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.
This might be of interest to those of you with 64-bit Windows systems.
AutoSizer is a terrific little tool. It's basic function is to open programs in full-screen mode, getting around annoyances like the way Internet Explorer opens in half-screen mode when clicking on an email link or Desktop shortcut. It also opens small programs, like Calculator — which seem to have a will of their own when it comes to where on the screen they'll open — in the center of the screen. Home site is here.
The problem is that it doesn't work with Internet Explorer on 64-bit systems.
To set it up, download the free file, install, then open the Options/Configuration panel. Select 'Show IE windows while being maximized' but nothing else.
Until we manage to uncouple higher education from the job market, we are going to persist in misunderstanding education’s true end. It may well be that in the past—i.e., in a debt-based economy incapable of imagining how top-heavy things eventually fall over—a college degree has been a stepping stone to the middle class, but those days are over. An economy that can’t help a college graduate retire an enormous debt is not going to look upon a college degree as a stepping stone to the middle class. Colleges, obviously, will continue to look thus upon the degree (how they will wield the mighty frame of education, how build, unbuild, contrive to save tuition costs), but this is just one more thing among many about which they will be wrong.
And although it is true that we shouldn’t make higher education a luxury, it is truer still that we shouldn’t make it a commodity. When it once again becomes difficult, it will be neither a luxury nor a commodity. Making it so “every American should be able to afford it” is no different from making it so every American can do it, which is the same thing as rendering it meaningless.
This year's Coming Attractions will include massive and distorted attacks on Mitt Romney's successful business career.
Promising young businesses need funding, and frail tired businesses must be re-built or sold for salvage. Is there a way to talk, politically, about venture capital and business competition in a way that people can relate to? I suppose buggy-whip companies and blacksmiths are a place to start.
The 2012 presidential race will be, in part, a showdown between two different models of economic growth. President Barack Obama and his Democratic administration will defend the once-discredited and now-resurgent theory that government must act as the economy’s “tutor” and use public funds to stimulate it. The Republican nominee, presumably Mitt Romney, will advance the free-market argument that the main source of new growth is the innovative energy of American entrepreneurs and that government needs to get out of the way.
The warblers are on the move up from South and Central America, and pass through hearabouts in May, on their way north to breed as soon as the buds begin to pop on the trees and the bugs wake up. Girls might like diamonds but the warblers are God's real living jewels.
The Yellow is the yellowest, and maybe most abundant warbler, with a distinctive "sweet sweeet sweet" call. Found throughout the US during migration. They like to be near wet areas - willows, etc., but they will be everywhere soon.
In my view, this whole DSM enterprise is one big Obsessional Disorder driven, in considerable part, by insurance requirements and by pharmaceutical companies.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear – From Frank Herbert’s Dune (h/t Classical Values)
In retrospect, it was an insanely stupid idea to begin with.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
The original concept was noble in its intent; a new fighter jet that would satisfy the needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marines. Better to develop one all-purpose fighter than have each branch go through the trouble and expense of manufacturing their own, right? And if one branch had a specific requirement, like the Navy needing stronger landing gear because of the stress put on the aircraft by carrier landings, then that could be taken care of after the fact.
Then they screwed the whole idea with the moronic notion that the newest, fastest, most brilliant state-of-the-art fighter in the world also had to serve as a helicopter.
Yes, you read that right.
For the first half of the story, watch this engaging Nova documentary on the battle between Boeing and Lockheed Martin over who would claim the prize. Both teams ran into serious delays, both teams overcame enormous hurdles, and both teams put together a truly awesome plane.
Both teams also deserve the Dunce of the Decade award for even considering such a preposterous notion that the fastest fighter jet in the world also had to serve as a friggin' chopper. If they had put their collective foot down and simply told the brass back in Washington "This is the stupidest idea we've ever heard of", maybe it would have dawned on someone that trying to make the fastest fighter jet in the world hover was the very definition of oxymoronic.
...it is striking how many phenomena attributed to the Internet age have their historical echo in the telephone. Identity theft and Internet predators? The early years of the telephone brought concerns over the unwanted entry—via telephone line—of unsavory characters into the home, and some people called for laws to regulate criminal use of the phone. Or consider the contemporary argument that automated high-frequency Internet trading increases the volatility of financial markets. As Aronson noted, “The widespread use of the telephone probably added to the short-run instability of such markets.” Before unwanted spam e-mails there were unwanted sales calls. The phrase “information superhighway” was preceded by a century in an AT&T ad announcing “a highway of communication.” Computer hacking grew out of the culture of “phone phreaks”—those early-1970s technological obsessives (Steve Jobs among them) who figured out how to manipulate the phone system to place free phone calls.The list of parallels goes on.
Perhaps the telephone, despite its seemingly transformative nature—the annihilation of time and space—didn’t change us much after all...
Few politicians have had the cojones to push back against the government unions who seem to believe that they own the government.
Walker did. Government unions nationwide are pouring so much money into his recall election that Obama's team is complaining that there isn't enough left for him.
During the last week, we have seen the president support three political positions: gay marriage, a raise in the minimum wage, and a cut in the interest rate on loans to college students. These issues have one thing in common: The president’s supporters claim that those who oppose gay marriage, oppose a high minimum wage, and oppose the lowering of interest rates on college student loans must really hate gays, hate the poor, and oppose education. If you don’t favor President Obama’s programs, you hate the groups targeted by the programs. Thus, we have no serious debate on the merits of either side of these issues, and that is unhealthy.
15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
15:11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15:15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
15:16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.
15:17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
The world is full of people who cannot or will not negotiate life very well, or with any pride or honor. Every sort of culture has them; the people who cost you money or detract from your life in some unpleasant way. Often, they have either had misguided or negligent upbringings, terrible karma, or have significant character flaws resulting in poor judgement, poor functioning, or antisocial or dependent traits. Often their families expect them to rely on government for survival or help, as so many do with the frail elderly these days. (That's the Julia story.)
Not everybody is born to be a real, self-sufficient, family-centered American-type. It's not easy. However, we are all fully aware of the grieveous moral and spiritual effects of moral hazard in government benefits, and of the temptation of freebies.
What's the answer? Or is it just the price of civilization that some people just don't or won't get it, and must be paid regardless of moral hazard? In other words, just write them off and absorb the losses. Let them rip you off or live off your labor, even though they are not your relatives.
That's my theory. Ignore moral hazard and people working the system, write them off as losses, give them some money and let them go away. Nothing anybody can do about it. With half of the country on the dole in one way or another, parasitism is becoming acceptable anyway.
When most people farmed, it was not thus. Even today, I think anybody can make themselves useful, and lead a positive existence, if they want to.
The campaign contour is pretty clear: The Obama reelection team will not make the case for the advantages and popularity of Obamacare, for the Chuian advantages of $4-a-gallon gas, for the dynamism of a 1.7 percent GDP growth rate, for the stimulatory effects of adding $5 trillion in new debt, or for why 8 percent unemployment does not qualify under the old rubric of a “jobless recovery.” Instead we are going to see a) mostly the spike-the-football sloganeering about Osama bin Laden and adherence to the Bush-Petraeus timetable in leaving Iraq, b) the supposed racism (Trayvon Martin–style), sexism (“war on women”) and homophobia of the Right, and c) personal attacks on Romney’s past.
Clora come view my Soul, and tell Whether I have contriv'd it well. Now all its several lodgings lye Compos'd into one Gallery; And the great Arras-hangings, made Of various Faces, by are laid; That, for all furniture, you'l find Only your Picture in my Mind.
Here Thou art painted in the Dress Of an Inhumane Murtheress; Examining upon our Hearts Thy fertile Shop of cruel Arts: Engines more keen than ever yet Adorned Tyrants Cabinet; Of which the most tormenting are Black Eyes, red Lips, and curled Hair.
But, on the other side, th' art drawn Like to Aurora in the Dawn; When in the East she slumb'ring lyes, And stretches out her milky Thighs; While all the morning Quire does sing, And Mamma falls, and Roses spring; And, at thy Feet, the wooing Doves Sit perfecting their harmless Loves.
Like an Enchantress here thou show'st, Vexing thy restless Lover's Ghost; And, by a Light obscure, dost rave Over his Entrails, in the Cave; Divining thence, with horrid Care, How long thou shalt continue fair; And (when inform'd) them throw'st away, To be the greedy Vultur's prey.
But, against that, thou sit'st a float Like Venus in her pearly Boat. The Halcyons, calming all that's nigh, Betwixt the Air and Water fly. Or, if some rowling Wave appears, A Mass of Ambergris it bears. Nor blows more Wind than what may well Convoy the Perfume to the Smell.
These Pictures and a thousand more, Of Thee, my Gallery dost store; In all the Forms thou can'st invent Either to please me, or torment: For thou alone to people me, Art grown a num'rous Colony; And a Collection choicer far Then or White-hall's, or Mantua's were.
But, of these Pictures and the rest, That at the Entrance likes me best: Where the same Posture, and the Look Remains, with which I first was took. A tender Shepherdess, whose Hair Hangs loosely playing in the Air, Transplanting Flow'rs from the green Hill, To crown her Head, and Bosome fill.
A perfect poem? Marvell is grouped with the English metaphysical poets, along with John Donne, George Herbert, and others. A politician and diplomat, Marvell was a close associate of Milton and the Cromwell family.
Governments suffer from grandiosity. They think that they can fix everything. Worse they believe that they should fix everything. It never occurs to them to fix themselves except around election time. When they do recognize their own brokenness they treat it as a symptom of the brokenness of the real world.
They conclude that the problem is not that their national health care plans are unworkable, but that there are too many fat people in the country. Bring down the number of fat people and there will be plenty of money left over for everything else. Get everyone to stop smoking, get them to eat their vegetables, floss twice a day and take the best possible care of themselves and the cost of health care will go down.
The Soviet Union similarly concluded that the problem was not with their collective farm system, it was with the people working on them. It didn't matter that wheat had been grown much more plentifully and efficiently before the rise of the red flag. It didn't matter that regions which had once been wheat exporters were now forced to import wheat from capitalist countries. The system was perfect, which meant that the people had to be made perfect enough to allow it to fulfill its potential.
Always enjoyed that Berthold Brecht quote about when a government is displeased with the people, the government should elect a new people.
Learned helplessness was what my wife and I observed then, and still do today, in social-democratic Spain. The recession, rigid labor markets, and excessive welfare spending have pushed unemployment to 24.4%, with youth joblessness over 50%. Nearly half of adults under 35 live with their parents. Unable to earn their success, Spaniards fight to keep unearned government benefits.
Meanwhile, their collective happiness—already relatively low—has withered. According to the nonprofit World Values Survey, 20% of Spaniards said they were "very happy" about their lives in 1981. This fell to 14% by 2007, even before the economic downturn.
That trajectory should be a cautionary tale to Americans who are watching the U.S. government careen toward a system that is every bit as socially democratic as Spain's.
Humans are very responsive to incentives, even to their own detriment (eg addiction).
It's not a polygraph, and complicated by left-handed and ambidextrous people and left-eyed people.
Do you know how to determine whether you are left- or right-eyed? Roll up a sheet of paper like a telescope, and see which eye you put it to. Most people have a dominant eye. Shooters care about this.
This might be of interest to those of you with 64-bit Windows systems.
Are jeans 
In retrospect, it was an insanely stupid idea to begin with.
Today we worry about the social effects of the Internet. 
Fighter plane from World War II found
The Gallery
