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.
We know, for example, that when a patient goes to his primary-care physician with a very common problem like lower back pain, the physician will deliver the right treatment with real clinical benefit about half of the time. Patients with the same health problem who go to different physicians will get wildly different treatments. Those physicians can't all be right.
Overall, physicians are said to get it wrong around 50% of the time. I suppose that is possible. I get it wrong on a regular basis. Dr. DB says he trusts no-one in medicine, including himself.
More from the Scientific American article:
Give surgeons a written description of a surgical problem, and half of the group will recommend surgery, while the other half will not. Survey them again two years later and as many as 40 percent of the same surgeons will disagree with their previous opinions and change their recommendations. Research studies back up all of these findings, according to Eddy.
Everything is a crisis these days, and this is not one either. Much of college education has little to do with the workplace, and most practical education is self-education. Still, the author is open to the sorts of educational flexibility that make sense.
Princeton's Neili has a major piece responding to the Chace piece on affirmative action which we posted a while ago. It's A Desperate Defense of Affirmative Action. One quote:
Our current preference system has all the perverse kind of contact effects that Allport feared to the extent that it assures, in the very nature of upward-ratcheting, that the typical black or Hispanic student at highly competitive colleges and universities will be less academically accomplished or less academically talented than the typical white or Asian student. The very logic of the system guarantees this result. It's the "dumb jock" problem cast into an ethno-racial mold. Just as the lowering of standards for recruited athletes results in a reinforcement of the association between "dumb" and "jock" on college campuses, so the lowering of standards for blacks and Hispanics reinforces the association -- in the minds of all parties concerned including the black and Hispanic students themselves -- of white and Asian with "smart" and black and Hispanic with "intellectually inferior." "Dumb black and Hispanic affirmative action students" is the inevitable association created, even if strictures of political correctness and concerns over hurt feelings discourage it from being expressed publicly. Systems of differential standards inevitably produce perverse effects of this kind. Within the context of the zero-sum nature of the reshuffling system, upward-ratcheting guarantees that Allport's "good contact" -- i.e. stereotype disconfirming contact -- will always be replaced by "bad contact" -- i.e. stereotype-confirming contact.
Professor Mullen discovers the third-oldest and one of the most competitive colleges in the country attracts a more affluent and more cosmopolitan student body with larger ambitions and wider career options than those of students attending the local neighborhood’s uncompetitive teacher’s college.
Certainly a lot of Yale students come from more affluent and better educated family backgrounds, but comparing Yale and Southern most meaningfully would have to be done on the basis of academic talent. Southern’s students have average SAT scores in the 480-490 range on the three parts of the current test. Yale quotes different 25%/75% figures, which indicate that only 25% of Yale students got under 700 on any of the three parts of the SAT, and another 25% got 780 to 800. Yale admits around 7.5% of applicants these days. Southern admits 71% of applicants.
While she was flying down the road 20 miles over the limit, a woman passed by an overpass only to find a cop with a radar gun on the other side lying in wait.
The cop pulled her over, walked up to the car, and with that classic patronizing smirk we all know and love, asked, "What's your hurry?" To which she replied, "I'm late for work." "Oh yeah," said the cop, "what do you do?" "I'm a rectum stretcher," she responded. The cop stammered, "A what? A rectum stretcher? And just what does a rectum stretcher do?" "Well," she said, "I start by inserting one finger, then work my way up to two fingers, then three, then four, then with my whole hand in. I work from side to side until I can get both hands in, and then I slowly but surely stretch, until it's about 6 feet wide." "And just what the hell do you do with a 6 foot asshole?" he asked. "You give him a radar gun and park him behind a bridge..."
Traffic Ticket $95.00 Court Costs. $45.00 The Look on Cop's Face. PRICELESS
One more: Things not to say to a police officer...
When he pulls you over and says,"I think I smell alcohol. Have you been drinking?" Do not say "I think I see powdered sugar on your face. Have you been eating jelly donuts?"
If it’s good, the government should subsidize it. If it’s bad, the government should ban it. If outcomes are in any way perceived by any group to be sub-optimal, then the government should regulate it. Anyone who opposes these bans, subsidies, and regulations must therefore be a supporter of bad outcomes, hate poor people, want people to get sick and die, etc.
All health care will be delivered by this method soon. Requests for chest X-rays will entail sending you an application to work at a Japanese power plant with a film shirt. Deafness will be treated by ordinances requiring that everyone yell at you -- not just the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Instead of glasses, those suffering from vision loss will be supplied with an even uglier spouse, because what difference will it make, anyway? At this point, with all our light fixtures filled with CFL bulbs, you can barely tell if you're living with a mammal, never mind a hottie. Good-looking spouses will be re-assigned to those with good eyesight, but who want Viagra, which doesn't grow on trees, you know.
Would you like to know more? Put in another quarter, and press pound. Your pound key generates all the electricity for your house, too, so press it a lot, really fast.
Read about the good old eastern US Red-Shouldered Hawk, the lover of wetlands and swamps, at Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Like the Barred Owl who keeps the little wetland critters on their toes at night, this bird likes the kinds of places I like. Wild, wooly, and wet.
Keep on Dancing: Haitian Salsa Champion Gets Second Chance to Dance due to Israeli Doctors – “We are extremely pleased to announce that George has been invited by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York to be featured in a float in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade [June 5].”
Barry Rubin (director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal):
Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn’t understand what’s at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn’t learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what’s happening in Egypt, to determine its future.
Thomas Merton and Buddhism: “Merton, who helped to popularise "Eastern spirituality" in the West, really misconstrued and misrepresented Buddhism.”
Ryan turns the other cheek: ““A candidate who is timid on entitlement reform is not qualified to lead the country,”
Well written police report:
Orville Smith, a store manager for Best Buy in Augusta, Georgia, told police he observed a male customer, later identified as Tyrone Jackson of Augusta, on surveillance cameras putting a laptop computer under his jacket. When confronted, the man became irate, knocked down an employee, drew a knife and ran for the door.
Outside on the sidewalk were four Marines collecting toys for the "Toys for Tots" program. Smith said the Marines stopped the man, but he stabbed one of the Marines, Cpl. Phillip Duggan, in the back. The injury did not appear to be severe.
After Police and an ambulance arrived at the scene Cpl. Duggan was transported for treatment.
The subject was also transported to the local hospital with two broken arms, a broken ankle, a broken leg, several missing teeth, possible broken ribs, multiple contusions, assorted lacerations, a broken nose and a broken jaw...injuries he sustained when he slipped and fell off of the curb after stabbing the Marine.
Alternative medical treatments rarely work. But the placebo effect they induce sometimes does “Dr Ernst is no breathless promoter of snake oil. Instead, he and his research group have pioneered the rigorous study of everything from acupuncture and crystal healing to Reiki channelling and herbal remedies. Alternative medicine is big business. Since it is largely unregulated, reliable statistics are hard to come by.”
The decision is opposed by the Midwest Dairy Association, a trade group of 11,000 dairy farms. While applauding the focus on health, the association noted that chocolate milk sold in Minneapolis schools has less sugar than other versions and only 20 calories more than a carton of 1-percent-fat milk.
In addition, research funded by the dairy industry shows that bans on chocolate milk are counterproductive. Children who switch to white milk end up throwing more away and getting less calcium and Vitamin D, said Carolyn Hudson, a dietitian with Midwest Dairy. "If the kids don't drink it," she said, "they won't get it."
I regularly get calls for consultations from people seeking disability for emotional complaints. If I fill out the lengthy state form, it's pretty much guaranteed that they will get some sorts of government checks forever.
I tell them to call somebody else. I won't do it. In the charity clinic at which I volunteer my time we have a blind fellow, a guy with no legs, and a paranoid schizophrenic lady working. They all get the admin work done. At my supermarket, my bags are packed by a gal with Down's. She is a sweetie.
