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.
...our government isn’t running trillion-dollar deficits because we’re letting the working class get away with not paying its fair share. We’re running those deficits because too many powerful interest groups have a stake in making sure the party doesn’t stop.
When you look around the richest precincts of today’s Washington, you don’t see a city running on paternalism or dependency. You see a city running on exploitation.
Not long ago I asked readers what my time is worth on a per-hour basis. Collectively and independently, they settled on a number of about $500/hr (see the comments). Now look for a moment at what Medicare pays, even at its highest level of billing for a physician’s time for evlauation and management of a medical problem: for 40 minutes of a physician’s time, it’s $140 (or $210/hr) before taxes. Again, we see another disconnect as to how doctors are valued in our current system.
The Obama administration's version of Aretha Franklin's R-E-S-P-E-C-T is its reverse, C-O-N-T-E-M-P-T. Contempt for the American people and for our institutions. How else can they baldface lie about most everything and anything, with the assistance of much of the liberal media covering-up for the lies. It is little wonder that either through patriotism, animus or self-serving that there are enough leaks to expose enough lies that any sentient being can see them for what they are. Events that are reported are making a hash out of administration deceptive contempt for truth and facts. For those less aware, the problem is penetrating the cover-up wall erected and defended by much of the liberal media. That will take a concerted effort. It doesn't have to be anything beyond factual ads swamping the airwaves in this final six weeks of the campaign, getting the truth over the media's wall. Romney better be going all in on getting those ads on the airwaves.
The neurosciences were the sexy new frontier in the 1990s, but popular writers often offered the impression that any basic science of the central nervous system might have clear implications for understanding the workings of the mind.
The idea that a neurological explanation could exhaust the meaning of experience was already being mocked as “medical materialism” by the psychologist William James a century ago. And today’s ubiquitous rhetorical confidence about how the brain works papers over a still-enormous scientific uncertainty. Paul Fletcher, professor of health neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, says that he gets “exasperated” by much popular coverage of neuroimaging research, which assumes that “activity in a brain region is the answer to some profound question about psychological processes. This is very hard to justify given how little we currently know about what different regions of the brain actually do.” Too often, he tells me in an email correspondence, a popular writer will “opt for some sort of neuro-flapdoodle in which a highly simplistic and questionable point is accompanied by a suitably grand-sounding neural term and thus acquires a weightiness that it really doesn’t deserve. In my view, this is no different to some mountebank selling quacksalve by talking about the physics of water molecules’ memories, or a beautician talking about action liposomes.”
A superior and useful breed. Tollers prance around in a way which seems to attract ("toll") ducks - at least the stupid ones. (As in "Ask not for whom the bell tolls,...")
Why? It's a mystery. Who can read a duck's mind? Except another duck. Why do we think we have to cover Labs with camo and make them lay still? Because we are stupider than ducks? The Tollers get all of the fun. Multi-purpose animals.
And if you shoot the duck, they are very fine retrievers.
Nice bouncy red dogs which look like mutts. Which is a compliment, on Maggie's Farm. Mutts Is Us. Love 'em. But Tollers are AKC.
9:30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it;
9:31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again."
9:32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
9:33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?"
9:34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
9:35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."
9:36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,
9:37 "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."
We're doing NY this weekend. The New York Botanical Garden's Monet Show will be closing soon. They recreated his garden in Giverny, inside the Conservatory, right down to his lily pond and his bridge - painted in his own bridge color.
His gardens were a blooming frenzy of uncoordinated color. Dominant? Roses, Helianthus, and Dahlias this time of year. He scoured the world for interesting plants, and threw them in. In his later years, he only painted his garden.
We love gardens and gardening ideas, getting ready for Spring right about now. I believe that Mrs. BD is finally in recovery from her historic, purist insistence on not mixing annuals with perennials.
Since lead shot was (rightly) outlawed for waterfowl hunting in North America in 1991, the varieties of alternatives have been growing.
Steel shot was the first to appear but steel has low density (hits softer, travels shorter, and thus requires larger shot size than lead). Many folks were reluctant to put magnum steel loads through older or valuable shotguns, it altered choke functioning, and many felt that steel produced too many crippled birds. (I thought so, but I am usually not a very good shot with waterfowl unless I am in the groove.)
Then came Bismuth, and Bismuth-Tungsten - all much more expensive than steel, but with densities closer to those of lead, and presumably gentler on the barrel than steel. Plus you use the same shot sizes as with lead, say, #4 for decoying ducks and BB for geese.
The non-toxic shot I've been hearing about lately i Hevi-Steel, an iron-tungsten shot which is as cheap as regular steel but with a density approaching that of lead. There's a good, detailed review of Hevi-steel here. Given the price, it sounds like an excellent choice for those giant flocks of Snow Geese.
I think Bismuth is my first choice for ducks, especially since I can do everything the same way I used to do with lead, but I wonder what our readers like to use for ducks and geese because I am no expert on this.
"I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others."
Actually, I'm going to Georgia first, to visit a whole passelful of relatives I haven't seen since I was a teenager.
Wail, howdee, nay-bah! Whuzzup heah in ol' Jo-ja?
Just practicing.
For those of you just tuning in, I'm off to beautiful Mehico to have a cancerous tumor removed. Or, in doctor's parlance, I'm "being treated for my condition". Doctors never use ugly words like "cancer" and "tumor" because it'll cause me to dwell in the depths of despair forever. The back story is here, and it's not too late to donate a few shekels to the cause. I'm still facing some serious post-operative costs.
And certainly my deepest thanks to those who helped make this possible. I honestly thought when I first heard the verdict diagnosis that it was a death sentence, simply because I knew I'd never have the money even for a cut-rate (no pun intended) operation down in Mexico. But, between selling almost everything I own (they can have my Honda Civic when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers), the gang at my mom's rest home (they actually held an official PBS-style 'fundraiser', with skits and songs and magic acts by the residents to entertain the troops during the event), and, of course, the generous people here and on Instapundit.
As for my recuperation and getting back to blogging, I have no idea what to expect. Naturally, I've been hearing wildly different scenarios, although I think the worse ones are referring to a full-fledged colostomy, which is a far cry from what I'm getting, thank God. I have an extremely comfortable computer chair, and, being on a boat, the galley and head are just five feet away, so I should be able to get along just fine. Because the boat's a liveaboard, I've got tons of food and water at the ready should the global warmists be wrong and dirt reaches the point of spontaneous combustion far sooner than expected and I need to quickly head out to sea so I can be boiled alive.
(there's something wrong with that last sentence, but I just can't place it)
And, of course, no Big C update would be complete without a cartoon or two from my two dear, dear friends who have done their utmost to keep my spirits buoyed by sending me every gruesome, morbid, soul-eviscerating cartoon they come across. Bless their little hearts.
And it occurs to me that not only do Americans live longer than Britons, Australians and Canadians, but Hispanics, as well. Or, to be precise, "have more liveable time' than the others.
You know all those extra letters Britons use in words like "colour", "neighbour", "programme", etc? Well, all those little seconds it takes to type those extra letters adds up over time. If it takes 1 second to type the 'u' in 'colour', 'neighbour', etc, times one million uses over a lifetime, that's 12 days, or almost two weeks of wasted life.
And then we notice the unnecessary upside-down exclamation and question marks in Spanish. Again, countless days, wastefully thrown away.
In other words, compared to every Briton, Australian, Canadian and Spanish-speaking person in the world, you just gained 12 days of life.
Springtime is the time to plant annuals, but fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees as I explained earlier.
Today, spring bulbs. You do not want to plant them until nights are regularly below 50 degrees F or the bulbs will either rot or try to send up shoots.
However, early enough to get some roots into the soil.
We should all be very glad that we have a Democratic president right now; otherwise the news would be terrible. We would be seeing a rash of horrible and depressing stories in the newspapers about strategic failure, with unremitting second guessing and belittling of a president who agonized for months before the surge and then saw his plan fail. We’d be hearing non-stop reports in the media about the incompetent and klutzy leader who torpedoed his own policy by announcing a withdrawal date; the man who tried to please everybody and do everything—and failed at all he tried.
Why does Secretary Clinton regard “F** you, God” as a fun toe-tapper for all the family but “F** you, Allah” as “disgusting and reprehensible”?
The Terrorists’ Veto - Around the world, a campaign of religious intimidation and murder intensifies.
A Tale ofTwo Secret Videoshe ASecretary Clinton regard “F*** you, God” as a fun toe-tapper for all the familaker the White House Can No Longer Ignore D'Souza: The Author & Filmmaker the
The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand; Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Many horse owners, and pretty much all owners of horses of any value, purchase insurance packages including medical and death benefit.
Many companies offer it. It's a free market. See Google equine insurance.
What was most interesting to me about the topic is that all of the medical insurance is Major Medical (which I believe to be the only sensible medical insurance to buy, but increasingly scarce) and it is quite inexpensive. Why inexpensive? Because it doesn't cover birth control, poison ivy, or the sniffles.
I suppose one reason it is inexpensive is because you shoot a horse with a broken leg, which is thus an inexpensive and relatively quick procedure. However, surgery for colic can cost over $10,000. and is not reliably successful.
The NHS is well-known for letting the elderly ill pass away without care (no bullets or lethal injections yet), and Obamacare will do the same, in time.
I wish I could buy some of that inexpensive equine insurance for myself (minus the bullets unless absolutely necessary). I don't mind going to a vet instead of an MD.
Furthermore, I'd prefer a bullet or a bolt to drawn-out pain, misery, and incapacitation.
We are all weary of the drearily repetitive claims of oppression and the academic insistence on PC orthodoxy. Everybody is oppressed - especially in America. And white-colored males are oppressed by the "victims."
What is true at Bowdoin is more or less true everywhere.The power of the victims' studies departments lies not in what they say but in their ability to prevent inquiry that runs against their preferred narratives.They need not go to a lot of trouble to make this happen.They are more often like rocks in the stream.The regular flow of academic life simply goes around them.Few faculty members or administrators want the hassle of getting in their way.
Bawer's book is as vivid an account of the history, the shifting rationalizations, and the rhetoric of victims' studies as we are ever likely to have.This owes something to his insider status.An openly gay man whose 1993 book, A Place at the Table, advanced the cause for integration of gays into mainstream society, Bawer is deeply sympathetic to academic work that emphasizes the history of groups who have struggled against prejudice. Moreover, he has been a participant in some of the key debates that shaped these fields.His chapter on how "gay studies" ("a serious academic discipline") was displaced by "queer studies" (a celebration of "oppositional relation to the norm") is the centerpiece of the book.He recounts his own disputes with queer theorists such as David Halperin, who attack him for criticizing the late Michel Foucault, whose view that sex is "socially constructed" is the founding principle of queer theory.
If sex is a social construct, somebody needs to inform the birds and the bees because they did not get the memo.
The Times Of Israel has published my piece, "A liberal rabbi's wake-up call for liberal Jews." The central theme of the rabbi's wake-up call is that "with great power comes great responsibility", focusing upon Iran and upon the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel diatribes and harrasment that frequently occurs on US college campuses. Liberal Jews in the US cannot afford to avoid or look away from directly and vigorously confronting these existential threats. Jews must use the historically recently-won power to defend ourselves. Otherwise, the almost two-millenia of fear and hiding, of slaughter, can return.
When Jefferson returned to America about five years after he had left, he brought back “eighty-six crates with kitchen utensils and equipment, including a pasta-making machine from Italy.” He also brought various wines and cheeses, olive oil and mustard, “seedlings of fruit trees” including apricots, pears and figs, and 680 bottles of wine.
He knew how to travel. The article does not mention whether he tried the pizza (he seemed to stay mostly in Tuscany and the Piedmont where there is no pizza), but he did introduce Washington DC to Macaroni and Cheese. That was a good move, but he also brought home Italian (arborio) rice. Can't make Risotto without it.
Pic is Fettuccine Alfredo, aka Mac 'n Cheese. A touch of black truffle shavings, preserve, or black truffle oil makes it even better. I've even seen it in fancy joints with caviar on top. Like all pastas, it's meant to be a small Primi, of course, not a Secondi.
I have seen American kids grow big and strong, smart and athletic on Cheerios, Peanut Butter and Jelly on Wonder Bread (or Fluffernutter), and Mac 'n Cheese for supper.
Photo: A Lotus blossom at the NYBG
Since lead shot was (rightly) outlawed for waterfowl hunting in North America in 1991, the varieties of alternatives have been growing. 
¡Hola!
Springtime is the time to plant annuals, but fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees 
Jesuit
Dover Beach
Many horse owners, and pretty much all owners of horses of any value, purchase insurance packages including medical and death benefit.
Image via 
The guy travelled around France and Italy for years, eating and drinking everything new and tasty he could find. The Founding Foodie -