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.
A few links, just in case Bird Dog didn’t return in time. I heard he got arrested at Walgreens for developing the TRUE photos of what he’s been doing, or having done to him. Transgender? Does this mean Bird Dog is now Bird Bitch?
Kennedy explained that he needed tutors because he "had spent so much time . . . knowing people who could help him become president that he knew very few . . . who could help him be president." ...Mr. Kempe's point is that Kennedy's indecisiveness in the early stages of the crisis produced the wall itself, an exponential increase in East-West tension, and, in the half-century that followed, other fateful consequences that included the Cuban missile crisis—and, though Mr. Kempe doesn't say so, the Vietnam War, along with social and strategic spores that lodged in the American psyche and darkened world opinion with results yet to be revealed. It also provided, as Mr. Kempe puts it in the final sentence of this mind-shaking work of investigative history, an example "of what unfree systems can impose when free leaders fail to resist."
17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
17:23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
17:27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
17:28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
17:29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
17:30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
17:31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
No man loves marshes and bogs more than I do. The variety of life they contain, protect, and support, from protozoans to minnowsto bass to amphibians to snakes to deer to woodpeckers to geese and ducks to eagles to bears is astonishing, and feels primeval.
Except for river-fed or run-off-fed marshes, though, most sizeable fresh-water marshes are ephemeral geographical features. In the northern US, most are the remnants of post-glacial ponds and lakes, gradually filled in with plant detritus and, just before they become the damp meadows that the Moose enjoy so much, the sphagnum bogs which, in Canada, are the source of most of our soil-enhancing peat moss.
The only sources of new marshes in the US are man (who is more inclined to fill them for building lots than to create them or rehabilitate them - except for Ducks Unlimited), and the Beaver:
And that is one reason we appreciate the remarkable beaver so much. He not only creates marshes, but he recycles them. I doubt that there is a single beaver marsh in the US which has not been used, on and off (until they have eaten or cut down everything they can find) over the several thousands of years since our last Ice Age buried Manhattan under a mile of ice.
Here are some of the critters I see (or hear) most often in the immediate vicinity of our small (8 acre) beaver marsh in western MA over the past few years - off the top of my head and probably omitting some:
Beavers (of course) Otter Black Bear Raccoon White-tailed Deer Red Fox Coyote (alas)
Wood Duck (nesting) Black Duck (nesting) Mallard (nesting) Canada Goose (nesting) Pileated Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Hairy Woodpecker Red-bellied Wodpecker Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Veery Wood thrush E. Phoebe Wood Pewee Great Blue Heron Green Heron Tree Swallow Barn Swallow Kingfisher Swamp Sparrow Grasshopper Sparrow Song Sparrow Barred Owl Screech Owl Great Horned Owl Baltimore Oriole (Northern Oriole) Marsh Wren Turkey Goldfinch (nesting) Warblers of all sorts (during migration) Turkey Vulture Red-Tailed Hawk Sharp-Shinned hawk Red-shouldered Hawk Broad-winged Hawk Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel) E. Bluebird E. Kingbird Ruffed Grouse Cedar Waxwing Catbird
Wood Turtle Eastern Painted Turtle Snapping Turtle Garter Snake Eastern Water Snake Black Snake
Bullfrog Eastern Newt (and their Red Efts by the trillions in the adjacent woods) Leopard Frog Green Frog American Toad Wood Frog Spring Peeper E. Gray Tree Frog
I like to keep track of our wildlife. It is one way of loving and embracing this world.
There are two sorts of people: those who love breakfast, and those for whom breakfast is nothing more than coffee and a cigar or, some days, a glass of OJ and five aspirins.
Breakfast is my favorite meal, but I rarely bother with it beyond a couple of cups of coffee. If I had breakfast every morning I would weigh 30 lbs. more than I do.
What are my favorite breakfasts?
- Home-made fresh cut-up fruit in a bowl - including Pineapple - Creamed Chipped Beef on toast. Or grits with biscuits 'n gravy - Kippered herrings with (white) toast and grilled tomatoes - 2 eggs sunny side up with bacon, sausage, home fries and white toast. And ketchup. - Blueberry pancakes with sausage and bacon. - Codfish cakes with toast - Smoked salmon on a toasted bagel with cream cheese, with capers - Eggs Benedict - Leftover pizza
I cannot pick a single favorite. Love 'em all.
Please post your favorite breakfasts in the comments.
The word bites like a fish. Shall I throw it back, free Arrowing to that sea Where thoughts lash tail and fin? Or shall I pull it in To rhyme upon a dish?
If you want to understand the “right of return” issue, read this to know its genesis. The early, narrow work by historian Benny Morris is often cited by pro-Palestinians, ignoring his fuller following work. In this piece, Morris shows how the pro-Palestinians also ignore the first half of the 1947-8 “civil war,” facts being inconvenient to their narrative.
The above Rapes gang-bang just took a few minutes to gather. Perverted politics.
