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.
Good questions, in the comments at Watts from Andrew Harding:
The warmists forgot one thing when they tried to persuade the world that AGW is happening and that is common sense. They were unable to provide answers to the following questions: 1) Why should I be paying a fortune for my gas,electricity,petrol and flights and have my countryside disfigured by windmills when industrial giants like China and India do nothing and have booming economies? 2) What % of CO2 in the atmosphere is regarded as “safe”? 3) 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere is man made, how do we deal with the other 97%? 4) Why have we had three cold winters in a row (with a fourth predicted) when we were told that AGW would mean that snow in the UK would be a thing of the past? 5) Likewise with the cool and wet summers? 6) Why are we building more wind turbines when we need power stations running in the background to provide power when the wind doesn’t blow? 7) Why are people who question AGW derided, insulted and described as “mentally ill” by AGW supporters? 8) If the science is “settled” why do we need more money pumped into research? 9) Is AGW as likely to end the world as HIV, bird flu, swine flu, tobacco, alcohol, mad cow disease, the millennium bug, 2012 and whatever date this year that some idiot told us would end mankind? 10) Climategate, hockey sticks, lawyers paid vast sums to prevent data paid for by the public, being seen by the public? 11) The global economic meltdown will be nothing in comparison to what will happen to the worldwide
Returned home at 3:45 P.M. yesterday from pitching for Little League batting practice. Garage door opener did not work. No electricity. Only carry car key, so got house key from secret hiding place. Told all not to open refrigerator for any reason. Got out my 1950's AM transistor radio and tuned to local news station. No one had a clue; just lots of jabber. Got out my 9 flashlights and camping lantern, plus battery powered Jack-o-Lanterns. Gavin (6) is ecstatic that it's Halloween and wants to go trick-or-treating. Supper is room-temp cans of Spaghettios. Yummy. Radio says that school is cancelled for Friday. The boys are even happier. They're deprived of snow days and hurricane days here in San Diego. Kids on my block all playing in the street. No parents mention any regret at missing President Obama's re-run of sameo-sameo speech. Radio says that a worker in Arizona power company tripped something or other during routine maintenance that cascaded throughout western Arizona, Imperial and San Diego counties, southern Orange County, and northern Baja Mexico. Spokesperson for power company at news conference says that the lack of building power plants and power lines (while not mentioning the envirocrazies) makes the power grid more vulnerable. Electricity returned to my area at 3-minutes to 10 P.M. Wife immediately looks for the TV listings so she doesn't miss the ten-thousandths rerun of Law And Order. I finish a spy novel and go to sleep.
If you want to know the one word missing from President Obama's speech, guess, than click here for the answer.
TWEET from skateboarding superhero Tony Hawk: "Is a blackout in North County a way to force the pseudo-hippies to see what it's like to truly 'go green?' Panic on the streets of Leucadia."
We've all seen this sort of urban death spiral happen in many places. Unionization, government costs, and living costs drive business away, taxes rise to support government, the middle class leaves the city behind to drugs, welfare, and dysfunction with a disappearing tax base and a nasty reputation. It is entirely predictable. Hartford, CT is a classic case, voted most pleasant medium-sized city to live in, in the USA, around 1955.
Next, forks? When I took my cc handgun licensing course, I met a guy who had used a baseball bat to fracture the skull of a burglar in his house. (Note to our Brit readers: Cops winked at him and said "Good job.")
This speech sounds pretty much exactly like all his other failed speeches. Pretty much every job he talks about, just like in 2009, 2010, and 2011 are government jobs or jobs dependent on government.
What do most administrators actually do? The answer, Ginsberg assures us, is what many senior faculty suspect: almost nothing of any intellectual value. His well-documented catalogue of make-work projects includes endless meetings to fashion long-term “strategic” plans filled with boilerplate and homilies (commonly called “vision statements”) that are quickly forgotten, expensive conferences that are dripping in psychobabble and activities like canoeing to sharpen “decision-making skills,’ and supervising committees to concoct meaningless benchmarks, targets and lists of “best practices.” All the while, the administrators voice the latest managerial buzzwords (e.g., SWOT, ECM, and MBO) to impress gullible outsiders. Further, add expensive image polishing campaigns and energetic fund-raising whose purpose is often to hire yet more administrators.
The unemployment rate in California is 12%. Remember that California is the only state in the last election that sent more Democrats to its legislature. The San Diego Union-Tribuneeditorialized today:
Adding new burdens on private employers when unemployment has been 11 percent or more for more than two years is a really bad idea. Adding new burdens on local governments at a time when the revenue crisis threatens their ability to provide basic services is a really bad idea.
