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.
If it is any consolation to you prosperous readers (which you all are by Jesus' standards), the accurate translation is to thread a camel hair through a needle. But whatever.
Mark 10:17-31
10:17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
10:18 Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
10:19 You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'"
10:20 He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."
10:21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
10:22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
10:23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"
10:24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
10:26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?"
10:27 Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."
10:28 Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you."
10:29 Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,
10:30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life.
10:31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."
In America, a pasta dish is often used as a secondi (ie an entree - the use of the term entree for a main course is American). Properly done, the pasta is a small dish primi followed by a meat (eg braciole) and vegetable secondi. Well, in America we do whatever the heck we want but at Maggie's HQ we try to respect the time-honored Italian traditions.
For me, any pasta as a main meal is a disgusting, bloating, cloying, enervating, fattening, brain-numbing experience. Best for a small dish primi, for special flavors. Same applies to risotto, gnocchi, or polenta. American restaurants serve too much primi to fill you up on the cheap.
Most common American error is to dump the sauce (or "gravy") on top of the pile of pasta. Nope. Dump the pasta in the hot pan of sauce and serve thinly-coated. That's what pasta tongs are for.
Those were the days before these Americans identified as victims. They didn't want to be victims, and pushed their way into the middle class. That was before the 1960s mess.
Funny - had dinner with friends last night at a fancy Portuguese restaurant, and had Portuguese cod cakes for appetizer. They served them with a parsley pesto.
The End of Retirement As We Know It? - As Chairman of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, Paul Irving wonders if retirement actually makes sense today.
Retirement is a modern concept, dating back only to the 1930s in the US. I have an IRA for tax purposes, but we have no retirement plans of any sort. We enjoy like life as it is, she enjoys my being out of the house all day, and if I quit working some things would need to change. Making income and being out in the world is a good thing at any age. I see plenty of guys working in their mid-70s, sometimes doing much less prestigious jobs than they once had. Clearly good for their mind, body, and soul.
Example: sales guy at our local Jos. A. Bank used to sell bonds. He's 72. Wife died, decided he had to get out of the house and off the golf course and away from the bar there. Top salesman, loves seeing people all day. Bought 3 suits from him for my lad.
Also, people who have paid lots of tuitions probably still need some income to maintain their lives as they like them.
My father in law wants to give me his .38 Colt Detective Special. I'd be happy to have it. He carried it for many years, and it slept in his bedside table at night. Just one of many reasons to respect his daughter.
It's a safe firearm to carry fully loaded.
I have plenty of long guns and I have a CC permit, but figuring out how to legally accept and register a handgun gift from a family member from one state to a blue New England state was not easy to figure out until I reached the right person.
All he has to do is to bring the gun to his local dealer. That dealer will mail it to my local gun shop, where it gets re-registered to me. Simple enough. Main thing to remember, once you have possession, is not to transport the handgun out of state unless there is reciprocity.
I have a place quite near by where people can play with handguns. Not being a handgun afficionado, a simple revolver instead of a 9 mm is all I want or need. For home defense, I still think the Taurus that fires shotgun shells might be best. However, I can hit close targets with handguns.
When we were kids, we had a loaded .22 revolver in the kitchen drawer and a loaded 12 ga. leaning against the kitchen entry. Not paranoid at all - just country ways. Shooting beer bottles off of stumps was the main handgun violence. Difficult to hit them - easier with a snowball.
I taught all of my kids - and Mrs. BD - firearm handling and firearm safety. Learned it from my sportsman gramps and my ex-Army Dad. Hope to pass it on to grandkids, God willing.
When sellers manipulate you, that's bad: It's phishing for phools. When the government nudges you, that's good: It's behavioral economics for the benefit of the public.
Then lenders will scrutinize their loans more closely, then government will give them lending mandates. Same thing happened with mortgages. The government's playbook is to screw something up, then to appear to fix what they did with even more rules and constraints. A downward spiral.
"From the 11, 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain."
CBS
News Slams Rathergate Film: 'It's Astounding How Little Truth There Is
In TRUTH' - See more at:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2015/10/08/cbs-news-slams-rathergate-film-its-astounding-how-little-truth-there#sthash.T12QA45F.sqhxOuHy.dpuf
CBS
News Slams Rathergate Film: 'It's Astounding How Little Truth There Is
In TRUTH' - See more at:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2015/10/08/cbs-news-slams-rathergate-film-its-astounding-how-little-truth-there#sthash.T12QA45F.sqhxOuHy.dpuf
Whatever you do, don’t miss this exhibition; this is exactly the kind of show MoMA is made for. Museum co-curators Ann Temkin and Anne Umland (with Virginie Perdrisot) make MoMA’s fourth-floor galleries look more beautiful and useful than they have ever looked. Linger in these spaces; the chance won’t come again for a long time. “Picasso Sculpture” could be one of the great learning experiences of your seeing life.
See it if you possibly can. It is a feast. Whatever visual adventures Picasso pursued, he did them with authority, some humor, dead seriousness, and perfect taste.
In the borderlands of physiologic abnormalities, changes happen all the time. For example, yesterday's perversion is today's celebrated "difference," while yesterday's lazy kid now has an internet addiction disorder.
Common sense people take it all with some humor and many grains of salt.
