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.
What if it turns out, like in Egypt (and in Afghanistan in the past), that the US and Euroland are naively laying out a red carpet for the Jihadists? Then what?
Granted that the region's squalid polities haven't had a decent military commander since King Hussein fired General Sir John Glubb half-a-century back, how difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots? But no: Instead, the Arab League decided to volunteer the U.S. military.
The NY Times' reporters on the ground in Egypt apparently did not see Islamism coming, unlike the right-bloggers in pajamas sitting in dimly lit basements with candy wrappers strewn on the floor.
Everyone needs to take a step back and calm down. I'm not excusing the actions of national unions like SEIU (I detest them) but not every public employee is a hard-left ideologue. Mostly, we're regular folks doing a job and supporting our families. I hope this bit of insider's perspective is useful to AT readers, and thank you for letting me vent.
Whan that aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (so priketh hem nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of engelond to caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. Bifil that in that seson on a day, In southwerk at the tabard as I lay Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage To caunterbury with ful devout corage, At nyght was come into that hostelrye Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye, Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle, That toward caunterbury wolden ryde. The chambres and the stables weren wyde, And wel we weren esed atte beste. And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste, So hadde I spoken with hem everichon That I was of hir felaweshipe anon, And made forward erly for to ryse, To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse. But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space, Er that I ferther in this tale pace, Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun To telle yow al the condicioun Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, And whiche they weren, and of what degree, And eek in what array that they were inne; And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.
Not aprill yet, but almost. A "palmer" is someone who wears a palm leaf as testimony of having taken a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I am posting a "modern English" translation below the fold, but bearing in mind that Chaucer wrote in the closest thing to modern English at the time - some say invented modern English in literature. The British Isles had many languages and language variants at the time; Anglo-Saxon, French, Gaelic, Welsh, etc. Just consider how many Norman-French words he uses. What the literate and well-educated Jeff Chaucer wrote was and is pretty much modern English - and fine job he did with it.
A Facebook webpage was created calling for a Third Palestinian Intifada against Israel. It is mostly in Arabic. The creators of this page are calling for the violent uprising against the State of Israel. The "Third Palestinian Intifada" Facebook page has amassed more than 310,000 supporters or "likes," it keeps increasing by the hour, and includes inflammatory anti-Israel language calling for supporters to build on the previous two intifadas, while sending users to Twitter, YouTube and elsewhere for more information.
The Second Palestinian Intifada was responsible for thousands of casualties and deaths through a campaign of terrorism against Israel that included suicide bombings of public places like restaurants, buses, dance clubs and cafes.
Directions to ask Facebook to remove the page:
JUST click on the link below to reach the Facebook page.
Then scroll down the left side of the page where you will see "Report Page" in tiny print. Click on 'report page' and Choose "Contains hate speech" You can then choose a further option of 'targets a race or ethnicity' or "violence or harmful behavior" Then click 'submit'.
If you don't have a Facebook account, and even if you do, please forward this message to others.
America's largest newspapers--The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The L.A. Times--all wrote richly detailed obituaries for Elizabeth Taylor, the Hollywood icon who died of heart failure this week, at 79. But no matter how richly detailed, every single one of these papers didn't say a word about Taylor's conversion to Judaism when she was 27. Why? Is it not chic among the MSM to be so dedicated to Israel as Elizabeth Taylor?
- the attitude that society should be governed by an elite group of individuals
- 1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources. 2. (A) The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class. ...
- someone who believes in rule by an elite group
Well, if you perused my pedigree, resume, career, J. Press tweedy and conservative life style, and the respectable, intelligent, accomplished, well-educated, well-behaved and refined people with whom I tend to associate, some might consider me one of America's elite. Given the definitions I found, however, I am not: I have no interest in power or control over anybody, and despise anybody who thinks they deserve that position. I lack all desire to tell anybody how to live other than myself, and I am not even especially good at that. Beneath my superficial aspects beats the simple heart of my free, crusty and cantankerous independent Yankee farmer ancestors who had far more freedom than we have today.
For example, when it comes to politics, the only politicians I trust are the crooked ones. They don't seek power over me and have no plans to make my life "better" - they just want money, chicks, easy jobs without meaningful accountability, and maybe some support for their weak egos. Let them have that if that's what they need, just so long as they leave me, my life, and my hard-earned assets alone. I will not be an obedient and passive serf like some of my Brit ancestors doubtless were, sending most of their grain or wool to their superiors.
We are not an aristocracy here. Let the elites figure out how to run their own lives (in general, I am not impressed), instead of trying to run mine. A few relevant links:
A Delta pilot’s story written by a Delta pilot on approach to Tokyo during the earthquake, forwarded thru CTV Television:
I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.
By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands. Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival. The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so positive).
From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller's anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect "indefinite" holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation, which, after an ocean crossing is typically low.
It wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverts started complicating the situation.
Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneada, near Tokyo, a half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced Haenada had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.
One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can't just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all needing a place to land and several now fuel critical ATC was getting over-whelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got my flight a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good. A few minutes into heading that way, I was "ordered" by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes (read- airport full). Ditto for Osaka.
With that statement, my situation went instantly from fuel okay, to fuel minimal considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making demands requests and threats to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to "emergency" fuel situation. Planes started to heading for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokoda AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer - Yokoda closed! no more space.
Reminds me of this Neal Stephenson quote: “The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.”
