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.
At 6:30 in the morning the Mrs. was down at the gym while I quietly enjoyed the view from our terrace with my idea of a good breakfast: Mexican coffee, a Cuban Romeo y Julieta, and a little tropical fruit, including avocado.
No, Virginia, there is not a little pill to fix everything that ails your heart and soul. It's the new fad, however. Your soul isn't troubled: you just have a little chemistry problem. Better living through chemistry!
It's not just about money. It's more complicated than that, but it's all very sad, in my opinion. I will not go into all of the reasons now other than to say that any doctor, Psychiatrist or not, who doesn't take the time to know you, and just wants to know your disease, isn't worth your time or your hard-earned money.
OK, now I'm depressed by my profession. Where's the pill for that?
Moving from “time-served” processes of certification (four year BA degrees, three years in law or divinity school) to certification based on achievement can make education dramatically cheaper. It is sheer madness that most students spend 12 years in school, and another four in college. Why exactly should all kids the same age be in the same grade? One size does not fit all; why shouldn’t high school kids go free when they can pass the equivalent of a GED? And for that matter, shouldn’t school districts encourage and reward teachers and schools that are able to graduate students faster? Among other things, this would allow some of the resources not spent on babysitting high-achieving kids to go to kids who really need the help. How “right wing” is that?
The same goes for college. Oxford and Cambridge graduate their students in three years — yet few people think British college grads are less accomplished than their American peers. What is sacred about the four year BA? Wouldn’t a shift to an exam based system (students who make qualifying scores on the appropriate exams would be certified as graduates) allow more people to advance farther at less cost? And there’s an element of social justice here: the kid from a no-name school who scores high on the exam will have an edge on the Ivy League kid who partied through college and just scraped by.
Entry porch of the place where we stayed, Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach on the Pacific side. Lots of people with kids, but elegant, beautifully-designed, built for the ages, friendly, simple, and utterly free of any tackiness. I nicknamed the place "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon" because it's built into an oceanside cliff.
A few of my random Cabo notes:
- Baja California Sur is a desert, dominated by cactus forest habitat. There are always rocky mountains in the distance, running north-south down the long peninsula. There are no rainy days and no cloudy days except in August and September. That's what creates the huge arroyos and canyons.
- The weather is said to be similar to that of Palm Springs, but with a constant sea breeze. Cool desert nights. No humidity.
- Besides the place where we stayed, other resort hotels that seemed especially appealing were Hacienda Del Mar and Palmilla (with golf) in San Jose.
- Cabo is famous for its fishing, deep-sea and coastal. Lots of tournaments. I like to know that the Marlin and Sailfish are out there, but I don't feel much of a need to hassle a fish anymore.
- In the winter months, whales are everywhere for calving season. Gray Whales and Humpbacks. Whether you go fishing, whale-watching, or just sit on the beach, they'll be out there. On the morning we left, I watched, from our terrace, a baby Humpback leaping and cavorting like a puppy.
- Our place had seven pools, some with jacuzzi jets in the corners and some with swim-up bars. We swam in a couple of them, but I am not a pool person and did not sit by one for a minute.
- I'm not much of a resort guy either, but I have to admit that they do know how to make a vacation as comfortable, painless, and convenient as this life can be. I am adaptable, and can adjust to that for a while before I feel like chopping some wood or doing something useful.
- Overheard at night in a pool between two Texas guys with drinks in hand (the only time I heard any crude talk at all): "My f-ing wife, her neighbor gets a f-ing 20-foot Christmas tree, and she has to have a 40-foot tree. Where the f-ing f- does she thinks this money comes from?" "My wife, it's the f-ing shoes. Thousand dollar shoes, she wears them once and tells me they pinch." "Yeah, well last week my f-ing wife..."
- Once you get off the main drag, it's dirt roads everywhere. Everything is coated with dust until rain comes in August.
- Odd as it seems, Cabo is only a 2-hr time difference from the East Coast.
