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.
The college pupette sends us her first small batch of photos from Nam. Small hotel or friend's apartment? I can't tell. "district 3, tran quoc thao, ho chi minh"
I have no idea why Flickr says "April 2008" because these are from earlier today. Hope she keeps 'em coming.
Did he ever find the plot? The guy is a first-class putz. If this bozo believes that the C of E is about money and politics instead of about saving souls, I suggest that he donate all of the C of E real estate and buildings to the poor - if they can find any poor in the UK with all of their government freebies. Looks like more parasites than poor.
...too many people, of both parties, of both political philosophies, believe that when housing prices fall, the federal government has a duty to skoosh 'em up again. And since the federal government cannot, however fervently it wishes it could, suspend the law of supply and demand by edict, the only way to sop up excess supply is to increase demand. And the only way to increase demand in a shortage of qualified buyers is to bring in a lot of unqualified buyers.
And that's precisely what we've been doing by, for example, lowering creditworthiness standards, forcing down interest rates, and reducing the percentage of purchase price required for a down payment.
From Yale Psychiatrist (and author of Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation) Charles Barber on the above topic in The Wilson Quarterly, a quote:
The new neuroscience has emerged from the last two decades of formidable progress in brain science, psychopharmacology, and brain imaging, bringing together research related to the human nervous system in fields as diverse as genetics and computer science. It has flowered into one of the hottest fields in academia, where almost anything "neuro" now generates excitement, along with neologisms, neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuromarketing. The torrent of money flowing into the field can only be described in superlatives - hundreds of millions of dollars for efforts such as Princeton's Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior and MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Psychiatrists have been in the forefront of the transformation, eagerly shrugging off the vestiges of "talk therapy" for the bold new paradigms of neuroscience. By the late 1980s, academic psychiatrists were beginning literally to reinvent parts of the discipline, hanging out new signs saying Department of Neuropsychiatry in some medical schools. A similar transformation has occurred in academic psychology.
A layperson leafing through a mainstream psychiatric journal today might easily conclude that biologists had taken over the profession. "Acute Stress and Nicotine Cues Interact to Unveil Locomotor Arousal" and "Activity-Dependent Gene Expression in the Prefrontal Cortex" are titles of typical offerings. The field has so thoroughly cast its lot with biology, and with the biology induced by psychoactive drugs, that psychiatrists can hardly hope to publish in one of the mainstream journals if their article tells the story of an individual patient, or includes any personal thoughts or feelings about the people or the work that patient was engaged with, or fails to include a large dose of statistical data. Psychiatry used to be all theories, urges, and ids. Now it's all a search for genes, receptors, and neurotransmitters.
A few comments: He correctly describes the currents in Psychiatry today - the emphasis on the mechanistic view. Of course, this is just one view of the elephant, and you cannot eliminate the words "mind" or "soul." After all, the main role of current neuroscience is to understand "the mind." I try to take a balanced view. I am fascinated by the neurosciences, and I think our psychiatric medicines are Godsends for many. But, for many problems - let's use addictions as an easy example - I believe that a soul-change is needed, and is possible. I think it's best if we shrinks remain modest about our knowledge and our powers.
Another quote from Barber:
If there's any lesson to be gleaned from the recent history of psychiatry, it is, in the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann's words, "how complex mental illness is, how difficult to treat, and how, in the face of this complexity, people cling to coherent explanations like poor swimmers to a raft."
We don't know much, but we should know just enough to recognize how primitive and crude our understanding of psychiatric drugs is, and how limited our understanding of the biology of mental disorder. The unfortunate fact remains that the ills of this world have a tantalizing way of eluding simple explanation. Our only hope is to be resolute and careful, not faddish, in assessing new developments as they arise, and to adopt them judiciously within a tradition of a gradually but steadily growing arsenal in the fight against genuine human suffering.
From recent morning links, I get the impression that the goal of the Maine legislature is to put everybody in the state on Welfare, and to have nobody working except them.
Well, as if a job in a state legislature were "work." Let's face it - it's a title, not a job.
They happen to have elected a semi-revolutionary governor. That might help. Politically, Maine is a strange little state. It has papermills, gigantic tree farms aka forests, a bit of lobstering, marginal potato farms and berry farms, a hundred dead old mill towns, the town of Portland which contains more doctors than people (big retiree town for Yankees who reject Florida ways), a fancy recreational coastline for prosperous New Yorkers and yachtsmen. Fair fishing and hunting, too.
Nobody moves there except drug dealers. And our friend theEditor of the Rumford Meteor. Perhaps he can explain to us the state of mind of the State of Maine sometime.
The government of the state would be in fine shape if they could tax meth and pot.
Love that photo. All anybody needs for a good wedding.
Always surprising to me how many amateur cooks have no clue about how to handle knives in the kitchen. Plenty of knife skill vids here. One basic example:
Tutors or parents, plus a Kindle, may be all that is necessary:
... the simplest tutoring approach often works magic. Years ago, a twelve-year-old foster child arrived in our home essentially unable to read after six or seven years of classroom "special" education. To the point where he didn't even know how to use a dictionary. Our oldest son, a prolific writer, happened to be visiting us at the time, saw the problem, and came up with a fix. He handed the boy the newspaper he read each morning, told him to sit on his bed, read it aloud, and circle every word he couldn't pronounce or didn't know the meaning of. Then, later, the two of them went over the circled words together. The first day, every fourth or fifth word was circled, but it wasn't very long before the number of circles began to decrease, and something clicked in the boy's mind. "Hey," he seemed to say to himself, "this is not such a mystery. I can get this reading and writing thing working on my own." And he went on to other material. Then, when he was ready to begin high school, the state and local school district sent a team to evaluate him in order to design a classroom program that met his "special needs." Only there wasn't any, because they were shocked to discover that he tested at or above -- and in a couple of subjects, far above -- his grade level.
"I start dreading Christmas from the time the decorations go up in the stores," she says. "It stopped being fun for me, so I'll find out this year if I can do without it altogether. I think it will be a relief. It already is."
Remember, back in the day, when a bankruptcy was simply called a bankruptcy? Naturally, this was well before ISDA came on the scene and footnoted the living feces out of everything by claiming that a bankruptcy is never a bankruptcy, as long as the creditors agree to 99.999% losses at gunpoint, with electrodes strapped to their testicles, submerged in a tank full of rabid piranhas, it they just sign a piece of paper (preferably in their own blood) saying the vaseline-free gang abuse was consensual. Well, now we learn that as the global insolvency wave finally moves to China, a bankruptcy is now called something even less scary: "deferred loan payments"...
Welcome to Cairostan - Egypt’s radicals eliminating country’s connection to West, but does anyone care?
Bruce wonders whether you've ever seen a Jewish Zebra:
The Wall St. daughter's pup was visiting this weekend. Nice sweater, eh? This Yorkie pup, named Emily (from Devil Wears Prada) has quite an elegant wardrobe. They have hair, not fur, so they get cold. Yorkies were bred to be ratters. They do like to chase and destroy little dog toys with their tiny sharp teeth. They have ADHD, I think.
I know, I know: it is shameless to use dog pics to build traffic.
We are putting our other, youngest, college daughter on a plane to Saigon Ho Chi Minh City this afternoon, via Shanghai, with a pocketful of cash, a backpack, a carry-on, and her best camera. She's done a fair amount of world-traveling on her own and with us, so it's no big deal for her. Like me, she travels casually. She threw some stuff into her bags in 15 minutes this morning like I do. She's doing a film. She promises to email pics, but she probably won't bother because she is always driven to focus on her immediate goal, and ignores everything peripheral to it. Goal-directed almost to a fault, which seems to be what life requires these days. A terrier. She'll be meeting an American friend in Hanoi via the train at some point. I gave her a kiss and had to say "Kill a Commie for Christ." Somehow, PC eludes me and I always say the totally wrong thing, even on Christmas Day. Harvard would fire me.
My Vietnam Vet pal Gwynnie asked "She's going there voluntarily?" My parents felt that way about Germany.
Flight from NYC to Shanghai almost touches the North Pole, so we suggested a hearty shout-out "Thanks" to Santa. He deserves it. He brought me a new leather office chair. Those Great Circle air routes are always surprising, aren't they, until you get used to them?
I had thought she was planning to go straight from Nam to Prague in three weeks but she decided to schedule to come back home for a few days first because it's tropical in Nam, winter in Prague. Change of chic wardrobe. Wanted to catch a play or two in NYC, and to grab some fresh cash (but she knocks herself out almost beyond belief to fund her adventures). Sheesh. The kids these days are so ambitious, determined, goal-directed, adventurous, and hard-working - much more than my peer group ever was. Like many of the hip youths these days, she loves Ron Paul. Sheesh, again. "Dad, Libertarianism is the only right, principled thing for the American attitude." "OK, sweetie. Whatever."
All three of my kids crack me up, each in his/her own way. Where the heck did they come from? From God. I take no credit or blame.
Want to read a good, short Christmas vignette today? Sipp's Open Is A Time.
How did the ancient mass media report the alleged birth of Christ? The People's Cube prepared the following compilation of quotes from the Roman and Judean sources, which should help our readers to form an unbiased opinion of what really happened in the days surrounding the so-called Christmas...