“Real leadership is rare,” says retiring Sec. Of Defense Robert Gates, who served under 8 Presidents, at the US Naval Academy graduation:
Gates told graduates that great leaders have some of the same qualities: conviction, self-confidence, moral courage, integrity and common decency.
“Above all, remember that the true measure of leadership is not how you react in times of peace or times without peril,” Gates said. “The true measure of leadership is how you react when the wind leaves your sails, when the tide turns against you.”
"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man."
Adolph Hitler, 1933. There is no doubt that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a Socialist movement. The only thing about it that could be construed as at all "rightist" was its ardent nationalism.
My question is this: If the National Socialist Party had left the Jews alone, would the Nazis have been heroes of the Left, as Stalin was?
I am a regular reader of fellow Psychoanalyst and Psychiatrist 1 Boring Old Man. Most of his posts go straight to the heart of the turmoil and controversy which is going on in our field today.
That's why I hope he receives this message from me: Your fonts are too small to read, and the color contrast between your print and your background is too slight. Those of us without 25 year-old eyes need a magnifying glass to read your good and interesting posts.
If you are one of those folks who keep the house at 55 both summer and winter, you can ignore this post. Otherwise, you may be grateful for this reminder about the ideal serving temperatures for red wines - 55-62 degrees F.
That is cellaring temperature, not room temperature. In the summertime, you will enjoy your reds much more if they are chilled a bit, rather than drinking them at 85 degrees. Yuk.
You spray a little stuff on the stains, then throw it in the dryer with the special paper thing. She says it works well for her skirts, jackets, and sweaters.
The Washington Times has the straight skinny on the downstream effects of our porcine federal government's expenditures. There's the usual stuff about billion dollar toilet seats without holes in them and so forth, but there's one gem hidden among the awful offal that makes the annual three trillion spree worth it. Oh, yeah. Shrimp on a treadmill!
Well, that's cooler than a HUD block grant, I'll say that much for it. But I gather everything the government does isn't nearly as essential as that.
Is "jello wrestling at the South Pole" a euphemism for something actually naughty? Or is it just dull, useless, ugly people wrestling in jello at great expense, in between bouts of fudging statistics about how hot it is in the Antarctic because I drive a four-door car? I'm sorry, it's hard to keep up with these hipsters. Next thing you know, you're going to tell me Pabst Blue Ribbon is popular again.
At constant fertility, Israel will have more young people by the end of this century than either Turkey or Iran, and more than German, Italy or Spain….The right way to read this projection is backwards: Israelis love children and have lots of them because they are happy, optimistic and prosperous….Europeans, Turks and Iranians, by contrast, have very few children because they are grumpy, alienated and pessimistic….
A new survey commissioned by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans found that 80% of respondents were found to have "little" or only "some" knowledge of the military holiday while just 20% of respondents claim to be "very familiar" with the day and its purpose.
No Democrat votes for any budget proposal -- Why Dems don’t want to present a budget: “The Peterson Foundation's Solutions Initiative brought together six think tanks -- two conservative, two liberal and two centrist -- and challenged each to present a detailed plan to solve our fiscal crisis-in-waiting, using the same uniform assumptions.” Read on
Before 1700s, dogs were considered vicious and disease-ridden
"Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens."
Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Law on Hiring Illegal Immigrants: “The decision did not involve an even more controversial immigration measure passed by Arizona lawmakers. That measure requiring police to check the immigration status of individuals in certain circumstances remains under separate legal challenge, and could likewise eventually reach the Supreme Court.”
The latest report by media watchdog group Just Journalism compared the coverage of Israel to the coverage of the “Arab spring” countries—Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia—during 2010. The group found that the attention given to the Arab spring countries (before the uprisings) was almost nonexistent….Israel was scapegoated as the root of Middle East unrest for years, while the oppression and corruption throughout the Arab world were largely ignored.
Mrs. BD is good with flowers and other things. It always amused me that she thought she invented flat flower arrangements until a flower arrangement judge informed her that her multi-level blue-ribbon construction was pave (with accent aigu), but inventively layered to a 6' height. Pave, once a popular avant garde style, is commonplace nowadays. It's good because it does not block cross-table conversation.
I was fortunate to recently hear a noted quartet play one of Brahms' masterpieces, his Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op.25, in an intimate setting. I am fortunate to live where there is plenty of live chamber music, and I am always happy to go listen.
I love chamber music as much or more than orchestral (too bad chamber music didn't have drum sets, though) but, with my tin ear and my slow brain, it takes me several hearings to get the structure, intent, and the direction of a composition unless I have studied it in advance. (Folk, blues, and pop are easy for my brain.) I mentioned this disability to Mrs. BD in reference to the G minor, and she replied "What do you mean? This is as clearly structured, developed, and disciplined a chamber piece as I have ever heard. The structure is transparent."
Listen to the whole piece for a day or two, if you need that as I do. It's a musical journey.
Here's just the familiar Finale, Movement 4 - the Rondo alla zingarese - a dance piece if there ever was one:
Mrs. BD and I have been taking the William and Mary course in Medieval History (with the delightfully Asperger's-ish Prof. Daileader via The Teaching Company) and we are enjoying it immensely. I do not like to sit unless I am at work, but this course gets me into a chair after work. (We live and thrive on the Teaching Company courses at my cottage, as readers know.)
