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.
During college I worked at Jack Frost Dry Goods, a fabric and yarn store in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The owner contributed extra cloth to the Little Sisters of the Poor in the nearby Bushwick neighborhood. My uncle had owned a nursing home in the Bronx when I was much younger than that, and the Little Sisters facility and care was superior.
The Little Sisters of the Poor are another example of religious based charitable organizations whose scruples and finances would be violated by Obamacare's requirement that it provide medical insurance that includes contraception and medical treatments that cause sterility or can cause abortions. Aside from its 300 sisters working in their facilities, non-users but still charged for the increased premium, the Little Sisters hires without regard to religion and cares for people without regard to religion. So, according to Obamacare, the Little Sisters of the Poor does not qualify for exemption.
I would think the NAACP would be embarassed about this statement, with its implication that the main black policy agenda is to get stuff from the government.
Slowing population growth. The restoration of massive swaths of farmland to nature. Increasing world food supplies. Lower food prices for billions of people. Massive water supplies beneath the driest deserts. Abundant oil and gas. The 21st century is looking like it will be a very different kind of place than the greens and Malthusians have warned us about.
It is a difficult time in central Connecticut, but it is almost Christ's birthday party. Being fresh out of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, what can we offer? We can offer receptivity.
We can offer anticipation of a mystery, new life, birth and re-birth, gifts of the spirit to be delivered by FedEx or Santa or the Holy Spirit on Christmas Eve, or any other time, to each heart open to those precious gifts.
They feel they must for PR, grandstanding, or as a power grab, but it won't matter in the end. From my readings about the Newtown nightmare, the killer was a distinctly odd, fairly bright but low-functioning kid, maybe autism spectrum or childhood schizophrenia spectrum, schizoid, or something like that. A harmless oddball. Some colleagues of mine have suspected a psychotic break, but I doubt it. Wired a bit wrong from the beginning I suspect, but this is not uncommon at all. Everybody has a loose wire and it's a matter of degree.
As the over-stressed parents of such kids learn, there are no cures for these problems. Often, no effective treatments either other than zombifying them with antipsychotic medicines. Sometimes a residential placement with lots of support can be useful but not curative in any way - and would need to be voluntarily undertaken. The killer's family had plenty of money, access to all of the resources that a wealthy family in wealthy and treatment-rich Connecticut and his devoted mother could provide, but nothing much could be done because there was little to do.
Not only is help limited in power, the humbling fact is that mental health professionals are essentially unable to predict either violent, homicidal or suicidal behavior except in the most acute situations. We try, often over-react, but these are black swan events which are unpredictable by definition. We cannot lock up every unusual, isolated kid who enjoys war games any more than we can lock up every angst-ridden teen with thoughts of suicide. And if we could, for how long? Kellerman writes about deinstitutionalization but that's not what this is about. Angry and unhappy people are everywhere.
Furthermore, many if not most people who could use a hand from mental health professionals have little interest in pursuing that. Interestingly, the ACLU recently blocked a Connecticut law which would have made outpatient treatment mandatory for some patients. Not that mandatory "treatment" can do much good. That's why people needing help slip through the cracks: they don't want it.
Unlike many libertarians, I am fine with a ban on automatic weapons. But no need to hop over to Change.org to start a petition to ban them; machine guns have been illegal in the United States since 1934, and since the 1980s, it has been illegal to manufacture and sell any automatic weapon. Apparently unbeknownst to Twitter, we have also already made it illegal for the mentally ill to buy or have guns, and have background checks aimed at prevented just that.
But beyond the strange calls to make serial killers pray more and outlaw things that are already illegal, the most interesting thing is how generic they were. As soon as Newtown happened, people reached into a mental basket already full of "ways to stop school shootings" and pulled out a few of their favorite items. They did not stop to find out whether those causes had actually obtained in this case.
It's the age-old "something must be done," but, as Megan points out, bad cases make bad law. The only consoling fact is that mass murder has been declining in the US since 1929. Guns have little to do with it. People determined to wreak havoc can do it in many sorts of ways, from making bombs to driving cars or airplanes into buildings, and do so across the world. The US has no monopoly on killing sprees, contra Michael Moore. If one looks around the world, it can seem as if civil behavior, as Americans understand it, is the abnormal.
Gun laws? Bomb laws? Other criminal laws? Evil-doers ignore and bypass laws while honest people end up having their freedoms limited by them. Naturally, when dramatic events happen in the world - 9/11, crash of housing bubble, mass murders, storms, etc., the pols and "advocates" and rent-seekers jump avidly onto their favorite hobby-horses and ride them for all it's worth for their own reasons. People want to assign blame on anything, it seems, other than, in this case, the seemingly demonic perpetrator.
As cold as it may sound today, crushing tragedy is part of the human condition and has always been. No "mental health system" or politician or policy will change that unless we all decide to live in a prison camp. We do believe in being armed, though, to minimize the odds of becoming a victim. That's why we have lightning rods on our roof, too.
In the meantime, we all mentally re-live the nightmare in our minds and wish it to be undone, to go away, to not be real, to be impossible.
"If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns." Leaving the rest of us to be helpless sheep in the face of criminals and reckless lunatics.
How did Canada's gun registry work out? After billions spent and years dedicated to it, not one crime solved. Duh. Bad guys do not own legal firearms. They obtain illegal ones on the street or they steal them.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
Human rights abroad are not of real concern to President Obama. This is clearly signaled by the potential nominations of John Kerry and Chuck Hegel to be Secretary of State and Defense, respectively, two men who throughout their careers have buddied up to tyrants and downplayed oppression.
None are arguing for direct armed intervention in every case of brutality toward human rights, or the US would be invading at least half the members of the United Nations.But, where US foreign policy interests are aligned with defense of the human rights within a country, there is no justification to ignore or excuse or downplay the gross denial of basic rights, nor for that matter not to aid those aligned with Western values.
This is not a new concern unique to the current administration, but it is a heightened problem in the Obama lead-from-behind or the Obama skedaddle-from-town foreign policy.
The major human rights organizations have a spotty record of holding this administration’s feet to the fire. Should Kerry and Hegel be the policy-making and public face of US foreign policy, the major human rights organizations either better rise to their pretenses or be self-labeled as frauds.
It is no secret that when it comes to staffing, the most famous U.S.-based human rights organizations are skewed more toward Democrats than even universities. The most professional organizations try not to allow partisanship to corrupt analysis, but they are seldom successful….
The coming four years, however, should force real soul searching among the human rights community. President Obama’s reported pick of John Kerry to be secretary of state and the looming choice of Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense will cement in his cabinet two figures that lack a moral compass in international affairs. If Kerry considered Bashar al-Assad “a dear friend” and a genuine reformer because they had a nice coffee and bike ride together, sympathizes with Latin America’s new populist dictators, and believes human rights should be shunted aside because Vladimir Putin is a sincere democrat, dictators will understand they have a free pass and democratic dissidents will realize they have no friend in the U.S. government.Hagel’s gut instincts are even worse: He is not naïve like Kerry, but rather cold and callous when it comes to human rights. His instincts are to dismiss his opponents’ worst excesses as a domestic affair. Hagel embraces traditional appeasement, unaware that rather than satiate dictators, it only emboldens them. It won’t take long for dictators to understand that, with both Kerry and Hagel at the helm, they will have carte blanche to repress and murder their own people in a manner unseen for decades
.…The question for the human rights community will be if they will hold water for such men and confirm the political corruption which infuses the professional human rights community.
A prime example of the hypocrisy of a leading human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, is 9/11 truther, virulent anti-Israel pro-Hamas apologist Richard Falk's membership on its Board of Directors. The anti-Israel animus in President Obama's potential appointments of Kerry and/or Hegel are described by Caroline Glick.
This past week was finals week for my son. Thankfully, his slow start at college led to a fine rally and his efforts were rewarded with good grades. I give him a tremendous amount of credit for pulling himself together in his new environment. He started out carelessly, as many young people do when suddenly placed in an environment which is seemingly responsibility-free. The reality hits home quickly, of course, and his hit in the first two weeks, details of which are not important.
What was important was how he responded. He buckled down, and realized that while he could have some fun, he was there to do work. I pointed out to him his payment for the work he does is the sense of accomplishment good grades provide.
However, for all the fine work he did, there was one event which bothered me. He handled it well, I can't say that I would've.
His professor, for their final paper, asked them all to write a letter to President Obama asking for increased legislation and leadership to move our nation to a 'green' or sustainable energy policy. All the papers would be graded, but the highest grade would be sent directly to President Obama through a personal friend.
My first reaction was "what right does this professor have to force a particular view on his students?" My son replied, "Look, I don't agree with this and I don't support it. But I can get an A and I've got a good idea of how to write this. If I fight him, he'll probably give me an F on the paper."
As much as this approach bothered me, I was impressed with his maturity and focus on the goal. His paper was, for what it was, pretty darn good. I don't know if it will get forwarded, but it was worthy of a very high grade. He and I laughed and I said "at least if it does get chosen, we can use it as a platform to show the inadequacies of some portions of higher education."
I'm aware that many colleges have become bastions of liberal indoctrination. I'm not sure when the decision was made to eliminate critical thought in the classroom - but I hope it is not fait accompli. Luckily for my son, he and I have active discussions about topics like his paper regularly, so he's aware there is more than one view on the topic. I'm not sure how many of his classmates are.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
and
Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.
I sometimes wonder whether black Americans would be happy or disappointed to know how little most white Americans think about race. And more and more, I think they’d be disappointed. Or mad.
Sipp makes the case that life is accumulated error. Lots of truth in that. Even small errors in facts, in choices, in judgement, build on eachother and you eventually you can have a mess that you drag along with you. It's difficult in life to start on a clean slate.
In Maritime Academies, they always teach the famous case of the cargo ship leaving NY harbor headed for Brazil in the 1960s. After a day at sea, the ship beached itself on Fire Island on Long Island, NY. The autopilot, as today, was controlled by a gyro. When a gyro malfunctions and drifts, everything checks out and agrees with the malfunctioning gyro. When the ship hit the beach, the crew had no idea where they were. Degree by degree, over three watches, the ship had made a 180. I'll assume they hit the beach at night.
Well, everything checks out as consistent - unless somebody bothers to check the heading against an old-fashioned magnetic compass. There is a reason all ships still carry a sextant and a copy of Bowditch too.
...the animating principle of the modern university is a focus on the image and “brand” of the university, rather than the underlying substance of the education experience received. Governance of the modern university is almost completely absorbed by how to market the school’s brand rather than how to improve its underlying quality. The focus of every discussion is what impact a particular action (or inaction) will have on the school’s brand.
I do not care for vodka in any form other than in a Bloody Mary or its variants, no matter what our team member Opie says about Grey Goose: I think it's just ethanol with a twist. (To me, a vodka Martini is only suited for auto fuel for the sanctimonious feel-gooders.)
At Maggie's Farm, we are feel-gooders of the other variety. While it's not a strictly holiday drink, I seem to only have Bloody Marys in the winter. Besides Irish Coffee, it's the only drink a proper gent can have before noon without looking like a drunk.
There are about a thousand different Bloody Mary recipes. Here's an interesting one. I used to have our wonderful Connecticut Yankee neighbor William F. Buckley Jr's recipe, which included canned beef broth or consomme and sounded like a complete wholesome meal in a glass - protein, vegetables, roughage (the celery stick) and booze - but I can't find it. (Thanks, reader. You remind me that some folks call that a Bloody Bull, but I'd still like to find his recipe - it obviously worked well for him.)
The Bloody Caesar (or plain "Caesar"), I learned recently, is the most popular mixed drink in Canada. It must be all that clam broth that makes Canadians so "nice." It could not be more simple, because the magic is in the magical Mott's Clamato. Rimming the glass with some lime and salt is a delicious touch and also wards off the dread Scurvy. I like the Spicy Clamato more than the regular. Here's the history of Clamato - one of Canada's great contributions to civilization, second only to the Labrador Retriever.
On most days, I'd take the Caesar over the Mary or the Bull. We olde Cape Codders cannot get away from that clam broth, which was Mother's milk to us ever since the kind Indians taught our ancestors how to dig the tasty quahogs.
Addendum: Opie doesn't want our readers to forget the Bloody Maria
I am pleased that we posted on Father Rohr this morning. I have no interest in posting on the topic of dramatic mass murders on this site, because I have already said all I have to say about it already on previous postings.
Dramatic or undramatic, evil is pervasive. There is not a single human heart without some. We read about guns, mental illness, government policy, a bad culture, inattentive parents and others, etc. These are all distractions. The relevant topic is human evil in all of its forms. We do not like to think about that.
Believe it or not, I saw a headline saying "Gun kills 26 in Connecticut."
A planet without humans would be a planet without good and evil. The utopian narrative goes something like this: "If everybody is properly served, controlled, treated, drugged, provided for, etc etc, horrible things might be eliminated from the world." That thought is truly crazy and is the reason we have trademarked the term "psycho-utopianism" on this website.
In more ways than one, we are waiting in darkness. Isaiah prophesied Jesus’ birth, saying, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2).
Yet, the darkness will never totally go away. I’ve worked long enough in ministry to know that moral evil isn’t going to disappear, but the Gospel offers something much more subtle and helpful: “the light shines on the inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it” (John 1:5). Such is the Christian form of yin-yang, our own belief in paradox and mystery.
We must all hope and work to eliminate darkness, especially in many of the great social issues of our time. We wish world hunger could be eliminated. We wish we could stop wasting the earth’s resources on armaments. We wish we could stop killing people from womb to tomb.
But at a certain point, we have to surrender to the fact that the darkness is part of reality, and my logical mind does not know why. But the only real question becomes how to trust the light, receive the light, and spread the light. That is not a capitulation to evil any more than the cross was a capitulation to evil. It is real transformation into the unique program of the Crucified and Risen Christ. This is the one pattern that redeems reality instead of punishing evil or thinking we can eliminate it entirely. Our main job is to face it in ourselves.
Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr
My pic is the Congregational Church of Hadlyme, CT, yesterday
Buddy's Comment: Miller was 14 years old, maybe 15, here, sez the comments. Rogers was a big star already, at 26, and let the kid have the part in the movie, and also let her steal this scene. Watch the micro moves in that under-a-minute span from 1:00 to 1:50 -
- A Mathematician, a Biologist and a Physicist are sitting in a street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people going into the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three persons coming out of the house. The Physicist: "The measurement wasn't accurate.". The Biologist: "They have reproduced". The Mathematician: "If now exactly one person enters the house then it will be empty again."
- A doctor, a lawyer, and a mathematician were having a conversation about the relative benefits of wives and mistresses.
The doctor insisted that, from a health perspective, it was far better to have a wife. He talked about stress, relaxation, routine, and other factors.
The lawyer contended that it was better to have a mistress, because that way you retain more of your legal rights, she doesn't own half your property, and so forth.
The mathematician said that he could see both sides of that argument, but really he thought it was best to have both.
"Both?", the doctor and the lawyer exclaimed. "Why?"
"Sure, both. That way, when the wife thinks you're with the mistress, and the mistress thinks you're with the wife, you can sneak off by yourself and do mathematics."
In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist:
This past spring, Harvard and MIT got the attention of everyone in the higher ed business when they announced a new online education venture called edX. The new venture will make online versions of the universities’ courses available to a virtually unlimited number of enrollees around the world. Think of the ramifications: Now anyone in the world with an internet connection can access the kind of high-level teaching and scholarship previously available only to a select group of the best and most privileged students.
Falconry season
I have nothing new to post about today. 
Spam University
Sipp makes the case that 
I do not care for vodka in any form other than in a Bloody Mary or its variants, no matter what our team member Opie says about Grey Goose: I think it's just ethanol with a twist. (To me, a vodka Martini is only suited for auto fuel for the sanctimonious feel-gooders.) 
COME EMMANUEL, GOD WITH US! 
Vanderleun: 