The meaning of Christmas is much bigger than the trite clichés that usually come up in this context; I won’t just be writing about the Importance of Giving and the Desirability of Being Nice. Christmas, at least the way I was taught, is a lot more than a merry interlude in the darkest, nastiest time of the year. It is more than getting or even giving. It is more than carols and candy, more than wonderful meals with the people you love best in the world. It is much more than the modern echo of the pagan festivities marking the winter solstice and the moment when the sun begins to reverse its long and slippery slide down the sky.
For Christians, 78% of the American people according to a recent Gallup poll, Christmas is the hinge of the world’s fate, the turning point of life. It is the most important thing that ever happened, and we celebrate it every year because it is still happening now. Whether we know it or not, whether we appreciate it or not, we are part of the Christmas Event that has turned history upside down. There’s a reason why we date the birth of Christ as the year 1 and why traditionally the world’s history was divided into BC, before Christ, and AD, anno domini, the year of the Lord.. (Actually, the monk who tried to calculate it seems to have gotten it wrong; Jesus was probably born four to six years “BC”. He also did not know about the use of zero as a number; there is no Year Zero between AD and BC — which is why irritating pedants remind people at every turn of the century that the “real” new century or millennium doesn’t begin until 2001, for example, rather than on January 1, 2000.)
Thanks for doing this for us, Prof. Mead. It's a good gift.
They claim they confiscated over a hundred thousand dangerous items. One of them was my over-large tube of Crest toothpaste, and one of them was my jar of Amish mustard.
Just a bunch of bitter, redneck clingers, not Real Americans. Want to see real clueless parochialism? Try DC or NYC, San Francisco, or the entire state of Massachusetts
Nobody works 9-5 anymore in America, unless government jobs or union jobs. Furthermore, seems to me that most Americans work far more than 8 hour days. Americans are not afraid of work. Heck, my daughter is working all day today.
I On the Morning of Christ's Nativity This is the month, and this the happy morn Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King, Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
II That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty, Wherewith he wont at Heav'n's high council-table, To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside, and here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
III Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the Infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, To welcome him to this his new abode, Now while the heav'n, by the Sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
IV See how from far upon the eastern road The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet: O run, prevent them with thy humble ode, And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet, And join thy voice unto the angel quire, From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.
Terrific piece at ZeroHedge today using Christmas Trees and land management as an allegory for the Fed's interventions in the market, and why it's dangerous.
We can increase moral hazard by taking effective steps to 'insure' against its downside. At some point, however, everything has to revert to the mean.
A quote:
From a forestry point of view, the lessons were learned. In 1995, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy stated, "Science has changed the way we think about wildland fire and the way we manage it. Wildland fire, as a critical natural process, must be reintroduced into the ecosystem."
Herein are pearls of great wisdom for central bankers today. Central banks are creating a tinderbox by keeping alive many very bad investments, fertilizing them with everything from artificially low interest rates to preferential liquidity to outright securities purchases. As these institutions and instruments overrun the financial landscape, they hamper the economic ecosystem and perpetuate the environment of low growth and high unemployment in which we currently find ourselves.
When Gutenberg printed his first Bible in 1455, is it possible he ever thought "I believe this technology will be outdated in 650 years"? Doubtful. In fact, he probably didn't even care.
We do care about change, though. Mainly because it is part of our lives. Change shapes us and molds us, even as we create the change we seek in our own lives. For Gutenberg, much of life was relatively the same over the course of time. By the time Benjamin Franklin was a printer 300 years later, he was still using essentially the same technology Gutenberg had created. Some revisions had taken place, but it was still a very manual process and the nature of the process would not seem unfamiliar to Gutenberg.
It's been about 100 years since men like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst changed the business of publishing. How would they have reacted to a blog like Maggie's? Could they have envisioned the future and recognized opportunity? It's possible, but more likely they would have feared the shift in message delivery systems and fought the new technology. Our perceptions about what we do and where we are going is shaped by what we've have done in the past. As a result, we tend to react poorly to new ideas and products which don't fit neatly into the way we believe life should progress. 25 years ago, we would have considered it odd to think that a TV would hang on a wall or that we could purchase virtually everything we needed as we watched a TV program.
More nice Adirondack Christmas pics from Tiger 
From Yale Psychiatrist (and author of Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation) Charles Barber on the above topic in The Wilson Quarterly, a quote:
From recent morning links, I get the impression that the goal of the Maine legislature is to put everybody in the state on Welfare, and to have nobody working except them. 
Book Review: 
For many, 
The subversion of Christmas has 
On The Morning of Christ's Nativity
Terrific piece at ZeroHedge today using Christmas Trees and