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.
God puzzles me. I can see him creating a lion or a butterfly, but why such a mediocre thing as humans? Perhaps he was lonely, but he could have done better.
More and more decisions, from the music business to the sports field, are being delegated to data. But where does that leave our intuition? With stories about John Hammond. Among others, he discovered Billy Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Bob Dylan.
I can hit the windshield of a fast-moving car with a snowball, but I can't do the math of it.
..., to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.
12:8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me,
12:9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
12:10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Ives' dad was a Civil War-era military bandleader and was practicing in the town park on the 3rd of July ... another military band, playing another patriotic song, marched through the first band ... the sound electrified little Charlie's brain, all his music tries to recapture that mystical strange eerie American song.
"Give Me Jesus - you can have all the the world, but give me Jesus."
Happy Independence Day! If you're like me, you're with your family and being independent together (h/t to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer).
If you're like me, you're probably having hot dogs and hamburgers, potato or macaroni salad, soda or beer, or other kinds of foods which were purchased at a store after being shipped from some other part of the U.S. or even another nation.
If you're like me, you probably don't spend time worrying about the details of how your food reached your table. But you may know people, as I do, who think the whole "eat local' idea will save our health and economy. We have a restaurant here which is excellent, but very expensive, and always booked. We need to make reservations several months in advance to get a table. They only serve locally grown foods (I believe it's a 50 mile radius), and it's BYOB (so I guess they're OK with bringing French wine to go with the Jersey Tomatoes).
Normally I don't go in for faddish trends, and I really don't buy the whole "local food" movement. But this is a good restaurant and just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I'll avoid a good meal. Good food is good food. There are reasons why I don't necessarily think the local food movement is ever going to change how we live, and it certainly is not going to make our lives better.
As this video (45 minutes long - so be prepared) points out, most nations with small farms have economic problems. This doesn't intrinsically mean small farms are impoverishing those nations, but there's no doubt being a food exporter (and the U.S. is by far the largest) is an indication of economic strength through size. This video also points out the hypocrisy of our nation's politics and its 'solutions' to perceived problems. We have deemed some banks "Too Big To Fail" and willingly subsidize their moral hazard, while at the same time pointing to large agricultural firms and saying they are "Too Big To Succeed" and impose excessive regulations on them while subsidizing failing small farms. So the policy of the U.S. that we subsidize failure, and engage double standards wherever we see fit.
The Jungle is often touted as an example of what would happen if we did not support regulation of the food industry. Unfortunately, this novel was a work of fiction designed to draw attention to the plight of the working man. It was the lies of Upton Sinclair about the Chicago Packing District that stick in people's memory, however. By and large, most food businesses provided healthier foods than smaller firms. It was in their best interest to do so. One does not win new consumers by killing or injuring those you have. In fact, most of these businesses wanted regulation as a means to raise barriers to entry against their smaller competitors, and to prevent foreign foods, which had raised trade barriers, from being too competitive.
Do boys still learn to box at the local Boy's Club? Man, I hated to get hit but I liked the hitting. Do Boy's Clubs still exist? Are they even legal? Teddy Roosevelt's stories about boxing as a child are hilarious. He was determined, despite asthma, to toughen up. He did.
... a couple of SEALs came over to ask me if I was the press secretary and if they could get a photograph with me. As their buddy got his camera ready, I decided to make a little small talk.
“What made you want to become a Navy SEAL – family tradition, sense of adventure, chance to see the world, physical challenge?
“Oh no, ma’am, chicks dig it,” he said.
I then asked the second SEAL, “When you are preparing to go…wherever it is that you may be going. Do you have to take a lot of language courses?”
A wonderful book, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, has done a lot to rebalance the early history of America. It is rarely recalled that the Pilgrims were headed to the New Amsterdam area - already a busy and growing Dutch settlement - but got stuck in Plymouth due to weather climate change and made the best of it.
A bad bad war, crazy. I mostly blame Lincoln but, in general, the northern Republicans. Any union ought to be voluntary. Slavery? That was going away anyway in the Western world. Today, we would say "negotiate." Result? 600,000 Americans dead, and a federal government with more power than it was ever intended to possess.
Tragic, all around. Liberia was a good solution and a good recompense, but I am glad for most of the African-American influence in American culture. Better off here than slaves of Moslems in Africa, but better if none of it ever happened.
“It might be more harmful to consume lots of carbohydrates than saturated fats. If you fear cardiovascular diseases, most types of fats are better than carbs,” says the professor. Svihus thinks that in the worst case all the focus on taking fats out of the diet might have raised risks for heart disease. This is because we drop fats and exchange them with a lot of carbohydrates.
Politico: "As I noted last month with a link to an AEI infographic, if Clinton patiently endures her falls from public popularity she’s almost always rewarded with a rise."
It’s easy to dismiss Greece as a dead beat country full of oily grifters. In theory, the Greek people have only themselves to blame for electing crooks and liars. That’s an argument against democracy, but the people never voted for bankruptcy. They were misled by their leaders, who got hooked on the heroin of global finance. They supported joining the Euro because they were told it would avoid these problems.