The calls I get about this are, like, I have bad Bipolar or bad OCD, or bad drug addiction, or chronic depression with fibromyalgia. Being a Psychiatrist, I fortunately do not get calls from the people who say they can't work because their back hurts. Whose doesn't?
Giving up on a productive life means giving up on life and giving up on dignity. A colleague of mine will not work with anybody on any form of disability. His view is "If they have given up hope for themselves, why should I bother?" I tell him it's all about getting the money, not about hope. Scamming the system, or reverting to dependency.
My seating companion at a very pleasant dinner last night engaged me in a conversation about the Moslems - the Moors - in Spain. My friends tend to be people with many interests and pursuits. Luckily for me, my aging brain remembered some of the history, but I wanted to quickly review it today. This was a good quick source: Muslim civilization in Spain (711-1492)
She knew all about it, and is taking a course in Ottoman art and design at Yale. We wondered what had happened to to Moslem civilization, and how and why it deteriorated to the point of its apparent current barbarianism. I speculated that perhaps it was not Islam, but the Ottoman Empire which had a civilization relatively independent of religion, as the Romans had, but I was just trying to maintain the level of the conversation.
Photo: One does not tend to associate the culture of the Alhambra with the current Middle-Eastern Islamicists who seem more focused on destruction than creation.
The president just finished speaking to a packed convention room at the AIPAC policy conference. He was not booed when he entered; most stood and offered brief applause. Still, the crowd during the speech had long periods of stony silence, and audible boos were heard when he brought up his plan to base an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal on the 1967 border lines. President Obama took nothing back from his foreign policy speech on Thursday and blamed the press for any controversy. He doubled down, making this upcoming presidential election a time for choosing for friends of Israel....This president once again has proved an apt negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians and a thorn in Israel’s side.
Conveniently, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has now released a statement, transforming Obama’s border guidelines into preconditions for renewed talks. Until recently the Palestinians had no problem negotiating without those preconditions. It was widely recognized that the Palestinians were trying to get to Obama’s position—a final status agreement structured around the 1949 lines plus land swaps—but that they would have to negotiate to it and make concessions along the way. Now Erekat is insisting that “there is no point talking about a peace process” unless Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu accepts the final Palestinian position as everyone’s starting position. Since that’s not going to happen under any circumstances—nor should it—we are again in a situation where President Obama’s de-facto advocacy for the Palestinian cause has made peace more difficult to achieve.
Me:
Obama to Israel, "Let's agree to disagree, and you'll pay for it later, out of sight of this audience."
Netanyahu replies: "My audience will hear from me tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, despite your sellouts."
It's like a perfect distillation of every unpleasant mental, verbal and physical tic extant in the land, gleaned from all points on the cultural, racial, and class compass.
Children raised solely by the popular culture and the public schools are essentially feral, but somehow less noble than an actual feral person would be. That's a difficult thing to achieve. Must be why it costs so much property tax money and cable bill cash to accomplish.
As The Wall Street Journal explains, “For a 10-year policy that costs $135, he [Centre] and his band of atheists promise to come to their [true believers’] homes after the Rapture, collect their pets and care for them. He says his 259 clients tend to be devout believers over the age of 40 ‘who love their pets and are sincerely concerned for what will happen to them.’”
Mr. Centre carefully screens all job applicants, making sure they are both animal lovers and, perhaps more importantly, not Jesus lovers.
“These are people not likely to be Raptured under any circumstances,” Mr. Centre told The Washington Post.
Continued the paper: “After a background check, each rescuer must satisfy Centre by blaspheming in accordance with Mark 3:29, the part of the New Testament that reads: ‘But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’”
PowerLine’s Scott Johnson, its music aficionado, reminds meof the most popular song among us Marines in Vietnam in the late ‘60s, “The Letter”. At the 1st MarDiv Hqs EM Club (a large shack), beer flowed (why always Black Label? A mystery, but who cared, it had alcohol), funding traveling shows of sexy girls doing cover songs, very well to our horny ears (horny ears? Yeah, Devil Dogs).
I guarantee you that we sang “The Letter” much better, louder (at the top of our lungs) and with more real feeling than this video of Joe Cocker with the All Stars of Mad Dogs & Englishmen. (The original by the Box Tops was recorded in 1967, and -- comments? -- better done.) We had more reason to sing and dance than the Hippies listening to Joe Cocker. And, even with much beer, we weren’t as spasticated.
DEAR CONGRESS: Your Credit Application Has Been Turned Down. “Our records indicate that your annual income for the 2011 taxable year was $2,170,000,000,000. You have requested a credit limit of $17,000,000,000,000. These figures exceed the American Public’s debt-to-income guidelines for credit issuance.” (HT: InstaPundit)
Meanwhile, consumerism and a crass popular culture, which increasingly constitute the common ground of being American, fill the void—and I’m not sure that a sustainable national identity can be built on a shared appreciation of fast food, bad movies, and vulgar popular music. Immigration can work again in this country. But for that to happen, schools and government must recommit themselves to teaching and reinforcing the common culture and political principles that immigrants once learned to become Americans.
The Problem with (Un)strategic Ambiguity -- And, Kissinger indicates US is getting ready to throw Taiwan under the bus. It’s getting crowded under there. President Obama’s revised Dale Carnegie: “How to lose friends and influence enemies to be determined”. “Mr. Kissinger suggests negotiations with the mainland "in which the de facto autonomy of Taiwan is preserved." On the model of Hong Kong? "Certainly beyond the Hong Kong pattern," he says.”
How Medicine Became a Growth Business: “The public is seeking care far beyond any need or reasoning. The influx of well, worried well, and worried sick people into a system designed to find medical diseases in sick people leads to large increases in false positives.”
I may have posted a photo of what my buddy's tumble-down get-away place in the wilds of upstate New York looked like when he bought it a few years ago. Saplings in the yard. Busted windows. This place had no door, clapboards with all the paint worn off or broken, and holes in the roof. Fallen chimney, I think.
The old farmhouse, in deer- and turkey-hunting territory, looked like a lost cause to me. A "scraper," as they are called around here. The guy is handy with guns, but I had no idea he was so handy with house renovation. Looking really good now. Not only a good new roof, but a power line too! Power is good.
I think I may volunteer my landscaping services in exchange for some turkey hunting. For starters, this place needs some apple trees.
Confidence in progress has now been replaced by postulation of change.
Progress is achieved and can be welcomed, but change just happens and
must be adjusted to. “Adjusting to change” is now the unofficial motto
of Harvard, mutabilitas instead of veritas. To adjust, the
new Harvard must avoid adherence to any principle that does not change,
even liberal principle. Yet in fact it has three principles: diversity,
choice, and equality. To respect change, diversity must serve to
overcome stereotypes, though stereotypes are necessary to diversity. How
else is a Midwesterner diverse if he is not a hayseed? And diversity of
opinion cannot be tolerated when it might hinder change.
Like me, you all are probably still engaged in some slow and tedious post-Christmas clean-up. I tend to use the shopping bags and small boxes to start my morning fires.
Some of the bags I used for fire-starting said "Michael Kors." What's that? Guys would not know. I checked it out:
It's fashionable shoes and dresses and stuff. Who got that stuff? I dunno, but it seems pretty nice.
I doubt it's a deliberate scam. I suspect she is not insane, but probably half-crazy. It's easy to prove: just do some blind testing of her.
It reminds me of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (a fascinating article). People in the US can retire on this non-existent syndrome. The shame is that quacks are around to reinforce this sort of nonsense:
"Multiple chemical sensitivity" is not a legitimate diagnosis. Instead of testing their claims with well-designed research, its advocates are promoting them through publications, talk shows, support groups, lawsuits, and political maneuvering (such as getting state governors to designate a Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Week). Many are also part of a network of questionable legal actions alleging injuries by environmental chemicals.
