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.
The 40-odd days following Ash Wednesday culminating in the prayer-laden and introspective Easter Vigil are the time when all Christians focus most intently on their relationship with the living Christ, and His role in their lives and in their hearts.
I usually welcome Lent with hope, and excitement about discovering where this year's Lenten journey might lead me. It is the gravitational center of my year.
Plant roots wake up and start growing months before the spring buds begin to swell. Lent is my root-growing time, and I hope it will be that this year.
Some of our readers enjoy Allen's movies. I do. My first date with the future Mrs. BD was to see Sleeper. Does the man have any moral foundation? I doubt it. Talent? Undoubtably. What is wrong with the people in the film biz?
A shrink friend sent me this comment:
“Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Dylan and Truth or truth” (Or, “Would you read this if the title didn’t say “Woody Allen.”)
“Truth is truth,” Paddy Chayefsky stated. If only analysts could have that certitude, lost in the past few decades. Truth is relative, “constructed” in the present (transference), not historically accurate. Historical truth doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter at least. Except if a child was sexually molested: then truth matters, the real thing, what happened, was she or he seduced, assaulted. No “relative” here (for truth).But not a simple matter. Let’s listen to Jean Piaget (more neutral than Woody Allen).
Piaget said that for much of his childhood, he “remembered” that when he was in the pram with his nurse as an infant, he was kidnapped. Then, some years later, his nurse revealed that he had not been kidnapped; she simply hadn’t paid attention and his pram rolled away. He still “felt” that he was kidnapped, even as he learned the historical truth that he hadn’t been.
Now, Allen and Farrow (for this is mostly a tragedy that results from their stunning animosity); their children suffer from what the U.S. Army would call “friendly fire” (about nothing which is friendly when your shot dead). Their young adult adopted daughter is cited by a columnist as an example of someone molested by her father in childhood and the aftereffects into adulthood. But, Allen cites an extensive evaluation at Yale Child Study Center at the time of the alleged molest, that showed that she was likely not molested by father. If they are to believed, if our Yale colleagues are to be trusted to some degree, then we learn at least three things.
First, the now young adulthood victim believes that she was molested; she is a victim of animosity between her parents. Second, we learn respect for the adherence between love and hate (as Freud suggested); how love turns to hate when a “divorce” occurs.
Second, Farrow, married at nineteen to Andre Previn, has such animosity to Allen that she would make enduring accusations at the expense of her children’s well-being (her older son confirms that mother told the children to turn against their father).
And third, perhaps Allen’s last word on this may be dismissed by some.
Perhaps all that is left to us at this point is to recognize that some “truths” are not so relative; ain’t important. Truth about life events can really count. When we work with children molested, helping them recognize the true events of their, to explain why they feel and live the way they do, is one significant factor in this work.
Two parents rain animosity at each other over the decades; their children are shot down in this crossfire.
Breast-feeding Benefits Appear to be Overstated, According to Study of Siblings - Advantages of women who choose breast-feeding likely bias findings in previous research
“What all the [ideological crusades of the twentieth-century] have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government....[S]everal key elements have been common to most of them:
1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole of society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes....(p.5)
What is remarkable is how few arguments are really engaged in, and how many substitutes for arguments there are. This vision so permeates the media and academia, and has made such major inroads into the religious community, that many grow into adulthood unaware that there is any other way of looking at things, or that evidence might be relevant to checking out the sweeping assumptions of so-called "thinking people". Many of these "thinking people" could more accurately be characterized as articulate people, as people whose verbal nimbleness can elude both evidence and logic. This can be a fatal talent, when it supplies the crucial insulation from reality behind many historic catastrophes. (p. 6)”
George W. Bush famously told Colin Powell, his secretary of state, that he thought the Russian leader was religious. “Powell, I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw his soul.” To which Powell replied: “Mr. President, I looked into President Putin’s eyes and I saw the KGB.”
Mrs. BD and I have liked Barbetta for many years. It's on the theater district's Restaurant Row, and it's been in the same townhouse, and owned by the same family, since 1906.
Food is mainly Piedmontese, no red sauces and only one pasta on the menu. I had the rabbit with a white wine sauce as secondi and so did the pupette, while she explained to us the basic architecture of successful playwriting from Aristotle to Beckett (it's always been the same because it works, even for screen writing - we had just seen a fairly OK production of Measure For Measure at The New Vic. She explained that Godot had perfect structure but no content - which was the point. For me, Godot sticks in my head but I don't really want or need it to).
Their pre- or post-theater prix-fixe menu is very reasonable if you pass on their amazing wine list. The upstairs dining is cozy, the downstairs is elegant but simple. The jewels that can be hidden inside simple old brownstones are always surprising to me. They also have a small garden.
Reservations absolutely required and appropriate adult attire is expected but the family which owns it has run a relaxed, highly-attentive, and cheerful, comfortable joint for over 100 years.
Here’s the Kremlin’s summary of the call. In a nutshell: a) The U.S. wanted the call so Putin took it. b) Nothing Obama said to Putin was particularly worth noting. c) Putin explicitly told Obama he reserves the right to move further into Ukraine.
Smart diplomacy at work. Putin is surely quaking in his boots.
Russia is a crappy country full of poor drunks run by KGB thugs. It just happens to produce the most beautiful women in the world - until they turn 35. The Ukraine is another crappy country run by thugs. Should I - or Obama - really care what these people do? I can find no reason to care, but I do feel for all of the people in the world who are living in crappy places with crappy and corrupt governments with delusions of grandeur. It's the norm in the world.
There is no end to learning. When we feel that we have learned everything, it means that we have learned nothing.
Kensho Daniel Furaya
Kensho Daniel Furuya
There
is no end to learning. When we feel that we have learned everything, it
means that we have learned nothing. - See more at:
http://www.medrants.com/archives/5674#sthash.0B4zSIcF.dpuf
17:1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.
17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.
17:3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
17:4 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
17:5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"
17:6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.
17:7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid."
17:8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
17:9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."
Psychiatry has seen its share of damagingly-erroneous fads over the years: multiple personality, satanism, "recovered memories." It's important to learn from such fads and errors, not to hide them in embarrassment.
Every branch of medicine, and of science in general, experiences erroneous fads and false enthusiasms. Only a few years ago, the climate scientists were going nuts about global cooling, and soon, perhaps, they will do so again.
It addresses the mystery in science, medicine, economics, predictions, and history. One quote:
One of the things I have found interesting about Taleb is the way he extends what I had in my own thinking thought of as ‘mystery’ to areas of human life I had not previously considered. My list of the ‘mysterious’ had included life: what is it, where did it come from and why; consciousness, morality and free will. Emotion too is mysterious because it is implicated in a proper existential attitude to the world and yet it is not fully intelligible. Emotion complements reason but by definition is not simply reason itself. Thus its workings and logic has to be intuited and felt rather than fully explicated.
Taleb extends mystery to include historical events, the workings of medicine and the future. We simply cannot predict the future and certainly not from extrapolating from current trends. If we can’t explain the past nor predict the future, then it may seem as though life is just a little too mysterious. But, like Socrates, Taleb’s starting point is that much of wisdom consists in acknowledging what we don’t know. Plato's Socrates thinks that, having discovered our ignorance, we should seek to remedy the situation. Taleb probably has a more modest idea about how far we really do this.
University
of Iowa president apologizes to precious snowflakes for mentioning
reality - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=52818#sthash.tqq6n1mf.dpuf
Hail to thee blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert -
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
The 40-odd days following Ash Wednesday culminating in the prayer-laden and introspective Easter Vigil are the time when all Christians focus most intently on their relationship with the living Christ, and His role in their lives and in their hearts. 
Breast-feeding Benefits Appear to be Overstated, According to Study of Siblings - Advantages of women who choose breast-feeding 
Mrs. BD and I have liked 
I stumbled on these, and they sound good to me:
You Thought You Were Educated