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.
I have a GI friend and colleague who makes most of his living sticking tubes down people's esophagi and up their behinds.
He told me that he recently took on a 1 day/week job at a Medicaid clinic to keep busy in this economy, and to do some low-fee work for the benefit of the community. Apparently people who pay or partly-pay for their own scopings are putting it off.
After four months of it, he was frustrated. He told me that over half of the scheduled patients do not keep their office appointments, and 2/3 do not show up for their scope appointments. He is quitting that experiment (leaving them without any GI person), and told me "No wonder these people are on Medicaid. If they cannot at least treat their doctors' time with respect, how can they hope to function in the normal world? It almost seems like they just do whatever they feel like doing. I end up just sitting there, like a chump while I pay my malpractice insurance bills to cover the work."
Well, yes, often enough. That is, of course, not an effective life plan for them. A sense of entitlement will get you nowhere in life.
Readers know that I donate one day each week to a charity clinic at which I decided to take no compensation. It is a component of my tithing. I told him that I give my charity patients two chances, but he rightly explained to me that, as a specialist with only consultation appointments, people feel no ongoing relationship with him, view him as a free government technician while he wants to be caring, engaged, and of help to them. Their physician, in other words.
I told him what he had already learned. The poor often do not have good health stats because they do not take care of themselves, and are often stuck in bad circumstances because they do not function reliably or behave respectfully in the world. I advised him that he was wrong to take it personally. He said that he could not help but to take it personally because he had made a serious decision to be of help to people in need and could not tolerate the lack of gratitude and respect. Said he would rather be on the golf course where his frustration would be on his own terms.
Also, forgot to mention his relevant unpleasant detail that when they do show up, they often have not accurately followed the pre-scoping directions, making his job impossible and disgusting. "It's a set-up for lawsuits," he said. "Can't see a freaking thing. I am not Roto-Rooter."
I tell him that that is the same as people who lie to me. He is right that some greedy and dishonorable people are looking for lawsuits anywhere they can find them, but you cannot practice good medicine with that at the top of your mind. Medical care is not a "service," it is a very human collaboration. Fortunately or unfortunately, you cannot "service" your body and/or mind like you do your car.
That is something that the bureaucrats just don't get. They will want us docs to be auto mechanics.
We all must adapt! With Global Cooling hastening our certain death and doom by freezing to death, we offer this info in our annual Winter in New England series. God willing and if we survive Climate Change, we will extend this series next fall with some new additions.
Let's face it: 4 WD is is for petite blond yuppie wives who do not know how to drive in snow and mud while chatting on their cell - and for hunters who like to take vehicles to gnarly places. There's a cheap solution.
Snow and mud tires are called "Winter tires" nowadays. They are made of a softer rubber (so as to provide better suppleness in cold temperatures), which is why they don't last as long as regular tires. That's the reason to put them on in November and to take them off in March or April (around here, anyway). At that rate, they will last 3-4 seasons at the minimum.
Important safety considerations with winter tires: Always put them on all 4 wheels and never replace just one: replace all 4 at the same time.
Decent snow tires will turn your old Chevette into the rough equivalent of a 4 WD. But how do you know whether you need them? In my opinion, if you need them, you will know it - but here's a piece on the subject.
With global cooling picking up its pace, everybody may need them soon. 4 WD is good but, where you need them, winter tires are as good or better.
Fears don't match facts, often, because people want to pretend they are in control of Fate. Eat your broccoli and tofu and skip your immunizations, suckers.
If you're a mature, sophisticated adult (that is, over 50), then you remember Cracked magazine as being one of the staples of your early youth, right alongside Mad magazine and Playboy. Gotta get your education from somewhere, right?
Well, IMHO, Cracked has turned into the premiere comedy/parody/satire site on the Web. There are a handful of imitations around, but Cracked is the best-written and most polished. Some of their stuff is exceptionally clever.
I found the following Cracked article both revealing and insightful, and immediately confess to being guilty of a huge number at least one of the sins he mentions. My thought at the end was, anyone getting on the Internet for the first time should read this first.
Oh, before we start, would you mind if I asked a rather delicate question?