Many people only know about the Municipal Art Society of New York through their acclaimed architectural walking tours or their historical preservation efforts, but they do much more than that. A BD daughter is considering getting involved with them, and I'm sure the BD lad would be interested too.
Good video with an IHop owner in Ohio, at Q and O.
He says, interestingly, that his restaurant business profits an average of $3000 per year per employee. Obamacare would put him to -$4000 per employee. Out of business.
In the 20 years to 2010, he gave 2,045 concerts, according to the fan site ExpectingRain.com, where you can study the setlist for every one of those nights. In April he will play in Singapore, Australasia and—if Beijing lets him in, after rebuffing him last year—China. In the summer he is expected in Europe. Not for nothing are his wanderings known as the Never Ending Tour.
and
His predicament raises the opposite question: how does it feel to be so known? Dylan gives an answer in “Chronicles”. “The big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny...I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper...I really was never any more than what I was—a folk musician who gazed into the grey mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze...I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad.” Maybe that is his achievement: to have stayed sane.
Bob's Where are you tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) from the under-rated and garage-recorded Street Legal (1978):
There's a long-distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write. There's a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much but she's drifting like a satellite. There's a neon light ablaze in this green smoky haze, laughter down on Elizabeth Street And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat. Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart. A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted to me the time and the place that we'd part.
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page Of a book that no one can write. Oh, where are you tonight?
Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.
On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."
We don't know what we are doing. We only know that we have moral support for it on paper, from an international organization that is utterly corrupt, wherein members who do not wish us well are pleased to grant us permission to blunder.
In 2000, Elizabeth Taylor was recognized by Queen Elizabeth as a “Dame”, the equivalent of knighthood.Like a good Dame, she lived her life fully, with gusto and passions. Today, at 79, her heart gave out. Before then, it stood firmly with Israel.
In 1959, Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism. Some said at the time it was because of her marriage to famous Jewish entertainer Eddie Fisher.Elizabeth Taylor denied that, saying she had been long attracted to Judaism. During and following her marriage to Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor was unwavering in her support for Israel.
The Zionist Organization of America issued this eulogy:
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) mourns the passing of legendary American actress and ardent Zionist, Elizabeth Taylor, who has passed away, aged 79. Ms. Taylor, who enjoyed a long and hugely successful career in Hollywood, was converted to Judaism in 1959 by the Rabbi Max Nussbaum, who served as National President of the ZOA from 1964 to 1966.
Among Elizabeth Taylor’s outstanding work on behalf of Israel and Jewish causes was her participating in raising $840,000 for Israel in a 1967 London gala and purchasing personally $100,000 in Israel Bonds in 1959. The same year, she cancelled a visit to Moscow after the Soviet Union lashed out at Israel after the June 1967 Six Day War. In 1975, she was one of 60 prominent women to sign a statement to then-U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, condemning the U.N. General Assembly’s infamous Zionism-is-Racism resolution. Taylor offered herself as a hostage when 104 hostages aboard an Air France airbus were hijacked by PLO terrorists and held at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport, from which they rescued in a spectacular Israeli commando mission on July 4, 1976, America’s 200th birthday. Taylor frequently visited Israel and met with its leadership, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1983. In 1987, she signed a petition seeking the release from Soviet incarceration of leading refusenik, Ida Nudel.
...there is also a school of philosophers — in fact, perhaps the majority school — who consider free will compatible with their definition of determinism. These compatibilists believe that we do make choices, even though these choices are determined by previous events and influences. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”
A friend who recently moved to New England from Texas asked me for a few good long-weekend getaway spots (to get away from their kids for romance, with good food and good hiking, regardless of season). It's important to couples to get away from it all - daily life routine, internet, rug rats, dogs, - to refresh the relationship.
I don't really like to stay in an inn without a fireplace in the room, but off the top of my head, I offered these (with a range of luxuriousness), although I am sure readers have their own lists of favorites:
What is needed is a renewed humility. We are not the masters of the sources of happiness; they ever elude the appointments we make with them, springing up when we least expect them and fleeing when we would hold them close. The excessive ambition to expunge all that is weak or broken in body or mind, to control moods and states of soul, sadness, chagrin, moments of emptiness—all this runs up against our finitude, against the inertia of the human species, which we cannot manipulate like some raw material. We have the power to avoid or to heal certain evils, yes, but we cannot order happiness as if it were a meal in a restaurant.
The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.
Readers know that, much as I value whatever joy and contentment come my way, I find "happiness" difficult to define and, furthermore, do not view it as a particularly meaningful or important goal of life as if is often defined. For example, if performing painful or sacrificial duties is what is satisfying to you, then how can you construct a universal definition of "happiness" when the word may mean "ease and comfort" to another person?
Sometimes I think morality is purely culturally-defined, and sometimes I think there is "natural law." Most of the time I simply try to adhere to God via the Ten Commandments and Christ's teachings (Mark 12:28):
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
If you are a Christian, those are the revealed word of God. If not, they are cultural. I know when I have done wrong because I feel guilt and shame. Sometimes I feel guilt and shame even when I haven't transgressed in any meaningful way. That's me, not God.
Why every kid in America doesn't need to be educated
The author begins -
I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.
Anchoress: 
Still sane? Dylan turns 70 in May, and is still on the road. From 
Bruckner subtitles his essay in City Journal: