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.
Mrs. BD warns you that this 2005-2007 BBC/HBO series (on Netflix) can be addictive. Generally historically-accurate too, right down to the footwear. Rome.
It was a shame that Julius Caesar set in motion the destruction of the republic.
... “the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82 percent. But it isn’t a government spending program. It’s called marriage.”
Statistically probably close, but a lot of unmarried people are likely either not interested, or are not desirable "marriage material." And sex material and marriage material are not the same things. Duh. Ref: Human History 101.
Poverty stats in the US do not take into account governmental or charitable benefits, both of which are huge and widely available to those who want them. The semi-voluntary poor, of course (eg grad students, recent grads, Maine Guides, new immigrants, beginning entrepreneurs, people who chose their own lifestyles to pursue happiness, hippies, starving artists, ski bums, people who choose the dole as a life style, etc) are not isolated from the stats so the stats seem meaningless to me. (Not to mention the pitiful people who work the system, game the system, etc. for a few extra bucks from the workingman's pocket.)
Few would refuse a gift of wealth obtained honorably, but I do not think pursuit of wealth is a major driver in American life, or in human life in general. Fortunately, and to the benefit of the rest of us, wealth is a driver for some highly talented people with commercial abilities (eg Derek Jeter, John D. Rockefeller, Jeff Bezos, Henry Ford, Steven Spielberg, Bob Dylan, JP Morgan, George Washington, Warren Buffet, etc etc etc).
The 15% in poverty measure is the number of people who would be in poverty if we didn’t help them by giving them money, food, housing and health care. It is not the number living in poverty. It is the number in poverty before we help them out of poverty. And as to the comparison with the 1960s, in the 1960s it really was the number in poverty after we helped, now it’s the number before we help.
"Poverty" is a political concept. Many people want free goodies if they are available, but sacrifice a bit of their precious human dignity in the process. As SDA always asks, "Why is there always a wide-screen TV?"
A real working man has every reason for pride in his work, regardless of wealth. Not sure what Bob was thinking with this weary but hopeful lullabye. Probably some part of himself. Try to ignore the images.
An interesting, forward-looking resource - "Find Telecommuting Jobs and other great flexible jobs such as Part-Time jobs and Freelance work."Flexjobs.com.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
People often tell me that feminist dogma often backfires and makes women look ineffective. But looking ineffective is not a problem for many women. They see it as an asset and it is a form of power.
On January 20, 1961, Robert Frost spoke at John F. Kennedy's inauguration. The snow-glare made it impossible for him to read his new poem for the occasion (he was 87 years old), so he recited a better poem, The Gift Outright, from memory.
~ The Gift Outright ~
The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia. But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak. Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.
By taking a promising idea and making a hash of things, advocates of the Common Core paid homage to a long tradition in American education. What could and should have happened in 2009 just might still be possible. It would offer the surest way out of what otherwise looks to be a bruising war of attrition that will complicate school improvement for years to come.
Although that original vision still offers a potential path forward, the odds of the necessary course correction actually taking place seem slight. Indeed, self-confident Common Core advocates have not been inclined to acknowledge missteps or problems and are instead more disposed to double down on clumsy political machinations, attempts to impugn skeptics, and an insistence that everything is working out just as they intended. At this point, however reasonable the rationale for the Common Core, it seems increasingly clear that American education would be better off if this unfortunate, quasi-national enterprise had never made it off the drawing board.
The Next Assault on Civil Rights - The Roberts court has been hostile toward voting rights and affirmative action. Its next target is the Fair Housing Act.
Many otherwise prudent people, many of whom may have smoked marijuana decades ago when it was far less potent than now, have gone along with the increased legalization of marijuana. It may be so that for most consumers, who do not abuse it, the harmful effects are minor. However, for many the short and long term effects are not minor. It is ironic that liberal politicians who are so eager to stamp out smoking tobacco and who are so fervent about controlling other things many consume are supporters of marijuana legalization. Their reasons are either that they still do imbibe or that they see another source of taxes they can spend on their other notions.
