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.
Dr. Francis, who had been an editor of the DSM 3 and Editor of the 4, and was a teacher of mine back in the day, discusses some of the current diagnostic craziness related to the DSM 5 (h/t to 1 Boring Old Man).
His talk also contains some good general comments about Psychiatric medical practice, for those who might be curious about it. Sensible fellow, and articulate without teleprompter.
I will post some more items about diagnosis this week for the two or three readers who find the topic interesting.
Despite the cultural storms and waves, it it is the daunting job of royalty (or at least of Brit royalty who are currently, sort-of of German origin despite being Brit in culture and manner) to make the best stand for the core values of duty and service.
I have never met the Queen, but I have always liked the cut of her jib.
The Queen of Duty - In an era of irresponsibility, Elizabeth Regina always does what is expected of her.
Minding The Campus blog, from the Manhattan Institute, is one of the preeminent venues for discussing issues in higher education. Today, my third annual shock at what is presented as required reading for incoming students at my alma mater and at many other colleges appears at Minding The Campus: Working Hard to Convince Freshmen They Are Victims.
I encourage you to click the link and go to the Minding The Campus website to read it, because you will find a site worthy of a daily visit.
Look around you. The late-20th-century Western lifestyle isn’t going to be around much longer. In a few years’ time, our children will look at old TV commercials showing retirees dancing, golfing, cruising away their sixties and seventies, and wonder what alternative universe that came from. In turn, their children will be amazed to discover that in the early 21st century the Western world thought it entirely normal that vast swathes of the citizenry should while away their youth enjoying what, a mere hundred years earlier, would have been the leisurely varsity of the younger son of a Mitteleuropean Grand Duke.
If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to bring the income of every lower-income American to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $44,000 per year for a family of four. (This calculation combines potential welfare aid with non-welfare income currently received by the poor.)
He said, ‘Look, what do you care who does the work?’” Liebau recalled Obama saying in reference to her management of the law review. “’It is the same amount of work for you to hand out the work no matter who it goes to, so why fight it? Do what’s easiest for you. Give the work to the people who will do the work, and just don’t worry about the people who don’t want to pull their weight.’”
Liebau wasn’t impressed.
“I guess I was young and naïve: I was like, ‘Ah but that wouldn’t be fair,’” she said.
“And what surprised me is apparently that didn’t bother Barack at all. It was just kind of like — take the easy way out. Why bother yourself with all these silly notions about justice and fairness? Do what works. Revealing? I don’t know. Good advice? I didn’t particularly think so.”
In 1911, the poet-philosopher T. E. Hulme observed that “there must be one word in the language spelt in capital letters. For a long time, and still for sane people, the word was God. Then one became bored with the letter ‘G,’ and went on to ‘R,’ and for a hundred years it was Reason, and now all the best people take off their hats and lower their voices when they speak of Life.” I think Hulme was on to something, both in his observation about the inveterate habit of reverence and the choice that sanity dictates. I wonder, though, whether we as a culture haven’t shifted our attention from “L” for “Life” to “E” for “Egalitarianism” or “P” for “Political Correctness.”
It is noteworthy, in any event, to what extent certain key words live in a state of existential diminishment. Consider the word “Gentleman.” It was not so long ago that it named a critical moral-social-cultural aspiration. What happened to the phenomenon it named? Or think of the word “respectable.” It too has become what the philosopher David Stove called a “smile word,” that is, a word that names a forgotten or neglected or out-of-fashion social virtue that we might remember but no longer publicly practice. The word still exists, but the reality has been ironized out of serious discussion. It is hard to use straight. Just as it would be difficult to call someone “respectable” today without silently adding a dollop of irony, so it is with the word “gentleman.”
Read it all. There is all sorts of good stuff in it.
Greetings from West Columbia, South Carolina from Captain Tom.
Lake Murray is a very interesting fishery. 50,000 acres of water and all kinds of micro-ecologies from amazing pan fish through it's premier striper fishery. 20/25 lb catfish are common and bream, shell cracker, crappie and your garden variety sunfish are in abundance in dinner plate sizes. The striper fishery is incredible - again, larger specimens of this fish are not uncommon in the 30 lb range with the average specimens running in the 15/20 lb class.
Lake Murray was built in the late '20s by impounding the Saluda River and its basin at Dreher Shoals a little Northwest of Columbia, SC. At one time, it was the largest earthen dam ever constructed. Water from the dam was used to power hydroelectric turbines for a large part of South Carolina and these turbines are still in use today.
Lake Murray also has an interesting military history. The Army Air Force during WWII used the lake's islands as bombing and strafing target practice. Five bombers were lost in the lake, four were recovered at the time for salvage, but the fifth, a somewhat rare B-25C, was lost until it was found in 2003. A salvage effort was launched in late 2004, the plane raised and it is now located at a restoration facility in Montgomery, Alabama.
Lake Murray is also famous for its Purple Martin Sanctuary located on Bomb Island (approximately in the middle of the lake). As odd as it may seem, this is a major tourist attraction for the area as thousands of Purple Martins leave in the morning and return in the evening to roost over night. A lot of boaters make an evening of picnics on the water watching the evening return of the Purple Martins to Bomb Island. If you Google up Purple Martins and Bomb Island, you will see some images and an incredible radar image taken of this daily routine. I don't have my pictures of this event - took the wrong laptop with me.
Ed. Note: You can read all about the remarkable anadromous and adaptable Striper here.
A steering committee led by Joyce Moy, director of CUNY’s Asian Research Institute, ran faculty focus groups based on “identity.” The groups included “African-American/black, Asian, White/Jewish, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender, Hispanic/Latino, Individuals with disabilities, and Italian-American.”
CUNY targets Italian-Americans for affirmative action in response to lawsuits alleging bias….
“White,” said a Jewish professor at Kingsborough Community College, “is in every way a detriment to be categorized because of the push to hire minorities.”
Good grief. And still, it seems exclusionary to me to omit "White Native Americans" from the special treatment list.
“163 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are former Marines, more of them having enlisted than having served as commissioned officers. When you consider that less than one percent of Americans served in the military in the last decade, understanding the causes of that ratio challenges you to think.”
The conflict today between Democrats and Republicans increasingly pits public sector unions, government employees and contractors, and beneficiaries of government programs against middle-class taxpayers and business interests large and small. . . This impasse between the two parties signals the end game for the system of politics that originated in the 1930s and 1940s. As the “regime party,” the Democrats are in the more vulnerable position because they have built their coalition around public spending, public debt, and publicly guaranteed credit, all sources of funds that appear to be reaching their limits. The end game for the New Deal system, and for the Democrats as our “regime party,” will arrive when those limits are reached or passed.
Dunkin' Donuts, the well-established donut-and-coffee chain on the East Coast and in the Midwest — with 6700 store locations in the U.S. and 30 other countries — didn’t have a California location until earlier this month.
Located inside Camp Pendleton’s new MCX store (a one-stop shop for active duty military and their families), Dunkin' Donuts opened with little fanfare on May 3.
Upon hearing of the store's opening, I tried on numerous occasions to get a comment from the Dunkin' Donuts corporation based in Massachusetts. It took several weeks for a spokesperson to respond to emails.
On May 22, PR manager McCall Gosslin responded that they understand the demand for Dunkin' Donuts in California, pointing out that the state is number one in sales for their prepackaged coffee. But, he added, it will be a long time before other California locations are added. He said Camp Pendleton officials reached out to Dunkin' Donuts because of their popularity at other military installations.
Speculation as to why a multinational company won't have an additional presence in California can be drawn from an announcement last year that Carl’s Jr. will no longer seek to open additional California locations due to a regulatory process that takes two to three years.
On May 23, Dunkin' Donuts manager Daisy said they were extremely busy and that the Marines are aware of the fact that theirs is the first shop in California.
Let no crisis go to waste. It's always a "crisis" when government wants power and control, and it is in the nature of governments to desire those things.
Nock’s essay on the Right Thing is a reminder that the advocates of the paternalistic state, whether “left” or “right,” have it backward: good conduct isn’t a precondition of freedom; it is a consequence of freedom. He contrasts the “region of conduct” regulated by force, that is, by government, with the region regulated by the individual’s sense of doing the Right Thing.
The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys argues for repealing those non-dischargeability provisions, at least for private lenders. That is actually a good idea, as long as, on the public side, the federal government gets out of the student-loan business altogether. No direct lending, no loan guarantees to the private sector--and no disability-rights oversight, either. Without the twin safety nets of non-dischargeability and taxpayer guarantees, a lender would be entitled to ask the next Carol Todd, without even broaching the subject of her Asperger's: "We've already lent you tens of thousands of dollars that you haven't repaid on degrees that you haven't used--why, exactly, should we lend you even more for yet another likely useless degree?" There would be nothing like having to live with the consequences of one's imprudent lending decisions to put an end to irresponsible adventures in higher education at public expense.
Unfortunately, Judge Gordon's ruling in Todd's case seems to point in another direction: toward relaxing the non-dischargeabiity rules by judicial fiat, so that ever-large numbers of people can load their student debt onto the backs of taxpayers on the basis of some chronic ailment that should have barred their borrowing in the first place. That's the worst of both worlds.
We attended a delightful Jubilee party that some Brit friends threw yesterday. Jolly good fun. Buckets of Pimm's Cup. Our friends were also celebrating their achievement of American citizenship, about which they feel proud. There are tight citizenship quotas for northern European immigrants despite our friends' being a Cambridge-educated economist and mathematician. I think he has waited ten years, working with a green card. Their house was flying both Brit and American flags for the occasion.
One of a bunch of cool pics from the year of the Queen's coronation (h/t AVI). What are those bags hanging on the wall?
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.
In the fall of 1971, in grad school, I did a 60-page analysis of the Nixon/Kissinger détente policy. I concluded it was largely a holding action meant to slow down what otherwise was believed by its primaries as the inevitable declining power of the West in the face of rising Soviet and Chinese power. I termed it “existential defeatism”. Although pragmatic coping in many ways, defeatism or its better cousin called nuance, has not been terribly beneficial to US interests since.
There isn’t a linear relationship from 1971 to now, but rather a trend. This trend is toward restraint in asserting our interests, with the confused interruption of our Iraq experience. It is increasingly coupled with deference to the alternate or contrary interests of other countries, called internationalism.
These policies can take little credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, under the weight of its own internal contradictions, in 1989. On the other hand, China kept ascending, US fecklessness in Indochina is touted by Islamist radicals as encouragement for their causes, and Russia is following its old path contrary to Western interests. Meanwhile, many of today’s foreign policy gurus tout international law and international organizations, usually most often in play to hinder or attack Western interests.
Restraint in foreign engagements, particularly military, is certainly to be prized unless clear US national interests, mechanisms, and follow-through plans are pretty clearly present, and articulated by our national political leaders so necessary to domestic support. However, instead, what we’ve increasingly seen is muddling and disparagement of the very concept of US national interests, substituting outright negativity, conceptual distractions, and refusal to actively engage unless elusive or impossible international consensus is reached, to include Russia and China who aren’t shy about exerting themselves actively in opposition to US or Western interests. In effect, as well, the US and Western Europe have too often abandoned its moral core, as well, to the favor of those who don’t share it or deride or hate it.
All that said, this critique must face the serious real-world problems we face immediately in the Middle East and coastal Asia, and the influence of financial problems.
Understandably nervous and hesitant to confront crazies in the Middle East, we have defaulted influence to Iran and to Russia.
Not wanting to indiscriminately support or arm possible future foes, as we did in Afghanistan to chase out the Soviet Union, there is little effort to discriminate and strengthen those not antagonistic to the West. Syria has been a cat’s paw of Iran to ferment conflict. Our non-action furthers this, rather than decrease it, aside from the humanitarian toll on Syrians with Iranians on the ground adding to the murders and Russian arms arriving in torrents. The US is rightly seen in the region and elsewhere as ineffectual, hardly worth allying with. Meanwhile, enough said, Iran continues its steady march to nuclear weapons, stirring others in the region to possibly also do so, further destabilizing international order and security.
One would hope that the US is doing more behind the scenes than is apparent, but no observers have seen such which is telling in the usually open sieve of reporting and NGOs. The US should be doing more in Syria, and more openly and assertively, including arms to those less problematic. The US should announce a date certain in 2012, after which all informed analysts recognize it will be too late, by which the US will devastatingly bomb—as only the US could -- Iran’s nuclear installations if there is not a convincing abandonment of Iran’s nuclear war-making capacities. Neither in Syria nor Iran are US military forces necessary on the ground. But short of that we have done far too little to influence the outcomes, leaving the threats to grow and to undermine confidence in the West, and influencing Middle East countries and citizens to accommodate or ally themselves with Iran.
The primary rationale for the US Senate to ratify its decades-pending Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) may be to strengthen the hand in an international forum of the states in coastal Asia against the expansiveness of China. However, all, including China, have long since joined LOST, and that hasn’t slowed China’s claim of virtually the entire South China Sea as its own. China’s navy is expanding, often acting aggressively toward other states, and its oil and gas exploration is reaching into deep waters near other countries. See this map, the red lines far away from China being ocean borders that China wildly claims.
The little coat embroidered with birds Is irretrievably ruined. We bought it in the spring. She stood upon a chair And raised her arms like branches. I leaned my head against her breast Listening to that heavy bird Thudding at the center of our happiness.
Everything is dragged away. The clothes that were so gay Lie in attics, like the dolls With which wild children used to play. The bed where the loved one lies Is a river bed on which Enchanting haunting life Is carried where the current may - Tangled among blocks of ice. Nests and singing branches Were the springs of yesterday.
Two female soldiers 
Why Anchoress 
Let no crisis go to waste. It's always a "crisis" when government wants power and control, and it is in the nature of governments to desire those things.
The entirety of 
My Mom, an avid gardener and an avid reader, recommends Richard Mabey's 
Deconstructed Fluffernutter sandwich via Laughing Squid. Some blame the fluffy Lefty brains of Massachusetts residents on being raised on this stuff.
The Little Coat