Wednesday, August 4. 2010
What's that thing behind the old VW?
Answer below -
Continue reading "What's that?"
Tuesday, August 3. 2010
From Dr. Bob's The Doctor Will See You Now – Or Else!
Mark my words, we are witnessing the disassembly of the American system of medicine — a system which, for its many flaws, has provided the best and most advanced health care the world has ever known. For some, its destruction will be a victory, flush with the naive utopian vision of universal, government-controlled health care.
For you, the patient, the outcome will prove far less sanguine.
Douglass at Am Thinker spells out the details. It is rather amusing. Krugman was once an economist, but has been a political hack for years. One quote from the piece:
Paul Krugman has spent his career as a pundit advocating that government bureaucrats and political process replace markets. He knows that there is a large literature that says that this is a bad idea. That literature is transparently relevant to Krugman's only policy proposal. And yet Krugman has not read it...and admits that he has not read it, without embarrassment.
By July, Krugman had lost his "Battle of the Blog." On July 23, Latrina commented, "Who is this Sean from Florida? He takes everything that [the] Professor [says] and shreds it, piece by piece. He shouldn't be allowed to post his comments on this blog since he seems to be winning all the debates. We progressives need to stick together and embellish our talking points without someone from the outside pointing out fallacies in our ideology."
Bingo.
"Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline."
G.K. Chesterton
 City Journal: What Social Science Does—and Doesn’t—Know. Our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound.
No Big Bang: A new model of the cosmos. h/t, Vanderleun
When The Government Owns GM… the other auto-makers are not going to be treated very fairly.
Challenge to Health Care Law Advances
State and Local Debt Bombs Ticking Throughout US Heartland. Beware of muni bond funds.
Via Thompson:
And then there’s the leftwing think-tank, the New Economics Foundation, whose Head of Social Policy, Anna Coote, tells us we would become “better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours” if only our incomes were dramatically reduced. “We,” she says, will be “satisfied” without the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” The preferences of the British electorate – whose taxes fund the NEF - don’t figure in this brave new world and the NEF’s deep thinkers simply know what’s best for us. What’s best for us is “introducing measures to reduce the gradient between high and low earners,” “growing our own food,” and “mending and repairing things.”
Top Ten Most Left-Biased Working Journalists
The Secret History of Climate Alarmism. It's about German politics.
At Volokh: Philipson and Posner on the Causes of Obesity. Some of the comments there are very good.
Ace on Paul Ryan's Roadmap:
I honestly would be in favor of the conservative bait and switch in '12 and pay the price in '14 if we got anywhere near the results the Democrats have gotten in the last year and a half. Somehow though, the Republicans never seem to pull the trigger.
Rep. Pete Stark: Federal Government Can Do Most Anything:
Has this guy ever read the Constitution? Didn't he have to swear to uphold it? People like this are dangerous.
Q&O: Bush tax cuts – it’s not your money, so quit whining
David Stockman on the debt: Four Deformations of the Apocalypse. He wants a tax hike. Kudlow .takes on Stockman
Up on the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is Big Bambu. You can take tours up through it. I guess you would call it an "installation." It is an endless work-in-progress. I wonder how it would stand up to a good Nor'easter.
The views from up there are magnificent, overlooking Central Park.
Monday, August 2. 2010
At 99, Mitch Miller has died but isn't forgotten, nor his singalongs in our living rooms.
The brief from Wikipedia:
Mitchell William "Mitch" Miller (July 4, 1911 – July 31, 2010)[1] was an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive. One of the most influential figures in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of Artists & Repertoire at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist, he is sometimes thought of as the creator of what would become karaoke with his NBC-TV series, Sing Along with Mitch. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his musical career as an accomplished player of the oboe and English horn, and recorded several highly regarded classical albums featuring his instrumental work. But he is best remembered as a conductor, choral director, television performer and recording executive.
Let's let Mitch Miller take us for a stroll.
If this is too schmaltzy for you, more the pity. Second part is vaudeville. (When Gavin was born, he wouldn't stop howling. I walked the hospital corridor singing "Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye" which quieted him. Not a single nurse nor visitor had ever heard of vaudeville!)
