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.
By the time I was college-aged and supposed to be "finding myself," I didn't want to pursue a degree; I wanted to work. Instead of searching through course catalogs, I found a better-paying position with a large insurance company. At that time, the early 1990s, no one demanded that I have a degree or even wondered how young I was. (I'm guessing because it was illegal to ask.) Someone in Human Resources put me in a temp spot, and before long, I had a permanent job followed by a promotion. It took me a while, and working for a few small businesses, before I finally found my true calling, newspapers, but by the time I became a weekly reporter, I already had ten years' office experience, at just 24 years old.
In Psychiatry today there is much discussion, debate, and confusion about diagnosing the varieties of serious mood or attitudinal instability (ie instability which is life-disrupting in some significant way).
It's not your grandfather's Bipolar Disorder anymore. The numbers of people labelled as "Bipolar spectrum" has increased dramatically, for better or worse, in recent years. It may be "diagnosis creep," or it might be better understanding. A complicating factor is the overlap between Bipolar Spectrum problems and Borderline Personality, discussed here, where flips in attitudes towards relationships (eg idealization and devaluation) can be prominent in both (along with volatility, grandiosity, hypersensitivity, rage and paranoia).
All of this mess can be treated. I have become a fan of Lamictal for mood instability and attitude shifts which do not rise to the level of full-blown Manic-Depression but which are well-outside the normal moods and shifts of daily life. Lamictal plus confrontational psychotherapy, and maybe an antidepressant.
It hardly matters, and I suspect that nobody cares much including FLOTUS, but it is interesting if true. (h/t Moonbattery.) It is claimed that Obama and ballet dancer Rahm hung out at "Man's Country."
Male dancers are not always gay - see Baryshnikov. Lots of talented guys dance for the money and the chicks.
Strassel: Mr. Romney, Trust Your Pants - Obama tells Americans the terrible things the Republican will do to them. The Republican remains silent about what he would do.
...that aging rock star will win this campaign going away if Romney keeps playing it safe. That is a terrible waste for Republicans, an ominous sign for a country in desperate need of new leadership, and more than enough reason for me to stop bothering to tweet on Saturday nights.
The worst line in the clip you showed was this where she said there are different views around the world about the outer limits of free speech. Why is she engaging in a disquisition on free speech with the mob? The implication here that, perhaps the mob is right, that we ought to be suppressing anything that offends Islam, this is a nation where somebody puts a crucifix in bottle of urine and it ends up in a museum. We allow all kind of expression. But perhaps we ought to make an exception in the case of Islam. This is absurd. She ought to be speaking to the heads of state, to the State Department equivalents in other states and saying ‘You speak to your mob and talk to them and defend the embassy.’ This is return to statement a few days ago, I think and they are totally in meltdown at the State Department.”
...to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
I doubt that it is widely true that young women have become the sexual exploiters and predators, but I know it is true to some extent.
When I was about to graduate from high school as an amiable screw-off, ranked barely above the lower quarter of my class, my father, who had not gone to college, told me that if I wished to go he would pay my way, but he encouraged me to consider whether my going wouldn’t be a waste of time. He personally thought I might make a hell of a good salesman, which was a compliment, for he was himself a hell of a good salesman, and a successful one. I eschewed his advice, not because it wasn’t sound, but chiefly because I felt that, at 18, I wasn’t ready to go out in the world to work.
In those days, the University of Illinois was, at least for residents of the state, an open-enrollment school. If you lived in Illinois, the school had to take you, no matter how low in your high school class you graduated. Lots of kids flunked out, and my own greatest fear on the train headed from Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana, in white bucks and reading The Catcher in the Rye, was that I would be among them.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. For today, we'll (semi-ironically) adopt the Democratic Socialist Party's meme: We didn't build Maggie's Farm on our own.
We rely on the geniuses who made the intertunnels possible, the engineers who provide us with our coal- and nuclear-energy, on the geniuses who invented the hyperlink and YouTube, on our Webmeister who keeps this rickety site functioning with duct tape and baling wire, on hundreds of other bloggers, websites, and news sources for content, on our commenters who add zip, on Dunkin Donuts which keeps us going, on Panasonic who built my Lumix, etc etc - and on our readers and the good folks who link to us.
