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.
From Washington State, where paying $5 for coffee and sitting around playing with your laptop was invented, small competitors to the large chains came up with Bikini Baristas.
Seems that a jury in Yakima found the owner of Dreamgirls Espresso showing too much buns.
Bird Dog, keep your Dunkin Donuts. I'm going to the Grab-N-Go when it opens in my area. -- "More steam in the cream, please."
From the review of the book "Perpetual Euphoria" in the WSJ:
Instead of rehearsing the usual explanations about the rise of science and technology, Mr. Bruckner claims that the Christian attitude to pain contained the seeds of its own undoing. Many Christians naturally desired to hasten the coming of the Messiah, who would deliver them from their earthly torment. During the French Revolution, this urgent desire was secularized into utopian designs—as when idealists like Robespierre tried to eliminate the misery of the ancien regime and remake society in accordance with republican virtue. But for Mr. Bruckner, as much as for Edmund Burke, any attempt to usher in a reign of felicity will be marked by folly—and may well create new forms of misery. He notes that the more secular Western societies have become, the more sensitive they are to suffering that is no longer justifiable as part of a divine plan.
The reviewer concludes:
Mr. Bruckner himself comes across as neither a stoic who advocates giving up on happiness nor a sentimentalist who thinks pain has some intrinsic or artistic value. We are only happy, he believes, in spite of the suffering around us, and only for rare, unexpected and often inexplicable moments. Happiness, he implies, may not be as important as qualities like lucidity and dignity. But if you really want it, the best way to find it is not to care too much about it.
I could write about this topic for hours, and find some happiness - or pleasure - in doing so. But I won't. I have other things that need doing.
Every year in midsummer, Bird Dog invites all the Maggie's Farm contributors to gather under the shade of the old hanging tree for the company picnic. It's a veritable kaleidoscope of camaraderie, and Mrs. Bird Dog always has a big supply of road kill jerky and ouzo for everybody. Please note the prevalence of what we like to call Maggie's Farm Gun Safety. The Wikipedia entry for Maggie's Farm gun safety rhapsodizes:
Bird Dog always opens the ceremonies with a rousing "Let me hear your balalaikas (and your AKs) ringing out, come and use your guns free form!" This year, I'm bringing a bazooka, or a bouzouki, or both.
Looking forward to the solstice, Bird Dog. Until then, I'll keep the home sterno burning.
I see light rail (subways, trolleys) and even commuter rail work very well in densely-populated areas. It should not be subsidized, though (and neither should highways, but we have enough of them now anyway).
I say it is not. It's a private good, or perhaps not much good at all except for the 5% who really use it. Who ever said you need a school to learn stuff? I learn all I can, every day. Every night, too. As we always say here, knowledge comes from books and from The Teaching Company, and wisdom comes from engaging life to the fullest.
Late last winter the Spring snowmelt combined with a late nor'easter washed out our footbridge along with some multi-ton marble blocks that formed the old mill dam. Nature's entropy is always trying to destroy whatever man does.
We still haven't figured out how to fix it all in a cost-manageable way, but the beavers are always working on rebuilding the dam now. The mill which had been here was built for cutting marble blocks, then rafting them downstream in the Spring high water towards NYC and Boston. Oxcarts too, I believe. Lots of marble in the Berkshires.
The basic problem, across the whole range of the human helping relationships (like aid) between what might be called the “helper” and the “doer,” is that success lies in achieving more autonomy on the part of the doers, and autonomy is precisely the sort of thing that cannot be externally supplied or provided by the would-be helpers. This is the fundamental conundrum of all human helping relations, and it is the basic reason, not complexity, why engineering approaches and the like don’t work.
Read the whole post. One can not and would not refuse to give some food to a starving person, but most economic "help" is not helpful to anybody. There is something racist about the idea that Africa, being black, needs welfare and charity instead of free markets and the rule of law.
On this day in 1959, the "Big Bopper" J.P. Richardson, Buddy Holly, and Richie Valens died in a plane crash. This video is "Chantilly Lace," one of my favorites from that era. (My boys hid behind their chairs when I sang it at karaoke on a cruise. -- Today, I'm tormenting them with my version of James Brown, together with my imitation of that great performer's dance steps -- wish I had a cape, too, singing "I feel good.")
...lowering import tariffs and immigration restrictions would help Africans at a far lower cost to us than most direct donations. Yet direct donation activities usually get far more attention in most discussions of what we here can do for them there. Why?
