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.
Educated people often make doctors’ worst patients: anti-vaxxers, cancer treatment rejecters, herbal remedy enthusiasts. Why do otherwise brilliant minds ignore science and reject modern medicine?
Read the article. I think people tend to be skeptical because "the science" is always in flux so many would rather go with their relatively-uninformed judgement than with the expert judgement of the day which may be obsolete next year. Remember the big scare about hormone replacement? Remember when they claimed that broccoli was good for you? Etc. People do know that physicians are smart and well-educated, but they like to make their own decisions for better or worse.
... intellectuals are a paradoxical product of the market economy, because “unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” Like Hayek, Schumpeter described intellectuals broadly as “people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word.” More narrowly, “one of the touches that distinguish them from other people who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs.” That is, intellectuals do not participate in the market (at least not in the areas they write about), and do not generally rely on satisfying consumers to earn a living. Add to this their naturally critical attitude—which Schumpeter argues is the product of the essential rationality of the market economy—and it is easy to see why intellectuals would be hostile to the market.
It's not simply to hide their results, it's because each client might have different goals. For many people, the goal is simply to not lose money to inflation.
How
Obama Lost Friends in Europe and Influence Globally - See more at:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/07/14/How-Obama-Lost-Friends-Europe-and-Influence-Globally#sthash.iWq2cXFg.dpuf
I think this is intelligent (or I would not link it): How to Think about Immigration- The U.S. government is generally expected to act in the interest of the people of the United States.
In recent history, sexual interests and inclinations outside of bourgeois Judeo-Christian monogamy have been labeled as immoral and "perversions" in the Western world, and in Western Psychiatry. Western Psychiatry has even categorized them in detail but some (such as homosexuality, which I find to be often a dubious categorization of people) have fallen out of favor due to political pressure.
Among the things which the Western world has relatively-recently and variously considered antisocial (lacking in normal conscience) or perverse (defined as outside local social norms) and/or illegal are polygamy, adultery, promiscuity, nymphomania, rape, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, miscengenation, internet pron, homosexuality, orgies and wife-swapping and related debaucheries, cross-dressing, childrens' pre-pubertal sexual interests, transgenderism, paraphilias and many fetishes like masochism, etc, prostitution, whoremongering, zoophilia, and so forth.
These are all culturally and/or religiously-determined categories of the wacky and disorderly, Bonobo-like vicissitudes of the human sex drive and of human psychology. Many humans successfully repress their inner Bonobo and happily adhere to their local cultural and moral codes, more or less. Many others lack a strong Bonobo streak, but it's not as if normal people never have wacky and aberrant fantasies and "curiosities".
As a Psychiatrist in the Western world, I can easily accept that many such things are statistically abnormal (ie at ends of bell curves), but high IQ is "abnormal" too.
I recently read this: 'Pedophilia is natural and normal for males'. Not "normal," I think, but certainly culturally-normative in parts of the Arab and Asian worlds. Some of our readers are quick to label perversions as "sick" if not just plain appalling or revolting. So is my natural inclination, but I think that inclination is culturally- and religiously- determined. Many human cultures view things otherwise.
Is there a Western socio-cultural trend to normalize previously-perverse and antisocial behaviors and to abnormalize conventional morality? I think so. In Psychoanalysis, we think of these things as embedded in problematic personality structures, but we could be wrong.
I am not claiming that I do not make moral or social judgements about behavior. All I claim is that it's complicated because living in a culture is part of being human, so "natural" loses meaning.
I will await discussion, but I may need to tie you up with duct tape and whip you. Here's your fun fetish joke du jour:
Four friends spent weeks planning a perfect desert camping and riding trip. Two days before the group is to leave Rob's wife puts her foot down and tells him he isn't going. Rob's friends are very upset that he can't go, but what can they do?
Two days later the three get to the camping site only to find Rob sitting there with a tent set up, firewood gathered, and supper cooking on the fire. "Dang man, how long you been here and how did you talk your wife into letting you go?"