- The Cabo area seems to mainly attract wholesome people from the Midwest and the West Coast. I suppose it serves similar purposes to those the Caribbean, Bermuda, and Florida do for Easterners. We met a number of delightful people, and spent a good evening having drinks and learning to play Mexican Train Dominoes with them. It's a good game, and you don't have to think too hard.
- Cabo San Lucas is on the southernmost tip of the long Baja peninsula, 1000 miles south of LA. My lad drove from LA to Cabo once. Mexican roads. I would not drive those highways at night - no guardrails or shoulders, cliffs, constant detours, cattle on the highways, etc.
- The ocean-side beaches, alas, are mostly not swimmable but are surfable. They tend to have a steep drop-off with powerful churning surf, strong currents, whirlpools, and undertows. Easy for a strong swimmer to lose control. The Sea of Cortez is entirely swimmable, and swim in it we did. Mrs. BD and I like cold salt water with waves. Chillier than one might expect down there. Most people use the heated pools, and make like a Manatee.
- The old part of Cabo San Lucas and the marina are predictably touristy and honky-tonk, with some fine, relatively inexpensive restaurants. Lively at night. Almost all of the resort hotels are on the Sea of Cortez side, so if you like lots of activity, guys selling faux-Mexican junk, crowded beaches, water taxis, Sea-Doos, girl-watching, boozed-up college kids, etc., that's your place. You have to go to that side to swim in the sea though, which is what we like to do.
- You get the feeling in Mexico that many jobs are either partly completed, never completed, or just abandoned. The ramshackle, third world look becomes part of the dusty charm after a day or two. On the other hand, the jobs which involve the gringos, like the resorts and vacation homes, are done very well and with fine craftsmanship, especially the stonework.
- We saw little of what we think of as "Mexican food" in the East. Yes, they have taco stands all over for the workmen, but the food we had was excellent with nary a refried bean. Not much guacamole either, but sliced avocado on top of lots of things. Saw no lemons, but those little limes are always sliced on a plate.
Early morning on our Cabo beach last week, with surfcasters. Note the 6-foot berm on the beach; there's a similar one just inside the water's edge such that there is no safe footing in the surf.
We ate very well in Mexico. These were seafood enchiladas with a creamy wine sauce, a relish of chopped raw vegetables marinated in lime juice, and some fried plantain chips. The green salsa with the brown corn chips was tomatillo, cilantro, onion, and chilis.
Also, the necessary daily Marguerita or two, to ward off scurvy and to prevent dehydration.
(This nice lunch was at the Cilantro Restaurant, next to the Pueblo Bonito Rose resort on the Cabo San Lucas harborside beach. That's not the hotel where we stayed but it's a good one if you like to be around a lot of activity.)
We go places and take photos to save our readers the trouble, hassle, and expense of travelling around. We do it for you!
Rolled back home to Maggie's HQ in Yankeeland at 3:15 this morning after several lengthy flight delays, stuck irritably in the Houston airport. I only have time to post one pic now - our hotel suite's terrace overlooking the quiet and peaceful Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas (as opposed to the Sea of Cortez side). Very pleasant to step into your palatial suite (His and Hers bathrooms, daily sheet changes, hot and cold-running help, chilled Pacificos on hand with lime slices, etc) and to see this sight (decadent hot tub out of sight on the left):
I found Baja Sur to be interesting in many ways. I'll get to my many pics and thoughts about it over the next few days. And yes, Capt. Tom and Dr. Merc, I did do a little fishin' - but just coastal fishing for dinner.
Morning links later today, if I can get my brain in order.
Gimme The Axe is one of the kids in Carl Sandburg's remarkable American fairy tales, The Rootabaga Stories. Tales told to his daughters.
Welcome to Rootabaga Country--where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, where the pigs wear bibs, and where the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind. You'll meet baby balloon pickers, flummywisters, corn fairies, and blue foxes--and if you're not careful, you may never find your way back home.
That was Publisher's Weekly.
ZIGZAG RAILROAD, THE PIGS WITH BIBS ON, THE CIRCUS CLOWN OVENS, THE VILLAGE OF LIVER AND ONIONS, THE VILLAGE OF CREAM PUFFS, HOW THEY BROK AWAY TO GO TO THE ROOTABAGA COUNTRY, HOW THEY BRING BACK THE VILLAGE OF CREAM PUFFS WHEN THE WIND BLOWS IT AWAY, HOW THE FIVE RUST RATS HELPED FIND A NEW VILLAGE, HOW SIX PIGEONS CAME BACK TO HATRACK THE HORSE AFTER MANY ACCIDENTS AND SIX TELEGRAMS, ....
I hope your kids did not grow up deprived this whimsical Americana. In fact, I think I enjoyed hearing them read outloud more than my kids did.
Instead of reading the books, I'd recommend tracking down the audio versions with Carl Sandburg reading them himself. It's pure delight, and his reading sticks in the mind most pleasantly - unlike most things in life.
"Do you want to buy the ticket with the blue flanch to go all the way and come back, or do you want to buy the ticket with the yellow flanch to go all the way, and never come back?"
A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme if not obsession in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, "We still have the power to shape history." But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.
Of the two great societal goals freedom and "the good" freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today's liberalism is focused on "the good" more than on freedom. And ideas of "the good" are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence if not superiority on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.
Almost finished putting the Christmas stuff away, and amusing myself by refreshing my memory about Henry Hudson's voyages.
Given what a careful exploration he did, I am surprised he never ventured up the St. Lawrence, which Cartier had discovered in 1535 and which Champlain was exploring at the same time as Hudson's trip. Also, I am reminded that the English Jamestown settlement existed a couple of years before his Dutch-sponsored 1609 trip, and that the West Indies, South America, and even Peru had been settled by Spanish long before, in the 1500s.
The Spanish knew where the gold was, and it wasn't in New England.
As all deniers, skeptics and heretics know, NASA has been the leading pusher of the global warming hoax here in America. While such august agencies as NOAA and the USGS have been firmly on board, NASA has been the real pioneer.
So it should come as no surprise that NASA has just spent another bazillion dollars of taxpayer money in a vain effort to bolster its feeble, warped and biased conclusions.
Or at least it tried to:
So that's not only good news, but, thanks to the hard efforts of the Washington Examiner, quadruply so! Thanks, Washington Examiner!
I didn't realize that Ricky Skaggs wrote this tune. We made friends with Ricky back when he was playing in bars in Kentucky. In fact, Mrs. BD hired him for a few performances. Dylan used a rousing rock version as his opening tune for a year or two, which I have from a bootleg on my iTunes.
17:1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.
17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.
17:3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
17:4 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
17:5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"
17:6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.
17:7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid."
17:8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
17:9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."
Are all photographers just people who like to make pictures but are too lazy to learn to paint? Who just want immediate gratification?
That topic came up over cocktails with a friend last night. He is an avid amateur photographer who has been taking a watercolor course at night. He told me painting is teaching him to see.
Coyotes have been moving south into the eastern US since the 1970s, presumably from Ontario. About 30% larger (50 lbs and more) than the western coyote, they have some wolf DNA from hybridization in Canada.
They have adapted to suburbia, where they prey on cats (that's a good thing), small ankle-biter dogs (another good thing), mice, rats, fawns, geese, etc. So although they do not really belong here in New England, they eat things that we don't mind their eating. And they have become common.
Massachusetts poet Catherine Reid has written a book about the coyotes which have now entended their range to the southern states, with great success, despite hunting, trapping, etc. The more of them you kill, the larger their litters. They are here to stay - at least until wolves return. Wolves kill coyotes, just as coyotes kill foxes.
Update: When we last left the riveting tale about minimizing full-screen programs that won't minimize while they're working, we were still using the stale, antiquated manual method, where you actually had to physically move the mouse and everything.
Well, I'm currently using one of those pesky programs a bunch, and I obviously tired of the painstaking, laborious process of opening Task Manager and minimizing the window every dang time, so I solved the problem using a DOS batch file.
It's now just a click away.
Details at the bottom of the post.
Pic: Artist's conception of our Editor when we ask for a raise.
Every now and then you might run into some stubborn program that won't minimize while doing its thing. For programs like video editors that might take an hour or two to render a file, it can be a tad aggravating when you want to get to the Desktop for something.
There are actually two ways to force a program to minimize, each with a plus and a minus.
To minimize everything that's open, hit Windows-D. The Windows key is usually on both sides of the space bar, the one with the little logo on it. You can also hit the tiny blue icon on the far right of the Task Bar.
This will allow you access to the Desktop. The hitch is that you then have to open back up the programs you were using. In that regard, it's quicker to do the following.
The second way takes an extra step, but it's permanent. Either hit Ctrl-Alt-Del or click on the Task Bar with the right mouse button and open the Task Manager.
Click on the 'Applications' tab, highlight the program's name with the right mouse button and select "Minimize" from the drop-down menu. That'll keep it minimized until it's finished.
The Windows key actually has a number of functions, but I've never found any of them to be of much use. If you have kids in the room and want to dash to the kitchen for a few minutes, hitting Win-L will lock the keyboard and keep things safe while you're away. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts, try this site.
Info on the 'one-click' closing method is below the fold.
Data from more than 1,300 four-year colleges and universities in the United States show that the use of race and ethnicity in admissions declined sharply after the mid-1990s, especially at public institutions. The proportion of public four-year colleges considering minority status in admissions has fallen from more than 60 percent to about 35 percent. Among private institutions, the drop during the same years has been notable but less dramatic, from 57 percent to 45 percent. The major decline came after 1995, when the campaign against affirmative action intensified, and schools, particularly public ones, thrown on the defensive, retreated. They were reacting not only to actual litigation but also to its threat. While colleges and universities that are considered elite are more likely to have practiced affirmative action and to have been more protective of it, even they have retreated. Few innovative or vigorous forms of affirmative action are now in play in the face of courts and federal agencies exercising strict scrutiny when examining admissions procedures and in the face of an increasingly suspicious citizenry.
Another reality is redefining, and probably weakening, the meaning of affirmative action. Although few schools publicize the fact, one of the central historic principles giving rise to affirmative action is being undermined. President Johnson’s speech assumed that affirmative action would help the descendants of former slaves (he made no mention of Hispanics). That assumption from yesteryear is out of sync with today’s realities. Affirmative action more and more functions to open the campus not only to the descendants of former slaves but to black students with different cultural and political heritages. Once championed, as in Johnson’s speech, as a means of reparation or restitution, affirmative action now turns out to be helping hundreds and hundreds of young people who have suffered the wounds of old-fashioned American racism little or not at all. More than a quarter of the black students enrolled at selective American colleges and universities are immigrants or the children of immigrants. African-American students born in the United States thus turn out to be more underrepresented (given their presence in the U.S. population) at selective colleges than one might imagine. At some of the most exclusive institutions (Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania), no less than two-fifths of those admitted as “black” are of immigrant origin. Such facts, as they come into view, blunt the force of arguments favoring affirmative action. Diversity and restitution are better reasons than diversity alone, but restitution seems less and less in play.
Diversity itself, moreover, seems weaker and weaker as an argument for affirmative action when many campuses now appear, at least to the public at large, more diverse than ever before. The increasing presence on campus of students from myriad ethnic groups (Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Iranian, and many others) and the consequent reduction of “white” students (witness student populations at the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, USC, Columbia, and other schools) undercut the notion that American higher education is still unfairly monochromatic.
Prof. Chace favors affirmative action only for blacks with American heritage.
No, Virginia, there is not a little pill to fix everything that ails your heart and soul. It's the new fad, however. Your soul isn't troubled: you just have a little chemistry problem. Better living through chemistry!
Krauthammer to Write Magnum Opus on Politics
Almost finished putting the Christmas stuff away, and amusing myself by refreshing my memory about 
Coyotes have been moving south into the eastern US since the 1970s, presumably from Ontario. About 30% larger (50 lbs and more) than the western coyote, they have some 
Pic: Artist's conception of our Editor when we ask for a raise.