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.
A famous Cape-Codder, Lorenzo Dow Baker (scroll down a little for the story):
As the 8th & youngest child of a fisherman and his wife, Lorenzo grew up on a homestead on Bound Brook Island on the bay side of northern Wellfleet. When he was 6, his mother died and his dad married a widow with several children of her own. Needless to say, his was not an easy life. He was apprenticed to a fishing captain at age 10, became a cook on a fishing schooner at age 15 and was considered an outstanding fisherman at the age of 18. By age 20, he was captain of a fishing schooner and eventually owned his own fishing schooner, "Vineyard". He married his childhood sweetheart, Martha, when he was 21 and she was 17. They had 4 children, Lorenzo Jr., Joshua, Martha and Reuben. He was a devout Methodist and a devoted husband and family man. For nine years, he made his living as a sea captain and fisherman...
Do we "make our own luck"? Pasteur famously said "Chance favors the prepared observer." From How Luck Works at aeon:
To investigate luck is to take on one of the grandest of all questions: how can we explain what happens to us, and whether we will be winners, losers or somewhere in the middle at love, work, sports, gambling and life overall? As it turns out, new findings suggest that luck is not a phenomenon that appears exclusively in hindsight, like a hail storm on your wedding day. Nor is it an expression of our desire to see patterns where none exist, like a conviction that your yellow sweater is lucky. The concept of luck is not a myth.
Money is difficult to acquire and easy to get rid of. All I really need to know is how good this Pagani is on snow and ice, and where to fit in the kids, dogs, skis, and luggage.
I located a truck from a Pagani dealership in the Gold Coast of Connecticut this weekend (middle insignia on the lower row):
"I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I do hope not, I really do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions." He smiled. "It's the only way to make progress."
From Terry Pratchett'sThe Truth, As Ace says, "The entire city of Ankh-Morpork is in mourning. R. I. P." Lots of sad Pratchett fans out there.
I like Leon Botstein as a person (I have heard him discuss music on the radio many times), but I have never agreed with his political instincts. He has an essay about education which I find appalling: Are We Still Making Citizens?
Who is "we," pardner? While attacking straw men, bringing race into a non-racial discussion, and demonizing "individualism", he seems to be arguing for a top-down, one-size-fits-all, centrally-organized system of primary and secondary education in the USA. He suggests that it be oriented ideologically, and claims it would be "for the common good." He is a Bismarckian with that Prussian control attitude towards the masses.
Thus it's a little dissonant to read his views, coming as they are from the president of hippy-dippy, free-spirit, granola-ridden and hugely expensive, and private, Bard College. But maybe it's not odd.
The project of public education is fundamental to the notion of public goods in America. The restoration of public education seems a precondition for making the public sphere operate properly. Education must be about something more than personal happiness and benefit, economically defined; it has to map out the idea that there is more to the public good than the belief that through some free-market-style calculus of aggregate self-interests, the greatest good for the greatest number will emerge. In other words, public education is about educating the future citizen to consider a common ground in politics that can and will secure a more rewarding notion of personal security and tranquility for all.
I'd bet home schooling drives him nuts. As usual with Liberals, "I know how to deliver your pursuit of happiness and I would like to shove it up your butt." I hate hearing the elites and the experts pontificate about what "we" should do. I'd rather hear myself pontificate about freedom and free choices in life. Even the freedom to apply to the somewhat offbeat Bard College if you want to.
I want to remind readers that the "morning link" post is a group effort by Maggie's Farmers, readers, friends, and others who suggest links. As is clear from our posts, we do not try to do the news but sometimes we just have to. Generally speaking, we post things of interest to us and things and viewpoints likely to be overlooked by the dogmatic part of the MSM. That's the idea, anyway.
Please feel free to submit ideas, but don't feel hurt if we don't use them. There is only so much time and space.
Hopeful news. Visiting Egypt is on my bucket list - not just to see the monuments, but to see the country. They had a golden age long ago, but the peasants there never had one and still do not.
Still affordable housing in Manhattan in Spanish Harlem (and Central Harlem). On my last drive through Harlem I was interested to see more Asians than blacks. Asians pushing strollers. Neighborhoods change. The Spanish West Side is the now-gentrifying Washington Heights, I guess.
I am not sure whether there is any dishonor or crime the Clintons could commit which would dampen their popularity. It's a puzzle to me. The Bonny and Clyde of American politics, I guess.
I read somewhere today that she had been fired from the legal team of the Watergate Commission and called a liar by her boss. But of course everything is just political smears or it's "old news."
Of course, none of this necessarily discredits her policy ideas, but I do not know what they are either.
Just about everything we thought we knew about the evils of cholesterol and fats has turned out to be wrong. The doctors, the nutritionists, the dietitians, the heart societies, the experts at Health Canada, the food pyramid that hung on the wall in school – the entire health and medical establishment, in fact, have been perpetuating a big fat fraud.
Did
economic incentives destroy lower-income families? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/did-economic-incentives-destroy-lower-income-families.html#sthash.p1Uw1TKv.dpuf
The discussions in the comments are quite good. Conservatives often idealize the independent, self-sufficient family, but there is a debate, and not all families can measure up to that. We're not in pioneer days. Government charity and freebies can be life-saving, but they can also be "enablers" for dysfunction and immature attitudes towards life.
