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 sometimes wonder what the US Constitution would look like if it had been written by “qualified” political scientists with Ph.Ds and a solid body of peer reviewed published work behind them. We think it would probably stink in comparison with the current version ..
Our readers know about Rawley's old hot dog joint in Fairfield from Gwynnie, but this is as good - better for seafood fans: Westfair Fish and Chips in Westport. It's right off I-95 for you hungry east-coast travellers.
Modest little clam shack has a fine raw bar too. Worth a trip, or makes a longer trip enjoyable. I will drive a good ways for fresh oysters, fried clam bellies, and fresh fried Cod.
Another Maggie's favorite just off I-95 is Gene's Famous Seafood (also a simple clam shack) in Fair Haven, MA. Sippican likes it too.
All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampots full of the jellied Specks to range on the window-sills at home, On shalves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
I like the way he gets creeped out by his guilty imagination. Heaney's bio here.
It's just one more of the many NYC neighborhoods that I am fond of, meaning 53rd between 1st Ave and Park Ave. A good area to be young, single (and straight). The pubs are hopping on Friday evening, and all the young people look good.
I think it's kinda cool to see people hanging out on stoops, right in Midtown.
Photo shows the "Lipstick building," where Bernie Madoff's offices were. 7th and 8th floors, I am told.
I just dug up a really slick Firefox add-on that takes care of two pesky little problems when it comes to grabbing online videos.
Traditionally, the easiest way to grab a YouTube-type video is to install a Firefox add-on like CacheViewer, play the video, open the cached files, sort them by 'Size', and the video was usually sitting right at the top of the heap.
There are two small problems with this method:
1. It doesn't always work. Sometimes the video simply isn't there.
2. If there's a choice of the same video but different quality, you won't get the one with the best quality.
Enter little DownloadHelper.
It allows us to pick the download with the best quality and format. Installation & tweaks are below the fold.
I just came up this this at my desk. "New services" means new medical services people will use now that they have insurance - along the lines of preventative care etc, which in my option may decrease "S" in the long term but not enough for an overall economic benefit. This model assumes the cost of insurance will be the same for everyone. My colleagues think it is a pretty robust equation.
Seems to me she gets to the heart of it. No, insurance companies cannot afford it without raising rates to a level which is impossible for the middle class and unacceptible to the federal regulators. Like requiring people to buy hybrid Rolls Royces that they don't want and cannot use. Then the companies will be blamed for the prices and few will remember that the government required the whole mess (just like the housing bubble).
Many claim this is the best Italian antipasto. It is properly made with dandelion greens.
This alone is plenty of lunch for me, but I rarely bother with lunch anyway unless it is a fun or social occasion. The simple recipe here.
Tastes fine, or better, if the flattened meat air-dries a little bit. Maybe half an hour or so.
This one was served to me in a cute little restaurant in Todi last June, sitting under the grape vines. Glass of the local Orvieto - not a great vino but just right with this on a warm day.
Despite the ugly subject matter, I suppose you could call this good news.
First off, in case you missed it, you might want to glance over my first post on spy drones.
I then started collecting articles for a future post, and here we are. But what's to note is that these aren't a bunch of whiny, bitchy rantings on some backwater blog site (like, you know, mine), but coming from the major news organizations.
I would also note that I mentioned the 'private sector' in the above post, and the first two links here are what I was referring to. All the rest have to do with our beloved imperialstormtroopers trusted government officials.
After those Street View snoopers, Google and Apple use planes that can film you sunbathing in your back garden. Software giants will use military-grade cameras to take powerful satellite images.
So, as these things go, it's nice to see the major news organizations aren't backing away from the story. I suppose this is figuring that all the while they're planning on building up their own 'eye in the sky' fleets. As soon as one news organization scoops everybody with some really boss footage of some horrendous disaster using a drone, they'll all have to jump on board. Those are the rules.
And all of that just barely scratches the surface.
The bare majority of the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare on grounds that stretch their imagination. The core of their decision allowing the individual mandate to buy insurance is that what is clearly written in the law as a penalty, argued to be allowed as justified under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, they choose to instead treat as a tax within Congress’ authority. Opinion writer Chief Justice Roberts said, “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.” WTF! As said at National Review,
Chief John Roberts may have flinched from doing what his fellow Republican-appointed justices were willing to do — strike down the individual mandate as a violation of the Commerce Clause — but he did so in a clever way. He resurrected an earlier argument, one the Obama administration had mostly abandoned, that the mandate was really a tax rather than a regulation.... the only way the administration prevailed was to have Obama’s main legislative accomplishment redefined as one of the largest middle-class tax increases in the history of the country.
Six Justices of the Supreme Court kicked the ball back to the court of Congress and the Defense Department to save stolen honor. The six Justices' decision this morning holds that the Stolen Valor Act exceeds the bounds of permissible government restrictions on speech. The decision is here. The six Justices, however, lay out how Congress may rewrite the Stolen Valor Act to make it acceptable to the Court and to strengthen the ability to expose frauds.
It's a laff riot as Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, quizzes some Obama stooges officials on what constitutes a 'green' job:
But it's still guffaws galore as even Rep. Issa wasn't aware how all-encompassing the 'creative accounting' had gone:
I'm far more concerned with the precedent the Court will set regarding the further expansion of the Commerce Clause. If the Court fails to declare a federal mandate of this type unconstitutional, that would be an enormous triumph for "progressives"---far beyond the momentary victory of the Court's upholding Obamacare.]
Cahoon Hollow is a beach in Wellfleet, on good old unfancy lower (ie, upper, or outer) Cape Cod. It's their only ocean beach with a bar/restaurant - The Beachcomber - in an old life-saving station. They have bands. I believe Sippican played there in his dissipated youth.
The area is undeveloped thanks to JFK's Cape Cod National Seashore. Sometimes government does good things - but usually not. If you like warm water, the Cape Cod beaches are not for you. And unlike California beaches, at Cape Cod beaches people sit under beach umbrellas, sometimes have to wear wind-breakers in August, and tend to bury their heads in books while the cheerful sand fleas nip at their ankles.
These beaches attract some surfers, but the main water activity is body surfing: exhilarating fun, endlessly challenging, and the turbulence will pull down a gal's bikini top in an instant. Modest gals who like to body surf do not wear bikinis.
Lots of seals to swim with out there in August. The occasional Great White Shark, too. No fraidy cats allowed.
I used to think I could be important, and ordered my life accordingly. Now I realize I’m not and try my best to simply know, understand, and do my duty.
What the US needs is bipartisan health care reforms, not the partisan ram-down that we’ve experienced with Obamacare.
Everyone has a prediction for tomorrow’s Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare, and no one has a clue, including President Obama who has three different speeches prepared for different decisions. Regardless of the decisions, all except those addicted to government-run and single-payer medical care recognize that either Obamacare will need serious revisions or that we will need to start from scratch.
Below is an op-ed that I had in the San Diego Union-Tribune with proposals based on my decades of experience and credentials in health insurance. Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree.
We probably don't eat as many hamburgers as we should, here at the Farm, but I am planning a friends and neighbors cookout for around 30 people and thought I would do some research on the best burger recipes.
Seems like a couple of splashes of Worcestershire sauce per pound, salt and pepper, and some Cuisenarted red onions is the simplest way to prep the meat. My preference for grilling is fatty beef, not lean. From Costco, of course.
My reading informs me that some people stir eggs, herbs, and all sorts of other things into the meat, but that sounds more like meatballs than burgers to me. Plus I like a burger rare, and who wants to eat raw eggs?
The official Maggie's Farm Weight Loss plan eliminates carbs for the same reason: even minor carbs give you an insulin spike which undoes any conscientious diet effort. If you cannot grow some spine and resist carbs, just give up on your weight issue because it ain't gonna happen.
What I think what they mean is "Is being Conservative a mental ailment?" After all, people routinely change their political views with life experience. Anyway, in my view it's a stupid and pointless question.
This biological or psychic determinism -- the peculiar notion that fundamental political differences "don't really have anything in particular to do with politics" -- should explain liberals as well as conservatives. Most of its practitioners, however, seem to assume that liberal values such as fairness and compassion are, for lack of a better term, normal and that it is conservatives' beliefs and values that are different, even deviant, and thus in need of explanation... John Jost, a professor of psychology at NYU, sees conservative "aversion to ambiguity, a sense of threats, and disgust." Scott Eidelman, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas, says "conservatives generally crave closure, prefer to act quickly, choose instinctive solutions." Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State, thinks the effort to be fair and balanced is misguided. "I'm not personally convinced that there is an equal balance of bias," he says. "I believe that we see things like authoritarianism, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, to be distributed currently more on the right than on the left
What crimes have you been subject to in your lifetime? - Not including ordinary rip-offs, school-age or barroom fist-fights, or unpaid invoices.
I'll start it off. I had a car stolen in Hartford about 15 years ago, and we had five saddles stolen from the barn about 6 years ago while vacationing. That's all I can recall. Never anything with violence or threat of violence, thank God. Well, I did run from two would-be young muggers in Cambridge many years ago when I was fleet of foot. Got into my car on a dark street before they caught up with me. I have a CT carry permit now, but I never carry out of state. That's jail time.
We had some internet glitches today but now the Farm is open for business again. 
Our readers know about Rawley's old hot dog joint in Fairfield from Gwynnie, but this is as good - better for seafood fans:
Death of a Naturalist
I just dug up a really slick Firefox add-on that takes care of two pesky little problems when it comes to grabbing online videos.
Photos: Before and after views of 
Despite the ugly subject matter, I suppose you could call this good news.
We probably don't eat as many hamburgers as we should, here at the Farm, but I am planning a friends and neighbors cookout for around 30 people and thought I would do some research on the best burger recipes.
CNN: 
I considered asking readers what crimes they may have committed, but figured few would respond despite the fact that we all have made dumb mistakes. (See