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.
As I write in my book: “Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity.” The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate. Marriage is all but defunct, except for William and Kate, fellow toffs, upscale gays and Muslims. From page 204: “For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population.”
The issue at hand, it seems to me, is whether there are any real limits to federal power these days. Seeing as we were a nation founded on the principle of limits on central power, it's an important discussion, to put it mildly. Some say that debate was over many years ago.
When I think about marketing genius, I usually think of bottled water. However, maybe the marketing of vodka takes the cake.
Water and vodka lack color, flavor, and odor, so they both present formidable marketing challenges which Madison Avenue has masterfully overcome in the effort to persuade you to part with your hard-earned money.
"There are people here with nothing," this rioter continued: nothing, that is, except an education that has cost $80,000, a roof over their head, clothes on their back and shoes on their feet, food in their stomachs, a cellphone, a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, an electric stove, heating and lighting, hot and cold running water, a guaranteed income, free medical care, and all of the same for any of the children that they might care to propagate.
But while the rioters have been maintained in a condition of near-permanent unemployment by government subvention augmented by criminal activity, Britain was importing labor to man its service industries. You can travel up and down the country and you can be sure that all the decent hotels and restaurants will be manned overwhelmingly by young foreigners; not a young Briton in sight (thank God).
It's about the unintended consequences of undiscerning compassion. Or, to be a bit more cynical, vote-buying. Genuine gratitude is the rarest of human sentiments.
Standing before a backdrop of graffiti, Cameron said Britain's damaged society had for too long been one which "incites laziness, that excuses bad behavior, that erodes self-discipline, that discourages hard work."
Honestly, close your eyes and try to imagine a scenario in which liberals would ever say that enough money has been spent, enough federal government power exerted. You will fail -- because there is just no satisfying liberals.
Some people become concerned with who and what they are, and some people just forge onward and never think twice about it.
To keep it simple, I'll tell you how to "find yourself." Engage the world in all the ways you can: socially, spiritually, economically, morally, avocationally in sports, volunteer activities, clubs, going places and doing things, and in hobbies.
By doing those things, the world will tell you what and who you are. Engaging reality is the best teacher. My experience teaches me that people avoid some engagments with the world because they do not want to learn what reality has to teach them about who and what they are.
Generally speaking, Prof. Reality teaches humility as its first lesson, and goes on from there.
A mechanic was removing a cylinder-head from the motor of a Harley motorcycle when he spotted a well-known cardiologist in his shop.
The cardiologist was there waiting for the service manager to come and take a look at his bike when the mechanic shouted across the garage..
"Hey, Doc, want to take a look at this?"
The cardiologist, a bit surprised, walked over to where the mechanic was working on the motorcycle.
The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and asked, "So Doc, look at this engine. I open its heart, take the valves out, repair any damage, and then put them back in, and when I finish, it works just like new. So how come I make $39,675 a year and you get the really big bucks ($1,695,759) when you and I are doing basically the same work?"
The cardiologist paused, smiled and leaned over, then whispered to the mechanic...........
What's the difference between Bruschetta (pronounced "bresketta") and Crostini? Here's one answer. And don't forget the crouton, which I like made with whole slices, not cubes.
And here's a quote from a piece in The New Statesman on bruschetta, Toast of the Tiber:
"The relationship between bruschetta and "garlic bread" is a peculiar one. In principle, bruschetta is the honest, poor man's original -nothing but charred, oil-soaked bread rubbed with garlic-while "garlic bread" is the embellished pretender. But somehow things have got mixed up. British democracy has confused them. Garlic bread became genuinely democratised, sold in dispiriting packs of two, or even four, for 99p in the brightest freezer cabinets. Meanwhile, the monied torchbearers of democracy - in fact, the elite - went crazy for bruschetta, paying a small fortune for pane covered in broad beans or anchovies at the River Cafe. And so, bizarrely, buttery indigestible garlic bread has come to seem unpretentious "people's food", while bruschetta is the poncy snack of the People's Party. This is an unfortunate state of affairs. Everything that is best about bruschetta -- its power to bestow well-being in one crisp bite -- is betrayed by garlic bread. To begin with, as Marcella Hazan points out: "The most important ingredient in bruschetta is not garlic but olive oil." The garlic on bruschetta is rubbed on, so that you inhale the fresh garlic perfume as a backdrop to the olive oil, rather than eating great lumps of it. The origin of bruschetta was probably the ancient Roman practice of tasting newly pressed olive oil on a piece of bread, with or without garlic -- a practice that has continued in the oil-producing areas of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. The name derives from bruscare, meaning "to roast over coals". Alice Waters's version of bruschetta involves frying country bread in large amounts of oil, until thoroughly impregnated, and Elizabeth David recommends baking slices of white bread in the oven."
