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.
Punch-card looms were invented in 1801 and remain in wide use today, mostly computer-controlled now but it's the original principle and basically the original loom mechanics.
The fact is that the MCAT contained, until 1977, a major component called "General Knowledge." This covered areas like history, geography, art, music, psychology, and literature, and was far too broad-ranging to possibly study for. I don't know why that part was removed.
For chocolate for baking or candy-making, I use World Wide Chocolate's site for their baking chocolate section. That's where many pastry chefs get their chocolate. There's a right chocolate for any culinary need. It's best to avoid products with under 70% cacao.
For the best chocolate candies, La Maison du Chocolat is probably the best source in the US. Their truffles are extraordinary.
In politics, few talents are as richly rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims. Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensation for injustices – leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.
Mitt Romney branded Barack Obama’s economic policies “European” in his speech last Tuesday after Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the Republican primaries. As a British citizen living in Italy, it was music to my ears to discover that “European” has at last become an all-purpose term of abuse, at least in America, for a good reason...
(Photos tear at emotions. I purposely do not include any images in this post as emotions are far from enough to convey the individual stories or the brutalities.)
At sundown today begins the annual observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. There are many museums, plaques, books that let today’s visitors get a glimpse of the horrors and the heroes of that time. As one passes through and on, what is often missed is the individual stories, the lost hopes and potentials, the personal exertions, the evils that were so common among men and women of many nationalities. The Nazis could not have killed so many without the work of those in conquered countries, some coerced, some bribed, some for their own salvation, many because of rife anti-Semitism. The Yad Veshem museum and memorials, including to Righteous Gentiles, outside Jerusalem, is a major repository of these individual stories. Visit the website.
The Holocaust needs to be remembered and restudied in every generation just because of its scale, and because of what it says about the thin veneer that separates now from then and now from recurrence. (It is not by coincidence that the week after Yom Hashoah is the celebration of Israel's Independence Day, Yom Ha'atzmaut.)
Below is a piece I wrote in 2006 that includes first-person accounts of what happened in a village near where much of my family perished.
"The biggest problem I can think of with human nature is the tendency in many humans to want a leader, or to want to boss others around. It really would be nice if these people could find each other without involving me."
The 20 Best Small Towns in America - From the Berkshires to the Cascades, we've crunched the numbers and pulled a list some of the most interesting spots around the country
"...Matthews is right: Romney will be at a huge disadvantage this year, running as he is against one of the warmest, most approachable, just-us-folks politicians that has ever graced our public life."
Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey. Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration... he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage...
We appreciate all the love and support and concern.
...more ominous is the condition of the family. The most fundamental component of civil society, it has also become the most vulnerable. Civil society is often identified (thanks largely to Tocqueville) with “voluntary associations.” But the traditional family is not, or at least did not used to be, a voluntary association. Indeed, it is important precisely because it is not voluntary, performing the natural, elemental, even biological functions of bearing and rearing children. Today, as a result of divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, single-parent families, and single-sex parenting, the family has become, in a sense, voluntarized. We are sometimes assured that these “alternative lifestyles” are merely variations on the old, serving the same purposes as the “nuclear” or “bourgeois” family. In fact, these families—“broken families,” like “broken windows”—are often literally “dysfunctional,” incapable of performing the natural functions that define the family.
Civil society has been described as an “immune system against cultural disease.” But much of it has been infected by the same virus that produces the disease—a loss of moral integrity and purpose. What is required, then, is not only the revitalization of civil society but its reform and remoralization—the reform of those institutions that parody government agencies, and the remoralization of those that have lost their moral focus.
In a voluntary poll, unscientific, by my hometown's Encinitas Patch, only 18% said "no" to whether "Is stay-at-home parenting as difficult as a job outside of the home?"
Encinitas political party registration is about evenly split among Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Obamaganda fails across party lines.
If Patch in your locality has a similar poll, please add the results in Comments.
Last Friday, the editor of a southern California publication asked me whether I wanted to do a piece about the “settlement” between the US Justice Department and University of California San Diego regarding the handling of racial harassment on campus. I told him that I wasn’t privy to the inside details, so didn’t want to analyze the settlement.
What I do know is that it grew out of incidents on campus in 2010 that caused an uproar of indignation, mostly justifiable. A fraternity held a Compton Cookout that relied on disparaging racial stereotypes of Blacks. A noose was found in a library. (As it later was revealed, a minority student admitted to placing the noose, not considering the implications.)UCSD quickly set up an office on Harassment and Discrimination to hear and judge complaints regarding any campus minority. UCSD took constructive action to uphold laws, alleviate fears and confront facts.
Added:Inside Higher Ed reports: "A professor’s use of a class website at the University of California at Los Angeles to promote a boycott of Israel has led to a protest and a subsequent finding by the university that his actions were inappropriate...Academic freedom experts said that professors are not free to use class websites to promote political agendas. “If the link posted is strictly of a political nature, and is unrelated to the course content, then it is not protected by academic freedom,” said Greg Scholtz, AAUP’s director of academic freedom, tenure and governance."
At the University of California’s sister public college system, California State University, however, the opposite is taking place. The illegal use of college webservers to promulgate anti-Israel propaganda, to promote boycotts of Israel, create an harassing atmosphere on campuses toward Jewish students and others supportive of Israel, and senior administrators who have ignored these transgressions and themself broken the law, has not been addressed nor remedied by the Chancellor of the Cal State system, Charles Reed. The outrageous and illegal activities by some faculty and administration members continue.
I won’t belabor you with all the details here. Just read the latest letter: "Abuses of academic freedom at CSU need your attention", below, from leaders of AMCHA, an organization to protect Jewish students from illegal harassment, written to Chancellor Reed, Cal State college presidents, and the state officials elected to protect the rights of all Californians. The issues have previously been brought to their attention, including by me (Cal State’s Chutzpah, in City Journal). The issue is already moving to the courts. We await the US Justice Department to intervene, or to as so often in this administration exhibit a proclivity to only become involved on behalf of one minority.
My Life as a Failed Country Gentleman - P.J. O'Rourke on his fields of crabgrass, trout-free trout stream, Federalist-era wiring and dashed dreams of tweedy refinement
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Image: Via 
Important reminder: 
Samuelson: