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.
With trout season on the way, a useful chart. ("Exercised" means you played the fish a bit before netting):
Event, Seconds out of Water, and Survival Rate
Fish caught, exercised but not taken out of water 0 secs. 88% Fish caught, exercised and taken out of the water 30 62% Fish caught, exercised and taken out of the water 60 28% Fish caught, exercised, placed in boat, handled and flops around 60+ 0%
Out my office window yesterday. That is a Cottontail, a lucky one who survived the winter's Red-tails, owls and foxes. Our bunny population peaks in Aug/Sept, and by this time there are just enough left to begin the cycle again.
Some higher ed is work training, some is general education, and some is a mix. It is the "general education" part, aka Liberal Arts, that most people mean by "an educated person." Can you discuss Plato? And Aristotle, sorry to tell you New Age profs, is the foundation of everything. De Poetica? Yeah! Have to read it.
What that has devolved into today is anybody's guess.
There's a belief gaining popularity that when patients seem to be nearing death's door, doctors should back off from aggressive medical care and let them die in peace. Providing "heroic" care has become a negative, and many doctors are stepping back from it. According to a 2011 study,[1] 42% of primary care physicians believed they were overtreating patients.
And yet some patients—even when debilitated by metastatic cancer, brain injury, or old age—still want to keep on fighting. They don't want the doctor to give up on them, and there are many documented cases when that extra boost has saved their lives.
But for how long, and with how much medical misery?
It's a complex dilemma, but the Brits figured it out. Offering opiates for patients with severe pain. it seems to me, is more worthwhile than worrying about the few who become serious addicts.
I first read about Shackleton long ago, and I've been a huge fan of his exploits. He never actually accomplished the goals he set out for, but he was a master of revising goals and probably one of the best examples of great leadership I've ever read. As an Anglophile, I've also been intrigued by the concept of the 'Magnificent Failure' which sometimes seems to be a uniquely British concept.
Certainly Shackleton deserves his name on a polar research ship. But in a magnificent failure, the British botched the naming process for the ship. Well, temporarily botched. I happen to like "Boaty McBoatface" over "Shackleton" it just seems like a ship where stuff gets done.
Oftentimes Wikipedia can provide a handy overview of a topic or an idea which helps me orient myself in my thinking about it. By contrast, ye olde Encyclopedia Britannica was verbose, rambling, and not well-organized for a clear overview. Just my opinion, of course.
The old one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia did that better. I relied on it when I was young.
19:28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
19:29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples,
19:30 saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here.
19:31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'"
19:32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them.
19:33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"
19:34 They said, "The Lord needs it."
19:35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.
19:36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road.
19:37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen,
19:38 saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"
19:39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop."
19:40 He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
I think the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim that human CO2 is causing warming is wrong. They created the result they wanted, which wasn’t designed to deal with warming but to stop economic development and reduce the population. They selected the data and mechanisms necessary to prove their hypothesis and manipulated the data where necessary, including rewriting climate history. The wider evidence, which is only examined when you move outside their limited definition of climate change, is that the world is cooling.
The major rewrite of history involved elimination of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). One of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) gang told David Deming in an email that it was necessary to get rid of the MWP. The reason, although not expressed in the email, was because they were telling people that the latter part of the 20th century was the warmest ever. It wasn’t by any measure, from the warm of the MWP to the prolonged warmer period of the Holocene Optimum. The MWP was the most immediate threat to their narrative because it was within a time period people could grasp. They could relate to the idea that Vikings sailed in Arctic waters that are permanent pack-ice today. There was also the graph (Figure 7c) in the first IPCC Report in 1990 that contradicted their claim – it had to go...
I suspect that Dr. Ball is correct, but really who cares about this topic anymore? Other than bureaucrats, moonbats, and government-funded researchers?
Adulthood means doing things you don't want to do and discovering that they can make you the person you want to be. That's how virtue is born. Perpetual childhood prevents virtue from ever forming. Instead public life is cluttered with oversized children who have the language skills, resources and political power of adults, but none of the virtues that come with maturity.