A scholarly analysis of the research since 1993 done into the health effects of marijuana finds:
Research in the past 20 years has shown that driving while cannabis-impaired approximately doubles car crash risk and that around one in 10 regular cannabis users develop dependence. Regular cannabis use in adolescence approximately doubles the risks of early school-leaving and of cognitive impairment and psychoses in adulthood. Regular cannabis use in adolescence is also associated strongly with the use of other illicit drugs. These associations persist after controlling for plausible confounding variables in longitudinal studies. This suggests that cannabis use is a contributory cause of these outcomes but some researchers still argue that these relationships are explained by shared causes or risk factors. Cannabis smoking probably increases cardiovascular disease risk in middle-aged adults but its effects on respiratory function and respiratory cancer remain unclear, because most cannabis smokers have smoked or still smoke tobacco.
Conclusions
The epidemiological literature in the past 20 years shows that cannabis use increases the risk of accidents and can produce dependence, and that there are consistent associations between regular cannabis use and poor psychosocial outcomes and mental health in adulthood.
...Obama’s not without ideas. He’s full of ideas, all of them out of date. All of them from the last century’s paradigms. He wanted to become like European social democracy at the very moment when it finally collapsed into the dust-bin of history. He hankered after the ideals of ‘progressivism’ when it had already become reactionary. He is like a man who has saved all his life to buy a pair of bell-bottomed pants only to reach the required sum just when they were 40 years out of style. He’s at the store looking to buy them and can’t find them on the rack.
... it is Dawkins’s identification with Darwin that is most incongruous. No two minds could be less alike than those of the great nineteenth-century scientist and the latter-day evangelist for atheism. Hesitant, doubtful, and often painfully perplexed, Darwin understood science as an empirical investigation in which truth is never self-evident and theories are always provisional. If science, for Darwin, was a method of inquiry that enabled him to edge tentatively and humbly toward the truth, for Dawkins, science is an unquestioned view of the world. The Victorians are often mocked for their supposed certainties, when in fact many of them (Darwin not least) were beset by anxieties and uncertainties. Dawkins, by contrast, seems never to doubt for a moment the capacity of the human mind—his own, at any rate—to resolve questions that previous generations have found insoluble.
I know how complicated a question that is. Are we talking about a date, a party conversation, a friend, a one night stand, friends with benefits, a husband's pal, an affair, a boy-toy, a potential marriage, etc?
If one is fortunate enough to be an appealing female, you know that all men will consider the notion of having a romp with you. They can't help it. Indeed, it is a no-brainer. You are a love-or-sex object before they even know you. Your Mom taught you that oafs want their hands on your body, creeps want to sneak into your head, and gentlemen try not to be either oaf or creep.
Women do live in a somewhat different mental world from men. As a shrink, I know both worlds. I know that many women find physical attractiveness appealing, tall guys with masculine physiques and regular features, etc., but I'm not asking about that, or that alone. And I am not asking about "marriageable," with its implications of good prospects, money, breeding, cultural affinity, intelligence, knowledge, skill sets, potential to make a good parent/mate, etc. Seductive expert men who try to get into your head? Red flag, always - those are would-be Bill Clinton types. Many women are drawn to charming sociopaths, and they know it because it connects with their own flaws. Been there in youth, done that, recovered, as have so many young women.
I am just asking about general "appealing," like somebody you want to talk to at a party and feel drawn to. Readers know that I have always loved Atticus Finch and that I married the closest I could find who also had good genes, who has effortfully made a lot of money while I pursued my medical calling, and been a great dad, a very hard-worker, a boy scout, and a loving and loyal husband despite his own difficult imperfections. Lucky me.
I will start it off:
The traits I find quickly appealing and charming in men are courage, honor, manliness, humor, shyness, but a confident attitude towards life and an easy, relaxed deportment which says that they are comfortable in their skin. They like to play sports and to play with power tools, books, and guns. Those things are instantly appealing to women like me, chemically. You do not have to mate with them, but I can just like it the way you like that chocolate dessert that you do not need and will not eat. We are not animals, but we do enjoy some people more than others. Decent men are the same way with the charming women they meet and enjoy. Normal guys who are out in the world develop instant crushes several times daily just from a chemical reaction.
How about you ladies? What appeals to you, in guys?
Too many Asians: Making Merit Subjective - The de Blasio administration floats a proposal to water down the admissions test to the city’s specialized high schools.
