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.
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.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Edward Pincus let Chen off with probation—for murder—after an anthropologist testified that, in Chinese culture, the shame of a man being cuckolded justified murder…. The female head of the Asian-American Defense and Education Fund, Margaret Fung, applauded Chen’s light sentence, saying that a harsher penalty would “promote the idea that when people come to America they have to give up their own way of doing things. This is an idea we cannot support.”
Poached salmon with yoghurt dill sauce is one of our standards for bringing as our contribution to outdoor summer dinner parties. Asparagus is good on the side. Everybody loves it.
We also use this as our large group Christmas Eve after-church suppers for whoever is lucky enough to be invited to our place for supper around the fireplaces, with the tree (Christmas Eve requires seafood, and you can do this in the afternoon so it's ready when you get home.) One or two of those huge Costco filets, depending on numbers, is good to poach. Easy to do.
Recipe here. We poach the large filets intact and present them on a large tray. It's more appealing that way.
In Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton speak of “an implicit agreement between the university and students to demand little of each other.”
It's a conspiracy. For example, how many As did your kid get? Yeah, they all do.
Saturday was New Haven, Sunday was NYC. Ah, Les Tres Riches Heures du Bird Dog. We went with dear friends to see DanceBrazil at the Joyce, then for early supper to the enjoyable and authentic Sicilian specialty restaurant Bar Eolo on 7th Ave. (Ask me for menu tips.)
We hadn't realized it was the day of the Gay Pride march on the West Side. By the time we sat down for supper outside, swarms - thousands - of gays were moving back uptown from their destination which I think had been the West Village. "Hi, Happy Pride!" Anyway, it made for some entertaining and curious people-watching. I told Mrs. BD that my Mom would have loved that scene which seems exotic to me. My question was why and how do so many gays (male or female) look gay. No Gaydar required, believe me. It's, like, obvious.
I suspect my buddy expected me as a wacko Christian conservative (ie Evil Right Wing Nazi) to be hostile or uncomfortable. Naw. Christians get a kick (mostly) out of all of God's creation. It was just strange, and a colorful spectacle. I can say that we four felt like aliens from a straight bourgeois planet - which was fine. Overall, fun. Do male gays add more to life than those grim-looking lesbians with their fat girlfriends? I tend to think so. However, I saw a handful of those lesbian marchers whose feminine charms, IMO, were going to waste and I said so.
DanceBrazil was something else. Mrs. BD gave me some words: Muscular, acrobatic, quick, primitive, full-body dancing. She said they were all ballet-trained, but probably lifted weights too. These men and women are seriously strong. Exhausting to watch because of the intense physicality. Very good, high-energy high-intensity stuff. Here's a clip from them a couple of years ago.
Also, a few random pics below the fold - but none of the gay parade people really.
We live in a world where Bobby Jindal is a fake Indian, but it’s racist to say an older white woman isn’t a real one (the correct term being “Native American,” of course). Nikki Haley is a villain for “suppressing” her Indian roots, but Sen. Ted Cruz is a fraud for touting his Cuban roots. (Cruz was recently grilled by Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin about how authentically Cuban he really is. At least Halperin later apologized).
Small beer
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Poached salmon with yoghurt dill sauce is one of our standards for bringing as our contribution to outdoor summer dinner parties. Asparagus is good on the side. Everybody loves it.
Unpaid Internships Are Worth it: 
How To Grow Kohlrabi
My college sex education: In her first year, a student finds a campus obsessed with hooking up —