The Prof says that the wealth of the Middle Ages came from a combination of trade and the renewal of currency in the form of the Italian Florin, the introduction of the heavy plow, the replacement of slavery with serfdom, a doubling of Europe's population - and the Medieval Warm Period which made it possible to grow better crops much further north than in the Dark Ages - and further north than today. Greenland was farmland.
The Warm Period was far warmer than the world today. People benefited. That's why we pray for Global Warming (but also doubt that humankind will be so lucky. With our luck, we'll get the next Ice Age and all be screwed except for Dr. Merc).
It was after morning recess in Mrs. Winter’s sixth grade class at Mapleton School. I remember the moment precisely, when the boy behind me, right in the middle of the lesson, leaned over his desk and my shoulder to whisper in my ear that if I’d take a nickel down to Woolworths at Broadway and Pearl, I could buy this fishing “thing” with which I could catch lots of fish out at East Dagues Lake.
Having sent Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden, do we propose to deal with Gaddafi by unleashing fierce lawyers at the Hague?...
Our current notions seem to reflect the cosmopolitan notion that we must care about everyone equally. In 2005, one of the leading theorists of cosmopolitan ethics, David Held of the London School of Economics, defined it this way: “Humankind belongs to a single moral realm in which each person is regarded as equally worthy of respect and consideration.” If you take this seriously enough, you will find it very hard to fight a successful war.
Gateway Pundit: “Like with everything Obama does, there’s no more than a two degree of separation between him and some America-hating leftist radical.”
VERY cool graphic: which supplements have evidence of working for various conditions, or not (go to "show me" tab on right side to see which work for which conditions; higher and bigger on the scale is better)
Neptunus Lex:" “Possible UN sanctions” for a Syrian nuclear plant that was destroyed almost four years ago? Talk about barn doors and fled horses.”
Surber: Lefty on the Lefties:“firebagging lefties constantly project on anyone with the temerity to question their paranoid conspiracy theories and character assassinations.” – There’s a HuffApp for that
Anomalocaridids. Say that 100 times, fast. They’d eat you or a distant ancestor.
Remembering The Brave. This slide show consists of photos taken at a formal dinner at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, VA. It is a beautiful presentation of the honor, commitment and pride today's heroes share with yesterday's.
Senate votes: Obama budget 0-97; Ryan House Budget 40-57 – Inching closer to facing the facts?
So one naturally asks: do the Democrats have something better to propose? The answer is: No. The Democratic Senate has not come up with a budget in two years, thereby violating federal law. President Obama has not proposed a replacement for his laughable FY 2012 budget, which not a single member of Congress is willing to support. The Democrats have no budget; no plan; no path out of the fiscal disaster into which they have led the United States. They are bystanders and political opportunists, utterly unfit to govern.
War is in some ways the most human of activities: it is about defining and achieving objectives in cooperation with some people, all-out opposition from others, in a contest that draws on every talent and tests every virtue that we have. Even those of us whose life plans do not involve storming up a hillside under enemy fire can learn from the way Clausewitz analyzes leadership and war. More, to ignore war in an education is to leave students ignorant about one of the central features of civilization and human life.
Long Live the Industrial City - New York City’s garment district illustrates that manufacturing can still be vital to the innovation that cities foster.
A quote:
Fashion is an intensely iterative process in which time becomes an obstacle. “When you move into higher-end design, there is so much spontaneous creativity happening that you don’t want to wait a month to see your garments,” says Tina Schenk, owner of the pattern-making company Werkstett. “One design is based on another. You want to keep the process going, you want to continuously look at the things that you’ve been designing.” Andrew Rosen, a third-generation garmento who founded Theory, a fashion company that now grosses half a billion dollars a year, remarks, “Just from an efficiency point of view, I can make clothes faster here. Which is not to say we haven’t shortened the lead times in China—we have. But there’s a lot more logistics that need to happen from 12,000 miles away than from 12 blocks away.” As Edward Glaeser notes in his new book The Triumph of the City, one thing cities do well is eliminate the “curse of complex communication.”
And as any Project Runway viewer knows from those trips to Mood Designer Fabrics, the massive garment district emporium where the reality TV show’s contestants scout for chiffon and charmeuse, it’s important to have the raw materials of fashion within easy reach. Fabric needs to be touched. “It’s not a flat medium you’re working in,” says veteran designer Anna Sui. “When you gather a piece of fabric, sometimes because of the thickness of it or the loftiness or the bounceability of it, you never know how it’s going to react.”
I still miss the blocks of garment racks blocking all the sidewalks over there, and the hordes of rude and crude "garmentos."
The weakness of all Utopias is this: that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motorcar or balloon.
G.K. Chesterton (h/t Dr. Bob, who seems to have quit writing)
There are two sorts of people: those who love breakfast, and those for whom breakfast is nothing more than coffee and a cigar or, some days, a glass of OJ and five aspirins. 