By borderlands, I mean the areas in which there are only subjective, untestable, vague complaints. Of course, that applies to many disorders in the Psychiatric domain.
One of my favorite bugaboos is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. I am told that one can obtain lifetime disability for this impossible disease which is, in fact, either fictitious in some cases and "hysteria" in others.
Another is "Chronic Lyme Disease," and another is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It used to be called Neurasthenia. Freud thought, at first, that it was caused by the chemistry of sexual deprivation. Every patient I have seen referred to me with this trashcan diagnosis has had a mood disorder and/or a personality disorder. No, one of them had an undiagnosed schizophrenia.
It's not just that humans are tribal, although they are. I am almost always curious about people with other backgrounds and stories, but I am most "at home," most relaxed, with people whose backgrounds and stories are similar to mine. You can help me explain all of the reasons for that, but part of it is social predictability. For example, it is difficult to build trust when you do not know or understand another person's definition.
A good degree of cultural homogeneity is good for a society because there is a shared context, shared values, shared referents, and shared meanings. This goes far beyond language itself, so assimilation into a culture takes several generations, with real effort, if it is to happen at all.
I suspect that the only places into which I could assimilate would be Canada, England, Oz, and Germany. In other places, I visit more as an amateur anthropologist, an outsider, and I know I will never really get it. Mind you, I live in NYC which is a United Nations of immigrants, a tower of babel. It's fun, but there is a right amount of it.
I think I am in the mainstream to hold the simple view that a society/culture can handle a modest or moderate degree of immigration, but not an invasion. Borders and armies exist primarily to prevent invasions. Today in a few parts of the world we see unarmed invasions, and many governments do not seem to know what to do. Suppose that Charles Martel had met 200,000 unarmed Muslims thronging towards Poitiers on their way to Paris?
The greater the cultural disconnect, and the fewer the cultural connections and traditions, the more likely one will feel like a stranger in a strange land and the more likely that the immigrant will be viewed as one. Whatever the multicults claim, there is a shared American culture from California to New Jersey, from Michigan to Alabama. Lots of subcultures, but an overarching set of shared ideas and assumptions.
Europe and the US seem to have had enough. I think it's a combination of the volume and of the feeling of being exploited. My basic question to legal immigrants would be "What will you do for America?" (I question myself every day about what I do for friends, family, community, God, and country. Scouting brainwashed me that way. Whenever I ask what is done for me, I squash the thought). For illegals, I tend to be with Trump. I guess that makes me a meany.
Sure, it can be subjected to a vote, but the vote will only show the current majority view of the current state of the data and interpretation. Rarely Truth. Today's Truthwill be tomorrow's object of mockery.
De
Blasio threatens New York City’s museums and cultural institutions over
“diversity” - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57745#sthash.mFG0XDxz.dpuf
“Our experience is that diminishing opportunities for unsupervised play in our society have left kids with a very thin understanding of how to manage their own play and that it is important to have grown-ups introduce some basic rules to make play work,” the Playworks website states.
It is emphatically not the case that the South, or the United States in general, engages in less manufacturing today than it did in the so-called golden age of the postwar era (during which years a lot of poor people in the South, members of my family included, supplemented the wages they were earning during the manufacturing boom by . . . picking cotton, by hand, and being paid by the pound). We manufacture much more today than we did in the 1950s, and we grow a lot more cotton, too — and both enterprises require fewer workers today than they did back then. When one worker can produce what ten workers used to produce, or a hundred, wages go up, which is why you can make $100,000 a year harvesting cotton today, massive capital investments and innovation having turned what was once the work of slaves into a fairly lucrative skilled occupation.
The ME is one of those little disputatious, duplicitous corners of the world which attract the interest of diplomats and strategists far out of proportion to their intrinsic importance or value. Small pawns in the big game of international politics.
Obama or not, the world is not America's sandbox. Most of the world does not think like Westerners, much less think like Americans, and they never will see life through our eyes.
Furthermore, while the American people like the idea of being the world superpower, they have not been particularly enthused about geopolitical adventures and military maneuverings in minor places since WW2 - none of which have ended very successfully anyway (eg Korea, Cuba, Southeast Asia, the Muslim world, Nicaragua, Ukraine, etc.). Reagan's pressure for the dismantling of the Soviet empire was a success without a single military death, but the result is less than beautiful except for a few ex-eastern bloc nations.
The argument is always that X is critical to America's interests. Really? Syria? Ukraine?
Syria has been a Russian client/ally for a long time. Some good points here: The Mind of Mr. Putin
If you wish to debate, first tell me a few places in the world which can not be construed as"critical to US interests." (I'll use "critical" meaning worth going to war about.)
...There is a wonderful quote from Epictetus that I think of every time I see someone get terribly upset about one of these things (I try to think about it when I get upset about anything): "If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation." He said that some 1,900 years ago. Even then we felt that it was easier to police the outside than examine our inside.
Global
Warming Hoaxer Jagadish Shukla Involved in “Largest Science Scandal in
US History” - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=63767#sthash.twBfVuky.dpuf
Mark 10:17-31
In America, a pasta dish is often used as a secondi (ie an entree - the use of
Robocoach, 
My father in law wants to give me his
Grateful immigrant: 
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