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.
But, none got the well-paying job (I didn't say high-paying, you'll see), as they lacked the confidence Maggie demands to reach out for what they want.
In a 2007 graduation speech to economics undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Sargent offered “a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches,” among them,“Many things that are desirable are not feasible,” and, “Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended.”
Lots of very smart people suck at those social things, however. That's why they should start their own operations. I am glad that Prasher got a few bucks from his work, and, finally, a job.
Our system is founded on our inalienable right to pursue our own happiness in our own way, a right that is supposed actually to result in happiness, or at least in more happiness than if we did not enjoy such a right. When it comes to choosing a mate, we have to consider only our inclinations, and not such things as obligations to society or parents. And when the marriage no longer suits, when the immortal beloved begins to bore us in a way incompatible with the chronic ecstasy we have come to expect as the only worthwhile state for a man (or woman) to be in, we dissolve the marriage and go off in search of another potential source of undiluted and everlasting bliss.
Unfortunately, the pool of candidates has in the meantime contracted. Gone are our student days, when the field seemed so ripe for the harvest. The field has thinned out like the hair on a man’s head. It is time to advertise.
Baseball? Football? No - they are based on foreign sports. Both are quintessentially American, but neither can actually claim North American roots. Cricket, Rounders and Rugby are all British.
Volleyball? Basketball? No - both were invented here in the United States, but they are basically 20th Century pastimes.
Style and approx date, if you can, of this elegant house in Deerfield, MA. Don't say "colonial" - that was an era but is not a design style - although there is something called Colonial Revival. I am having fun learning about this.
When scientists say we know something, we mean only that we have certain ideas and theories whose predictions have been well tested over a certain range of distances or energies. These ideas and theories are not necessarily the eternal laws for the ages or the most fundamental of physical laws. They are rules that apply as well as any experiment could possibly test, over the range of parameters available to current technology. This doesn’t mean that these laws will never be overtaken by new ones. Newton’s laws are instrumental and correct, but they cease to apply at or near the speed of light where Einstein’s theory applies. Newton’s laws are at the same time both correct and incomplete. They apply over a limited domain.
..if I had to pick just one French term of art popularized by a 19th-century German philologist to describe the Occupy Wall Street set and its attendants, it would be Nietzsche’s Ressentiment. Why does good old English “resentment” not suffice? Why is the extra ‘s’ and fancy French pronunciation required? Well, resentment is about begrudging the success of your betters as a way to avoid self-reflection on your own failures. The Nietzsche scholar Robert Solomon described resentment as an “impotence self-righteousness” directed at your superiors, and contrasted it with anger (directed at your equals) and contempt (directed at your inferiors). But ressentiment is what happens when you take that impotent self-righteousness and define a whole morality of good and evil in terms of it, build a whole belief system out of it, build an ideology, a political movement — an occupation.
Waves of nostalgia swept over me. This was exactly how I spent my college years, which were theoretically dedicated to creating a more humane society and stopping the war in Vietnam, but, in reality, mainly involved meetings. Endless meetings in which it was alleged that the winner was the person who managed to remain sitting while everyone else toppled over with boredom. I can’t say definitely, because I never made it to the end.
This Italian (Genoa) adventurer in the employ of Spain didn't discover the New World but, with the help of people like Vespucci, he sure did help put it on the map. New Spain!
In Willpower, the pioneering researcher Roy F. Baumeister collaborates with renowned New York Times science writer John Tierney to revolutionize our understanding of the most coveted human virtue: self-control.
In what became one of the most cited papers in social science literature, Baumeister discovered that willpower actually operates like a muscle: it can be strengthened with practice and fatigued by overuse. Willpower is fueled by glucose, and it can be bolstered simply by replenishing the brain's store of fuel. That's why eating and sleeping- and especially failing to do either of those-have such dramatic effects on self-control (and why dieters have such a hard time resisting temptation).
Baumeister's latest research shows that we typically spend four hours every day resisting temptation. No wonder people around the world rank a lack of self-control as their biggest weakness. Willpower looks to the lives of entrepreneurs, parents, entertainers, and artists-including David Blaine, Eric Clapton, and others-who have flourished by improving their self-control.
From Klavan's post:
Willpower surpasses even intelligence as a predictor of success in life. And Baumeister has performed a number of experiments that convinced him that willpower is something like a muscle: it can be strengthened, conserved, and fatigued...
But in the question period after the presentation, I asked Baumeister how else, aside from eating well, could willpower be strengthened. His response was this: Exercise strengthens willpower just as it strengthens muscles. Even a meaningless exercise of will — training yourself to use your left hand for a task instead of your right, for instance — can make the will stronger over time. He added — I quote from memory: “When I was a boy, I used to be baffled by the idea of profanity. I used to wonder why there should be all these words that everyone knew but nobody used. But now I understand: that strengthens willpower.”
Well, right. In other words, behaving well, behaving responsibly, learning the norms of politeness and refusing to abandon them without good reason tend to make you a more self-controlled, successful, and finally better person.
This is precisely the wisdom my generation threw away. Their promiscuity, adolescent foul-mouthedness, bad manners, and disregard for tradition — all of which they claimed were a new kind of freedom — were in fact the precursors to the very oldest kind of slavery: slavery to one’s own impulses and desires. This slavery, packaged in the Sixties as “identity” or “culture” or “the right to be yourself,” ultimately leads to enslavement by others as it makes you indolent and irresponsible and in need of protection and restraint by the powers that be. A poor black man’s journey from hip hop culture to prison is a perfect example. So is a middle class white man’s journey from moral license and unwarranted praise to his sniveling need for an all-providing — oh, and by the way, all-powerful — state.
Ditto to that, Mr. Klavan. I have always thought of willpower as mental or moral muscle. I've been practicing telling myself for years that I will do, or will not do, one thing or another several times daily. It gets easier, just like running that extra mile.
Willpower and persistence are surely important in pursuing one's goals in life, but I would add other items too, for examples:
Comportment Good vibes Sense of duty Social intuition Good, sane judgement Constructing good life plans - if you want to
When I joined Maggie's recently, I was told it was a voluntary collective. "To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities. Just be eclectic with your topics." I decided this would be interesting and fun.
After watching the Occupy Wall Street movement, however, I've come to realize that Maggie's is just another corporate entity keeping me down, and I am being shortchanged by The System. I've decided to visit some of the Wall Street protesters and get them to join me here. We can complain about how Maggie is keeping us from enjoying the well-deserved fruits of our labor. After all, Maggie's Farm takes advantage of a public good (the internet), so just as people like Elizabeth Warren point out Maggie should, in all fairness, be giving back.
The Wall Street protesters agree and feel that if Maggie won't share, then perhaps the government should step in and make things fair. After all, I went to college. I have debts. I'm putting into The System. Where are my goodies? I want my Dunkin' Donuts! It's time to redistribute!
I call on other writers to join me in creating a list of demands that can be endless. Not having one demand makes us stronger. If we have more, and make the demands go on and on forever, we show strength.
Now I'm going to go take a nap, play some hacky sack, blog on my Mac about how I'm looking out for the best interests of other Maggie's Farmers, have compassion for others, feel good about myself, and engage in many other unproductive activities until I get something for nothing.
(I really hope Maggie has a sense of humor.)
Editor, to Bulldog: We would gladly surrender to the armed occupiers below the fold, but I am afraid most of today's Occupier chicks do not meet Maggie's Farm standards - to say the least. Furthermore, the $5 million Dunkin Donuts pays me each year is all mine! Be a big dog and suck it up! You get a free megaphone out of it!
If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada's C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.
"Even the people who did the experiment will tell you that the chances are very, very small that it's right," Carroll said. "They just want people to understand that it's on the table, it's possible. They don't know what's wrong with their experiment. They would like someone else to check it, to duplicate it, to see what might be wrong."
...the Obama administration — let me be candid here — seems clueless, overpopulated as it is by policy nerds, academic overachievers, and tenured functionaries (cf. Larry Summers’ “there is no adult in charge”). They tend to flash Ivy League certificates, but otherwise have little record of achievement in the private sector. Officials seem to think that long ago test scores, a now Neolithic nod from an Ivy League professor, or a past prize translates into knowing what makes America run in places like Idaho and southern Michigan.
“Healthy men should no longer receive a P.S.A. blood test to screen for prostate cancer because the test does not save lives over all and often leads to more tests and treatments that needlessly cause pain, impotence and incontinence in many, a key government health panel has decided,” reports the New York Times. But JunkScience.com was all over this more than 13 years ago.
Our readers have all been educated on the Cloward-Piven strategy. We have an admin in DC which is steeped in Alinsky, Gramsci, and Cloward-Piven. Just add Lenin and you have their Founding Fathers.
...only three economists predicted job gains anywhere near what Obama claimed. And the median forecast was a piddling 288,000 new jobs. Given the $447 billion price tag, that comes to $1.6 million per job.
How often does the MSM call the O out on his habitual lying?
22:1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:
22:2 "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.
22:3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.
22:4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.'
22:5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,
22:6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.
22:7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
22:8 Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.
