Sunday, October 24. 2010
The University of Chicago played Kenyon College in Gambier yesterday afternoon! Neither of the colleges recruit athletes nor offer athletic scholarships. Lots of fumbles, simple bleachers, no cheerleaders, and no admission charge. BYOB. Note cornfields in the distance.
Good fun, like a high school game.
Who won? Don't know and don't really care. I never really care very much about sports scores unless I am playing.
These intellectual schools do have their share of sturdy, fine-lookin' young lads, however, according to the BD pupette. Just a lot smarter and far more academically talented than the usual, says she. Literarily or mathematically-inclined. What a wonderful world.
More Ohio pics later.
Well, I hesitate to term these "professional" conferences, because by my definition unionized people cannot really be considered professionals. But, putting that aside, here's Academic Conferences: the Oppressed Versus the Oppressors. One quote:
A preliminary program for the National Council of Teachers of English conference (Nov. 18-21, Orlando) lists a session, "Leading Out Our Profession Through Advocacy," that blames Ronald Reagan (whatever happened to blaming Bush?) for scripted lessons and mandates handed down to classroom teachers in the cause of school reform: "During the Reagan years, systems and structures were set in place so that corporate giants and government would have more control over education," resulting in policies such as No Child Left Behind and now even the Obama Race to the Top. The NCTE workshop's answer to all that? "Critical reflection, dialogue, and action toward an educational reform and advocacy that enables teachers and learners to collaborate, explore, engage, and renew ourselves through positive, empowering, professional advocacy."
If I can peer clearly through the edubabble, I think this is a union training session. Not certain, though. By the way, what's a "learner"?
Purists might object, but these things are made of "resin," not wood. They are heavy. They have been outdoors for over a year and had accumulated mildew and dirt, so I decided to give them a bleach spray bath last weekend. It worked like magic.
I asked Mrs. BD whether she wanted me to put them inside someplace for the winter and she told me not to bother. "They're resin." I said "You mean plastic." I never realized it. I am happy to know that a lifetime of scraping, painting, and replacing rotting Adirondack chairs is over.
Seaside Casual Furniture, from Rhode Island. Only somebody like Sipp would notice that they aren't the real thing.
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
4:6 As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.
4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
4:8 From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
4:16 At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them!
4:17 But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth.
4:18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
On Cape Cod in September. Thought blogger colleague Retriever might enjoy this pic.
Saturday, October 23. 2010
A patient told me last week that her brother had been arrested again, for the 17th time.
What now? I asked.
Mugged somebody with a knife.
What's he been doing since he got out of jail?
On probation, living on Disability, he gets Medicare. Those are my tax dollars. A Psychiatrist gave him the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, but did not know he was using crack at the time. He got Disability, plus he gets extra money for taking online college courses. He has better benefits than I have on my job.
What's he doing out on the street again?
Lost his apartment. Didn't pay the rent. He hates to pay rent. He wants to be back in jail. He's a member of The -----s, they are a big deal in jail. In real life, he isn't. No job is good enough for him.
Talk to him yet?
I won't talk to him. He is such a charmer and spinner of words and tales he could convince you that the moon was blue cheese. I gave up on talking him long ago because he just drags you into his web of lies. He comes across as very earnest and sensitive. Then you start caring, and that's when he gets you. He is evil.
Mr. Surber supplied the toon. The video here.
Somebody asked me this weekend what is meant my the common legal term "in the state's interest."
When you think about it, it does sound like a term from feudal times; an odd turn of phrase for a democratic republic. On the other hand, in socialist or communist countries, they use the term "the peoples' interest" as a euphemism for the same thing.
There is a good brief definition and discussion here, as the term applies in the US.
My problem with this basic legal concept, when I think about it a little with my small brain, is this: What happens when The State becomes a special interest of its own, looming over all other interests? Well, James Madison et al anticipated all of that, didn't they? Very shrewd and wise old dead guys with unfashionable ethnicities.
I have a fatal disease in my large, probably 100 year-old Copper Beech tree. I have diagnosed it as Beech Bark Disease. I've seen the same bark disease on many old Copper Beeches recently - areas of shedding bark on the trunk and dying branches high overhead. It's a damn shame.
That's an overstatement.
On other topics,
If Reagan couldn't do it, who could?
...imagine if your car insurance covered every scratch or dent. Wouldn't you expect your premiums to rise to meet the expanded coverage? And wouldn't you expect your auto repair shops to become clogged with cars that didn't really need to be repaired, competing for time and space with other cars with broken transmissions or burnt-out motors?
If we want lower insurance premiums, we will need to return to a system that favors high deductible, high co-pay catastrophic-type insurance with a built-in disincentive for overuse, such as the kind that some employers have provided as an option up until now. Patients could pay for office visits from health savings accounts or other flexible spending tax shelters. More than 10 million Americans already have such accounts.
A Lukewarmer speaks at Watts. Good comments on the post.
Prof B: How much is too much when it comes to taxes?
Climate regulations coming for trucks, buses
Let's bring on a new Ice Age
No normal human does not enjoy the smell of bacon
Moslems need to lighten up and learn more tolerance.
FOX is the most tolerant network
Greg Sullivan: Buy, Mortimer, Buy! - The Saga of Maine Family Robinson Continues
Anchoress on The Brutality of Grace and Cormac McCarthy
Did you ever see the film El Topo? McCarthy is like that.
Three Charts that Will Infuriate Taxpayers
Public Employees Union Spends Huge to Save Dems
This is corrupt.
The homelessness industry has re-branded San Francisco's street bums (h/t Lucianne).
It's quite a story. The homeless advocates are begging and manipulating for money in a way which is similar to that of the seemingly-sociopathic panhandlers.
 An Old Man's Winter Night
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
One of the good things about this handyman special on Route 6 in Wellfleet is that you can just walk up the dirveway to the Cumbie and the liquor store. What does anybody really need that cannot be got at one of those places?
Friday, October 22. 2010
A re-post of Shrinkwrapped's fine and thoughtful essay on the causes of poverty in prosperous and opportunity-filled places. He begins with a quote from Heather MacDonald:
A welfare mother in Central Harlem is not poor for the same reasons that a subsistence corn farmer in Mexico is poor. That’s just one of the many self-evident conclusions to emerge from a dangerously misguided antipoverty program begun by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. Bloomberg’s initiative, Opportunity NYC–Family Rewards, bestows cash rewards on (for the most part) single parents and their children if they act responsibly—by attending school, for example, or by working. Interim results for New York’s effort, which is modeled on a program in Mexico that targeted agricultural peasants, are now in. Not all of them are as blindingly obvious, though, as the fact that multigenerational urban poverty in America is far different from Third World rural poverty. One detail in particular stands out: that the lives of America’s underclass are characterized by a degree of disorganization that is rarely grasped or acknowledged. The implications of this revelation will be difficult, if not impossible, for the welfare industry to accept.
We have often discussed here that modern life is not only packed with opportunity, but that it is more demanding and challenging than that of the life of a serf on a Lord's estate or of a slave on a plantation. Freedom and free markets are part of what makes it challenging and worthwhile.
America is about opportunity, not security. That's why people want to come here. People who just want freebies go to England or Germany.
Perhaps this sounds like a heartless post during an extended recession. We believe in charity, but we also believe in holding people accountable for their fates and expect them to take charge of their lives as best they can. Furthermore, we do not view truckloads of money as the ultimate goal of life.
Our shrink friend has another post on the topic this week: The Culture of Poverty.
Those without socialist ideologies know that poverty in America is often temporary, often by life-style choice, sometimes by bad luck, and often because of dysfunctional life choices and/or character flaws and mental disability and illness.
And, for contrast, here's the view from the Left.
 Beers range between around 3% to around 9% alcohol by volume. I prefer the lower numbers because it is pleasant to enjoy a few brews without really feeling it.
You can look up your favorite beer's alcohol content (and calories) here.
Over the transom:
Waimea Bay shore-break surfing pioneer, husband, and father of two, Clark Little has gained nationwide recognition for his photography with appearances on Good Morning America, Inside Edition, and many local news stations across the U.S.
It all started in 2007 when Clark 's wife wanted a nice piece of art to decorate a wall. Voluntarily, Clark grabbed a camera, jumped in the water, and starting snapping away capturing the beauty and power of monstrous Hawaiian waves from the inside out.
"Clark's view" is a unique view of the ocean that most will only be able to experience safely on land while studying one of Clark 's photos.
Now with a camera upgrade and an itch to get that better shot, Clark has taken this on full time and has moved his office from land, to the inside of a barrel.
Here is Little's website.
Via Theo
Is it time to return to caveman parenting?
Stone Age families didn't spank and relied on multiple caregivers to raise their kids, research claims.
It sounds like Noble Savage silliness to me - the idealization of the primitive - although I am sure stone-age tribal people did share in watching the kids. Tribal kid-watching still makes sense today. The nuclear nucular family is a socio-cultural aberration.
Read this review before watching this trailer for the film "2081"
"The film is only twenty-five minutes long, but it packs a punch as terrible as Michael Radford’s gritty, nearly two-hour long Nineteen Eighty-Four. The production values are as good as any $20 million budget blockbuster’s. As a parable on the price of silence and the fate of those who prefer security and passivity over independence and freedom, it is one of the best films I have ever seen."
 A Viking mystery in Oxford (h/t, Never Yet melted)
Reason: The Eternal Return of Overpopulation. Well, I believe that there are too many people on the planet. Too many for what? That's a long answer, but let's just say for now that they are putting mini-mansions on some of the grouse coverts I grew up hunting.
Driscoll on elitism: Puritanical Poseurs in Paradise
Think Progress Discovers Conservative Philanthropy Is a Lot Like Progressive Philanthropy
NPR: Here’s a quick billion dollars or so that taxpayers can save
Culture of entitlement: French strike to save 'birthright' of privileges. How are hand-outs "privileges"? These people have no work ethic, and are still acting like disgruntled peasants instead of free people.
Is "sustainable" taking over from "diversity" in academic fashion?
NAACP: Tea Party needs to become racist so we can call them racists. Or something.
Solar farms in England? What a joke. Your tax dollars at work, suckers. Makes as much sense as solar in Seattle.
The Krautman: Obama Underappreciation Syndrome:
Here Obama has spent two years bestowing upon the peasantry the "New Foundation" of a more regulated, socially engineered and therefore more humane society, and they repay him with recalcitrance and outright opposition. Here he gave them Obamacare, the stimulus, financial regulation and a shot at cap-and-trade -- and the electorate remains not just unmoved but ungrateful.
Faced with this truly puzzling conundrum, Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the "facts and science" undergirding Obamacare and the other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high.
OK, Obama thinks that I am mentally disturbed. Of course I am. At least he didn't call me racist.
Thursday, October 21. 2010
Over the transom:
One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift... The next year, I didn't buy her a gift.
When she asked me why, I replied,
"Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!"
And that's how the fight started.....
____________________________
My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, 'Do you want to have Sex?' 'No,' she answered. I then said, 'Is that your final answer?'
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying, 'Yes..'
So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."
And that's when the fight started...
______________________________
My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.
I asked her, "Do you know him?" "Yes", she sighed,
"He's my old boyfriend.... I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since."
"My God!" I said, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"
And then the fight started...
A few more below the fold -
Continue reading "How to start a fight"
Finally, the soft sciences are willing to take another look at culture: The NYT, the Soft Sciences, and the Slow, Stupid Return to Reason. Steinberg begins:
A rather astonishing piece appeared in the New York Times this week, offering some degree of hope that the pursuit of scientific truth has a chance of once again becoming the dominant theme in university science.
Maybe human fate is a teensy bit more complicated than "Who is oppressing who?" Indeed, studying cultures and subcultures is a fascinating task which calls on depth of knowledge from all fields.
From Mike Huckabee:
"NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left."
NPR exists in a kindergarten dream world. NPR has hated Williams since he dared to discuss self-destructive black subcultures. That is a no-no even though everybody knows about it.
Also see Opinion: Juan Williams, NPR and the Death of Liberalism.
h/t, Theo
More on the embarassment at Widener Law School
With open gays now free to join the army, Ivy League to bring back ROTC any second now, right?
VDH: How our first postracial, postnational, bipartisan president has revealed himself to be a condescending doctrinaire ideologue.
Who is giving a million to fight MSNBC?
This is cruel: Maureen Dowd and Revenge of the Homely Redhead
Carpe: The Antidote to Obamacare? Dr. Wal-Mart, Retail Clinics and Strip Mall Medicine Are Booming in U.S.
Does the government have a grudge against salt?
Classical: News Weak says the TEA Party folks have made a fetish out of the Constitution but worse - they get it wrong.
I like the idea of wilderness preservation anywhere -but with allowance for careful oil drilling - and cops, for Pete's sake
The UK: Osborne wields axe
Tyrrell: It is over. He begins:
The Democrats are about to be beaten by something that they do not in their heart of hearts think exists, a huge national majority. At this late hour, with the storm clouds gathering and the livestock getting restless, they see only sunshine. Yes, there is "foreign money" out there. Yes, the media have bungled broadcasting the purity of the Democratic message. And naturally, angry voices can be heard. Yet surely there is no majority gathering to unseat the party of decency and good deeds. Well, there is, and it is nothing like how the Democrats describe it.
That majority is amiable and sensible and believes in limited government. It is convinced that we face a catastrophic budget crisis and that measures must be taken against the spending and on behalf of growth. Furthermore, many of these friendly Americans would be delighted to give our president a ride home if they found him on a street corner, though they would be a lot happier if he did not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They doubt he would ask them in for a drink. After all, to him they do not exist.
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