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 you might have heard, a court in Italy has convicted seven scientists of manslaughter because they failed to predict an earthquake that struck some village and killed a bunch of people.
People living in non-earthquake-reinforced buildings in an area known for having violent earthquakes, I might add.
An Italian court sentenced scientists to jail time for not having a functioning crystal ball ahead of the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila. The arguments of science and reason fell on deaf ears. Rarely since a Catholic inquisition in Rome condemned Galileo Galilei to spend the remainder of his days under house arrest for the heresy of teaching that the Earth revolves around the sun has an Italian court been so wrong about science.
Today, a court in the central Italian city of L'Aquila, 380 years after that miscarriage of justice, sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail [and $10.2 million in fines] on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead.
More articles on this travesty of justice, sensibility and reason:
Most recent NOAA storm prediction for the Northeastern US here.
Looks like they predict a major Nor'easter fueled by Hurricane Sandy. The dramatic prediction of perfect storm conditions will likely be wrong but heck, it's time to get your boat out of the water now anyway.
Humans aren't Bonobos, but in human connections there is always some sex in the air. The popularity of "friends with benefits" relationships among the youth, and now middle-aged singles - makes that clear. Lots of other things are in the air too, like competitiveness, childish emotional wishes, familial-type feelings, feelings of tribal affiliation. loneliness, delight or amusement in another's company, shared intellectual or recreational fun, exploitative aspirations, etc., etc.
My profound and earth-shaking point here is simply that human interactions and connections partake of all aspects of being ... human.
There's one thing I know for sure: Put a guy and a gal who are pals in a comfy place away from home, add alcohol, stir, and anything can happen. Alcohol numbs the prefrontal cortex.
I have never before endorsed a Republican for President, I call for the election of Mitt Romney to the nation’s highest office.
Don Harrison is the editor of the San Diego Jewish World, widely influential in this area and widely read elsewhere. Don Harrison is what I have often called him, "an open-minded liberal." Indeed, he has often published me! He is thoroughly politically liberal, and can be counted upon to with very rare exception endorse the Democrat candidate for any office. However, in the case of Romney Vs Obama, Harrison tells me that he agonized for a long time. The deciding factors for Harrison are that Obama can't be trusted to be a firm supporter of Israel in its existential danger from the development of Iranian nuclear weapons while Romney can be trusted more, and that domestically Harrison feels that there will be enough constraints on social conservative agendas to avoid the worst fears raised by Democrats during the campaign.
Instead of seeing college as a private investment, we must consider it a public good. If we remember the generation that was educated after World War II, generous public support meant that they could afford -- economically -- to spend four years studying the subject that most interested or spoke to them, and then they took their education and did millions of things with it that helped us develop a richer society, not just in terms of wealth but in terms of knowledge, art, and citizenship. That generation could do so because they did not have to take on thousands of dollars in debt and to worry all the time about how to pay for it. They could do so because public support for their education -- meaning low tuition for students thanks to tax support for America’s colleges -- gave them the freedom -- the leisure -- to study.
While I am somewhat sympathetic to the feeling of the article, I also find it foolish in several ways.
First, it is not only the elites who have access to the liberal arts. With 70% of current job seekers holding higher ed degrees, that no longer applies.
Second, any public high school offers an abundant introduction to the liberal arts, enough to prepare anybody to pursue their intellectual interests for the rest of their lives.
Third, "leisure to study"? That's ridiculous. Full-time college offers leisure to drink, to attend football games, and to pursue the opposite sex. Best students I've known had no leisure.
Fourth, the idea of a "public good." Last I heard, that just means that somebody else ought to pay for it, preferably my neighbor via taxation. Why my neighbor should pay for my kid to "pursue at leisure the things that speak to him" is utterly beyond me.
Needed his sleep before fund-raiser in Las Vegas in the morning. Staff and press covered for him. This goes beyond "scandal" into other more serious categories like abrogation of duty.
...fasten your seat belt, because the Democrats are about to pull out every stop in their desperate greed to hang on to unearned wealth and political power.
Everything that the West has done to appease Muslims has worked as well as a man jumping into a tiger cage and pouring meat sauce all over his body. Each act of appeasement only makes Muslim violence necessary and inevitable.
I think it must have been painful for him to accept that many of the Liberal policies he had stood for during his career were plain destructive and exasperating to the ordinary citizen who just wanted to make an honest living.
I think the Romney people are looking at their inside numbers, and believe that they are winning, or close to it, with momentum on their side. I think the Obama people are watching their lead of the summertime slip through their fingers with little they can do about it other than to sling one more $100 million worth of slime at Romney. Going all-negative and throwing hopey-changey under the bus.
Hence the nature of the "debate" last night, with Romney rising amiably above the fray while Obama irritably yipped and yapped and snapped at him like a sharp-toothed puppy trying to get a rise out of a big dog.
A pleasant ramble through the topic of hurricanes of the past, engineering, beaver dams, and related topics from a guy who enjoys stormy weather: Hurricane Warning; McKibben Alert. A quote:
At age twelve my interest in hurricanes was largely motivated by two things: First, hurricanes made things go crash, smash and boom, and I was the sort of kid who could endure “The Bridge Over The River Kwai,” (including the intermission,) just for the train wreck at the end. (I was not alone. It might not be politically correct, but the entire theater burst into wild cheering and applause, when that train finally, finally wrecked.)
The second reason was that a hurricane might cancel school. I hated school. McKibben apparently loved what I loathed, for he went to Harvard, and there became ignorant where I became wise, for he doesn’t even know what I knew at age twelve: The precedent has already been set. Wicked awesome hurricanes have hit New England in the past.
“I can personally relate to a lot of the things Sue was saying about microaggressions against Asian-Americans,” said Christine Noh, a sophomore journalism student. “Yet I was never one to take offense to it- but I see it in a different light now.”
Woodward became a hero not because of WHAT he did, but WHO he did it to. Liberal Democrat politicians can do REPEATEDLY things any one of which would another’s career. These can range from the criminal to the absurd. Imagine if a Republican Presidential or ANY candidate had a girl get weak — “wait, give her some air….somebody give her a bottle of water” at EIGHT consecutive rallies as if it was an old burlesque routine where a singer pops up in the audience the way Al Jolsen was introduced as a kid. Obama pulled that and it was never mentioned in the press –even on Fox. Clinton was accused of rape by two different women and had another brought to his room by state police, when he proceded to “drop trou”…. result??? He is routinely declared a “political genius”. A republican can — after being misled about a foreign word and its meaning say “makaka” at a rally— career over. Get it?
Obama has run far and fast from his own record. Romney, I’m sorry to say, hasn’t always hit him for that as much or as strongly as I think he should have.
But is Romney credible?
Yes. Romney is credible. Perfect? No. Credible, yes.
And that’s a win tonight.
Obama came in with an impossible task, to act as a spoiler and to appear presidential.
I was talking with some twenty-somethings before the debate. They thought it funny to call tonight's debate as between zombies. From their viewpoint both candidate are bitten and not to be trusted, but Obama is further along in the transformation that is a US apocolypse. I chuckled, and then I saw the opening intro by debate moderator Bob Schieffer. They were correct, it's a zombie debate.
Romney avoided being cornered, by Obama or Schieffer. Projects calmness and desire for peace. Obama comes off angry and offensive. The CNN tracking of "undecideds" in Florida relatively neutral between both. That means Obama failed to paint Romney as dangerous, Romney succeeded in coming across as moderate. That makes this debate a victory for Romney, and a failure for Obama to change the game or impressions of Romney.
So, on with the debate. It shapes up as do you believe what you saw for four-years or what Obama says happened. Only Obamazombies can choose the latter.
On Libya, Romney: "We can't kill our way out of this mess." Need a comprehensive strategy. (Well, duh!)
Obama: We're able to transition out responsibly and rebuild alliances. "We did everything we can" to help the Americans in "harms way" in Benghazi. (BS meter goes off the dial.)
Romney: "Attacking me is not an agenda." Then aims head shots at Obama.
I see psychoanalysis, art and biology ultimately coming together, just like cognitive psychology and neuroscience have merged recently. You have specifically selected examples, which I use not to illustrate how science can enhance insight into art. Rather I use them to show how artists had insights into the mind that Freud did not have and that enriched and corrected what Freud taught us. This is what concerns me in the first third of the book. It is in the second and third parts of the book that I outline a biological approach to how we respond to a work of art...
Amtrak has around 20,000 employees with an average income of $90,000. I thought that the government takeover of passenger rail had been meant to be a temporary rescue measure, but I guess I was wrong.
Now I am not sure why passenger rail should be viewed any differently from the also-government-supported interstate highway system, or government-supported airports, but Clark Whelton claims Amtrak is a jobs program on wheels.
Where should one draw the line on taxpayer support of life amenities? I must confess that the high-speed Boston-Providence-NYC-Philly-Baltimore-DC Acela service is a very fine and heavily-used amenity for those in the Northeast corridor, as are the New York area commuter trains.
I'm on the road and using my laptop (barf) so this'll be short. Just a reminder that the third and final (praise be) presidential debate is on tonight. Showtime for the event in 9 pm Eastern. More info & a streamcast here.
By the way, in case you were out of the country planet last week and were wondering who won the debate, you'll be interested to know that both sides won. Democracy in action! Obama won the 'Overall Likeability' contest (which counts for half, as I understand it) but in every issue-oriented question ("Who do you think will best improve the economy?" e.g.), Romney won it walking away.
I think we'll see a general repeat of last week tonight. Three things will happen; both candidates will be at their best, the moderator will make damn sure Obama is protected from the slings and arrows of outrageous truth, and the MSM will pick one single Romney quote ("binders") to go nuts over. The usual stuff, in other words.
Re Mitt Romney’s toughest debate, he probably can't "win" on details of foreign policy. However, the election is not about details of foreign policy. There are no votes in the Benghazi mess up and coverup, and nobody cares too much about the entire crack-up in the ME, or whether Obama hearts Putin.
I think Romney can make his mark on two themes. First, the importance that America remain the leader of the free world, and the most generous and helpful nation on the planet. Second, that America's beneficial influence is founded on two things: our ideas of freedom and the wealth born of (relatively) free markets. The Reagan approach, minus the Cold War. That leads back to talking about prosperity at home.
(If he has the nerve to talk about respect, and bowing to foreign leaders, that would be fun but would not win any votes. This is fun too: Chavez, Castro, Putin endorse Obama... )
Obama’s last stand is also the Democratic Party’s last stand. A hundred years of foreign policy and economic failures at the hands of a corrupt mafia is about to come home to roost. The Democratic Party has marginalized itself, abandoning mainstream Americans while openly embracing a trillion dollar welfare state.
Iconography elevated Obama as it did FDR and JFK, but it cannot see him through a constellation of crises. And if he falls, then his party falls with him.
Tsk-tsk, Italy.
George McGovern was hard not to like, but his politics were naive in the extreme. Late in life, he decided to go into business, and wrote about it: 
Pic is a Sugar Maple, on fire yesterday
I'm on the road and using my laptop (barf) so this'll be short. Just a reminder that the third and final (praise be) presidential debate is on tonight. Showtime for the event in 9 pm Eastern. More info & a streamcast 
5 Life Advantages You Acquire from Experiencing Poverty