Symptoms of the higher education bubble include students and their families in debt for unemployable degrees, taxpayers and the economy weighed down to support colleges that put country-club campuses, lack of academic rigor, even outright bias, above excellence, and fervid resistance to change from college faculties and administrators.
Any organization that fails to identify and satisfy the legitimate needs of those who provide its inputs and consume its outputs -- stakeholders -- will ultimately fail. Higher education is not immune to this rule of markets.
Professors are not the only stakeholders in academic freedom, though they’d like others to think so and allow them exclusive sway over what occurs within higher education. Students, qualified outside observers, taxpayers, indeed society in general, are key stakeholders.
Loyola professor of business law Arthur Gross-Schaefer’s brilliant piece in the February 2011 Journal of Legal Studies in Business, “Academic Freedom: Moving Away From The Faculty-Only Paradigm” is must reading for anyone who is concerned for the future and success of US higher education. As Gross-Schaefer says, “A serious re-evaluation of the faculty-centered paradigm of academic freedom needs to be undertaken.” Gross-Schaefer gets to the point: “this article will challenge the Robinson paradigm of academic freedom, predicated on faculty as the single stakeholder, as limiting and self-serving.” He reviews what happens “when a professor’s personal analysis begins to interfere with objective inquiry and the honest review of diverse opinions.”
Usually, this abnormal situation occurs when a professor is dealing with a contentious topic and has only presented a single view that compromises the academic environment. Accordingly, university students need basic academic rights: the right to not have professors impose political or personal beliefs, the right to receive valid scholarly materials, and the right to have controversial topics fairly discussed by having diverse views represented and carefully examined.[84]
Psychiatry made a wrong turn when it tried to turn its back on the heart and soul, and appeared to decide that it was better, or easier, or most cost-effective, or more "medical"-sounding, to view humans as bags of chemicals and containers of symptoms.
In his "Reflections on Sacred Texts," the Boring Old Man sees it pretty much the way I see it (h/t to Dr. X). I have a similar aversion to the DSM. My "sacred text" is the individual with the problem. Most patients I see do not fit neatly into any box, and I do not try to squeeze them into one.
The good doctors of most patient-oriented specialities - Internal Medicine, Family Practice, Surgery, etc. - seem to take more personal interest in understanding their patients and their lives than many "Biological Psychiatrists" do these days.
Psychiatry spans a broad range of problems, from pure brain abnormalities to regular difficult life problems, with complicated mixtures being the most frequent.
Fortunately for our patients, some us are still interested in getting to know them and in figuring out what ails them beyond their symptom checklist.
So which is it? I say all weather is caused by Bush, or Palin, Glenn Beck, or the Jews. Except for the nice weather.
Such claims are termed, in the language of logic, unfalsifiable. It is entertaining to read the news and the pundits and to hunt for the unfalsifiable claims. It's like an Easter egg hunt but you don't have to look as hard.
The recent study conducted by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College shows that only 26 percent of undergraduates at small institutions, and only 18 percent at larger institutions, felt strongly that their professors had high expectations and challenged them academically.
At a state university where I taught, seniors who took my 100-level survey course told me that it was the hardest and most intellectually demanding class they had taken in four years at college. Many were actually grateful for having taken my course and felt cheated by their other professors---although others weren't as grateful and eventually dropped the course or wrote negative comments on Ratemyprofessor.com. In an age when higher education exists for credentialing, and anyone can "get a degree," they wanted an easy professor and a blow-off class.
“For the near-term, how the Egyptian military promotes, thwarts, and/or negotiates the inevitable redistribution of power among individuals and factions within the country is the most critical issue.” Bay then reviews the reduced power of the military in Turkey and Iran following Islamists rise to power. Bay ends: “At some point, the Militant Islamists will resort to terror and assassination in their bid to secure unrivaled power. It will take a resilient alliance of Egyptian secularists, moderate Islamists and the military to defeat them. Encouraging this alliance should be America's foremost diplomatic goal.”
Jed Babbin, a former United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense who served during the first Bush administration, writes in his column:
“given Egypt's culture and its military's low-paid status, it's entirely possible that a new Islamist regime could purchase the military's loyalty. That is the most likely scenario if radical Islamic influence - from inside Egypt and emanating from Iran and Syria - manage to tip the balance their way.” Babbin concludes with an alternative: “Many of our most senior generals have longstanding relationships with their Egyptian comrades, the kind of bond that can only be achieved by serving side by side in training and military exercises. These officers, if the president permits them, should be on the phone with their Egyptian comrades to offer assurances of aid and support if they choose to stand against a radical Islamic regime. That, and only that, would be an effective American influence on Egypt's immediate future.”
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