American life, as journalist Sebastian Junger observed in 1999, "has become staggeringly easy," even "vaguely unfulfilling." The context of Junger's remarks was an exploration into why some people deliberately seek danger nowadays, whether it's bungee-jumping from a high bridge or teasing grizzly bears in the (ultimately fatal) manner of Timothy Treadwell.
The political parallel to Junger's thesis is the oft-cited "solution in search of a problem," of which the Our Children's Trust lawsuit is but one example. (For others, I need only refer you to any Democratic Party political platform.) While it is certainly true that our water and air are not 100% pure (whatever that may be), the fact is that the goal posts keep getting moved back with every improvement in observation that we achieve.
Mayor Mike said this morning that if there is anyone to blame for the mortgage crisis that led the collapse of the financial industry, it's not the "big banks," but Congress.
He is an amateur. That's part of why people like him, but not a reason that people will decide to vote for him. Obama is still surprisingly popular.
Israel: A true ally in the Middle East - Israeli contributions to U.S. national interests, underappreciated by many, include enhanced counter-terrorism, intelligence and technology useful in urban warfare.
Magnificent place, wonderful gardens. Gardens make a house a home. Hydrangeas and cottage gardens make a garden homey. Note that many if not most of the charming homes in Woodstock are second homes, summer and ski-season getaways. This one too, no doubt:
However, the science is settled (via Watts): there is probably or possibly a short-term (centuries) warming trend, if the data is worth anything (about which I am a skeptic). Nothing to think twice about unless you plan on bringing farming back to Greenland in 300 years:
Note the dramatic correlation with global CO2 emissions! None. Here's a better correlation which shows some real proof: Global temperatures caused by decrease of Mediterranean pirates.
QED - it's a linear inverse relationship This cause is therefore settled science, and the obvious solution to refrigerate ourselves is to import more pirates into the Med until we are cold enough.
Brain science “will eventually begin to influence how the public views justice and responsibility,” Dr. Gazzaniga said at a recent conference here sponsored by the Edge Foundation.
And there is no guarantee, he added, that its influence will be a good one.
Prof Gazzaniga is a good, humble scientist who knows the limits of what his area can offer us.
The Reins Act is part of the Republican Jobs Bill, antithetical in most respects to the Democrats killing-jobs bills and regulations that we’ve suffered the past 3-years. There are 192 co-sponsors (text and sponsors) in the House, and growing. Check and see if your Congressman has signed on yet. The major media, of course, has not paid much of any attention to the Reins Act. President Obama would, of course, veto it, but he may not be in the position to do so after next year’s elections. Then, await the howls of the legions profiteering from the federal regulatory behemoth. But, Congress must be held accountable for regulations promulgated in its name.
Last week, House Speaker Boehner said of pending job-killers, “Today there are 219 such rules that are sitting in these agencies ready to come rolling out and to impose new costs on a private sector that’s struggling to keep its head above water and to create jobs.”
Amity Shlaes points out that in 1933 President Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration “had generated more paper than the entire legislative output of the federal government since 1789.” (The Forgotten Man) In 1935, the US Supreme Court found the NRA unconstitutional for infringing on the separation of powers by delegating powers to the executive properly those of the legislative branch.
Firm action by Congress to rein in costly regulation is sorely needed. Over the past few years, the cost and number of new regulations have increased dramatically. This increase did not begin with President Obama, but it has accelerated markedly during his tenure. From inauguration day 2009 through March of this year, regulatory agencies imposed some 75 major new regulations (defined as those costing $100 million or more), imposing some $38 billion of new costs annually on the economy and consumers.[1]
This is on top of the continuing burden of the existing stock of red tape, which has been estimated at some $1.75 trillion per year.[2] This burden not only increases costs for consumers but hinders enterprises from growing and jobs from being created.
[A] bill to increase legislative control over and accountability for federal regulatory policy. The central provisions of the REINS Act provide that new “major rules” – those regulations expected to cost over $100 million annually – may not become effective unless a joint resolution of approval passes Congress. The Act would further create an expedited review process designed to ensure that there is a prompt up-or-down vote in each house of Congress on all new “major” rules, which represent less than five percent of the 3,000-plus federal regulations promulgated each year….
The question is not whether we would have “more efficient and more effective regulation” but whether we would have regulations that more closely follow the value preferences of the American people. Existing regulatory decisions are not made by “scientists and engineers” who have regulatory authority due to their independent expertise, but by executive and independent agencies that are headed by political appointees who are granted regulatory authority by Congress. Their regulatory decisions are informed by scientific and technical information, but the ultimate regulatory choices are based on normative judgments – whether it is worth imposing X amount of costs for Y benefits, whether it is fair to impose particular costs, risks or burdens on particular segments of the population, whether environmental gains in one area are worth safety or environmental losses in another, and so on. These are legislative policy judgments for which legislators should be held accountable.
Critics of the Rein Act say it will gum up the works. But, as Heritage points out, there are not hundreds but a few dozen such regs a year, "hardly an unmanageable number." And, surely more worthwhile for Congress to analyze and act upon than much else that it does. -- Regulatory threats led to the housing values meltdown. Next Friday, in what's billed as a major speech, Mitt Romney will address government spending at Americans For Prosperity Tribute to Ronald Reagan dinner. Americans For Prosperity supports the Reins Act. Let's see if Romney does.
At WhatWillTheyLearn.com, students can click onto ACTA's recent survey of more than 1,000 American four-year institutions—and find out how their colleges and universities rate. Two findings jump out. First, the more costly the college, the less likely it will require a demanding core curriculum. Second, public institutions generally do better here than private ones—and historically black colleges such as Morehouse and service academies such as West Point amount to what ACTA calls "hidden gems."
Alas, much of the debate over the value of a college degree breaks down one of two ways. Either people pit the liberal arts against the sciences—"Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?" asks Florida Gov. Rick Scott—or they plump for degrees that are thought to be more practical (e.g., business). Both are probably mistakes.
Shanghai Gets Supersized - Boasting 200 skyscrapers, China's financial capital has grown like no other city on earth – and shows few signs of stopping
Are Twentysomethings Expecting Too Much? - They were raised to believe they could do anything, and now they’re demanding more from work than previous generations ever did. Will they change the world or have to lower their sights?
Right now we have what the Left so fervently desires — an us-against-them Tocquevillian nightmare that can only exacerbate the class warfare currently being whipped up in Washington.
In many parts of the country prospective homebuyers will pay almost as much in property taxes as in mortgage interest! No wonder the residential real estate market can’t come up for air, and why the American middle class feels that it is fighting for its existence
The fair-lending task force’s original policy paper undercuts the notion the financial crisis was all about banker “greed,” though it certainly played a role after the fact. Rather, it offers compelling evidence that the crisis evolved chiefly from government mandates and threats to increase lending to applicants who could not afford them.
But a strange thing happened on the way to the 21st century: political correctness as imposed by a variety of lawyers, human rights activists and the like progressively reduced the power of the state to defend its population against external aggressors to the point where it failed to provide an adequate level of protection. When private individuals could no longer rely on uniformed officialdom to protect them, they did the natural thing. They took the matter of warfare back into their own hands.
The problem the New Class faces at this point is the psychological and social self-perceptions of a status group that is alienated (as we marxists say) from traditional labor by its semi-privileged upbringing. It is, for the moment, insistent not just on white-collar work as its birthright and unable to conceive of much else. It does not celebrate the dignity of labor; it conceived of itself as existing to regulate labor. So it has purified itself to the point that not just any white-collar work will do. It has to be, as Michelle Obama instructed people in what now has to be seen as another era, virtuous non-profit or government work. Those attitudes are changing, but only slowly; the university pipelines are still full of people who cannot imagine themselves in any other kind of work, unless it means working for Apple or Google.
The idea is that employers can decide which certificate level they would like to see in the hands of applicants in order to match them to the job at hand. (They can also check with ACT to verify that a certificate is genuine.) The NCRC test avoids such high-school stumbling-blocks as algebra, geometry, grammar, and advanced vocabulary—the stuff of the SAT and the regular ACT test. Instead the NCRC test, designed to focus on real-world in contrast to academic aptitude, contains just three WorkKeys: "Applied Mathematics," "Reading for Information," and "Locating Information." Still, while the skills assessed in the three WorkKeys are fairly basic, (Applied Mathematics requires no more than eighth-grade math), to perform well enough to earn a Platinum-level certificate would probably challenge many college graduates.