Or maybe it's already almost too late to plan for 2015. We have our plans mostly set - including a bit more of totally-cool north Africa and the Canary Islands. (Why? Ask Mrs. BD. She plans, I just show up with a passport, an absurd hat, absurd clothes, a credit card, and a cheap camera. I typically pack in 15 minutes, so it is ridiculous. Just remember - always throw in a tux for a formal ship.) I do love ships and I will always jump on one to go anywhere. This one has sails.
Readers know that the whole BD clan has been world-traveling for years, way before Maggie's existed. Between us, my own parents, and my in-laws, there are few spots on the planet which have been left unvisited. We have been a fortunate and adventurous clan.
I have a friend who took his kids (without Mom) on an around the world in 60 days trip which he planned himself. Bonding time with Dad. That's a whirlwind trip but a cool idea. Holland-America has a 115-day round the world cruise. We met a prof and his wife on a ski gondola in New Hampshire who had taken that during a sabbatical and loved it. How could you not? Leave all your cares behind...
I've been to plenty of places in the US and Canada too, before Maggie's, but it's fun to go places without a Wendy's or a Holiday Inn-type place. Never been to Orlando, and it ain't on my list. I guess I could say that my favorite places in the USA are Cape Cod, Montana, and New York City.
For fun, here's our Maggie's Travel and Travelogue with past travel reports, photos, and ideas. (Push "next page" at the bottom of the page to flip back through our old files.)
I have a bucket list, and I have not been everywhere.
It's a little upsetting when you think that this is was your money. I recently read a definition of money as "stored labor," like a battery. Does that make sense?
2:2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.
2:3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us
2:5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--
2:6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
2:7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--
2:9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
2:10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
The guy annoys me a lot, but it's a good intro (in series, automatically) to several of the common fallacies we can all fall into: The Guide to Some Common Fallacies.
This brings to mind something I have been thinking about. I think colleges (and high schools) ought to offer lots of one or two-month courses, as my prep school did. These were mostly ways of applying basic knowledge to real life.
We had lots of short course options: intro to logic, public speaking, argumentation and fallacy, etymology, the Parthenon and Greek architecture, opera history, local geology, basics of meteorology, ornithology, paper-making, the math and science of sails and sailing, human anatomy, emergency first aid, typing (was required), the natural history of New England woodlands, intro to the American legal system (by a local lawyer), how doctors think and diagnose (by a local doc), the life and music of Brahms, Freud's main theories, What banks do and the math of banking, Adam Smith's life and work, ballistics and firearm design, geology of the sun, the US Constitution and the Federalist Papers, etc. etc., - along with the usual full trimester things and the required daily sports and daily chapel (which was, in effect, a 4-year Bible study). Wonderful. In four years, you could do a lot of them.
(We all had to be on a dirty jobs crew throughout the year too. Slave labor saved the school money, and protected us privileged boys from being complete spoiled brats. Dishwashing, leaf-raking, mowing the sports fields, serving at faculty tea, vacuuming the dorms, cleaning the chapel, and so much more!)
With the short courses, you had to learn it fast, which was good brain-training. The masters got to chose their own offerings from their own interests and hobbies. 10 kids per class, max.
Our required trimester courses? That's another topic, but they were good indeed and there were no choices at all. It's a shame that few colleges are as fine and as demanding as was my prep school. Gosh, it was fun, and they improved my Skeet skills too. The things that make preppy preppy, I guess. Not brains necessarily, but exposure, discipline, and training.
Some thoughts about Mr. and Mrs. Clinton below the fold so as not to overburden our front page with annoying Clinton links -
It's an issue of character. We all know not to look for high character in those inclined towards careers in politics but, policies aside, I think the Left can do better than these grifters and con artists. Even their "marriage" is a fraud, and so is the Clinton Foundation.
I think even the MSM press is weary of them and their endless BS. I am, anyway. Rejected once; why try again?
And I'll ask once again, How does one accumulate a $200 million bank account and a $2 billion slush fund in "a life devoted to public service"? Perhaps that trick can be listed as one of her major life accomplishments. I am impressed by that.
She is the "I went to Wellesley, and I married a sociopathic redneck politician" candidate. Wow.
From one of our links below:
Clinton's political career was launched based on the record and relationships of her husband. She has no accomplishments to speak of from either her time in the Senate or as Secretary of State. But her personal network has put her in the position as the overwhelming frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
In the liberal ghetto of Ann Arbor, several University of Michigan administrators recently gathered for a passionate brainstorm. The head of student affairs declared he was simply “going to die” if he heard about one more so-called micro-aggression on campus. When a colleague told him he was “acting crazy” for being so sensitive, he was shipped off to a mandatory session for freshmen where he learned about white privilege and determined that he would never say anything potentially controversial again. And with that, the Inclusive Language Campaign was born.
Academics often defend tenure, despite its many negative consequences, on grounds that it allows academic freedom for independent minds. Yet there are few places in America with more taboos and intellectual intolerance than academic campuses.
A famous Cape-Codder, 
How 
Padriac, Patricius, or whatever: 
I want to remind readers that the "morning link" post is a group effort by Maggie's Farmers, readers, friends, and others who suggest links. As is clear from our posts, we do not try to do the news but sometimes we just have to. Generally speaking, we post things of interest to us and things and viewpoints likely to be overlooked by the dogmatic part of the MSM. That's the idea, anyway.
Document theft and destruction nothing new for Hillary Clinton
I always used 22/7 for Pi, myself. Close enough for government work. It's the sexiest magical number so everybody in the world is fascinated by it.
Some thoughts about Mr. and Mrs. Clinton below the fold so as not to overburden our front page with annoying Clinton links -
An amusing book, and still accurate: