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.
..the interest of individuals is above the exclusive interest of the state. The power of the whole is not to be set in the balance for a moment with freedom-that is, the conscience of the subject - and those who act on other principle are the worst of criminals.
Marines urinating on the dead? This is war. - The video of US marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters has shocked many. But the dehumanizing of the enemy was much worse back in the day.
When I was beginning to read I imagined that bridges had something to do with birds and with what seemed to be cages but I knew that they were not cages it must have been autumn with the dusty light flashing from the streetcar wires and those orange places on fire in the pictures and now indeed it is autumn the clear days not far from the sea with a small wind nosing over dry grass that yesterday was green the empty corn standing trembling and a down of ghost flowers veiling the ignored fields and everywhere the colors I cannot take my eyes from all of them red even the wide streams red it is the season of migrants flying at night feeling the turning earth beneath them and I woke in the city hearing the call notes of the plover then again and again before I slept and here far downriver flocking together echoing close to the shore the longest bridges have opened their slender wings
This is something that gets obscured in today's medical reporting--everyone, as they get older, will get sick for some reason and die at some point. The biggest risk factor for heart disease and cancer isn't BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc....it's age. And to a large extent, the incidence of those diseases is random; doing everything right lowers your risk of disease, but not to zero, and usually not to that small a fraction of the risk for the general population.
Too busy this week and week-end to do a good Editor-in-Chief job on Maggie's, but Vanderleun is doing a great job at his place. Image on the right is an example.
In America, the poor do not stay poor, and the rich do not remain rich. Overall, in the US, both great wealth and difficult poverty seem to be transient. I am opposed to the death tax because it discourages people from building a secure and independent future for their kids and grandkids.
Of course, death taxes seem not to affect the very wealthy.
From the latter link:
...if upward mobility is so common, why are there still plenty of poor people in this country? In a recent video about income mobility hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies, economist Steven Horwitz of Saint Lawrence University explains:“Immigrants and young people entering the labor force come into that income distribution at low levels of income. They become the new poor when the old poor slowly move their way up.” Horwitz concludes that “even though a first glance at the data may make it seem as if the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the reality of the United States in the early 21st century is that everyone is getting richer, poor and rich alike.”
But-but-but, his computer models proved the link between good health and red wine. So whats the problem? So what if he made up a few numbers and tweaked the model to coincide with his theory, nothing new, everyone does it. Hey, the more red wine I drink, the better I feel. That’s all the modeling I need.
The reporting of the court martial of Frank Wuterich’s actions in 2005 at Haditha fails to adequately explain the background of the specific charges and, also, the standards of evidence that must be met. Without that crucial information, the reader of daily news reports is likely justifiably confused. The news reports are being more circumspect than previously in parroting accusations of willful massacre. But, major media reports are mostly cherry-picking comments from prosecution witnesses, briefly passing over defense cross-examination, and most importantly not presenting the crucial context of the testimony and examinations.
The core issues in the court martial are whether beyond a reasonable doubt Frank Wuterich acted (1) with dereliction of duty to not obey rules of engagement, (2) leading to his own actions and command culpability for negligent homicide in the deaths at Haditha that otherwise would have been avoided. These are reductions of charges from the original charges of murder against Frank Wuterich. Several other charges were thrown out in opening motions at the court martial.
These key points were examined in Frank Wuterich’s Article 32 proceeding. An Article 32 hearing is comparable to a preliminary hearing in civilian law, with even broader latitude in searching for whether there is cause to proceed to a court martial trial. In an Article 32 hearing, the standard is reasonable doubt. In a court martial, generally following civilian federal trial guidelines, the higher standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. The Article 32 hearing officer concluded that the throw-the-sink, murder charges brought by the prosecution were excessive to the standard of reasonable doubt, and that a key prosecution witness granted immunity – then Corporal, now Sergeant, Sanick Dela Cruz -- was not credible, his story changing multiple times.
"Bullshit" is the title of a well-known 1986 essay by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, now expanded into a short book.
Two of Frankfurt's main points seem to be that, 1, the bullshitter is more motivated to create an impression of himself rather than to communicate substantial true material and 2. bullshit may be more insidious than lying. From a review of the book here:
...bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
Besides being a very bright fellow, his life as an academic gives him unique experience with the world of bullshit. We are all bullshitters, to some extent, but some make a career of it.
Frankfurt's original 6-page essay can be read here. One quote:
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
I am just finishing it. One hell of a tale - and I do mean hell. The xenophobia and racism of the Japanese is well-known, but the book will give one a harrowing picture of it.
Mentioned to my father-in-law that I was reading it, and he told me he saw Zamperini run in Madison Square Garden. We young'uns don't realize that Track and Field used to be perhaps the most popular sport in America.
Pic is Louie Zamperini carrying the Olympic Torch in 1984.
Yesterday, Warren Buffett did something that was, in my opinion, outlandish and childish. He says he felt guilty for his comment about needing to pay more in taxes, so he took it upon himself to offer a dollar for dollar match for every extra payment a GOP member of Congress makes. Except for Mitch McConnell, who he will match 3 to 1.
Buffett is mistaken on several levels. First, as the linked article points out, why weren't Democrats and Obama included in this dare? Clearly this is Buffett's partisan nature and bias showing through. He is seeking to demonize one party over the other, without justification. I haven't seen Democrats lining up to make extra payments, nor have I seen Obama going 'over and above'.
Secondly, and more importantly, I shouldn't have to see anybody making extra payments. Not Buffett, not Democrats, not Republicans, not Obama. Making these payments is a personal decision, not a public one. Buffett went public with his statement last year that the wealthy should pay more taxes. Maybe they should, but I don't think that's a real issue. If Buffett wants to pay more, and T. Boone Pickens doesn't, let one send in the extra check as he sees fit, while the other chooses not to. Buffett went public, so he is turning this into a game. It's a game I'm not interested in, unless it is done fairly. Buffett rigged this game from the start.
He is more interested in making certain politicians look bad. I think it makes him look bad.
...the German vision of a Europe transformed into virtuous northern savers who play honestly and conscientiously by the accepted rules of the game looks hopelessly unrealistic, and never so more than now as the Italians get into the game.
Herbert London: The Failure of the Century's Grand Experiments:
If there is one obvious condition associated with the last century, it is the lack of government humility. Among the century’s leadership there was the self confident belief that “good ideas” will trump tradition, customs, history, even instinct. There were scarcely limits to political ingenuity. Here was the triumph of positivism, the assumption that rationality can subdue emotion. The engineers were in history’s driver’s seat and the lights appeared to be synchronized in green. Somewhere along the way things went wrong and the lights turned crimson...
It is a relief for learn that our Dept. of Homeland Security is busy monitoring Drudge Report, New York Times, blogs, and Twitter. I always thought this DHS was a foolish idea, and that it would never go away. If violent Jihadism disappeared today, the DHS would find or invent work for itself, and continue to grow, for eternity. This is one dumb thing I really do blame Bush for.
As Ronaldus Magnus used to say, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth."
"But, by an inference as false as it is unjust, do you know what the economists are now accused of? When we oppose subsidies, we are charged with opposing the very thing that it was proposed to subsidize and of being the enemies of all kinds of activity, because we want these activities to be voluntary and to seek their proper reward in themselves. Thus, if we ask that the state not intervene, by taxation, in religious matters, we are atheists. If we ask that the state not intervene, by taxation, in education, then we hate enlightenment. If we say that the state should not give, by taxation, an artificial value to land or to some branch of industry, then we are the enemies of property and of labor. If we think that the state should not subsidize artists, we are barbarians who judge the arts useless."
You might suppose that the anti-Vietnam press corps might have approved of this demonstration of independent thinking. But Romney was, after all, a Republican. Moreover, as White makes clear, he was a particular kind of Republican — naïve, innocently moralistic, and old-fashioned — qualities that the liberals in the press were inclined to loathe. Within days, the “brainwashing” quote was everywhere. Eugene McCarthy added a cruel but amusing quip that no brainwashing was needed as “a light rinse should have been sufficient.” Romney’s polls tanked. He was finished.
Driving into "the Hive," as Vanderleun terms it, on the West Side Highway a few days ago. Always exciting for a simple country boy like me. I love the feel of it all, and I have good old friends there and lots of cool places to go to:
We have periodically posted here about eating obsessions, whether overeating, anorexia, "organic" preoccupations, people whose approach to food verges on the medicinal, vegetarianism, food fads and food quackery, etc. We shrinks call it all "orality."
As we have often said here, anybody in the Western World would need to make a full-time effort to avoid an adequate diet. Furthermore, medical science has yet to come up with a consensus on what a "healthy diet" really is. Eskimos thrive on seal fat and sea gull meat. Despite what Mrs. Obama or anybody else tells you, it's all Old Wives Tales. We all would enjoy believing that we can control Fate in some way by one sort of magic or another. Eat fruit? Why? It's pure carbs and just makes you fat. Spend good money on vitamins? Why? It's all Magical Thinking.
During most of human history, any food was scarce and costly to obtain. We have tons of good food, cheap. If anything, too much and too tasty, and we don't have to do drudge labor in the fields all day to get some of it.
I have seen plenty of sturdy young athletes grow up on nothing but Cheerios, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Eat what you like, and thank God we have food choices.
Where's my Big Mac? I've been waiting here two minutes already.
Genius! 
ECHOING LIGHT 
Too busy this week and week-end to do a good Editor-in-Chief job on Maggie's, but Vanderleun is doing a great job at
Don't swim in it: 
Seems like everybody I run into has already read this book: 
Photo via 