I tried out the most difficult of the sample NCRC questions on ACT's website and found myself delving deep into memory for the formula for calculating the volume of a cylinder (Applied Mathematics), attempting to correlate two complex soil-sample graphs (Locating Information), and poring over a legal document (Reading for Information). Critical thinking and the ability to use abstract data to solve concrete problems are clearly among the skills assessed. ACT has also developed a list of additional WorkKey assessments that employers in search of specific talents such as business writing or applying technology, or "soft" interpersonal skills such as listening, conflict resolution, or working in a team, can use to fit applicants to the specific demands of a job.
Recently, I posted about Steve Jobs. I believe, despite faults which he undoubtedly possessed, Steve was a visionary who radically altered our lives for the better over the last thirty years. Were it not for his untimely passing, he may have altered them further in the next twenty to thirty years.
It was part of his lifestyle, his mission, to look at things in a manner which was different from everyone else. He took computing from the realm of technology and moved it into culture and fashion. He did this without moving out of forward thinking technology. This kind of transformative behavior is unusual. Very few entrepreneurs are able to retain a firm hold on massive corporate structures. Even fewer can hold on and maintain a sharp entrepreneurial vision.
Now that Jobs is gone, Apple will be left to see if Jobs' vision was his alone or if someone else can pick up the slack at the company. However, in terms of personalities which society perceives as 'transformative', we are left with a gaping hole. There doesn't appear to be anyone quite like Steve Jobs.
I read this article recently, suggesting Jeff Bezos could be the "next Steve Jobs". I think he's definitely in the running. Jeff has changed the way people think about buying things. Like Jobs, I'm sure he's got flaws and faults, but I'm curious to see if he can be transformative. Even today, mom and pop shops in towns across the US are cursing firms like Amazon and Wal-Mart. But this isn't a fault of Bezos, it's simply the nature of the economy, which is one of change.
Are there other personalities out there who could be the "next Steve Jobs"? Certainly there are, and we may not have even heard of some of them yet.
Just got power back at ye olde Maggie's HQ. Looks like our servers held up with my pre-posts and the other postings. These links are from Bruce, mostly, because I had a productive internet-free, heat-free and electric-illumination-free weekend -
What is worrying is that almost a decade of energy investing hasn’t produced any home runs -- no green-energy equivalents of eBay, Amazon, Google or Facebook. The modest, incremental advances we have seen don’t perceptibly move the needle on the energy problem.
In the meantime, however, a real revolution has happened in traditional energy -- one that poses a serious challenge to companies and investors betting on alternative energy. This breakthrough is arguably one of the greatest advances in energy production since the 1960s. And it came not from a Silicon Valley company, or from MIT or Stanford, but from George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherd who immigrated to the U.S.
I usually get my identifications wrong, but I think Sipp would say that this old house in Wellfleet, MA is not so much an architectural style as a local New England vernacular. Tell me why I am wrong.
Like so many homes of its era (I would date this one 1850-80), they put expensive clapboard on the front, and cheaper cedar shakes elsewhere. Wish I had done that with my house because painting is so damn expensive if you hire it out.
My plan for the future is either that new semi-fake impermeable artificial, pigment-infused "wood", or natural cedar shakes. Can't afford continual painting. Just cannot win against the laws of entropy.
I love homey houses like this one, right there on the street so you can say "Howdy" to your neighbors on their evening stroll, and invite them up on the porch for a lemonade or a beer if you are in the mood for a chat.
I have a GI friend and colleague who makes most of his living sticking tubes down people's esophagi and up their behinds. 
If you're a mature, sophisticated adult (that is, over 50), then you remember Cracked magazine as being one of the staples of your early youth, right alongside Mad magazine and Playboy. Gotta get your education from somewhere, right?
I thought sexual harassment 
SC Sheriff 
21st Century baby names