Get all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum...iPhone pic sent from a BD daughter yesterday from the Muir Woods in Mill Valley. A magnificent country, isn't it?
A Teddy Roosevelt quote: "When I am here in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West."
I have never been quite clear about what "studying" littacher means. (I do know the difference between aggressive reading and passive diversionary reading.) However, there are a few "critics" - I think of them as "illuminators", who are wonderful to read on the topics of books and authors. Books about books, which are literary works in themselves. Harold Bloom is one, another is John Updike, and I can list a few more who I enjoy like Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Walter Benjamin.
I also enjoy learning from experts about how stories (or songs or pictures or poems) are structured, the hidden architecture.
In the end, people do love well-told stories and well-depicted ideas and things, regardless of the medium. When stories, for example, are very well-written and constructed, the delight in the words adds a lot to the tale (eg rosy-fingered dawn). Craft, talent, inspiration, penetrating intelligence, wide knowledge, insight into human nature, magic - the things most of us lack but admire and even envy.
I would take a class with Bloom, but what about "studying littacher" in an ordinary high school or college? This via Schneiderman's Are Literature Departments Doomed? (but not his view):
Literary texts, like other artworks, are neither more nor less important than any other cultural artifact or practice. Keeping the emphasis on how cultural meanings are produced, circulated, and consumed, the investigator will focus on art or literature insofar as such works connect with broader social factors, not because they possess some intrinsic interest or special aesthetic values.
If you think the transgendered are normal and gays want to get married, you’re not going outside. Marriage has a lot of benefits for gays like getting your spouse’s health care and pension, but it also comes with a lot of work. “For better or for worse” means you can have some bad months, even bad years. Fortunately, you make it through those times because you want to be there for your children. Take kids out of the equation and add in people you want to fuck and monogamy is just not possible. Most gays concede this and have come up with new terms like “monogamish.” In other words, they’re redefining marriage. Unlike the pundits on TV such as Jon Stewart, I actually know gays. There are so many homos at my place upstate we call it a GAYted community. I’m also married to a fag hag so they regularly fill up my apartment in the city, too. They don’t want to get married. They want to party. The only ones screaming about equality are a handful of annoying nerds nobody gives a shit about (look at the guy who got Brendan Eich fired). Real homos aren’t tweeting about social justice. They’re in Paris, fornicating. LGBT isn’t an alliance. It’s a hodgepodge of outcasts who have absolutely nothing in common with one another. LG needs to cut BT loose. B is lying and T’s insane.
I'd say it's a handy expression, or query, or response, for the verbal toolbox, but it does not work as a response to many pleasant things (eg, "Mrs. Sippican, would you like some Strawberry Shortcake?" or "Mrs. Sippican, would you, the Mr., and the boys like to take a ride to Nice on my new G6 for a week at my villa in Cap d'Antibe?").
Oh,
look, some Libertarians are having a few second thoughts about the
goals of gay activists post-Obergefell - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57212#sthash.Rwa9T2B8.dpuf
Fit, strong, and sexy yet? At this point, I have offered enough advice. Take it, or do not. Take it, or donut. It's your life, as I say all day long to people regarding all sorts of things. Brief as that of a butterfly, from God's view.
No doubt about it. Government regulations generally end up working in favor of large, established industries and companies, and, in effect, suppress competition. It takes a large legal department to try to make sure of compliance. Upstarts become discouraged, or just blow off the rules and hope nobody notices.
Just see what they are doing to Uber. Customers love Uber.
Ronaldus Magnus:
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
In my experience, small businesses are almost never in full compliance with all relevant (local, state, county, federal) rules and regulations and only are aware of the obvious ones. The only beneficiaries are lawyers. Government rules and regulations are our bread and butter and I am not proud of that.
Liberals/progressives talk incessantly about racism, yet there are spectacularly few examples of the phenomenon, so they pounce on every conceivable black-white interaction–think Ferguson and Baltimore–even if the facts don’t support their immoral, divisive accusations.
Let's sweep away the lies and just say it out loud:
90% of the left's attempts at social control are simply attempt to outlaw behaviors they perceived as favored or engaged in by 'traditional" "conservative" "old-school" "white" etc. people. Thus, a liberal can simultaneously demand that cigarettes be outlawed but marijuana be legalized.
Why? Because (in their conception of social reality) marijuana is a leftist intoxicant favored by the "counter-culture" while nicotine is a right-wing intoxicant favored by the "dominant culture."
"The Man" smokes cigars. "The Rebels" smoke weed.
That's all there is to it.
...It's absolute juvenile revenge fantasy, leftover from the '60s. That's all it is. The younger generation of activist are automatons acting out the revenge fantasies of their professors.
I've been there. Interesting place. Good food. Aggressive salesmen in the souk. A brief clip of the souk in Tunis. Fun place, not mainly meant for tourists.
Americans 
Small beer
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