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.
As the Christmas trees come down and the holiday cheer is stored away, this from Mead:Born of a WHAT???
The specifically Christian idea of the Virgin Birth is one of the most controversial and confusing theological concepts around, and a Yuletide blog which didn’t take on the topic wouldn’t be doing its job.
Every now and then... something truly egregious bubbles up from the dismal pit of pseudo-intellectual academic lucubration, some special gem of fatuous, wood-pulp darkening nonsense that even now, at the fag-end of Anno Domini 2013, has the capacity to spark a little frisson of nauseated wonderment in this jaded breast. As it happens, the latest such production comes to us courtesy of our friends at the American Studies Association, that’s to say it comes from its official literary organ, the American Quarterly. Perhaps your subscription to this pointless agglomeration of polysyllabic, reader-proof grievance-mongering has lapsed. Mine has, too. But my fellow connoisseurs of repellent academic nonentity will not want to miss “Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies,” by one Greta Gaard, “an ecofeminist writer, scholar, activist, and documentary filmmaker.” (According to an opus called Ecocomposition: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches, she is “one of the most influential ecofeminist scholars.” Ponder that.)
...the Robertson-A&E dust-up was merely the latest in a long — very long — line of leftist attempts to impose supposedly sophisticated moral pretensions on the rest of the country.
This laughable air of moral superiority has been at the root of everything from the violence of the anti-Vietnam War rioters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and Obama pal Bill Ayers’ Weathermen to today’s Occupy Wall Street crowd. And all manner of things in between.
In 1969 alone this seemingly bottomless well of sniffy moral arrogance and condescension propelled student strikes or shutdowns at some 400-plus universities...
The NYT tries to pull Hillary’s Benghazi acorns out of the fire, they get burned
Class-consciousness has always been a fact of American life, but rarely is it about how the poor, or even the middle class, feel toward the very rich. It has been about how the professional class—lawyers, journalists, administrators, academics—feel toward the financial class. It's what Volvo America thinks about S-class America.
That idiot you knew freshman year, always fondling a lacrosse stick, before he became the head of his fraternity—his bonus last year was how much?
"...how is it that paying 1.3 million Americans not to work creates jobs? That one has never been explained. Every respectable economist I've consulted states that when unemployment benefits run out, a greater number of workers return to the labor force."
It is true. Docs who use electronic records spend more time on the computer than with their patients. Even worse, the treatments are increasingly done by prescribed protocols instead of designed for the individual situation. Case in point: When treating a patient with dementia, electronic health records fall short.
Furthermore, those records are not private. This is what you get when government gets more involved with medical care - and anything else.
My patients know that they are not on an assembly line, and I'll keep it that way until they make it illegal. Doing things my way, however, requires that I take no government insurances. Just pay me for my time at around the same fee as a master electrician and below the rate of a fancy lawyer.
He calls it "Wonderland." Dr. Essex is Prof. of Applied Mathematics at Univ. Western Ontario, and former director of its theoretical physics program. The math part isn't too bad:
Almost everybody wants to stay strong, fit, attractive, and ready for life. Avoiding carbs can keep you shapely, but it won't keep you fit. Walking is fine for the elderly for whom a long walk can constitute "exertion," but, otherwise, keeping one's muscles alive doesn't need to take very much time if done right.
The government should provide all of us sedentary cubicle-monkeys and couch-sitters with trainers for a half-hour daily, just as North Korea does. Daily government monitoring of our life-styles via in-home NSA-supplied video systems would be a good start. We all need more free services and more help from our moral and intellectual superiors.
As someone who worked for a firm for many years, I have been self-employed for a while. The costs of self-employment are high:
- office space, maintenance, and insurances, including buying your own Disability - work insecurity, erratic income, and no unemployment - no paid vacations - no splitting Social Sec and Medicare taxes with an employer - I pay 100% of it - I find my own medical insurance and pay 100% of it - Nobody contributes to my IRA except me - no collegiality
With all that, it's understandable that most people prefer being employees. So what's the benefit?
Most of the stories are in his comments section. One of these days, I will report my story which had to do with growing up, seeing the world clearly, and being involved with business.
A batch of Redhead ducks which I shot this fall, roasted rare for Mr. and Mrs. Bird Dog and other friends on Sat. night. Do they taste like farm ducks or Mallards? No, not at all.
Despite their grimly statist ways, the utopians continue to pass themselves off as well-meaning hipsters, anti-establishment rebels and earthy pro-underdog types, united by a devotion to freedom and tolerance. This has to be the most successful PR exercise in history – no less astonishing than if Hitler had convinced the world he was an avid Judeophile. The people responsible for hate crimes, speech codes, the smoking ban, debilitating taxes, and a soul-sucking state bureaucracy would have us believe that they are chilled-out hepcats, who totally dig your scene. If you think what they think, do what they say, and accept the terms of their ‘generosity’, it might be possible to enjoy their simulacrum of freedom as though it’s the real thing. But wander too far from the coop and soon you’ll soon collide with the chicken wire.
Also
Young people once looked forward to the day they would escape the family home and forge their own path through life. Holding down a job, managing their finances and taking responsibility for their actions were what defined them as adults. And a society of such people, working together, was the cornerstone of Western civilisation. But for the past few decades, the Left has sold us a different dream. They have promised to look after the boring admin of life, so we might set off on its great adventure, like Georgian gentlemen embarking on Grand Tours. Even if this vision had not soured to a living nightmare, it would have still been profoundly dehumanising. Coping with the vagaries of life is life. It’s how we express our individuality and become more mature, rounded human beings. By seeking to liberate us from life’s challenges, the Left has turned us into a nation of children, trapped in a shabby, impoverished society, the primary function of which is to subsidise its least productive members.
Kipling, who turned thirty in 1895, would likely have stayed in Brattleboro had not a bitter quarrel with his drunken lout of a brother-in-law put an abrupt end to his New England idyll. The Kiplings had built a beautiful Indian-style bungalow high above the Connecticut River (it is still there), and had hired Carrie’s boorish brother, Beatty Balestier, to care for the meadows and build a tennis court (also still there). Their quarrel over money ended in physical threats and a histrionic court hearing attended by so many spectators and reporters that the proceedings were moved to the largest assembly room in the town hall.
How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk- What does the way you speak say about where you’re from? Answer all the questions below to see your personal dialect map.
Single parenthood accounts for most of it. It's a poor life plan, unless wealthy. Some people never plan their lives at all. That's not being an adult. However, people always change paths, and that works too.
Grade inflation, in my view, is a quite deliberate project of our most elite schools to secure the elitist advantage of their students from effective competition. Indeed, the center of grade inflation is the Ivy League. As far as I can tell, the grade inflation is meant to protect the "brand" of the meritocrats earned by being admitted. To be sure, it's not that the students at Harvard or Princeton don't work hard. It's just that their efforts occur in a safe and secure environment. They're protected from real competition from excellent students at lesser schools. Nobody is ever to say that an A at my Berry College is as good as an A or even A minus at Harvard. So we professors in the sticks can't really win by sustaining grading standards too different from those used by our most prestigious schools.
The Heimlich Maneuver and CPR should be known by every responsible citizen. As I regularly remind readers, the CPR procedure has been revised and simplified.
The difficult thing about CPR is knowing who needs it. I have heard stories of people doing CPR on people who were choking, and on people who simply fainted.
Sued for a medical study?
An entrepreneurial colleague has a smart start-up in 
A book: 
What is Mrs. BD reading? 
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; 
Time to Stock Up on Incandescent Bulbs 
Green Grow the Rashes O!