We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
“If he does that, he [George Washington] will be the Greatest Man in the World!“
King George III, upon hearing of Washington's plan to retire as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army (1783), surrender power to Congress and go home to Mt. Vernon. Washington did exactly that. He also refused a third term as President of the US.
The way we used to think about politics and, unfortunately, the way I fear they’re thinking about politics still in Washington” involves “the old playbook [which] says, “lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election.”
Being old-school folks with an appreciation for the variety of interests and talents that exist in different people, we view education as having three components:
1. What everybody needs to know to function as a citizen in a free republic 2. What somebody needs to function in a job 3. The opening up of the life of the mind without regard to utility
#3 is, of course, what the original Liberal Arts college education was designed for. It was assumed that #1 was accomplished already, and #2 for most non-professional jobs.
Prof. Fish is not happy with the invasion of the marketplace into academia, but I think it is inevitable; inevitable because employment demands are requiring college degrees, whatever they might be and however silly such requirements might be. It's about monopoly credentialization, like education degrees.
We all know people with good IQs but without degrees who know more and are more interested in life than most of the folks we know with fancy degrees. I need not refer to George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Bob Dylan, or Bill Gates: I need only refer to our appliance repairman who is an impressive Shakespeare scholar (about whom I have posted here in the past).
The identity of the "college" has changed enormously over time, as has the amount of stuff to learn about. In 1700, many barbers doubled as dentists and surgeons, and our few colleges were as much about producing educated and literate Congregationalist ministers as anything else. Things have changed. A "college degree" can mean almost anything now.
A quote from Fish's piece:
What is happening in traditional universities where the ethos of the liberal arts is still given lip service is the forthright policy of for-profit universities, which make no pretense of valuing what used to be called the higher learning. John Sperling, founder of the group that gave us Phoenix University, is refreshingly blunt: Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that expand their minds nonsense.
The for-profit university is the logical end of a shift from a model of education centered in an individual professor who delivers insight and inspiration to a model that begins and ends with the imperative to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment.
In this latter model , the mode of delivery a disc, a computer screen, a video hook-up doesn't matter so long as delivery occurs.
Yes, it's a downscale, mass-market Kollege-Mart now. Read Fish's brief, poignant NYT essay, The Last Professor.
"We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor." - Samuel Gompers
In the romantic liberal vision of this union uprising, determined workers are standing up to the powerful. But there's no fat-cat owner wanting to pocket more profits here. The unions' target in Wisconsin is the taxpayer.
Those statehouse Republicans want to bust up that longstanding sweetheart deal in which public employee unions elect Democrats, who turn around and give the unions anything they want.
This arrangement between the unions and Democrats has led to unfunded liabilities for pension and benefits for retirees that now total $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion among the states.
I think the backlash is going to be harsh, and the Presidents' joining the fray is going to hurt him with the middle class. Too many taxpayers feel left out of the equation and resent the apparent greed, childishness, anger, bullying, and inflexibility of the people who are in their employ. It's understood that there is much - if not everything - at stake for the government unions who currently seem to own the Dem Party. However, by making such a conspicuous and unappealing spectacle during a time when so many are out of work, underemployed, or plain hurting, far more people are becoming aware of the sorts of generous deals these unions have made with their Dem patrons in the cities and states.
Only government employees get pensions these days, and many governments have switched to normal 401-Ks.
As Gov. Walker commented, the people of Wisconsin are saying "Hey, where can I sign up for this deal?"
I think people are most appalled by the teachers' behavior. People want to admire teachers. They are damaging their reputations and damaging their cause, so I suspect they will evoke little sympathy regardless of whatever justice may be in their cause.
Hats off to Gov Christie, TigerHawk's "Governor Awesome," for having shown the way to sanity and responsibility.
19:2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
19:9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
19:10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
19:11 You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another.
19:12 And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD.
19:13 You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.
19:14 You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.
19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
19:17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.
19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
A reader sent me this pic. Trust me: these dogs are trained. Which reminds me - we need a series on dog training, hunting and regular obedience. It's an important topic, and only the rich farm it out to experts. I have trained my own. For regular obedience, they have been quite good but for hunting they have been a little "difficult." They like the birds too much and behave like children when there is too much game around. My fault.
If you feed a dog, he'll love you. Any dog will snuggle. The training is the deeper connection in which you learn to think like him, and hopefully mostly vice-versa. His work is to anticipate your wishes just as our work is to anticipate our bosses' wishes (but at Maggie's, we try to avoid having bosses other than God).
Any dog can be trained to the whistle and to hand signals. Any human can learn God's hand signals.
Our group is still reading Ecclesiastes and yes, I do know that a more accurate translation would be "futilities," or "meaninglessness."
Despite the wisdom of the Preacher, our animal spirits and desires are ever-present and ever-pressing.
There's not much that I desire, but I really want one of these systems: Heated Driveway. A flame-thrower would be cheaper and more fun, though it might melt the asphalt.
This is actually somewhat rare. It's one thing if individual bloggers face off, like some squabble between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, but the big league blogging sites, like Pajamas Media, Townhall, Politico and RealClearPolitics, usually refrain from any specific finger-pointing or name-calling.
Still, I agree that this Politico piece of AGW sputum is an exception. As I was reading it, I was thinking in the back of my mind, "Wow, what is this, 2003?" Then I get down to the comments and some guy's exclaiming, "Wow, this looks like a piece from 2003!" It just reeks of nostalgia. The only thing missing was any mention of the polar bears and their sad, plaintive plight.
The problem, as with any AGW article these days, is that the question that immediately arises is, do they know what they're claiming is complete bullshit — and thus they're just flat-out lying to us? Is it money, power, sex? Ego, pride, reputation? Or are they honestly so naive as to believe everything they read in the MSM and disregard the rest? As the renown TigerHawk would ask, can you think of a third alternative?
I have no comment as I read it yesterday and my mind has mercifully deleted the entire contents — and I refuse to go through such an ugly ordeal again. My guess is that he was entirely correct about the warming part, right up until he used the word "man".
The response from RealClearPolitics is not only a superb piece in itself as he totally dismantles the guy, but it also has some interesting background on Galileo, which is actually why I'm posting it. I don't do straight AGW anymore. The whole topic is just so 2010.
I would only add that despite my having a plethora of questions for the author of the first article, the very first question — as it relates to the title of his post — would be, "What does global warming have to do with the GOP and politics?" From the title of his post, alone, he exposes the fact that this is an ideological rant bent along established party lines, not an independent review of a scientific question. It's just amazing lefty writers don't understand how clearly we see through the ideological patina they cover themselves with.
As a small footnote, Bird Dog did one of his semi-annual "Tell your friends about Maggie's Farm" posts the other day. When you describe it to them, you can now add, "It's the kind of site where you'll see the words plethora and patina in the same paragraph!"
Followed them forth; and meanwhile there was heard
A mighty shout: "Come, O ye sons of Greeks,
Make free your country, make your children free,
Your wives, and fanes of your ancestral gods,
And your sires' tombs! For all we now contend!"
And from our side the rush of Persian speech
Replied. No longer might the crisis wait.
At once ship smote on ship with brazen beak;
A vessel of the Greeks began the attack,
Crushing the stem of a Phoenician ship.
Each on a different vessel turned its prow.
At first the current of the Persian host
Withstood; but when within the strait the throng
Of ships was gathered, and they could not aid
Each other, but by their own brazen bows
Were struck, they shattered all our naval host.
The Grecian vessels not unskillfully
Were smiting round about; the hulls of ships
Were overset; the sea was hid from sight,
Covered with wreckage and the death of men;
The reefs and headlands were with corpses filled,
And in disordered flight each ship was rowed,
As many as were of the Persian host.
But they, like tunnies or some shoal of fish,
With broken oars and fragments of the wrecks
Struck us and clove us; and at once a cry
Of lamentation filled the briny sea,
Till the black darkness' eye did rescue us.
The number of our griefs, not though ten days
I talked together, could I fully tell;
But this know well, that never in one day
Perished so great a multitude of men.
(This English translation by William Cranston Lawton of 'The Battle of Salamis' is reprinted from Greek Poets in English Verse. Ed. William Hyde Appleton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893.)
The Liberal Mead's The Madison Blues. Real change is coming, moving past his "Liberalism 3.0."
For many Democrats, the weakening of the public sector union movement looks like a strategic setback to be resisted at all costs. Blue labor has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Democratic candidates in recent election cycles — both in direct cash contributions and in volunteer and in-kind contributions like phone banks.
