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.
Hillary Clinton has been an utter disaster as Secretary of State. Syria
is awash in mass murder, chemical weapons, and Iranian missiles. Egypt
is under the control of the Nazi-esque Muslim Brotherhood. Libya is a
cauldron of terrorist activity. And Iran has -- or is about to --
acquire nuclear weapons. At the same time, North Korea and the People's
Republic of China are seemingly at a tipping point.
Maybe some guy on the internet will break it eventually. But you realize Woodward and Bernstein became Woodward and Bernstein because what they did to Nixon. The key thing in that equation was Nixon. You had a free rein on him.
You can't go after this guy. You won't get Woodward and Bernstein status. You’ll be out of the game. If you’re the one who brings down Barack Obama, you will be out of the game. And if you go after Hillary, who’s going to run the next eight years, you’ll be more out of the game. So, in this case, it’s, you know, it's not going to happen. The press isn't going to dig on on this.
The Indians came here from somewhere else too, Mongolia or something, and totally screwed up the ecology, killed off all of the big animalsand set fires to the prairies
I was told that, when Leonard Bernstein retired from the New York Philharmonic and took on the Vienna he gave them hell for playing the notes perfectly but not playing the music.
... college grads should forget the dream of stable, long-term jobs in the education, health care, or public sector (what he refers to as the “rentier cartel-state economy”), and instead adapt themselves to the realities of the freelance economy.
Good advice. The rentier economy is going nowhere but downwards.
If you have the ambition to energetically create the life you want, clarify your goals, clarify your principles, learn all you can from your errors, be a helpful but tough manager of yourself and of others. It worked for him.
I've mentioned here several times that the DSM is no "bible" for me or for most of my colleagues. We rarely find our patients in there, or human beings, for that matter. When the premise is wrong (that surface symptoms and complaints lead directly back to a neuro-chemical abnormality), then the entire endeavor is only useful for completing insurance forms (with a handful of partial exceptions).
A few relevant and interesting links:
- The Real Problems With Psychiatry - A psychotherapist contends that the DSM, psychiatry's "bible" that defines all mental illness, is not scientific but a product of unscrupulous politics and bureaucracy.
Not to mention the pharmaceutical industry. Always question Authority!
Like many fields of endeavor, good Psychiatry is part art, part science, but mixed with much life experience, much interpersonal experience, and as much painful self-knowledge as the doc him- or herself can handle to "sharpen the scalpel" as it were. We are called upon to be experts in real life, relationships, religion, the brain, the mind, the body, and the soul. It's a tall order which is why it is often termed "the impossible profession."
Readers know that I have trademarked the term "psycho-utopianism" to refer to the naive and reductionistic notion that, if all our our chemicals and all of our neurons were straightened out, and if we docs could fix it all by a cookbook, we'd all be some kind of "normal" and some kind of moral and some kind of "happy" of a serene, bourgeois sort. It ain't never gonna happen, and it's for the best that it cannot.
It would not be human, and it would not be real life. I recently was referred an evaluation for depression. Patient fit the DSM perfectly, but it didn't "smell right" to me so I took a chance and ordered her a total body MRI. She had an undiagnosed gastric cancer.
As we have said ad nauseum, if this had happened under Bush, imagine the media uproar. However, they are attempting to run interference for Hillary ("at this point, what does it matter?") Clinton.
Live, 1986. An energetic performance (thanks, Gerard). I think that's Tom Petty on guitar.
Play list (In The Garden is a Christian song. I'll Remember You is a magnificent song. That Lennie Bruce song is stupid):
1.In The Garden 2.Just, Like A Woman 3.Like A Rolling Stone 4.It 's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) 5.Girl From The North Country 6.Lenny Bruce 7.When The Night Comes Falling 8.Ballad Of A Thin Man 9.I"ll Remember You 10.Knockin 'On Heaven's Door
If you have been raped, you dial 911. If in danger of being raped, you try to use 911 or else pull out your Derringer or your Glock if you have one. Rape and assault are felonies. Why one would phone a campus administrator is beyond me because law enforcement is not their job. They do not live in reality.
For the purposes of income, satisfaction, challenge, skill-enhancement, personal growth, relationships, and pleasure, I have been planning and pursuing my life goals for ten years. Like Prof. Boudreaux, I have zero interest in income equality. I want to be prosperous, but I recognize that most people do not if they have to work or plan for it too hard, or take too many risks. I want to support a wife and kids without help, I want to help my parents when and if they need it, I want to keep learning, I want to be my own boss and to learn how to lead, I want my own Conquest, I want a white picket fence, I want a cushion of cash in the mattress, and I want to go places the way Bird Dog does.
Also, I am also entirely opposed to the idea of minimum wage, especially for people under 18 or 20 years old. All it does is to deprive the youth of valuable work experience. Labor is a market, same as cars or arugula. Child labor is a good thing, much better than teen tours. Work never hurt anybody. Not working seems pretty bad for people unless they are Moms raising a young litter.
When I see the announcement that Salon has gone offline, having voluntarily given up its air conditioned Internet server rooms for the sake of preserving Gaia and staving off “the apocalypse,” I’m willing to revisit the cheeseburger argument.
"Mr. Bernanke has no clue about economics or currencies, and no clue about how markets work. You have to be very careful and watch those guys. Many people for some reason have some kind of faith, even worship of the Central Bank, like they know what they are doing. Its has only been in the past few decades people even knew who Central Bankers were. Nobody knew about these guys 100 years, 80 years ago yet now they have become exalted and that is a bubble.
Fortunately Central Bankers are going to pop and this particular crisis may well lead to it. In America we've had 3 Central Banks, the first two disappeared and this one will too in my view. They are making such horrible mistakes. "
“If you have the biggest computer and the biggest data, you can calculate how to target people with a political message, and have almost a guaranteed deterministic level of success,” says Lanier. “Politics then becomes about who has the biggest computer. The way Obama won the last US election was by having the best computer strategy.”
“If that is to be the future of politics, it will no longer have meaning. The path we are currently on now is not compatible with democracy.”
On our drive up from JAX towards Little Saint Simons, we made a couple of brief side visits, one to Fort Frederika on (big) Saint Simons Island, and one to Fernandina on Amelia Island. Both places have interesting histories.
The short-lived fort and town of Frederika on the river/marsh side of Saint Simons stopped the Hispanic (Spanish) invasion from Florida into the English colonies in 1742. Its purpose having been served, the population, including many of the Scottish Highlander soldiers, moved to the mainland. The Spanish never tried to invade the coast again.
Most astonishing factoid about Frederika: The Wesley brothers preached there, John and Charles, more or less the founders of Methodism in England. Charles, of course, best known for his splendid hymn-writing. (I once lost a bet of an expensive bottle of wine at a dinner party when I bet that the Wesleys never preached in Georgia.)
A nice Live Oak on the site of the old abandoned village:
Since we had a little time on the road, we also checked out Amelia Island briefly, for lunch. Instead out scouting out the Amelia Island Plantation, we went into Fernandina. Charming little town. Amelia Island is termed the land of eight flags because it has been claimed by eight nations over its history. I'm sure they all wanted to own the golf courses.
“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
There's a style of AGW propaganda that I call the 'Little Lie, Big Truth' format. This is when some tiny lie of the AGW campaign is soundly debunked, making the author look 'clinical, scientific and impartial', then, almost as a 'P.S.', it's noted that, by the way, man-made global warming is here, real, and must be dealt with now. One little lie debunked, but one grand truth revealed.
Allahpundit (aka 'God's Critic') over on Hot Air has linked to a number of these articles over the years in their 'Headlines'. Whether he's just skimming over the article and failing to spot the Big Truth paragraph at the end, or actually believes in AGW and is posting these links to appear clinical, scientific and impartial, is anybody's guess.
He's in good company, though. Matt Drudge does the same thing:
Progressives don't fear guns in the hands of criminals, or not very much. It's not about school shootings, either. It's guns in the hands, and homes, of law abiding citizens that Progressives hate. Those are the guns they wish were gone; those are the guns they will try to eliminate if they can. Because those are the guns which stand in the way of them taking over.
The Sultans of Swing, live. Not sure what year this was. I do remember the first time I heard this tune on the car radio. It blew my mind. I do know that I was driving east, into eastern Kentucky and the coal country. Good times.
There seems to be something wonderful about something new.
We recently picked up a new car, an SUV of course to help prevent global cooling. (I wanted a Suburban but that is not what She fetched - thought it was too long for her to park.) An off-lease car, because we like the idea of letting the previous owner take the hit on the depreciation nowadays. Stupid not to, since they all come with 4-year warrantees anyway.
Happily, we are down to only three - or 2 1/2 - vehicles and, finally, no boats to worry about.
However, it got me to thinking about the charms of new things. New camera, new car, new house, new dog, new gun, new girlfriend or boyfriend, new painting for the wall, new horse, new piece of furniture, new iPhone, new place to visit, new landscaping plan and new plantings, new paint job, new chain saw, new tweed sport jacket, new TV. New sexual position.
The charm of the new never lasts, but it delights for a while before it lapses into the routine. Unless your new car is a Maserati, perhaps.
What is it about the new that so enchanting, when we know that new becomes old and familiar so quickly? I ask this as someone for whom old things are the most comfortable.
23 
Hollywood "Script Evaluators" Now Being 
The 
Live, 1986. An energetic performance (thanks, Gerard). I think that's Tom Petty on guitar.
There's a style of AGW propaganda that I call the 'Little Lie, Big Truth' format. This is when some tiny lie of the AGW campaign is soundly debunked, making the author look 'clinical, scientific and impartial', then, almost as a 'P.S.', it's noted that, by the way, man-made global warming is here, real, and must be dealt with now. One little lie debunked, but one grand truth revealed.
I like the 
There seems to be something wonderful about something new.