LIKE SO MANY HAPPENINGS IN THIS ADMINISTRATION, IF YOU PUT THIS IN A NOVEL IT WOULD SEEM CRUDE AND UNREALISTIC: Obama slams billionaires at the home of a guy named Rich Richman. Who is . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . rich!
There are at least two main trends in Psychiatry in the US nowadays, with a large area of grey in between.
At one extreme, there are those who practice as if there were neither mind nor soul, as if there were nothing to a person but a bag of chemicals.
At the other extreme, those who practice as if there were no protoplasm and nothing but a bag of conflict and developmental/situational hang-ups.
Both extremes suffer from some form of psycho-utopianism. Most of us come in somewhere in some grey zone, in a confusing and challenging grey zone which keeps our brains working hard. A zone of ambiguity and mystery.
My close colleagues and I tend towards Dr. Levinson's view: Psychiatry’s Underground Economy. (It's not mainly about money, it's about how we think about patients.)
The simulacrum is often defined as a copy with no original, or as Gilles Deleuze (1990) describes it, “the simulacrum is an image without resemblance”.[9] Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right, aka the hyperreal. He created four steps of reproduction: (1) basic reflection of reality, (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever".[10]
The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself. While humans and other vertebrates have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight’s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone. Hence the workers were at first unaware of their mother’s death. Her quietude said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signalled, I remain among you. She smelled alive.
The deception was made easier by the fact that in life she had never given orders or led them in activities of any kind—even though she could have performed all their tasks if she chose. She had taken the only initiatives she ever took all in a burst, at the beginning of her adult life, when she had abandoned the colony of her birth and, along with it, her mother and her sisters. First, she had spread her four membranous wings and flown into the air. There, she’d joined a swarm of flying males and other virgin queens. One of the males had caught her. He’d clamped his legs around her body, and the couple had spiralled down to the ground. On landing, he had used the large claspers at the rear end of his body to hold their genitalia together as he completed the insemination. Within five minutes, the act was finished, and the queen shook the male loose. All the sperm she had received flowed up into a special bag-shaped organ in her abdomen, where it would stay until called on to fertilize her eggs. It might last for years into the future. Each sperm was endowed with a potential life span equal to her own.
In contrast, the father of all her children was programmed to die almost immediately after the mating. The only thing that he had ever done was accept meals regurgitated to him by his sisters, as if he were a nestling bird, and wait, and wait some more, and finally take the one short flight from his home, followed by five minutes of copulation. In other words, the male was no more than a guided missile loaded with sperm, his life’s work a single ejaculation. Afterward, he was left with only one instruction, to be enforced if necessary by his sisters: Don’t come back. He had been issued a one-way ticket. He had no chance at all of survival. A delicate creature, he could not find food, or feed himself if he stumbled across some. He would die by dehydration, or crushed in the beak of a bird, or chopped into pieces by the jaws of an enemy ant, or, less quickly, pierced by the bloodsucking proboscis of an assassin bug.
To escape the same fate, the newly mated future Queen of the Trailhead Colony, full-brained and powerfully muscled, hurried to find shelter. She had to get back underground as quickly as possible. First, however, she had to take a few minutes to shed her wings. To do that, she simply bent her middle legs forward, pressed them against the base of the wings, and snapped them off. This mutilation caused no injury to the rest of her body; it caused no pain. The Queen was a parachutist who slipped her harness upon landing. Now she could move more quickly to avoid the ants, spiders, and other predators hunting around her in the grassroots jungle.
Soon she came upon an open space between grass clumps, a small clearing at the Lake Nokobee trailhead. By luck she had found an ideal site to build a nest. She began at once to dig a vertical tunnel in the sandy clay soil. Her movements were swift and precise, and within minutes she had deepened the shaft to more than her body length. This provided her some degree of protection, but she needed to proceed as quickly as possible. Her life remained in constant danger.
Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Like 
I know how complicated a question that is. Are we talking about a date, a party conversation, a friend, a one night stand, friends with benefits, a husband's pal, an affair, a boy-toy, a potential marriage, etc?
My pal who returned from a couple of weeks in Zambia is quite the wildlife photographer.
