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.
Many people today are obsessed with food, what to eat and how much. Government wants to get in on the game and to tell you what to eat, but the experts have no answers. So governments just make it up.
...several top medical scientists have concluded that the government’s carb-heavy guidelines may actually have harmed public health. In 2008, three researchers from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine—including the associate dean of clinical research, Paul Marantz, and a former president of the International Hypertension Society, Michael Alderman—observed in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine that since 1977, Americans have largely followed the government’s advice, doubtless as conveyed by the doctors they consulted. Men, for instance, cut their fat intake from 37 percent of their daily calories to 32 percent and increased their carbohydrate intake from 42 percent to 49 percent. Yet over the same three decades, the fraction of American men who were overweight or obese increased from 53 percent of the population to about 69 percent. The doctors wondered whether this correlation was an unintended consequence of telling the entire population to change its eating patterns. “In general,” the doctors wrote, “weak evidentiary support has been accepted as adequate justification for [the U.S. dietary] guidelines.
Read the whole thing. My sense is that you can eat whatever you want unless you have some special illness like diabetes, and it won't make a darn bit of difference. Food is not medicine. All we really know is that no food is bad, plenty of food - but not too much - is good.
Bird Dog is off gallivanting again. Pictures (and more pictures, and more pictures) at his return. Meanwhile, all others ducking the honor, you're stuck with me. I'm so excited to see you every morning.
Fresh combat regiments of Vietnam Peoples Army's soldiers are now converging in a key province of Northern Vietnam to attack and arrest thousands of Hmong Catholic, Protestant and independent Animist religious believers demonstrating for human rights, religious freedom, land reform and an end to illegal logging and deforestation.
Thanks to mandatory “volunteer service” (or, as I call it, “community servitude”), the children I know are disinclined to do any type of volunteer work and much inclined to engage in scams and cheats.”
“Unemployment duration ain’t what it used to be. In 1982, the last time unemployment tipped double digits, joblessness was more of a short-term affair. Across these four categories, the plurality of folks were unemployed for fewer than five weeks. In 2011, by contrast, about half the jobless have been out of work for at least 27 weeks….In 1982, unemployment was a terrible cold, measured in weeks and maybe months. Today it's pneumonia.”
Anyone remember the elbow test? (That's how I met my first wife, really.)
Between 1964 and the present, the study of Western Civilization has literally disappeared from most college curricula.Not only is it not required, you’ve often got to searchpretty hard to find individual history courses that tangentially cover bits and pieces of the themes once commonly encountered by most undergraduates.
Roger Ebert take down: “What kind of man hears coded racism in the words “food” and “stamps” on Sunday but excuses pro-Nazi/anti-Israel remarks on Wednesday?”
““Everywhere I went, it was, ‘we only take online applications; apply online,’” he groused. “Half the time, they couldn’t even be bothered looking up. So, you clean up, wear decent clothes, walk in trying to project a positive attitude and you hit this wall of disinterest. There’s no Human Resource Department. There’s no one interested, just these cogs in the wheels telling you that your best shot is to enter a lottery to become a cog in the wheel.”
Colbert punks … self? “how Colbert started off trying to skewer the Supreme Court over the Citizens United v FEC ruling, and ended up getting a lesson in its necessity”
Reaction to Obama’s latest big speech: Forgetaboutit
Wonder why? Here's a recent example from the West Bank:
... at a ceremony honoring all 73 Palestinians from Bethlehem serving life sentences in Israeli prisons, the PA unveiled a "Tree of Freedom for Prisoners." Its branches are decorated with "photographs of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment."
The following prisoners were mentioned in the first article: Riyad Al-Amour - Serving 11 life sentences for murder of 9 Israelis and 3 Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel. Adnan Al-Afandi - Attempted to kill two children by stabbing them, 1992 Nasser and Mahmoud Abu Sorour - Participated in the murder of a member of Israeli Intelligence, 1993. Rizq Salah - Killed an Israeli soldier with a bomb in Bethlehem, 1993
And here's another recent example from the West Bank Palestinian Authority's partner, Hamas in Gaza:
Hamas TV Extols Female Palestinian Suicide Bombers and Jihad Fighters: Jihad-Fighting Mothers Urge Their Sons to Seek Martyrdom
Here's a top-level analysis of Israel's security needs for a viable peace.
Because of current U.S. policy, U.S. companies are prohibited from developing oil fields that lie in Cuban waters and come within 50 miles of Florida. However, Cuba is exploring and developing these oil fields, estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to possess more oil than the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and Cuba is partnering with China and other countries, such as Spain, France, and Canada.
The Castro Regime will begin drilling off the coast of Florida this year and will go deeper than the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April.
In my view, we all have different wiring, and we all have some loose wires and short circuits and sparking, but some loose wires cause more problems than others. Some will just make you more interesting, but some will burn your house down.
...a tiny minority of Yale’s most obnoxious and neurotic females, members of a gender comprising a slight majority of humanity, already empowered by Nature with staggering powers of influence and control over members of the opposite gender, particularly during a period of life when the reproductive impulse and any young lady’s powers of personal attraction are at their height, have been persuaded by ideological influences hosted and specially cultivated by Yale to see themselves on the basis of myths, stereotypes, and crude historical misunderstandings as victims, and then encouraged to exploit that status for personal and group power and rewarded for doing exactly that with attention and applause.
As someone who lives adjacent to a river (a small one, but larger than a stream - around 30-40' wide in dry season), I know all about flooding. The prosperous farmer who built the core of my house in 1803 had the brains to build his house and barns above the level of flooding, even just barely above the level of 100-year floods.
Our new (c. 1890) barn was built on the old barn foundations. We have had water right up to the footings from the river 200 yards away.
Our land is flooded regularly, and it does wonders for the meadows but it fills my pool with silt, branches, dead fish, leaves, etc. Knocks down our fencing, too. Most of our land is on a flood plain, and only about 1/4 of it is above the plain.
If you live on a flood plain, whether salt or fresh, flooding must be part of your life plan. I think it makes good sense to have farmland, open space, natural preserves, etc on flood plains, but it drives me crazy that the Feds subsidize construction on flood plains via flood insurance. That is just plain stupid. If you live in a flood plain, you should live in a trailer that can be moved to higher ground with a pickup truck. I did live for a spell in one like that (but I did not really like it).
Levees and other Army Corps of Engineers devices only worsen the flooding that rivers regularly perform for the benefit of the richness of the flood plains. They attempt to turn rivers into drainage ditches instead of the ever-changing, meandering, shape-changing wild things that they are.
The argument is fair enough, but the question is who gets to decide what is made public? The press? People are obviously interested in what "leaders" and celebs do in their spare time.
France's culture, the article says, writes off a lot of behavior that would be considered in the Anglo-American world to be borderline menacing and assaulting -- not rape, but the knocking on that door -- as some kind of boys-will-be-boys seduction.
Obama came to Boston in March to rub elbows with wealthy businessmen -- whose businesses have benefitted from his policies. For the pleasure of face time with the President, these businessmen contributed to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, anywhere from a few hundred dollars to more than $30,000.
Catfish Noodling (h/t, Wizbang). Gotta love these crazy guys, pulling these delicious Channel Catfish out of their holes in the mud. What a great country!
Many Jews and decent liberals are having a “consciousness-raising” experience. The three incidents at CUNY this past academic year honoring extremist foes of Israel, and throwing up chaff about academic freedom to distract, have struck to the quick in New York City and spread throughout the country. The contamination in our core institutions of the blatant Israel-hate that has melded the far left and Palestinian apologists and advocates has activated a ground-swell of reaction. Can this be the start of a roll-back? Yes, as more and more Americans speak up in defense of Western values and strike back at those who undermine them.
The Obama-CYA, George Soros funded, Palestinians apologists of J-Street, leftist Jews, defended Tony Kushner receiving an honorary degree from CUNY as “a victory for all of those in the Jewish community and beyond who cherish freedom of speech and are unwilling to punish people for the content of their political views.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has written to the Chair of the Board of Trustees at CUNY, Benno Schmidt, and to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. This Council represents approximately fifty Jewish organizations (including the ADL, AJC, Hadassah, Hillel, Jewish National Fund, Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, UJA, Union of Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, ZOA, the American Sephardi Association, etc.) and is headed by some Major Jewish Players.
We are troubled though that it appears that the explicit right and duty of a CUNY Trustee under Policy 1.19 – to express his/her views and vote his/her conscience – are now being challenged….We believe that academic freedom cannot be exclusively limited to faculty and/or students. Indeed, that right applies to all sectors of the academy, including Trustees. We are shocked that people – including zealous advocates of academic freedom and free speech – have called for a Trustee’s removal because they disagree with his ideas and/or his desire to articulate them. Mr. Wiesenfeld’s freedom to state his views and opinions – whether one agrees with him or not – is equal to the freedom granted to faculty, students or even honorary degree nominees.
There are of course other contexts in which academic freedom is at stake, but the awarding of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner or anyone else isn’t one of them.
The 55,000 member Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, on 3500 worldwide campuses, wrote to the CUNY Board of Trustees to reverse the decision to grant an honorary degree to Tony Kushner:
By rejecting your earlier decision to table the nomination and put it up for discussion, you have, sadly, abrogated your responsibility….
The roll-back needs your active involvement in your house of worship, in your alma mater, in your newspaper. This is a "tea party" requiring all to attend.
UPDATE: Tony Kushner, on Facebook, says, " it seems like with each successive fight around the Israel-Palestine issue (first Moustafa Bayoumi, then Kristofer, now this), our side gets stronger and stronger." Kushner calls for "You want Wiesenfeld off the Board? Organize for it..."Now let's make a bigger, f-ing deal. Go to it, folks!" Bring it on, Tony, as you cement your and your allies reps lower than already. Kushner titles his post, "We Won." Kushner, you've won a whoppin'.
Greeks’ and theologians’ dour double disapproval of money has been the hideous inheritance of the West. Reinforced by aristocratic and would-be aristocratic disdain for work, hostility to wealth had, by the mid-19th century, torn free of its intellectual roots and become one of those ideas accepted without thought by a certain kind of intellectual, whatever his relationship to Greeks or theologians. Marx was heir to this prejudice, and the millions killed by Marx’s followers its victims. So pervasive was this idea that even 19th-century Utilitarianism, whose principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” should have made its followers leading advocates of economic liberty (as, indeed, they began), evolved over time a hostility to getting and spending; John Stuart Mill ended his life a socialist.
Nowadays, all it takes is one jackass to mess things up for everybody else. Why does one whining person have more power than hundreds of non-whining people? "I'm offended. Rearrange the world for me."
Given the statistical likelihood that there is at least one stupid, selfish or self-righteous jackass fault-finder in any group, it's guaranteed that somebody will bitch about something every time anything happens.
Between Arnold and The French Great Seducer, I am reading plenty of baloney about sex. Things about power as an aphrodisiac, things about "primitive men," that old feminist meme that it's about power and not sex, all sorts of nonsense.
Truth is, most people - men and women - have some or much desire for new sexual and/or romantic experiences. Novelty is exciting, flirting is fun, and seduction is exciting as hell. The French understand that side of the story.
The other side of the story has to do with consequences: The effects on family life, existing relationships, kids, spiritual life, conscience, financial condition and even legal issues. In other words, the grown-up side of the story.
Politicians and the rich and famous have no monopoly on adultery or promiscuity. They are common as dirt among both men and women of all social stations and, unless one tends to form "open" and "Don't ask, don't tell" relationships (which a surprising number of people do these days), they otherwise usually leave a trail of misery, shame, guilt, anger, distrust, and destruction.
Everybody knows that, but some people don't worry about consequences very much. They are too much devoted to "What I want to do" and too quickly forget that "Feelings aren't facts," "Character counts," and life is not meant to be free of struggle, conflict, disappointment, and frustration.
I advise patients that, if they are determined to have affairs or want to "go out," that they file for divorce first. And oh, I know - things do happen though. Having a trusting relationship with decent communication, commitment, and decent or creative sex is the best prevention but sometimes a few drinks at the hotel bar at a convention far away can undo even the best marriages.
One of the saddest things I see in my work are couples, after affairs or "indiscretions." Often, they begin to talk, to open up with each other, to become closer, more honest, and even to become better friends. However, it's too late to salvage the specialness that the relationship might have had. Something innocent dies whether they decide to stay together or not.
I picked the right week to go to the nursery. Planted and transplanted mostly at the direction of Mrs. BD last week, and we have had rain ever since. The daily steady cool rain simplifies my life.
At the risk of sounding like a Twitter post, I added some roses, moved a bunch of Hostas around, planted some perennial Salvia, threw out some excess plants, - and I did get my tomatoes in too. A few, anyway.
You show me a Christian who is antisemitic. I'll show you a Christian who is clueless about his faith.
This is fascinating. She is humorous, too - and just a teensy bit provocative. Yes, she burns the Koran too. What do I think about it?. As we say up here in Yankeeland, "She's a piece of work."
Do people attempt mass murder because they want better schools and better sewers? From Dalrymple's Sewer Thing:
...to return to the question of intellectuals and their appreciation of human motivation. On the one hand they seem to want to deny the deeper currents that underlie the most extraordinary behaviour such as suicide bombing; on the other, they want to deny the quite ordinary or commonplace motivation for genuinely prosaic behaviour, such as spending too much. This is odd.
Perhaps they want to preserve the notion that man is by nature fundamentally good. In the Guardian article with which I started we are introduced to the concept of the altruistic suicide bomber, a concept derived from the fact that those who survived their attempted bombings claimed to be in pursuit of some altruistic end, when asked afterwards. It is surely very naïve to take this at face value: anyone caught in the middle of committing, and prevented from continuing, genocide would presumably argue the same thing. What the intellectual does not want to admit is that there is a joy in rage, and a joy in expressing that rage by evil deeds. And this is because we are constituted as we are: original sin, if that is how you want to put it.
Similarly, lust for easy gain is common enough. It is a human universal, not in the sense that it has always existed in all places and everywhere, but in the sense that it exists as soon as there is the opportunity for it to manifest itself. That is to say, there will be no final victory over such greed, and I have very little doubt that at some time in the not distant future there will be yet another epidemic of it, if we are not indeed in the midst of one already.
Read the whole good thing (link above). We have always contended here at Maggie's that a flaw in Leftist visions of paradise is an unrealistic view, or I could say fantasy, about the true nature of fallen mankind.
My tailor grandfather taught me the difference between being a Jew and being honored.
When I was a little boy, holding my grandfather’s hand as we exited the synagogue, all the well-dressed people were walking around a disheveled, crying man at the bottom of the steps.My grandfather immediately went up to him and asked what was the matter. Years later, my grandfather told me that the man replied with sobs that he’d lost his job because of drinking, his wife had left him after he had an affair, and he was too ashamed of what had happened to his life to come into synagogue. My grandfather took him by the hand and in they went, me trailing behind.
Afterwards I asked my grandfather why he hadn’t also invited the man home with us for supper.My grandfather answered that as long as the man behaved, he should be welcome in synagogue, but due to how he had behaved toward his responsibilities he wasn’t welcome in his house. Any Jew who wants to join communal prayers can do so. Any Jew who dishonors his people doesn’t deserve to be honored.
Our universities used to be called temples of learning but most universities have relaxed their former standards, as have many Jews.
No sooner had the tin-foil hat world just begun to gin up conspiracy theories about Bin Laden than we get the new story about the "great man" (I had never heard of him before) Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Now we have to have a new slew of conspiracies about him, as if life were not interesting and confusing enough without them.
It is difficult to keep up with all of the conspiracy theories these days.
I am always amused by health advice because it so often turns out to be wrong, and because popular writing on health so consistently confuses correlation with causation. Nevertheless, I do take a daily Vit D as one of my compromises with magical thinking. Lipitor too, for the same reason.
Many people today are obsessed with food, what to eat and how much. Government wants to get in on the game and to tell you what to eat, but the experts have no answers. So governments just make it up.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
Update on Prof 
I suppose this is a companion piece to my post last week, 
Between Arnold and The French Great Seducer, I am reading plenty of baloney about sex. Things about power as an aphrodisiac, things about "primitive men," that old feminist meme that it's about power and not sex, all sorts of nonsense.
In s
No sooner had the tin-foil hat world just begun to gin up conspiracy theories about Bin Laden than we get the new story about the "great man" (I had never heard of him before) Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Now we have to have a new slew of conspiracies about him, as if life were not interesting and confusing enough without them.