"the all-powerful central state worshipped by Reich and all the
other Establishment insiders, Democrat and Republican alike, is the true
culmination of fascism."
The developments provoked fury among Eurosceptics. UKIP Migration spokesman Steven Woolfe said: “It’s clear that the EU has got absolutely no moral obligation to accept them.
“To say it is against EU values to send economic migrants back to home is ridiculous. And what are EU values? Ignoring referendum results in France, Netherlands and Ireland?
"Enforcing Euro membership to create poverty and unemployment for millions? Bullying smaller countries to comply with German demands?
“It seems to me that only value that the EU holds is to increase power for itself, and pay for its bureaucrats.
“The UNHCR estimates that there are 60 million displaced people in the world.
"The notion that the EU alone has a duty to take them all in is ridiculous in the extreme.”
Reading together one day for delight Of Lancelot, caught up in love’s sweet snare, We were alone, with no thought of what might Occur to us, although we stopped to stare Sometimes at what we read, and even paled. But then the moment came we turned a page And all our powers of resistance failed: When we read of that great knight in a rage To kiss the smile he so desired, Paolo, This one so quiet now, made my mouth still— Which, loosened by those words, had trembled so— With his mouth. And right then we lost the will— For love can will will’s loss, as well you know— To read on. But let that man take a bow Who wrote the book we called our Galahad, The reason nothing can divide us now.
I think Trump could conceivably win a general election, although current polls indicate a bloodbath. It's been an interesting 6 months, and the next 6 could be equally interesting. I doubt that he would have done so well with a more compact set of primary candidates, though.
I do not think the Trump phenomenon is about anger, ignorance, or toothless white men. Exit polls I saw indicated that he drew votes from all social classes, ethnicities, and from women. They are not Know-Nothings; they are reluctantly-politicized people. So what is it about? I feel it's a spirit of rebellion and defiance. That is quite American. I think many feel that Washington with its condescending, bien pensant elites and vast, intrusive bureaucracies are diminishing life in America. (But they want their benefits too.) I can relate.
I think upper-middle-class seculars -- and even upper-middle-class religious folk -- don't realize just how much of a minority they are in this country.
Well, it's not that simple but I think many enjoy his anti-effete spirit and his plain talk. He is right about some things, wrong about other things. So is everybody.
On a personal level, I think Trump is a jerk and Hillary! is a revolting human. Given the choice, I'd hire Trump to work for me.
Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.
Theodore Roosevelt, October 14, 1912, after being shot by an attempted assassin. He spoke for 90 minutes.(h/t Ace)
Earnest young Christian writers (males more than females, perhaps) wring their hands over discovering materialism* and pride - even in themselves. In this they demonstrate that they totally get it, and understand, and aren't really judging at all, clearing the battle space for denunciation. Double bonus points - you get to demonstrate after how many mattresses you can still detect this pea. Prejudice is another big-ticket item. We all have prejudices that we don't want to admit. Even I have a cute anecdote that I shake my head ruefully at in feigned humility before condemning all you racist bastards. Being part of the system and all that.
I have been reluctant to spend so much space discussing The Bell Curve’s treatment of race and intelligence because it was such an ancillary topic in the book. Focusing on it in this letter has probably made it sound as if it was as important as President Sands’s open letter implied.
But I had to do it. For two decades, I have had to put up with misrepresentations of The Bell Curve. It is annoying. After so long, when so many of the book’s main arguments have been so dramatically vindicated by events, and when our presentations of the meaning and role of IQ have been so steadily reinforced by subsequent research in the social sciences, not to mention developments in neuroscience and genetics, President Sands’s casual accusation that our work has been “largely discredited” was especially exasperating. The president of a distinguished university should take more care.
Krauthammer: "The immediate conventional wisdom was to blame the disturbance on the
“toxic environment” created by Trump. Nonsense. This was an act of
deliberate sabotage created by a totalitarian left..."
Why I Don't Buy Organic, 
Re exercise, via 
It's time to plant bare-root fruit trees. A free ad for
Luke 19:28-40
Col. Sanders 