Many people diagnosed with "MCS" suffer greatly and are very difficult to treat. Well-designed investigations suggest that most of them have a psychosomatic disorder in which they develop multiple symptoms in response to stress. If this is true—and I believe it is—clinical ecology patients run the risks of misdiagnosis, mistreatment, financial exploitation, and/or delay of proper medical and psychiatric care. In addition, insurance companies, employers, other taxpayers, and ultimately all citizens are being burdened by dubious claims for disability and damages. To protect the public, state licensing boards should scrutinize the activities of clinical ecologists and decide whether the overall quality of their care is sufficient for them to remain in medical practice.
Lyme Disease (which is a real and readily-treatable infection) presents another interesting situation in which crocks and quackery abounds.
Moonwalking: President Obama tries to backpedal (or staggers back), his Middle East speech. Smooth shuffle doesn’t hide his direction, reversal of sense and security, nor that of his syncophants:
What to make of all the liberal Jewish groups and pundits who fawned over the speech and insisted there was no change in U.S. policy contained in Obama’s statement on the 1967 borders (which is a misnomer; there is only the 1949 armistice line)? They have, to the extent they had any credit, discredited themselves as reliable translators to Jews and Americans at large of the peace process. Whether through ignorance or through an insatiable need to defend a liberal president at all costs, they leapt into the fray to deny that Obama said anything damaging at all. The proof of Obama’s misstep is his swift backpedal, which, I suspect, will continue today.
The “liberal union” label doesn’t sell?“Forty-five years ago one in every five Americans belonged to the “seven sister” mainline Protestant denominations. Today, only one in 15 still does.”
Without major changes, “we fear that very few providers will enroll … and that (Medicare) and the provider community will miss the best opportunity to inject value and accountability into the delivery system.”
By "accountability," I think they mean cheap. One of the reasons I agreed to post my thoughts at Maggie's Farm was because of our editor's "Ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more" ethos. The Medicare and insurance company's regs drove me nuts, so I quit them all. See me, pay me. If you're rich, I'll charge you a lot. If you're poor, a little. Rightly or wrongly, I do it my way.
There are two simple things that can be done to reduce medical costs in the US: 1. Tort reform, so that everybody with a tension headache doesn't get a $700 cya CAT scan and OBs don't have to spend $200,000/yr for malpractice insurance, and 2. A wide market for interstate major medical insurance.
NYT: "Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality," an unsmiling Netanyahu told Obama in the Oval Office.
Reactions: "Respect goes two ways and Obama, a leader who has a history of cavalierly dismissing the sensibilities of American allies, cannot pretend that he is the injured party here."
A year ago I moved into a row house in northeast Washington, D.C., two
miles from the Capitol. I paid $85,000, a price so low it’s a punch line
in a city where the average home sells for more than $600,000.
The hot water heater was missing, and the bathroom tub drained into a
downstairs closet. My house inspector, a dead ringer for the
gravel-voiced actor Sam Elliott, tramped silently from room to room,
occasionally pausing to pronounce, “It’s not proper.” The house was in
foreclosure and had been vacant for a couple of years, so when I found
crayons under the old carpet, I was spared the guilt of imagining them
in still-young fingers. But once, someone had loved this place. The
backyard bloomed with rosebushes staked with weathered shoelaces. With
an FHA-backed loan and a savvy contractor, I gutted the house and
renovated it. I found myself realizing a dream I’d assumed was miles out
of reach: I was a homeowner.
At HuffPo, 
My seating companion at a very pleasant dinner last night engaged me in a conversation about the Moslems - the Moors - in Spain. My friends tend to be people with many interests and pursuits. Luckily for me, my aging brain remembered some of the history, but I wanted to quickly review it today. This was a good quick source: 
In Sweden, you can get disability for this: 