Yet that is just what the Legislature has been doing this year, and at a more rapid pace than ever.
2012 doesn't look any better, indeed worse, due to the gerrymandering that will likely increase the Democrats' count in the legislature to a super-majority, letting them run even more wild.
Even cartoon characters are having a rough time, now trying to rob convenience stores:
According to the report, "The clerk -- who was unfamiliar with the Gumby character -- thought the incident was a prank and did not report it until 6 a.m. when the store manager came in." The online version deleted this description in the print newspaper: "Gumby is tall and green, with a wedge-shaped head." Yeah, that ought to help find him.
"A half-century experiment in draping steamship anchors around the necks of the productive class and expecting them to run a four-minute mile has ended in failure. The confiscation of rights and property, the moral impoverishment of generations caused by the state’s usurpation of parental obligations, the elevation of a credentialed elite that believes academia’s fashions are a worthy substitute for knowledge of history and human nature, and above all the faith in a weightless cipher whose oratorical panache now consists of looking from one teleprompter screen to the other with the enthusiasm of a man watching someone else’s kids play tennis–it’s over, whether you believe in it or not. It cannot be sustained without reducing everyone to penurious equality, crippling the power of the United States, and subsuming the economy to a no-growth future that rations energy.
To which some progressives respond: You say that like it’s a bad thing."
The debate was quite interesting. Everyone turned in an decent performance, with no obvious stumbles or pie-on-the-face moments. For the most part, the questions were fair and reasonable, and the always-smooth Brian Williams did the moderating along with some dweeb from the left-leaning Politico whom I immediately disliked.
Let's start this off with a simple multiple choice question, shall we?
Q: In the great big, beautiful room in which the debate took place, what hangs over the audience's head?
A. A huge glass chandelier B. 9,863 small chandeliers C. An exact replica of the Sistine Chapel D. Air Force One
Answer: D. Admittedly, it's a little disconcerting at first. I mean, Air Force One is a big plane. But there it is, hanging away. Must be friggin' awesome during an earthquake.
Long execrated by most law professors, Lochner is the liberals’ least favorite decision because its premises pose a threat to their aspiration, which is to provide an emancipation proclamation for regulatory government. The rehabilitation of Lochner is another step in the disarmament of such thinking.
The Calm Before the Storm - Cyberwar is already happening -- and it's about to get much, much worse. A veteran intelligence official explains how America can prepare itself.
Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public, or at a large social gathering — without hedging your every word? When? Can you identify a single recent instance when you felt your conservative or even moderate views would be tolerated without provoking name-calling or public shaming into the nearest corner of societal oblivion?
Good point. I had that experience at a cocktail party last weekend. Me and my big mouth.
Piano Quintet, Op 44, ll. I remember when I used to confuse Shubert and Schumann. Love 'em both, but it doesn't get any better than this. My brain is semi-music retarded, and I have to hear a whole piece many times before I begin to get it. I do like piano quintets, but sometimes feel they need a little drum. (Yes, I know that pianny is a percussion instrument.)
One aspect of being "socialized" humans is the capacity to appraise the people we have any meaningful contact with. Most people get better at this, over time. Older is wiser, usually. We get too soon old, and too late smart.
These appraisals happen automatically. We know that most human "thought" takes place as non-deliberately as our digestion. We call that intuition: "I like the cut of his jib;" "She seems like a superficial ninny;" "There's something off about them but I can't put my finger on it;" "He's crazy;" "She strikes me as a strong, upright person;" "He feels calculating and devious;" "She seems full of fun, sexiness, and vitality;" "A schmoozer-saleman-type who, if you offer them your hand, takes you by the arm;""The guy seems very shrewd and clever;" "He's a gloomy Gus;" "Too needy;" "What a phony;" "She's a flake, but a good kind of flake;" "He's an Old Soul;" "He's got a personal agenda;" "This kid will go far."
We get a quick "feel" for people. Vibes. Our brains have a remarkable ability to form automatic and almost instant impressions of a person, accurately or not, from an abundance of information: social presentation, tone of voice, body language, posture, facial expressions, dress and grooming, use of words, style of interacting, and social signaling of all sorts. It takes around a fifth of a second, after all, to fall in love or in lust, and not much longer to think that you might, or might not, want to consider getting to know somebody. Of course, it pays to be careful, but most people mean well unless they are on the make in some calculating way, and everybody wants some things - but perhaps not from you.