It's a communal effort, and an enjoyable one. Many farm hands make light(er) work. No government involvement or funds, however.
This is our biannual request that our readers pitch in and give us a hand by sending out the word about our eclectic, informative, and politically-Centrist/Libertarian website. As I always say, our readership is our reward for what we do here.
Pic of the Maggie's Farm hard-working back office farm hands - and fact-checkers (Zachriel missed the photo op) - safely below the fold.
I should not be surprised that the shocking, shocking headline news of the past 48 hours has not been lethal Islamist attacks on American embassies, but Mitt Romney's comments about these barbarian atrocities.
If you think I was angry yesterday…then stand by for today. Let’s connect the dots in close to real time. Reasonably, President Bush took aggressive action against the Afghan and Iraqi regimes that sponsored terrorism against the US and its allies, although – along with every intelligence service – in major error believing that Iraq’s WMDs were more and more able. At the same time, reasonably, President Bush exerted himself to inform Americans to separate believers in Islam from radical Islamists.
That latter distinction is still valid. However, experience has demonstrated that the radical Islamists have grasped power in country after country while the voices or efforts of moderates have been inadequate or squelched by both the radical Islamists and by much of the Western media making increasingly tenuous excuses for the radicals.
Cap that off with an Obama administration, from the president himself to his appointed minions in the highest levels at the State Department, apologizing for supposed US sins, as claimed by radical Islamists, and otherwise stubbornly pursuing fairy tale wishes that catering to radicals will transform them into moderates and allies.
This same Obama administration failed to negotiate a reasonable timetable and process for reducing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan while directing our military to leave more quickly. This has increased instability in those two countries in which Americans have sacrificed, persuaded fence-sitters to lean or go into the radical Isalamist camps, and encouraged bolder defiance from Maliki and Karzai of US and Western interests.
With all that and more background, the attacks yesterday on the US Embassy in Cairo and the US Consulate in Benghazi should come as little surprise. It should also come as little surprise that the response by the Obama administration was so initially apologetic -- and little better in its walk-back -- to the attackers instead of calling them out as thugs and demanding apologies from the Egyptian and Libyan governments for standing by. It should come as little surprise when there are more attacks on US Embassies and Consulates in the MidEast. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which has seized almost all power in Egypt, calls for more nationwide demonstrations this Friday. There are strong signs that Islamists in other Arab countries are stampeding in that path.
Apologists for extremism, abroad, in the White House or media, will continue to twist themselves into putrid pretzels of pusillanimity, and the media play along, with the most prominent prime perpetrator of press cover-up, the New York Times, even being so craven to keep yesterday’s outrages off its front page.
Presidential contender Mitt Romney, while pointedly criticizing the weak Obama response, needs to go much further, and quickly, to demonstrate how his administration would put spine back in the deboned eagle of the past four years. MidEast expert Michael Rubin lays out a program. That’s more and better than these offenses just being bantered and battered about without purposeful action.
It’s past time to return the proud and mighty eagle to prominence, talons bared, and let our enemies stand by for a thrashing wherever and whenever we decide. No longer can they be allowed so much initiative to incite without serious consequence, expecting the US to just whimper from the Oval Office.
The comments on that post show some eddication, too. Math is the best test of intellectual rigor because, up through Calc 3, it doesn't require talent. Just IQ (ie pattern-recognition, pleasure in the application of logic, and ability to handle abstraction), some humility in witholding one's own precious opinions and bullshitting skills learned in high school as in soft courses, and good study habits.
That's why tough colleges use Calc as "weed-out" courses for so many majors, and why so many grad school entry exams include Calc and advanced math (eg Med School, Engineering, Accounting, Computer, Biz School, Bio, the hard sciences obviously, etc). It's about capacity for mental discipline.
However, many Prep Schools and large High Schools in the US today offer Calc 2 and even Calc 3 so brainy kids don't have to waste college time on them and can jump right into real "Higher Ed."
The sad thing is that many bright kids' brains do not mature at the same pace (due to myelinization and other things), and sometimes can process things easily at 20 which they could not have done at 16.