But public sector union support, however attractive in the short term, is a poisoned chalice in today’s world. As long as Democrats are in hock to the teachers’ unions, the postal workers, and the various state and federal civil service unions, they are reduced to a producers’ lobby for government workers. They are tied to the 22.6 million Americans who have government jobs — and cannot respond creatively and thoughtfully to the needs of the 280 million who don’t.
and
However much money the public sector unions fling into the maw of Democratic party politics, the old system is going down. Workers will actually do better in states that act quickly; the longer the day of reckoning is postponed, the higher the bill will be, and the more savage and draconian the cuts will have to become.
But if the blue social model and 4.0 liberalism are losing, what will take their place?
Popular Science visited some toy fair the other day and ran an article on some of the snappier products. I thought I'd highlight a few here.
Let's start off with an easy one. This is one of those puzzles that's actually much easier to do than it sounds.
The object is to roll the ball through the obstacle course. Easy enough? The hitch is, you have to sit four feet away and you can't touch anything.
The answer?
Well, mind control, of course.
How else would you do it?
Mindflex was a great step forward in games, tracking your EEG waves through a headband to help you move a ball across the board. But who wants to play a game alone, right? Mattel's new MindFlex Duel is an upgraded two-player version in which you and a friend race to move the ball across the game board or through an obstacle course. It's a true battle of wits.
Sure, you'd like to hide a video camera in the girls' locker room. Who wouldn't? The problem is, the darn steam always fogs up the lens! Obviously, the answer is to secretly dash in, grab the vid, then dash back out before the lens gets fogged up.
As we say in the locker room biz, no sweat!
Get the car's-eye-view from a camera embedded in the hood of these three-inch racecars. Each 1:64 scale car can hold up to 12 minutes of VGA-quality video and has a one-inch LCD on its lower chassis for instant playback -- or you can load videos onto a computer to share online.
Most people like pets. I've raised tropical fish and exotic goldfish, dogs and cats, rats and rabbits. And many people would like to keep a small 'desk pet' at work, like a cute little hamster or guinea pig running around the desktop, keeping one company in the wee hours. Unfortunately, the cruel, merciless corporate plutocrats in their effort to keep us crushed beneath the imperialistic jackboot of authority have deemed this inappropriate.
Still, there's a simple answer. I present this more as a harbinger of things to come:
Set this palm-sized 'bot on its way on your desk without worrying that it will knock over the coffee cup in its path. When it's not being controlled by its accompanying iPhone app, the TankBot's autonomous mode relies on infrared sensors to see and avoid obstacles, so it won't make a mess of your workspace.
1 Boring Old Manhas a good post (one of a series) about current trends in Psychiatric diagnostics. One quote:
To my mind, the resulting evidence-based psychiatry seems like a tautology from my college logic class. A tautology is neither a proof nor fallacy. It’s the situation where the premise and the conclusion are just different ways of saying the same thing. Instead of experience informing, refining, or changing our new classification, practice was being designed to reaffirm and solidify it, since the only admissable evidence is group validation by clinical trial. No matter the outcome of the study, the validity of the group is affirmed. It depersonifies our patients - their diagnoses becomes bigger than their lives or experiences, and it locates the seat of knowledge outside the clinician/patient dyad, putting it in the hands of key opinion leaders who look at the studies and create the algorithms. The resulting relationship moved from doctor/patient to expert/diagnostic_group. I wish I were overstating this, but I don’t think I am by much.
Because human nature is so variable and strange and complicated, and because my field is still in recovery from an overdose of "Biological Psychiatry" (in which the "mind" plays no role), many of our Experts have seen fit to categorize people according to their symptoms.
Pursue sex too avidly? You got a sex addiction. Work too hard? You got OCD. Nervous about something? You got an Anxiety Disorder. Put stuff into your underpants at WalMart? You got Kleptomania.
To my mind, these things are not diagnoses - they are what we term in Medicine "Chief Complaints" - we scribble "cc -".
To my mind, surface emotional symptoms frequently say little about what is ailing or bothering a person, just as saying that a patient has a fever tells you little about what is wrong. It just tells you that something is wrong. I find it to be challenging, helpful, and always interesting to probe into what is really the matter rather than slapping a label on somebody.
A label is not a diagnosis. I had my training from the best, and they certainly agree. (We need to re-post my series on diagnosis one of these days.) I'd like to go on at length about the topic of depth Psychology and Psychiatry vs. cheap and superficial Psychiatry, but I can't do that right now.
ObamaCare reduces the number of tax-paying Americans while increasing unemployment and adding to the personal and government costs of providing medical insurance.
It’s not just the 800,000 fewer workers seeking jobs under ObamaCare, as the CBO Director admitted last week to Congress, becausethe law will reduce "the propensity to work" in order to get medical insurance. With subsidized guaranteed issue of medical insurance, there will be less incentive to find a job with benefits. At the same time, medical insurance premiums will increase for all as ObamaCare’s guarantee issue creates an incentive to wait until ill to obtain insurance.
Further, due to higher required levels of benefits within allowed medical insurance policies, the premiums are increased for tens of millions, only deferred for this and maybe next year by the temporary waivers issued by the Obama administration.
On top of that, there will be untold tens or hundreds of thousands lower wage workers who want to work who will not be hired, because the required cost to employers of their medical insurance under ObamaCare is too high. The cost of medical insurance to employers under ObamaCare will be near as much as lower wage workers earn, especially for those with a family. Indeed, many are not being hired now, as businesses restrain hiring to prevent being locked-in when this 2014 job-killing effect of ObamaCare kicks in.
In 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time employees, 30 hours a week or more, may only charge employees 8% of their income for their contribution toward employer-provided medical insurance. For a worker earning $125,000, that amounts to $10,000 toward the typical $20,000 annual cost of family coverage. That leaves the employer with $10,000 to pay, or an additional 8% above wages.For a worker earning $25,000, that amounts to $2,000 toward the typical $20,000 annual cost of family coverage. That leaves the employer with $18,000 to pay, or an additional 72% above wages.
Many sane employers will think twice and more before hiring that will bring its head-count to 50 or more. Many sane employers will hire those who are single, instead of with families, because of the required 8% of singles’ lower medical insurance premium. Many sane employers will seek efficiencies and technologies to avoid hiring lower-wage workers. Many sane employers will reduce hours worked by lower-wage workers in order to reduce its full-time head-count. Many sane employers will rather pay the $2,000 per worker ObamaCare penalty by ending its medical insurance program and letting the government provide medical insurance.
The ultimate toll of ObamaCare will be far greater than the $trillions in budget costs already estimated. ObamaCare’s budget costs will actually be even larger, and so will the as yet uncounted costs. The US tax-base will shrink while the number of unemployed will remain high.
The Constitutional challenges to ObamaCare center on the individual mandate, and on that causing the whole of ObamaCare to be thrown out of court. There is no other court recourse against these other travesties of ObamaCare. Only a Congress with both houses overcoming a Presidential veto can save us, or 2012 bringing us more in the Senate willing to vote for repeal and a new President willing to sign off.
It will be important to get across to lower-wage earners that they have much at stake in 2012.
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
The political battles over public unions are seen as Labor's Last Stand. They appear to view government unions as their last source of power in a world which has left the union movement far behind.
Public unions have a monopoly position that gives them undue bargaining power. Their campaign cash—collected via mandatory dues—also helps to elect the politicians who are then supposed to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those same unions. The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table. This is why such famous political friends of the working man as Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia opposed collective bargaining for government workers, even as they championed private unions.
USDA employees and FBI officials estimate that the number of fraudulent claims ranges from 50 to 95 percent. Boyd takes issue with those statistics, though.
It's more shooting than hunting, but it looks like great fun. Friends who have done such shoots come home with sore shoulders but otherwise very happy and well-fed - with no time zone change.
More cool if slightly pricey hunts at GSS. (No, this is not a paid advt. We do no paid ads here but we do plenty of freebies just for fun.)
“If he does that, he [George Washington] will be the Greatest Man in the World!“ 
Stanley Fish, who we just happen to have linked last week 
FDR's Ghost Is 
This is actually somewhat rare. It's one thing if individual bloggers face off, like some squabble between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, but the big league blogging sites, like Pajamas Media, Townhall, Politico and RealClearPolitics, usually refrain from any specific finger-pointing or name-calling.
Sipp links to 