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.
Parrish (1870-1966) was an enormously popular New Hampshire illustrator/artist whose prints and posters are readily available. For me, they are highly sentimental and corny in a charming way. He frequently decorated his landscapes with lovely nymphettes. This is River in Ascutney. That is Mount Ascutney in the background, and the CT River.
My Christmas present to Mrs. BD was piano lessons from a fine teacher who comes to the house. Mrs. BD had lessons in youth and had an incredible music education later. She is music-oriented, but now can only easily play basic things - Happy Birthday and Christmas carols and Auld Lang Syne - she reads music but wants and needs to be able to play chords, jazz riffs, serious pieces, etc., especially since we replaced the old and now have my late Dad's Steinway baby grand. What a sound! It fills ye olde cabin with rich noise. I don't care about missed notes or the sound of practicing. I love to hear it all, including the "damn, damn, damn."
Barking dogs, "damns" from the pianny, drier thumping, vacuum cleaner roaring, the scullery maids dropping pots, doorbell ringing, Blue Jays squawking outside, a young 'un yelling "Where's my sneakers?" - the lovely sounds of home sweet home.
Mrs. BD "gets" music, but pretty much dislikes pop music, country music, rock - and Dylan. She's not a snob, just finds them all annoyingly juvenile, unrefined, and stupid - except for a little Motown. What she loves is opera - and anything you can dance to. She wins Charleston competitions, and that's saying a lot, because the youth these days are into vigorous retro dance.
I am musically-retarded and tone-deaf but, in my wasted youth, a little cannabis plus a history of music course helped me hear, seemed to open my ears and, for some reason, that effect has lasted despite being drug-free since college. I still have to close my eyes to listen. You can get WQXR via the internets. Good fun.
When I grew up, we had an upright in the kitchen for kids' lessons, and a Grand or Baby Grand for the grown-ups in the parlor. I am told that the life span of a fine piano is 40-50 years if kept away from heat, sunlight, and given proper humidity - and then it's worthless junk, useless if not pretentious decor to put pictures on, or a $20,000 factory refurbishing. Unlike fine violins, old pianos are basically garbage which you have to pay somebody to get rid of. I placed Dad's in a northern corner of the parlor which has no nearby heat source except a fireplace that we only light up about 15 times per year for a few hours, for holidays and winter parties.
I am going to coat those windows with that UV stuff to protect the wood. It's around 25 years old, so it still has a good life left in it. My Dad would bang out Mozart for an hour a day on this machine, during cocktail hour. The good old days. "Damn, damn, damn" when he missed a note. Mom would do Christmas songs and children's songs with nary a "damn."
The previous family piano was a black Chickering Grand piano. Like all pianos, it aged and was junked.
Those excellent Legacy speakers? I can play pretty good Bach on the CD player and my old Denon record player. Recorded music mostly destroyed the American family music culture which was based on home-made music. Well, that plus radio and TV all turned Americans into inert and passive blobs.
State Department upset that a private conversation was intercepted and recorded. They were shocked this is happening. I was too. Just kidding. Ever heard of the NSA?
What were they concerned about? US involvement in unrest in the Ukraine. Because we don't do that stuff anymore now that Barry is in charge.
As the Olympics is about to begin, I can only imagine this phone call ended with chants of "USA, USA!"
If you can make a case for government-controlled education and medical care, then it is easier to make a case for socialized law - or socialized plumbing, for that matter.
Liberal Democrats all but concede that Obamacare marked the end of their activist ambitions. Hereafter, we will all take vigorous walks and watch prestige dramas on HBO.
But there’s still at least one major social-welfare project the left must see through before anyone considers its mission accomplished. The issue is the vast injustice that arises from the way the law is applied to different classes of citizens.
If and when that's done, there will something else, ad infinitum, until the people rebel and take back their birthright.
I never expect honest answers from questions about sex, substance use, or money, so I won't expect perfect honesty here.
However, in an effort to warm up this frigid winter season, here's my scientific Maggie's Farm poll question for today:
How often during a normal day out and about in the world do you think "Hmmm, that's appealing; I think I wouldn't mind having some sex with that guy or gal"?
If she really is committed to changing the tale of two cities, as she and the new mayor claim to be, one way to start would be to cast aside ideology and judge whether those Core Knowledge classrooms, drenched in “mere facts,” are actually the key to narrowing the devastating knowledge gap between middle-class kids and poor children, who begin school with little knowledge of the world and with a stunted vocabulary. She might also find that there is at least as much “joy” in classrooms in which children get taught explicitly about the world around them as there is in classrooms in which children “construct” their own knowledge.
"I am not really a religious man, only a sinner in a sailor suit" he says.
A few days ago, at a National Day of Prayer gathering in Washington D.C., Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Lee ditched his prepared speech, and delivered a scathing indictment of federal rules regarding expression of faith in the military. The video has just now become available.
OK class, take out a pen and piece of paper, I am going to tell you a bit about ICD 10.
First, don't be alarmed by the prophets of doom who say you docs will be required to use this carefully crafted taxonomy in order for the insurers to refuse to compensate you for your services. This is true. I had dinner with an oncologist friend who is in bankruptcy because even though his patient's insurance company gave prior approval for a $100,000 course of chemotherapy they maintained that did not obligate them to actually pay for the cost. He already had, and on multiple occasions.
Back to ICD 10. This document will allow you to kick back and have some laughs about the conditions you likely will not be called upon to treat. The Monty Python crew had a field day constructing this and they've arranged for the ICD 10 office to be right next door to the Department of Silly Walks. Viz:
V9733XA: Sucked into a jet engine, initial encounter V9733XD: Sucked into jet engine subsequent encounter (Should this person be allowed on runways?) V9733XS: Sucked into jet engine, sequelae ( this is for the litigators)
But, don't overlook, Index to External Causes of Injury Accident E919.1 Bore, earth drilling or mining
Land or seabed E919.7 Bulldozer E909.9 Cataclysmic: Earth surface movement or eruption
So, be grateful if you only have to deal with intangibles and won't get blood on your shoes.
I'll be back soon to discuss Scott Stossel's heroic battle with anxiety and transgressive therapists.
Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It reads:
A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazingly appealing. She believed him to be her dream guy and soul mate so much that she fell in love with him right then and there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.
Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?
A good friend left off this load of split Beech last weekend. I have to unload it, which is fine. An excellent gift. Beech is heavy as lead and as hard as nails, so hard that it destroyed saws so foresters left it alone until power saws came along.
All of the majestic old Beeches around here are dying of a bark fungus.
Somehow I completely missed Dylan's 2012 album Tempest.
From one review:
Tempest is certainly his strongest and most distinctive album in a decade. The sound is a distillation of the jump blues, railroad boogie, archaic country and lush folk that Dylan has been honing since 2001's Love and Theft, played with swagger and character by his live ensemble and snappily produced by the man himself. A notoriously impatient recording artist, Dylan seems to have found a style that suits his working methods. Drawing on the early 20th-century Americana that first grabbed his attention as a young man (and that he celebrated in his Theme Time Radio Hour shows) and surrounding himself with slick, intuitive musicians capable of charging these nostalgic grooves with contemporary energy, his late-period albums seem a continuation of his tours, as if he rolls right off the stage and into the studio and just keeps rocking.
The message here will be what it was in 2008 and to a lesser extent in 2012 — a chance to make history, this time by electing the first female US president. In fact, that’s all Hillary has. She has no track record of significant accomplishment in her eight years as a US Senator, and nothing at all to recommend her from her four years as Secretary of State. Even a Clinton ally like Lanny Davis couldn’t come up with a single data point in a tenure bookended by the “reset button” embarrassment and the debacle in Benghazi. Despite her outsize power in the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is simply a weak candidate and a mediocre-at-best campaigner — and that’s why Democrats should be hitting the panic button.
... if the poor pay attention, they can learn from the rich and become better off themselves by investing in education, getting and staying married, and working full-time.
Do most Americans energetically pursue wealth? I don't think they do. People have other desires besides wealth, fortunately. Of course, few would refuse a windfall. Even Bill Ayers lives high on the hog, on his family fortune.
Here's the place where your editor Bird Dog spends many hours in work and study. Kids and wives wife were never really welcome in here except to search for books to read - but dogs, friends, and cigars are always welcome. No TV in here, thank you, but there is a radio and CD player.
I was experimenting with camera settings, and this was not really as sharp as I was aiming for. I was hoping to be able to capture the antique Eskimo animal carvings on the mantle, but it does give a general idea of The Inner Sanctum on a dark, snowy winter evening. A comfortable if humble study, perfect for me:
The American Robin is semi-migratory (populations edge southwards), and can be found almost anywhere in the US in wintertime. Here, our winter Robins are probably Canucks, while our local summer breeders are probably in South Carolina.
In the northern US, they live on old berries and fruits in the winter, usually foraging in flocks. Sometimes they get drunk on fermented rotten fruit. They do not eat bird seed.
This pic was from a readera while back, taken, as I recall, in Lenox, MA:
Not that there is any reason to assume the CBO is 'impartial'. It likely is not. It's probably not any more impartial than a host of other predictive organizations out there. However, the CBO does have a larger veneer of impartiality than, say, the president's Council of Economic Advisers.
But today's release, by the CBO, about how Obamacare will impact the workforce is possibly the most insightful look into the potential damage this legislation will wreak on workers in the United States.
But wait! There's more! Spin, that is. After all, what good is an administration if it can't get the gullible masses to believe the CBO didn't say what it did say? I'm curious to see how this plays out (or doesn't, as is more likely) in the media over the next few days.
(Years ago) Tucker outlined to Hillary the transformation of the entire American system into "a seamless web that extends from cradle to grave" and is the "same system for everyone," coordinated by a "system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum and job matching will be handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program." The mission of schools would change from "teaching children academic basics and knowledge to training them to serve the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards" in an outcome-based system "guided by clear national standards of performance," set to "international benchmarks" that "define the stages of the system for the people who progress through it." In this "new system of linked standards, curriculum and pedagogy will abandon the American tracking system." Best of all, college loans debt will be forgiven for "public service." Sound familiar?
I was pretty good college material because I have always been curious about everything, have always read up on anything I did not know about, and have always had adequate verbal and mathematical abilities.
Feeling ignorant was a blessing for me because I always wanted to fight it, and learning new things has always been one of my joys.
Football
Is Top Sport in U.S.: 1,088,158 High School Players - See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/football-top-sport-us-1088158-high-school-players#sthash.hjKC0UA2.dpuf
Charter
High Schools Increase Earnings and Educational Achievement - See more
at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/02/charter-high-schools-increase-earnings-and-educational-achievement.html#sthash.shWRN1wD.dpuf
Panelist
at Podesta's Think Tank on Common Core: 'The Children Belong to All of
Us' - See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/video/cnsnews/panelist-podestas-think-tank-common-core-children-belong-all-us#sthash.LUCyJ9E4.dpuf
ABC’s Slime-Time News- Did flashy reporting go too far when it stirred up hysteria over a common beef product?
Michael Barone: How ObamaCare Misreads America - The Washington elites who designed the law must be bewildered: Why doesn't everyone behave as they do?
Science changed dramatically in the 1970s, when the reward structure in the profession began to revolve around the acquisition of massive amounts of taxpayer funding that was external to the normal budgets of the universities and federal laboratories. In climate science, this meant portraying the issue in dire terms, often in alliance with environmental advocacy organizations. Predictably, scientists (and their institutions) became addicted to the wealth, fame, and travel in the front of the airplane...
Readers know that I believe that being unproductive in the world is a terrible, worthless, pointless, goal, especially for people with the American spirit. Unfortunately, some people are forced into it by bad luck, illness, and age limits. Also, some people aspire to it because the advertising tells them to.
Ask any guy, and he'll tell you that a man without a job or a full-time mission feels half-emasculated. That is a least one part of why most guys who retire seek to return to work after two or three years. I see people in their 90s still working. In addition, few wives want their husbands around all the time.
What people aspire to, I believe, is a degree of financial security so they can worry about other things in life besides survival. That is a worthy goal, and makes any sort of work more enjoyable.
I never expect honest answers from questions about sex, substance use, or money, so I won't expect perfect honesty here.
Hoffman’s Heroin 
I was pretty good college material because I have always been curious about everything, have always read up on anything I did not know about, and have always had adequate verbal and mathematical abilities.