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.
Confidence in progress has now been replaced by postulation of change.
Progress is achieved and can be welcomed, but change just happens and
must be adjusted to. “Adjusting to change” is now the unofficial motto
of Harvard, mutabilitas instead of veritas. To adjust, the
new Harvard must avoid adherence to any principle that does not change,
even liberal principle. Yet in fact it has three principles: diversity,
choice, and equality. To respect change, diversity must serve to
overcome stereotypes, though stereotypes are necessary to diversity. How
else is a Midwesterner diverse if he is not a hayseed? And diversity of
opinion cannot be tolerated when it might hinder change.
Like me, you all are probably still engaged in some slow and tedious post-Christmas clean-up. I tend to use the shopping bags and small boxes to start my morning fires.
Some of the bags I used for fire-starting said "Michael Kors." What's that? Guys would not know. I checked it out:
It's fashionable shoes and dresses and stuff. Who got that stuff? I dunno, but it seems pretty nice.
I doubt it's a deliberate scam. I suspect she is not insane, but probably half-crazy. It's easy to prove: just do some blind testing of her.
It reminds me of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (a fascinating article). People in the US can retire on this non-existent syndrome. The shame is that quacks are around to reinforce this sort of nonsense:
"Multiple chemical sensitivity" is not a legitimate diagnosis. Instead of testing their claims with well-designed research, its advocates are promoting them through publications, talk shows, support groups, lawsuits, and political maneuvering (such as getting state governors to designate a Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Week). Many are also part of a network of questionable legal actions alleging injuries by environmental chemicals.
Many people diagnosed with "MCS" suffer greatly and are very difficult to treat. Well-designed investigations suggest that most of them have a psychosomatic disorder in which they develop multiple symptoms in response to stress. If this is true—and I believe it is—clinical ecology patients run the risks of misdiagnosis, mistreatment, financial exploitation, and/or delay of proper medical and psychiatric care. In addition, insurance companies, employers, other taxpayers, and ultimately all citizens are being burdened by dubious claims for disability and damages. To protect the public, state licensing boards should scrutinize the activities of clinical ecologists and decide whether the overall quality of their care is sufficient for them to remain in medical practice.
Lyme Disease (which is a real and readily-treatable infection) presents another interesting situation in which crocks and quackery abounds.
Moonwalking: President Obama tries to backpedal (or staggers back), his Middle East speech. Smooth shuffle doesn’t hide his direction, reversal of sense and security, nor that of his syncophants:
What to make of all the liberal Jewish groups and pundits who fawned over the speech and insisted there was no change in U.S. policy contained in Obama’s statement on the 1967 borders (which is a misnomer; there is only the 1949 armistice line)? They have, to the extent they had any credit, discredited themselves as reliable translators to Jews and Americans at large of the peace process. Whether through ignorance or through an insatiable need to defend a liberal president at all costs, they leapt into the fray to deny that Obama said anything damaging at all. The proof of Obama’s misstep is his swift backpedal, which, I suspect, will continue today.
The “liberal union” label doesn’t sell?“Forty-five years ago one in every five Americans belonged to the “seven sister” mainline Protestant denominations. Today, only one in 15 still does.”
Without major changes, “we fear that very few providers will enroll … and that (Medicare) and the provider community will miss the best opportunity to inject value and accountability into the delivery system.”
By "accountability," I think they mean cheap. One of the reasons I agreed to post my thoughts at Maggie's Farm was because of our editor's "Ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more" ethos. The Medicare and insurance company's regs drove me nuts, so I quit them all. See me, pay me. If you're rich, I'll charge you a lot. If you're poor, a little. Rightly or wrongly, I do it my way.
There are two simple things that can be done to reduce medical costs in the US: 1. Tort reform, so that everybody with a tension headache doesn't get a $700 cya CAT scan and OBs don't have to spend $200,000/yr for malpractice insurance, and 2. A wide market for interstate major medical insurance.
NYT: "Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality," an unsmiling Netanyahu told Obama in the Oval Office.
Reactions: "Respect goes two ways and Obama, a leader who has a history of cavalierly dismissing the sensibilities of American allies, cannot pretend that he is the injured party here."
A year ago I moved into a row house in northeast Washington, D.C., two
miles from the Capitol. I paid $85,000, a price so low it’s a punch line
in a city where the average home sells for more than $600,000.
The hot water heater was missing, and the bathroom tub drained into a
downstairs closet. My house inspector, a dead ringer for the
gravel-voiced actor Sam Elliott, tramped silently from room to room,
occasionally pausing to pronounce, “It’s not proper.” The house was in
foreclosure and had been vacant for a couple of years, so when I found
crayons under the old carpet, I was spared the guilt of imagining them
in still-young fingers. But once, someone had loved this place. The
backyard bloomed with rosebushes staked with weathered shoelaces. With
an FHA-backed loan and a savvy contractor, I gutted the house and
renovated it. I found myself realizing a dream I’d assumed was miles out
of reach: I was a homeowner.
Many people today are obsessed with food, what to eat and how much. Government wants to get in on the game and to tell you what to eat, but the experts have no answers. So governments just make it up.
...several top medical scientists have concluded that the government’s carb-heavy guidelines may actually have harmed public health. In 2008, three researchers from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine—including the associate dean of clinical research, Paul Marantz, and a former president of the International Hypertension Society, Michael Alderman—observed in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine that since 1977, Americans have largely followed the government’s advice, doubtless as conveyed by the doctors they consulted. Men, for instance, cut their fat intake from 37 percent of their daily calories to 32 percent and increased their carbohydrate intake from 42 percent to 49 percent. Yet over the same three decades, the fraction of American men who were overweight or obese increased from 53 percent of the population to about 69 percent. The doctors wondered whether this correlation was an unintended consequence of telling the entire population to change its eating patterns. “In general,” the doctors wrote, “weak evidentiary support has been accepted as adequate justification for [the U.S. dietary] guidelines.
Read the whole thing. My sense is that you can eat whatever you want unless you have some special illness like diabetes, and it won't make a darn bit of difference. Food is not medicine. All we really know is that no food is bad, plenty of food - but not too much - is good.
Bird Dog is off gallivanting again. Pictures (and more pictures, and more pictures) at his return. Meanwhile, all others ducking the honor, you're stuck with me. I'm so excited to see you every morning.
Fresh combat regiments of Vietnam Peoples Army's soldiers are now converging in a key province of Northern Vietnam to attack and arrest thousands of Hmong Catholic, Protestant and independent Animist religious believers demonstrating for human rights, religious freedom, land reform and an end to illegal logging and deforestation.
Thanks to mandatory “volunteer service” (or, as I call it, “community servitude”), the children I know are disinclined to do any type of volunteer work and much inclined to engage in scams and cheats.”
“Unemployment duration ain’t what it used to be. In 1982, the last time unemployment tipped double digits, joblessness was more of a short-term affair. Across these four categories, the plurality of folks were unemployed for fewer than five weeks. In 2011, by contrast, about half the jobless have been out of work for at least 27 weeks….In 1982, unemployment was a terrible cold, measured in weeks and maybe months. Today it's pneumonia.”
Anyone remember the elbow test? (That's how I met my first wife, really.)
Between 1964 and the present, the study of Western Civilization has literally disappeared from most college curricula.Not only is it not required, you’ve often got to searchpretty hard to find individual history courses that tangentially cover bits and pieces of the themes once commonly encountered by most undergraduates.
Roger Ebert take down: “What kind of man hears coded racism in the words “food” and “stamps” on Sunday but excuses pro-Nazi/anti-Israel remarks on Wednesday?”
““Everywhere I went, it was, ‘we only take online applications; apply online,’” he groused. “Half the time, they couldn’t even be bothered looking up. So, you clean up, wear decent clothes, walk in trying to project a positive attitude and you hit this wall of disinterest. There’s no Human Resource Department. There’s no one interested, just these cogs in the wheels telling you that your best shot is to enter a lottery to become a cog in the wheel.”
Colbert punks … self? “how Colbert started off trying to skewer the Supreme Court over the Citizens United v FEC ruling, and ended up getting a lesson in its necessity”
Reaction to Obama’s latest big speech: Forgetaboutit
Wonder why? Here's a recent example from the West Bank:
... at a ceremony honoring all 73 Palestinians from Bethlehem serving life sentences in Israeli prisons, the PA unveiled a "Tree of Freedom for Prisoners." Its branches are decorated with "photographs of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment."
The following prisoners were mentioned in the first article: Riyad Al-Amour - Serving 11 life sentences for murder of 9 Israelis and 3 Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel. Adnan Al-Afandi - Attempted to kill two children by stabbing them, 1992 Nasser and Mahmoud Abu Sorour - Participated in the murder of a member of Israeli Intelligence, 1993. Rizq Salah - Killed an Israeli soldier with a bomb in Bethlehem, 1993
And here's another recent example from the West Bank Palestinian Authority's partner, Hamas in Gaza:
Hamas TV Extols Female Palestinian Suicide Bombers and Jihad Fighters: Jihad-Fighting Mothers Urge Their Sons to Seek Martyrdom
Here's a top-level analysis of Israel's security needs for a viable peace.
Because of current U.S. policy, U.S. companies are prohibited from developing oil fields that lie in Cuban waters and come within 50 miles of Florida. However, Cuba is exploring and developing these oil fields, estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to possess more oil than the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and Cuba is partnering with China and other countries, such as Spain, France, and Canada.
The Castro Regime will begin drilling off the coast of Florida this year and will go deeper than the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April.
In my view, we all have different wiring, and we all have some loose wires and short circuits and sparking, but some loose wires cause more problems than others. Some will just make you more interesting, but some will burn your house down.
...a tiny minority of Yale’s most obnoxious and neurotic females, members of a gender comprising a slight majority of humanity, already empowered by Nature with staggering powers of influence and control over members of the opposite gender, particularly during a period of life when the reproductive impulse and any young lady’s powers of personal attraction are at their height, have been persuaded by ideological influences hosted and specially cultivated by Yale to see themselves on the basis of myths, stereotypes, and crude historical misunderstandings as victims, and then encouraged to exploit that status for personal and group power and rewarded for doing exactly that with attention and applause.