As they say, eddication - like sex - is wasted on the young. I have friends who have taken up higher math, Chinese, and accounting in adulthood, just for the enjoyable challenge and for life-enrichment. Even writing books about obscure 16th Century Dutch artists. Reading fiction and watching TV and movies do not suffice for the active, adventurous mind. In fact, I have a 65 year-old (not retired) golfing buddy who is taking up Sanskrit. I admire people like that, and do not particularly admire people who do not have serious intellectual, artistic, or religious pursuits, regardless of their age.
I might like or love them, but don't admire. Precious grey matter should not be put out to pasture, because it is a gift. Very rare and fortunate are those who can combine vocation with avocation.
If your kid doesn't know Calc 1 or Stats 1 in High School, your government is ripping you off. That does not happen in India, China, or Singapore.
Average pay for Chicago teachers is $76,000 for 9 months' work with many vacations, not including benefits and defined-benefit pensions. Student performance is terrible, with only 15% of grade school students reading at grade level. In other words, it's not working. If this were a competitive business, it would be out of business but it is a government monopoly, controlled by a wealthy and powerful union.
1. The highest-paid public school teacher in Illinois is a physical education teacher making $191,124 per year (I'm assuming this is a 9-month teaching "year").2. Six of the top 12 highest-paid high school teachers in Illinois teach physical education, each making $170,000 or more. 3. Six state employees teaching driver education make $150,000 or more. 4. Six high school teachers make more than the Illinois Governor's salary of $177,500.5. 14,048 Illinois high school teachers made salaries of $100,000 or more in 2010, which is up 13% over last year.
Many, too many, Americans appear to have not learned or forgotten the critical lesson of 9/11/2001. The United States has some ruthless enemies, in some cases with even more capabilities now than then, and we must go out into the world to foil them. In the 1990s, benumbed and enjoying a supposed peace dividend after the fall of the Soviet Union, we too much ignored other budding threats. Then came 9/11/2001.Now the minor attention paid to foreign affairs in the presidential campaign caters to ostrich-head-in-sand voters.
But, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. BIG shame.
It may be rationalized that downplaying foreign affairs, or downplaying imminent threats, is good politics for this election. It is not, however, the leadership we need and deserve for now and the coming years. It is a shame.
Welcome to those of you arriving from Instapundit and my thanks to Glenn for the helpful link. My original post on this gruesome subject is here and the Save-Our-Doc donation page is here.
And welcome to Maggie's Farm, the oldest and bestest eclectic site in the sphereoblogs. It's the only site in town where you'll see a penetrating look into the human psyche by a renown psychiatrist, an exposé of the rotten core we call our educational system, a warning about the latest nasty computer virus, all followed by an endearing piece titled 'Chipmunk of the Week'. Quality eclecticity, all the way.
As far as who the hell I am, I was blogging ten years before the word was invented and had a page of the latest hot web links up a decade before Instapundit launched. Details here. As I said to Ed Driscoll today, relics like me should be preserved. As for some of my recent posts, if you like music, check this out. If you like horses, check this out. The genetics post Ed once referred to as "epic" is here, and my home site is here.
As for the rest of you lugs (and lugesses), I'm still tentatively scheduled for the 24th, but I might push it back a bit. The problem with the entire medical field is that it's full of 'ifs'. If the operation goes routinely, I might have enough money. If the post-operative costs are normal, I might have enough money. If the drugs are still available (a number of post-operative cancer drugs have recently become harder to find because of — you guessed it — government over-regulation by the FDA), I might have enough money.
It's the not-ifs that are worrying me.
The good news is that a subsidiary of the company I normally do the web work for hired me to do a big project for them (Ever put an Excel database online? It's not a pretty site.) so that'll keep me busy for a while. It should be worth about $800, but the pisser is that I won't get it for almost two months.
I also dusted off my plumbing tools the other day and made $350 replacing a water heater and two faucets. I modestly admit I haven't lost my touch. I had those puppies replaced in no time flat.
And, of course, no Big C update would be complete without including one of the many, many (many) happy-go-lucky, cheer-me-up cartoons and pics my two best friends have sent me since this all began. I'm sure lucky to have such support!
Paestum 
I forget where I found today's photo so I can't credit the finder, but 