22:9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.'
22:10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
22:11 "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe,
22:12 and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless.
22:13 Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
Katrina provided the opportunity to reconstruct NO education from the beginning.
The Big Easy's School Revolution - John White, superintendent of New Orleans' public schools: 'In other cities, charter schools exist in spite of the system. Here they are the system.'
A couple of years ago we took the train up from Stresa to Domodossola, then the Centovalli train over to Locarno in Switzerland, and then the ferry back down Lago Maggiore to Baveno.
We got off the train in some little town to take a hike, but took a left instead of a right and ended up with a multi-mile hike through mountain roads and some amazing tiny alpine towns instead of hiking to the center of the town.
We had to hitchike back just in time to catch the last train of the day to Locarno, and had to run down to catch the last ferry down the lake. Funny now, but it was not funny to me at the time.
It's a cool 2-hour train ride into Switzerland, then back down the lake to Italy through steep gorges, mountain passes, tiny farm villages, vineyards, and alpine forests:
Independents and some Democrats must be joining nearly all Republicans in the recognition of deep dysfunction in the Obama-Reid-Pelosi leadership axis. The lefty pollsters must be telling them that the numbers --weighted correctly and unspun for the MSM-- are collapsing at every level, which is making an already desperate group collectively unhinged.
Let us recall that it was Obama – not McCain – who picked up the most money from the banking, hedge fund, and securities sectors. It was a majority of House Democrats – not Republicans – who voted for TARP. And it was the Democratic financial reform bill – not the GOP’s – that ignored Fannie & Freddie and watered down the Volcker Rule to irrelevance. Tim Geithner's financial bailout plan prompted even John Heilemann (no GOP partisan!) to declare that it was “strikingly favorable to Wall Street.” So, if there was ever a cycle that the charge--“The GOP is a tool of fat cats!”--won’t stick, it is 2012.
Over the long term, however, it’s a different story, and Republicans should pay close attention to what’s happening. The protests on Wall Street this month are only a taste of what will come should the GOP win the White House in 2013.
Not everybody who is complaining was wronged. The We Are the 99 Percent Tumblr includes complaints like this: “My father (multiple PhD’s) lives in his car so that he can do what he loves for a living rather than be a slave to the system.” A Columbia graduate student complained to the Associated Press that she has to eat rice and beans. These are not people who got screwed. These are people who have gainful employment available to them and made follow-your-dreams life choices that reduce their incomes. That’s their prerogative; it’s not anybody else’s problem.
I. There was a naughty boy, A naughty boy was he, He would not stop at home, He could not quiet be- He took In his knapsack A book Full of vowels And a shirt With some towels, A slight cap For night cap, A hair brush, Comb ditto, New stockings For old ones Would split O! This knapsack Tight at's back He rivetted close And followed his nose To the north, To the north, And follow'd his nose To the north.
II. There was a naughty boy And a naughty boy was he, For nothing would he do But scribble poetry- He took An ink stand In his hand And a pen Big as ten In the other, And away In a pother He ran To the mountains And fountains And ghostes And postes And witches And ditches And wrote In his coat When the weather Was cool. Fear of gout, And without When the weather Was warm- Och the charm When we choose To follow one's nose To the north, To the north, To follow one's nose To the north!
III. There was a naughty boy And a naughty boy was he, He kept little fishes In washing tubs three In spite Of the might Of the maid Nor afraid Of his Granny-good- He often would Hurly burly Get up early And go By hook or crook To the brook And bring home Miller's thumb, Tittlebat Not over fat, Minnows small As the stall Of a glove, Not above The size Of a nice Little baby's Little fingers- O he made 'Twas his trade Of fish a pretty kettle A kettle- A kettle Of fish a pretty kettle A kettle!
IV. There was a naughty boy, And a naughty boy was he, He ran away to Scotland The people for to see- There he found That the ground Was as hard, That a yard Was as long, That a song Was as merry, That a cherry Was as red, That lead Was as weighty, That fourscore Was as eighty, That a door Was as wooden As in England- So he stood in his shoes And he wonder'd, He wonder'd, He stood in his Shoes and he wonder'd.
Fresh beer, unpasteurized. My lunch in Bavaria, along the Danube canal, last summer. Roast pork, grilled pork, bratwurst, weisswurst, sauerkraut, applesauce, weissbrau. Hold the veggies! I like German mustard - isn't mustard a vegetable?
Image via 
After watching the Occupy Wall Street movement, however, I've come to realize that Maggie's is just another corporate entity keeping me down, and I am being shortchanged by 
Emitters kindly requested to stop breathing. Image via 