As someone who lives adjacent to a river (a small one, but larger than a stream - around 30-40' wide in dry season), I know all about flooding. The prosperous farmer who built the core of my house in 1803 had the brains to build his house and barns above the level of flooding, even just barely above the level of 100-year floods.
Our new (c. 1890) barn was built on the old barn foundations. We have had water right up to the footings from the river 200 yards away.
Our land is flooded regularly, and it does wonders for the meadows but it fills my pool with silt, branches, dead fish, leaves, etc. Knocks down our fencing, too. Most of our land is on a flood plain, and only about 1/4 of it is above the plain.
If you live on a flood plain, whether salt or fresh, flooding must be part of your life plan. I think it makes good sense to have farmland, open space, natural preserves, etc on flood plains, but it drives me crazy that the Feds subsidize construction on flood plains via flood insurance. That is just plain stupid. If you live in a flood plain, you should live in a trailer that can be moved to higher ground with a pickup truck. I did live for a spell in one like that (but I did not really like it).
Levees and other Army Corps of Engineers devices only worsen the flooding that rivers regularly perform for the benefit of the richness of the flood plains. They attempt to turn rivers into drainage ditches instead of the ever-changing, meandering, shape-changing wild things that they are.
The argument is fair enough, but the question is who gets to decide what is made public? The press? People are obviously interested in what "leaders" and celebs do in their spare time.
France's culture, the article says, writes off a lot of behavior that would be considered in the Anglo-American world to be borderline menacing and assaulting -- not rape, but the knocking on that door -- as some kind of boys-will-be-boys seduction.
Obama came to Boston in March to rub elbows with wealthy businessmen -- whose businesses have benefitted from his policies. For the pleasure of face time with the President, these businessmen contributed to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, anywhere from a few hundred dollars to more than $30,000.
Catfish Noodling (h/t, Wizbang). Gotta love these crazy guys, pulling these delicious Channel Catfish out of their holes in the mud. What a great country!
Many Jews and decent liberals are having a “consciousness-raising” experience. The three incidents at CUNY this past academic year honoring extremist foes of Israel, and throwing up chaff about academic freedom to distract, have struck to the quick in New York City and spread throughout the country. The contamination in our core institutions of the blatant Israel-hate that has melded the far left and Palestinian apologists and advocates has activated a ground-swell of reaction. Can this be the start of a roll-back? Yes, as more and more Americans speak up in defense of Western values and strike back at those who undermine them.
The Obama-CYA, George Soros funded, Palestinians apologists of J-Street, leftist Jews, defended Tony Kushner receiving an honorary degree from CUNY as “a victory for all of those in the Jewish community and beyond who cherish freedom of speech and are unwilling to punish people for the content of their political views.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has written to the Chair of the Board of Trustees at CUNY, Benno Schmidt, and to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. This Council represents approximately fifty Jewish organizations (including the ADL, AJC, Hadassah, Hillel, Jewish National Fund, Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, UJA, Union of Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, ZOA, the American Sephardi Association, etc.) and is headed by some Major Jewish Players.
We are troubled though that it appears that the explicit right and duty of a CUNY Trustee under Policy 1.19 – to express his/her views and vote his/her conscience – are now being challenged….We believe that academic freedom cannot be exclusively limited to faculty and/or students. Indeed, that right applies to all sectors of the academy, including Trustees. We are shocked that people – including zealous advocates of academic freedom and free speech – have called for a Trustee’s removal because they disagree with his ideas and/or his desire to articulate them. Mr. Wiesenfeld’s freedom to state his views and opinions – whether one agrees with him or not – is equal to the freedom granted to faculty, students or even honorary degree nominees.
There are of course other contexts in which academic freedom is at stake, but the awarding of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner or anyone else isn’t one of them.
The 55,000 member Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, on 3500 worldwide campuses, wrote to the CUNY Board of Trustees to reverse the decision to grant an honorary degree to Tony Kushner:
By rejecting your earlier decision to table the nomination and put it up for discussion, you have, sadly, abrogated your responsibility….
The roll-back needs your active involvement in your house of worship, in your alma mater, in your newspaper. This is a "tea party" requiring all to attend.
UPDATE: Tony Kushner, on Facebook, says, " it seems like with each successive fight around the Israel-Palestine issue (first Moustafa Bayoumi, then Kristofer, now this), our side gets stronger and stronger." Kushner calls for "You want Wiesenfeld off the Board? Organize for it..."Now let's make a bigger, f-ing deal. Go to it, folks!" Bring it on, Tony, as you cement your and your allies reps lower than already. Kushner titles his post, "We Won." Kushner, you've won a whoppin'.
In Sweden, you can get disability for this: 
Many people today are obsessed with food, what to eat and how much. Government wants to get in on the game and to tell you what to eat, but the experts have no answers. So governments just make it up.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
Update on Prof