Thus we learn that American "garlic bread" is not really Italian. The whole piece is interesting, and makes me wonder whether we American garlic-lovers - me, anyway - use our garlic far more heavy-handedly than we should. I will do Bruschetta this way:
Sourdough bread slices lightly fried in oil then garlic-rubbed, chopped fresh tomatoes barely warmed in a little oil with sea salt and maybe a touch of vinegar (plus maybe a little lightly sauteed onion) then fresh basil and parsley sprinkled on top. I think a sloppy Bruschetta is just fine if the oil and tomatoes are excellent, but I think I prefer a little plate of Crostini with a glass of wine.
In Italy we were served Crostini that were simple thin toasted baguette slices (garlic-rubbed with a little salt) with oil and some herbs (including Rosemary), others with a very light smear of pesto or goat cheese, and some others with just a little bit of sauteed shallot. Clearly the oil is the main point - and the wine. The oil has to be the best. Any added flavor should be subtle.
I think I prefer my Crostini lightly salted and fried in olive oil with a bit of garlic without any other flavor added on top. However, that would be properly known as the French "crouton." My family loves these fried slices of Italian bread or baguettes, and will eat them with anything. In fact, the Pupette makes then now, for snacks.
If you Google "crostini+recipe" you can find a ton of ideas, most of which I think are excessive.
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address, June 2005
Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
(It's a short speech - continue reading on continuation page below)
"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."
Socialist politician Adolf Hitler, as quoted in American Thinker's The Democrats' Big Lie
The Democratic leadership’s top priority isn’t to get America’s fiscal house in order. It is, as one aide candidly told The Hill, “to continue to raise resources to grow and preserve our majority.”
I am still up in the mountains, with marginal communications with civilization and rare internet service. A party line phone, and no cell service. I do have a rocking chair on the porch.
So, the days of leaving college to jump around from half-job to half-job, or to travel and “find yourself,” or to just hang out for awhile before joining the rat race are over.If you do it, there are consequences.
There always were consequences. Adult life is not child's play unless you have a good-sized trust fund. Of course, you can always do liberal arts grad study in England: they are desperate for suckers. Afterwards, you can wait tables or join riots to burn down some entrepreneurial Paki's fruit stand or some struggling family's haberdashery.
The academic bubble is not bursting, but it is a slow, steady leak which will leave many would-be paid scholars unemployed. My best advice, which is worth exactly what you pay for it, is to get a real productive job and to pursue your scholarly interests on your own, as most people have done in the past. It's going to be difficult to get paid for a hobby in the near future. No free ride unless you are a Talmud scholar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, married to a rich wife.
A friend sent me this YouTuber, from 1952. As I said, only the names and the dates change.
The YouTube notes are fascinating, below. Remember the ditty, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?
Myrtle Eleanor Cooper (December 24, 1913--February 8, 1999) and Scott Greene Wiseman (November 8, 1908--January 31, 1981),[1] known professionally as Lulu Belle and Scotty, were one of the major country music acts of the 1930s and 1940s, dubbed The Sweethearts of Country Music.
Cooper was born in Boone, North Carolina; Wiseman was from Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Lulu Belle and Scotty enjoyed enormous national popularity thanks to their regular appearances on National Barn Dance on WLS-AM in Chicago, a rival to WSM-AM's Grand Ole Opry. Barn Dance enjoyed a large radio audience in the 1930s and early 1940s with some 20 million Americans regularly tuning in.
The duo married on December 13, 1934, one year after Wiseman became a regular on Barn Dance (Cooper had been a solo performer there since 1932). The duo is best known for their self-penned classic "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?", which became one of the first country songs to attract major attention in pop circles and was recorded by many artists in both genres. Cooper was the somewhat dominant half of the duo with a comic persona as a wisecracking country girl. Her most famous novelty number was "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It's Flavor On The Bedpost". In 1938, she was named Favorite Female Radio Star by the readers of Radio Guide magazine, an unusual recognition for a country performer.
Lulu Belle and Scotty recorded for record labels including Vocalion Records, Columbia Records, Bluebird Records; and Starday Records, in their final sessions during the 1960s reprising their old hits. They were among the first country music stars to venture into feature motion pictures, appearing in such films as Shine on Harvest Moon (1938), County Fair (1941) and The National Barn Dance (1944).
The couple retired from show business in 1958, excepting occasional appearances, going on to new careers in teaching (Wiseman) and politics (Cooper). Cooper served two terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives as the Democratic representative for three counties. In 1977, she gave a memorable speech in which she revealed that she had been raped on the country music circuit.[2]
Wiseman was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971. After his death in 1981 from a heart attack in Gainesville, Florida, Cooper married Ernest Stamey in 1983; and in 1985 recorded her first album in 20 years for a small traditional music label.
Picked up my car from service today. They charged me $97/per hour for labor. I remember when auto repair was $17/hour, 20/hr if you watched, 25/hour if you helped.
Well, my gunsmith charges $150/hr, and my local electronics repair joint charges $200 now. There definitely is an economic case for learning how to do something that people need.
How the flavorless, colorless, odorless spirit became a billion-dollar business
Image on right from Knish's 
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