When we have any interest and curiosity in a person beyond the superficial (driven by such things as business dealings, attraction, things in common, etc), we have to move past the intuitive impressions, which are often in error and contaminated by emotional and/or transference reactions, put our thinking cap on, and do a little active thinking about a person. People don't do it in the methodical way that shrinks do as trained observers and inquirers, but cover many of the same bases of human interaction. For some examples:
- intelligence, curiosity, fund and depth of knowledge, abilities, talents, wit, good cheer, interests, goals and dreams - do we get along - are we on the same page with shared assumptions and understandings? Same tribe? Do we speak the same language, so to speak? Or are we different in interesting ways? - quirks, eccentricities, weaknesses, criminality, and obvious flaws - respectfulness, decorum, and self-respect - sociability, manners, openness, depth, relatedness or self-centeredness, self-awareness - integrity, honor, self-control, level of BS, reliability, trustworthiness. Are they givers, takers, or neither; general emotional maturity and judgement - level of energy, vitality, and ambition: Are they fun or stimulating to be with? As Imus would say, "What do they bring to the table?" - level of life functioning (that covers a whole lot of territory)
along with other considerations, and, of course:
- Do they want something from me and, if so, what? (eg sex, money, love, favors, attention, status, casual social acquaintanceship, friendship, close friendship, Christian fellowship, help, companionship, collegiality, conversational amusement, or, as in most cases, little or nothing at all, etc.). If we're in an introspective mood, we might also ask ourselves what we want with them, and where we want to locate our boundaries with them.
Shrinks, when at work, attempt character assessment in a way that is analogous to a physical exam (ie "Come into the consulting room and take your social facade off. Strip to your psychological underwear. The doctor will be with you shortly, and you can let her know who you really are, what you are really made of, and what your private struggles are.). I am not impressed that, in the end, we shrinks make many fewer initial errors than the average thoughtful and perceptive person on the street. We just don't use the same lingo.
I began this post with the intention of writing about different levels of life functioning, with this as an intro, but this is already long enough for now. LOF can wait until later.
It's a better name for this wonderful business. Go onto their site and have them mail you their catalogues. It is a wholesome addiction.
Heather MacDonald has a good piece on the company at City Journal. They are making money. Wow - for-profit education. I actually had the idea of doing that before The Teaching Company existed. There's a big difference between idle dreamers and effective entrepreneurs, ain't there?
We use them often, but tend towards the courses on sale. If you go through ten or so of their courses, randomly-selected, you'll probably know more than the average recent college grad today.
Maggie's Farm pinup girl Marianne sent me this video this morning to WAKE UP my day, and it certainly did. It is from a Japanese movie, school girls doing a rousing version of the classic swing era Sing, Sing, Sing. Unfortunately the embed is disabled at Youtube, but just click this link and get your day jumpin'. Crank up the sound and swing.
Poll illustrates California voters' anger - Nearly 3 in 4 say the country is on the wrong track, and nearly half favor slashing government spending — a potentially dismal finding for President Obama, who will unveil a jobs plan this week.
The distinguished publisher of The Rumford Meteor has gone Hunter Thompson, or Carl Hiassen, or Rupert Murdoch, or The Onion, or something like that.
If Maine is Lake Wobegon on meth and welfare, this online newspaper captures the local ambience with, dare I say it, wit and wisdom.
Not only that, it's all pure fact. No wonder everybody in the Statehouse in Augusta (where's that?) reads it. And if Maine has any remaining local journalists, I'm sure they read it too.
It's a slice of America, and Mr. Sullivan has, I think rightly, recognized that colorful local online news is part of the future of journalism as the dead tree approach dies its slow death. Only problem: do people in Maine have internets?
How does one market a new online local (ie statewide) newspaper? Rent a billboard? Where?
Our lad is now based in Rome for the rest of the summer. He goes everywhere and tries to see everything. He sends these photos of Ostia Antica, aka "The Better Pompeii." It means "The Old Port," just outside of Rome. 100,000 people once lived there.
Whenever I consider the Romans, I realize that, although we tend to think of ourselves as living in a Judeo-Christian culture, we really live in a Roman culture with a little Judeo-Christian icing on top.
Having been to Pompeii, I would say that, judging from the photos, Ostia Antica is the far-superior Roman site. A passer-by was kind enough to take this snap of himself at an old fast-food counter (Pompeii was full of those too):
Maggie's Farm is now 
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