Wednesday, December 31. 2014
 I was just informed by my social secretary that "we" had accepted a black tie cocktail party, and then later a late-night black tie dinner event with music and dancing, for tonight. I had been happy to imagine that we had no plans.
Glad I had my dress-up uniform cleaned. The rules which apply to me generally seem to be "Suit up and show up" - and shut up.
I hate New Year's Eve and I will never watch that idiotic Times Square thing, but I am a curmudgeon. Of course, I was there for that once in youth, and once was enough.
I will not have a drop of ETOH, and I do not like champagne, but I greatly enjoy the stimulating and amusing people we'll be seeing. I will ask our readers to be careful out there today. We need all of the live readers we can get, so drive defensively because there are lots of amateur drinkers out there.
Tomorrow, I am told, leg of lamb for family. I got Prosecca and a very nice Mt. Etna Rosso. Life goes on, God willing.
Best curmudgeonly wishes to all for a happy, healthy, grateful, and prosperous 2015.
As I rode into work one recent morning, I was contemplating a number of things. What I had to do for the day, what I needed to do at home, what bills were coming due, and how well my football team would perform this weekend. Random thoughts, nothing in particular mind-boggling or earth-shattering.
Then I realized I was riding on the train to work for about the 7,000th time in my life, and I was likely to do it over and over again for another 6,000 or so rides. It was at that point I asked, "Hey God, where's my miracle?"
Almost as soon as that popped into my head, I realized how stupid I was. I contemplated this a bit further, though. Plenty of people pray to God for the things they want. Love, money, enjoyment, even critical things like surviving a difficult situation or just simply living through a debilitating disease. We all hope for God, or whatever being or entity we believe in, to provide us a miracle at some point.
I say "we all" because the old phrase "There are no atheists in foxholes" rings true to me. At some point, in everyone's life, we've asked a higher power for something.
So here I was, just lazily asking God for a miracle to help me not have to ride this train into the city anymore. Hardly worth asking for. But I asked it because I was being mentally lazy.
Atheists sometimes use the 'fact' that God doesn't 'answer' prayers as a proof that there is no God. I've never found that particularly compelling, for one reason.
God is not a cosmic waiter at your beck and call, waiting to be motioned over to bless your latest business deal. ~Michael Slaughter
Continue reading "A Thought about God While on the Train"
It's neither Protestant nor Catholic -it's from the excellent Anglican and Episcopalian Great Litany which is well-worth perusing once in a while:
That it may please thee to give us true repentance; to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances; and to endue us with the grace of thy Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to thy holy Word, we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord
Tuesday, December 30. 2014
From Wikipedia, where I was doing some background research on various football teams:
In 1930, there were still many who questioned the quality of the professional game, claiming the college "amateurs" played with more intensity than professionals. In December 1930, the Giants played a team of Notre Dame All Stars at the Polo Grounds to raise money for the unemployed of New York City. It was also an opportunity to establish the skill and prestige of the pro game. Knute Rockne reassembled his Four Horsemen along with the stars of his 1924 Championship squad and told them to score early, then defend. Rockne, like much of the public, thought little of pro football and expected an easy win. But from the beginning it was a one-way contest, with Friedman running for two Giant touchdowns and Hap Moran passing for another. Notre Dame failed to score. When it was all over, Coach Rockne told his team, "That was the greatest football machine I ever saw. I am glad none of you got hurt." The game raised $100,000 for the homeless, and is often credited with establishing the legitimacy of the professional game for those who were critical.
The two things I find intriguing are: 1. There was a time that pro football was considered lower quality and intensity than college. 2. They raised $100,000 for the homeless during the Depression - essentially $1.4mm in today's dollars.
Not an insubstantial sum, it represented .6% of per capita government welfare spending in the New York area. Total government (federal, state, and local) spending in 1930 was $11.9bb and only $300mm was on welfare. By 1934, those totals were $12.8bb and $1.0bb. By 1940, the same figures were $20.4bb and $2.1bb.
For all the problems the NFL faces, there is still plenty to feel good about, though I don't think it would be easy to match that $1.4mm figure today, unless all the ticket receipts were just turned over.
How Ebola Roared Back. For a fleeting moment last spring, the epidemic sweeping West Africa might have been stopped. But the opportunity to control the virus, which has now caused more than 7,800 deaths, was lost.
Regulation gone wild – Christmas lights are the next target of nanny state thinking
Cracking the Sitcom Code - After signing up to write a script for Croatian television, I learned that virtually all TV comedies, from Seinfeld to South Park, follow a simple formula.
Let Them Eat Quiche: How the Local Food Movement Swerved Right
Prostitution Was Made Illegal — Is Porn Next?
Should adultery be illegal?
California Moonbats Demand Schools Teach “Sexual Consent” To Kindergarteners…
In LA, CBS Station Pretends There Was a Real Kwanzaa Parade
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LA, CBS Station Pretends There Was a Real Kwanzaa Parade - See more
at:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/12/27/la-cbs-station-pretends-there-was-real-kwanzaa-parade-yesterday#sthash.jakpMTUY.dpuf
Cop Killings in New York: Who's Responsible?
Michigan Has More Food Stamp Recipients Than Students
Pope Francis to Lead Fight Against Global Warming Junk Science
Will Elizabeth Warren sell ‘outside the bubble’?
When Republican Nixon Listened to Liberal Moynihan
Drug prohibition and mass incarceration
Sweden to Opt for Suicide by Immigration?
Woe to anyone in Sweden who dissents from the orthodox view that welcoming large numbers of indigent peoples from such countries as Iraq, Syria, and Somalia is anything but a fine and noble idea. Even to argue that permitting about 1 percent of the existing population to emigrate annually from an alien civilization renders one politically, socially, and even legally beyond the pale. (I know a journalist threatened with arrest for mild dissent on this issue.) Stating that there exists a Swedish culture worth preserving meets with puzzlement.
116 foreign fighters who had joined Islamic State but later wanted to return home, were executed in the Syrian provinces of Deir Al-Zor, Raqqa and Hassakeh since November.
Monday, December 29. 2014
I've started, revised, and rewritten this post several times. I began it just about the time of the Ferguson riots. Then something happened and I had to add to it, while altering other parts. Something else occurred, and so on. Certain issues continue a narrative over time, and that is the nature of news.
The post I was writing was specific to the riots in Ferguson. Then Eric Garner's Grand Jury results came in and it morphed. Then my ultra-liberal sister posted an article about how white people simply can't understand the black narrative and we need to be sensitive to why they feel the way they do about cops. This was followed by a discussion over a post by my friend which supported the #crimingwhilewhite tweeters. Then I picked up my son from college and heard about how 'white privilege' is now a hot topic among his classmates. Finally, two cops were shot and buried in the last week. I spent time trying to decide whether this was a post about race, cops, or something else altogether. In the end, I realized it's probably a number of things, because there wasn't just one narrative here. Brown and Garner were not about race, no matter how much people wanted them to be. Nor were they only about how bad cops are, or can be. Nor was any of this about how poorly the media handles these topics, or how those who consider themselves the intellectual elite manage the discussion. It's really about all of these items, but none of them, either. Ultimately, in the end, it's about each of us and how we individually think about unconnected events which we try to connect through some kind of hive mentality. It's about whether we really care about these events, and how we care about them.
At first, I planned to discuss how far we'd come in race relations. We have come very far. It's impossible to look at how we deal with race today and say we are in the same place we were in any year from 1880-2000. My friend said that improvement is relative, that we have further to go. Perhaps we do. But I'm not benchmarking myself against an unclear ideal which no group of people fully agree on. What will represent the final 'best' format of race in our nation? Nobody knows. All we can do is be aware of ourselves, individually, and try to be better about how we treat people when it comes to race, gender, nationality and religion. I include all of these together because as a society we have issues in every single one of these categories. We need to stop letting one word, used out of place or out of context, produce rage. We need to ignore things like "trigger words", which are nothing more than words which certain people have designated for censorship because they lack the courage to accept that language is malleable and can sometimes offend even slightly. As a nation, we need a real dialogue. Not about race, in particular. We need a dialogue about values and what is truly important. Race may be part of that value structure, but it's only a small part. Individual responsibility is really the larger value structure we need to focus on. Responsibility for our own health, our own minds, our own speech and our own education. We can't let small parts of the 'society' value chain derail us from the goal of crafting a nation which is unified entirely by how different each person is.
Continue reading "I Do Care about race relations"
Getting away from all news and internet for 5 or 6 days is always interesting. To make it even more liberating, I leave my cell phone at home.
Sometimes I feel strongly that politics is important, and at other times I believe that they are all big government scoundrels and that America would be best off with a philosopher-king with perfect integrity, as long as it were me. I'd hate the job.
This is interesting: 2014: The Year the Democratic Party Death Watch Resumed
Sunday, December 28. 2014
Not many interesting birds around thus far this winter, but a Red Tail Hawk has been screaming at me all day from the top of a Sugar Maple. I've been hauling firewood, which seems to annoy. My regular Great Horned Owls are of course hooting each morning at 4:30.
Which reminds me that on Christmas afternoon a Bald Eagle flew right over my roof. Not an everyday occurrence here. I mentioned it to Mrs. BD and she said "Oh yeah, they have been nesting down on --- Road this summer. Watched them raising their chicks every morning on my morning exercise walk with friends."
Sheesh. Could have mentioned that to me. I, the Bird Dog, would have been interested.
Wonderful to see those big fish eagles coming back. I didn't think it could happen, but then I never expected the Ospreys to come back so strongly either. Or, God knows, the Wild Turkeys. The resilience of nature is a wonder.
 I was glad to inherit my Mom's huge and complete set of Cuthbertson Christmas china - including the coffee cups. She kept expanding it, so the designs vary a little as the company made minor changes over the years.
My sibs still get to use and see them here at the Maggie's HQ, every Christmastime. It is sentimental for all of us.
Like most nice stuff, they are not ok for the dishwasher despite what they may say.
Frederick Cuthbertson of Greenwich, CT, designed these classic and charming things in 1922 for his shop in NYC. Still made in England, though. You can buy them today and leave them to your kids. They don't get heavy use.
We loved this family-friendly hotel in the Dolomites - southern Alps - now part of Italy but Austrian in culture and food. People speak German and at least some Italian, and also Ladin. Mostly Ladin at home, because nobody else in the world speaks it.
This hotel is in the Val Gardena. You get a rental car in Malpensa airport, and drive north almost to the Brenner Pass.
Hiking the Dolomites is on lots of folks' bucket lists. It can range from easy and relaxed to very challenging hiking. You do not have to climb those peaks, although we have a neighbor who climbed each one of them. A good thing is that there are refugios with coffee, beer, snacks, and frische buttermilch every few miles. There are trail maps to sort-of help you from getting too lost, but getting a little lost is part of the fun.
Bathing (and the lack thereof) in colonial New England
WSJ (paywall): Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God
Luke 2:22-40
2:22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord
2:23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"),
2:24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."
2:25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.
2:26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
2:27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law,
2:28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
2:29 "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;
2:30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
2:31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
2:32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."
2:33 And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.
2:34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed
2:35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too."
2:36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,
2:37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.
2:38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
2:39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.
2:40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
Saturday, December 27. 2014
 The often-lame David Brooks has an interesting piece in the NYT: The Subtle Sensations of Faith. A quote:
The best modern book on belief is “My Bright Abyss” by my Yale colleague, Christian Wiman. In it, he writes, “When I hear people say they have no religious impulse whatsoever ... I always want to respond: Really? You have never felt overwhelmed by, and in some way inadequate to, an experience in your life, have never felt something in yourself staking a claim beyond yourself, some wordless mystery straining through word to reach you? Never?”
Most believers seem to have had these magical moments of wonder and clearest consciousness, which suggested a dimension of existence beyond the everyday. Maybe it happened during childbirth, with music, in nature, in love or pain, or during a moment of overwhelming gratitude and exaltation.
These glimmering experiences are not in themselves faith, but they are the seed of faith.
Rod Dreher has more, in The Hard, Healing Experience of Faith:
This (Brooks') column resonated with me after this intense experience of writing my Dante book. As I wrote it, I was surprised to discover that the particularly religious aspect of my pilgrimage out of sickness and depression — that is, the role that prayer, confession, and liturgy played in the process — was more important than I had thought (and I knew it was pretty important). And it wasn’t just any religion: it was Orthodox Christianity, with its intense focus on the necessity to do hard inner spiritual work on repentance. And it wasn’t just any Orthodox parish: it was ours, pastored by Father Matthew, a tough-love priest who is compassionate, but who doesn’t let that compassion get in the way of compelling his parishioners to own up to and face down their sins.
He does this, I think, because he was once a police officer, and every day went out on the front lines of sin — that is, where sin leads. After seven years, he burned out. Couldn’t handle it — the violence, the injustice, the constant anger he had inside. He told me that he would stand at the liturgy and cry his eyes out during that time — and if you know Father Matthew, you know he’s a tough guy; the thought of him crying his eyes out is shocking. But that’s how broken he was...
 Good photos in National Geographic
Antique American recipes, restored
John Cleese: 'I'll never grow up' - The Fawlty Towers actor on grasping ex-wives, self-centered mothers and
why he's happy with his Peter Pan complex
Lobsters thrive on lobster bait
“Scrooge Was A Liberal, Studies Show”
Once Upon A Time, Free Speech And Association Were Sacred To Liberals
Meanwhile, back in grad school
Have We Become a Nation of ‘Wussies’?
Do Diversity Initiatives Indirectly Discriminate Against Asian Americans?
The Big Lie of the Anti-Cop Left Turns Lethal - The real story behind the murder of two NYPD officers:
The New York Times ratcheted up its already stratospheric level of anti-cop polemics. In an editorial justifying the Ferguson riots, the Times claimed that “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast.”
Cuba Derangement Syndrome strikes again
With Two Years Left, the Inflection Point of the Obama Presidency
The World Is Not Falling Apart - Never mind the headlines. We’ve never lived in such peaceful times.
Ben-Dror Yemini - "The Industry of Lies", an interview
Image below via Sultan's Every Christmas Now Comes With Muslim Terrorism
Friday, December 26. 2014
In the UK, docs must now report weight-gainers to the government.
Is that the first step towards making being fat a crime? That's a country in which it is now a crime to put your garbage in the wrong bin. That is not from a Monty Python skit.
We always figure that if you get fat and die young, you save money for the government. So why not encourage obesity? America does, by asking people to eat carbs as a diet despite sedentary lives.
 Anybody can be in error once in a while. Our friend Schneiderman has seemed to miss the point here because these people are not fragile. They are venomous: Trigger Warnings and Trauma
It's all pure manipulation. There is no real neurotic hypersensitivity there. Play-acting, like drawing a foul. In today's politicized world, people use contrived pain as a tool of aggression and control, just as borderlines do.
 Wood stove chimney design
Passenger tossed after flipping out over staff’s ‘Merry Christmas’
A little touchy? Well, holiday season can do that to people.
Anti-Feminists Baffle Feminists - Woman Against Feminism vs. feminists: Who's actually confused?
Who owns Chicken Tikka Masala?
I feel triggered by the odor of cultural appropriation
My atheist Christmas: How I overcame my personal struggle with the holiday - The holiday and its religious trappings used to offend me deeply. Here's how I overcame my feelings of oppression
Good grief. He thinks Christmas is all about him
A cool museum: inside Manhattan's Tenement Museum shed light on Lower East Side's notorious turn-of-the-century slum
What is a "slum"? It's a starting place where people would rather live in than the hopeless crappy place they came from
Thank SCOTUS for Credential Inflation
If Single Payer Can't Work in Vermont...
Tribal Raid In Peru May Be Related To Hotcoldwetdry
Teenager Shot In Missouri: So What?
"Stories of choice"
Imagine No Religion - The French press refuses to see a clear case of Islamic terrorism.
Al-Qaida Calls for Lone Wolf Attacks Against US Airliners
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