We need Mitch Miller in our living rooms today. His lasting impacts.
Students Who Don't Study - Evidence shows that college students put in less and less time on coursework but receive higher grades.
Allitt begins:
American discussions of education often veer over into utopian fantasy, and one of the commonest delusions is that nearly every young person wants to be educated. The reality is quite different.
Nearly every young person wants the qualifications that offer access to well paid work, and will do as much as it takes to get them. But most youngsters do not care deeply about education for its own sake, especially if getting it requires long hours of solitary, disciplined study. Learning is hard, often joyless, and for centuries was understood to be so alien to youngsters’ inclinations that it had to be reinforced with frequent beatings.
Now we indulge the idea that not just basic literacy but a high level of formal education is for everyone, and that they will appreciate it.
Neither man nor life is perfectable. Indeed, it would be difficult to find agreement on "perfection" anyway.
Some people in the psychological health professions have an unspoken and even unacknowledged notion that, given proper therapy and/or proper medicines, we could all be brought to "normality" or "mental health." I term that "psycho-utopianism," and I hold the copyright for the term.
My view of all utopianisms is that they represent infantile wishes; that they are unrealistic dreams. Dreams of Eden. "If only..., this organization would run better." "If only we had..., we'd be happier." "If only the country would..., life would be better." "If only I were more motivated to (work out, make more money, get a better job, Etc.), I'd be happy."
In Psychoanalysis, we often use the term "normal neurotic" for those whose defenses and adaptations are in the normal range, ie not too dysfunctional and not too misery-creating. Most people are in that category. Psychoanalyst Dr. Joyce McDougall wrote a wonderful book in 1992, Plea For A Measure Of Abnormality, which addresses the topic.
I am not a therapeutic nihilist. I try to be a realist. Everybody has character flaws and weaknesses and immaturities, and always will regardless of the next miracle drug or the next whatever. The trick is to know oneself, to know one's strengths and weaknesses and flaws, same as it is to know the limits of external reality. A good life is a struggle with both.
It would not be difficult to preach on this topic at long and tedious length with the implications for how it applies to many or most human endeavors in the post-Eden world, but I'll save my ammunition for another time.
- From Sandel in The Atlantic (2004), The Case Against Perfection - What's wrong with designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering.
- Ars Psychiatrica discusses the ailments of prosperity: The Age of Anomie?
- Yet another normal neurosis may get an "official" diagnosis: Internet Addiction - "What once was parody may soon be diagnosis." Same thing goes for "sex addiction" in my opinion. It's like shopaholics and chocaholics: from Oprah to DSM 5 in one easy step.
- If "Borderline Personality" is up to 10% of the population, is it really all that abnormal?
- One in five Californians say they need mental health care. Those are just the folks who want to deal with their "issues." Willingness to address one's "issues" is partly cultural.
Unrelated, but interesting: A Simulation Of What It’s Like To Experience Schizophrenic Symptoms. h/t, Linkiest
 If you blinked this morning you missed the link I posted to a gallery of the Playboy centerfolds, semi- and unclad, "Maggie's Farmcritters", from 1953-2008. It was taken down by order from she-who-must-be-obeyed, our in-farm censor. Banned from the Farm even as a link, not to mention in full display "below the fold" as a hidden page.
As a site posting great art, I wonder if painted nudes will be banned, or statues figleafed. Bird Dog, better skip the Belvedere Museum outside Vienna.
But, my wife is from Europe, and enjoys the female form. She posed nude and in lingerie when younger. Her mother has a nude drawing of my wife on her living room wall. We have several Klimpts hanging in our house, and it hasn't corrupted our sons, both former champion breast-feeders. My wife enjoyed and emailed around my review of the Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant.
The other day I replied to a Commenter that "As I age, I would find more delight in finding the perfect Italian Cheesecake, far rarer than the perfect 'cheesecake.' " Personally, I would never allow cream cheese cake to pass my lips, but I wouldn't ban others from enjoying it when tastefully done.
What are your tastes and limits in either cheesecake?
(Photo is an Italian Cheesecake. Ricotta cheese. Not too sweet.)
"The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work."
G.K. Chesterton, 1918
Tiger takes a walk on the High Line
Women 'view modesty as sign of weakness'
The WaPo doesn't get it
Report: Connecticut No. 2 In Unfunded Pension Liability
ADA update:
In recent months a New Jersey jury ordered a rheumatologist to pay $400,000 for not providing a deaf patient with a sign language interpreter at his own expense...
Related: Jury Damage Award Could Close Calif. Healthcare Facilities
Megatool Prince Charles Declares He's Here to Save the Planet or Something
The Ruling Class Tosses Americans Overboard
Young Illegals Out Themselves, Daring To Be Deported
Americans Cut Back On Visits To Doctor
Alcohol Use Now at 25-Year High
Palin: Obama lacks 'the cojones' to tackle immigration
Michelle: Summer of Corruption: Maxine Waters/OneUnited Bank refresher course\
The yacht vs. the pickup truck - Democrats are now the party of perceived privilege, and GOP is the party of the people
Related: the story of two weddings. Also related: Dems are the party of the rich
Surber: It was not a stimulus. It was a raid on the Treasury
Powerline:
That's what happens under government medicine. Political considerations are substituted for medical judgment, and over time many doctors and nurses, government employees all, come to view their patients much as postal employees view the letters and packages they sort. With no competition, patients have no choices, and the quality of care steadily erodes even as the price--like the price of everything run by government--rises.
Gateway: It’s Back: Public Option Again Rears It’s Ugly Head
Can Rubio win?
NYT Blogger Who Knocked Fox News' Audience Diversity Has the Same Problem
Something we can learn from Cuba:
After the crash of the former Soviet bloc, Cuba's cash-strapped government in the 1990s approved a wide range of self-employment. Positions such as beauticians, dog groomers, small restaurant owners and even lighter refillers were legalized as long as workers got licenses and paid taxes.
But social resentment emerged as an issue when some workers, particularly in small private restaurants, achieved dramatic levels of success.
The government began increasing taxation and regulation, and decreasing license-granting, until the self-employed sector was largely rendered paralyzed, like the rest of the economy.
Sunday, August 1. 2010
 Why? Because he says it all, here.
Photo from the post.
That's a Picasso quote. For me, even his small etchings and line drawings have more soul and substance and solidity (and variety and visual surprise) than all the work of the other great artists I have seen. Every line shows strength, boldness, certainty, inevitability, regardless of whether it is etchings, lithos, oil, ink, watercolor, collage, sculpture - anything. It's called "talent."
If you're in the neighborhood, I'd advise not missing the Picasso show at the Metropolitan Museum. We got there yesterday. 300 works, all dusted off from their own mind-boggling collection. If I didn't suffer from "museum brain," I could have spent an hour just in the last room with the small etchings from the 1960s. As always, the audio guide is very good ($6, and two for one if you are a member.)
The show runs until Aug 15, and it's never crowded in August. I'd say the show is worth a special trip to NYC because it is a visual feast. For me, an overdose because just a handful of wonderful pictures fills my feeble brain to the brim.
This from his "Classical" period, 1920s.
More of my pics below the fold -
Continue reading ""Good artists borrow. Great artists steal." The Met's Picasso show"
FBI Files Reveal Historian Howard Zinn Lied to Hide CPUSA Membership. Who is surprised? This America-hater made many millions, and led a cushy life in freedom on his fashionable America-hating. The only good thing about Zinn is that he loved Wellfleet, which fortunately was never in the Soviet Union.
Malanga: Government dietary advice often proves disastrous. As we have repeatedly said here, nobody knows what an optimal diet is, and definitions of "healthy eating" change constantly. It's a field full of fads, and full of cranks with the delusion that they know what's best for you. At Maggie's Farm, we have been thriving on Thai Noodle Soup (the hot version) this summer. Eat your Bok Choy! Scientists say it's good for you!
Vanderleun on poetry. We like poems.
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
1:12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem,
1:13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.
1:14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
2:18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me
2:19 --and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.
2:20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun,
2:21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.
2:22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?
2:23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.
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