"Well, I've been here since yesterday. Yesterday evening I was sitting in my chair when my wife came up behind me, put her hands over my eyes and said 'guess who'?" I pulled her hands off and she was wearing a brand new see- through nightie. She took my hand and took me to our bedroom. The room had two dozen candles and rose pedals all over. On the bed, she had handcuffs and ropes! She told me to tie and cuff her to the bed so I did. Then she said, 'Now, you can do whatever you want.' So here I am."
Was he teaching "community organizing"? I was a drunk, angry teacher - I just wanted to open my students' eyes to social justice and reality. I didn't want them to end up bitter like me.
It's not so much the drinking that bothers me - it's that he was not doing his job and it sounds like he still is not. For him, it's all about him. I would not want this jerk "teaching" my kids anything. Since I am sure he is in a government teaching union, he can't be fired.
Early Saturday, whistles and signal calls echoed in the night air from across the river and in our midst, the clandestine communication of coyotes and cartel members using the border crisis to profit. As we moved, on foot or by car, through the thick brush toward the river or down the rocky path, we heard them all around us, moving with us, at some points frighteningly nearby.
Here's a list of the Phoenix VA Hospital administrators and their salaries. There are no doctors in this list (wrong). This is what you get when the government runs health care..... via http://www.openthebooks.com/search/?PensionCode=840&F_fiscalyear=2013&F_Station=Phoenix&F_Name=&perpage=100
Correction -
That list did seem implausible. Sorry for conveying erroneous info! Sloppy of us.
The grades I just issued in my post-calculus, differential equations course – a sophomore math offering taken mostly by engineering students—followed the usual bell-shaped curve, roughly 10% A’s, 20% B’s, 40% C’s, 20% D’s and 10% F’s. The complaints came more from the D students than from the Fs.
The border crisis isn’t Obama’s Katrina – it’s worse
The nation is getting furious about this, and I know why. First, they are showing contempt for our sovereignty and our laws from the start. Second, somebody invited them to come and Mexico is complicit. Third, these people are jumping the queue and exploiting the situation and exploiting the US. Fourth, many of these "children" are violent gang members. Well, I could go on.
I don't care what age these immigrants claim to be are or where they try to sign up for high school - they are not children and I do not want them in my neighborhood:
Of course they did. Mexico bans any immigration. It's a crime in Mexico. (Almost forgot - it's a crime in the US too without papers.) Nobody enters Mexico unless the government lets you. The southern Mexican border is fully-armed with federales and those federales are not kind-hearted, gentle fellows. Their northern border is not, of course.
It's not likely that anybody would get a Pulitzer for reporting on journalistic malfeasance.
Most journalists have two natural biases that influence and limit their work; no science training, and a determination to push their institutional and personal bias on society. Stories about climate, and they are mostly stories, devolve to sensationalism. Balance and objectivity are virtually gone in the media. Fox News’ slogan “fair and balanced” should be a redundancy, but became a proud and almost unique claim, albeit tokenism. Nowadays, news reporting is almost always an opinion or an editorial.
Been there, done that. The tough old-timers I knew felt they were doing the devil's work, seeking unpleasant truths, rocking all boats, and creating chaos, but the modern young ones think they are doing God's work. Silly people. Still, as the old saying went, it's tough to argue with people who buy ink by the barrel.
Read about it lately? It has burned down many hay barns, but I never thought about Pistachio nuts. Hay needs to be dry, but I wouldn't know how to store a ton of dangerous pistachio nuts. I do love them, though.
Older people remember when they used to dye them red. Who knows why? Pistachio harvest.
Image via 
How to Get 
So is life. 
In recent history, sexual interests and inclinations outside of bourgeois Judeo-Christian monogamy have been labeled as immoral and "perversions" in the Western world, and in Western Psychiatry. Western Psychiatry has even categorized them in detail but some (such as homosexuality, which I find to be often a dubious categorization of people) have fallen out of favor due to political pressure.
Photos via Drudge: 
