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.
If you can’t handle the reality that academia is rife with politics, back-stabbing, and an operational Social Darwinism due to finite funds, then obviously it isn’t for you. Real jobs in the real world have many of the same issues, but are not burdened with the same idealistic presumptions. The academic pipeline is a difficult and brutal sieve.
Our friend AVI put up a comment here yesterday to the effect that Leftist forces are far more interested in undermining Western culture than they give a damn about the pawns they use.
What goes on these days at an elite, expensive, private liberal arts college? It's been studied, and parents might not be too pleased by the looniness there.
Students are encouraged to "think critically" about anything that threatens the college's dogmas on diversity, multiculturalism, gender, and sustainability, etc., but, for the most part, not to think critically about those dogmas themselves. That is the problem: such contradictions go unnoticed. And they go unnoticed because at Bowdoin, and places like it, there are precious few people who can point them out.
It all reminds me of a conversation I had with a nice lady last weekend. She was talking about the oppression of Muslim women. I offered the notion that she was not being very multiculturally-tolerant in wanting to impose her Western views on Muslim culture. I asked her whether we should not respect cultural differences.
Somewhat apropos: Islam’s Latest Fatwa Permitting Rape of Non-Muslim Women. Why does Islam seem so preoccupied with the interests in rape, pedophilia, homosexuality, bestiality, religious imperialism, and killing Jews? Surely there must be other, more productive and positive things in life to focus on.
Perhaps the Bowdoin faculty could enlighten me on these points because the only aspects of it which seem to be approved on college campi are the homosexuality and the killing of Israelis.
February, March, April and May are my busiest times of the year at work. No time to think except in the shower. No time for thoughtful posts. One must make hay while the sun shines.
Piers Morgan has armed security. And I read that Jim Carrey has an armed bodyguard whenever in public. Since I am cheap and not wealthy, I have to be my own bodyguard. If armed protection is OK for the President and Piers Morgan, it's OK for me.
I can't say I am too thrilled with what the Dem-ruled Connecticut legislature is about to do with firearms. I like to try my best to be law-abiding, but I do not know how many firearms we have around the place any more than I know how many hammers we have. Some are antiques, workable probably and oiled, but not fired for 30 years. Some are probably in closets and drawers we have never opened and in dark corners of the attics which we have never explored.
This place has been inhabited by firearm owners, country men, since 1823. As far as I know, not one of them every shot anybody, even if they deserved it.
My late father-in-law's farm, on which we now blissfully reside in commuting distance to Hartford, always had handguns (old .45 revolvers) in the drawer in the tack room of the barn (in case a horse needed shooting - broken leg, terminal colic, etc) and a .410 leaning on the barn wall for pigeons, Copperheads, and rattlers. He liked pigeon stew, and plenty of them lived in the barn before we tightened it up. (I liked the squab better.)
When he lived here, there was no crime at all. He was a big shot insurance fellow, and a gentleman farmer just as I aspire to be. Math genius actuary-turned executive, but farm-raised. Family tradition. Family farm, now. Third generation here, if we can keep it with the taxes which insist on taxing us as if we were a 60-acre housing development (they term that "taxable at best use". What is "best use"?). Otherwise, some developer will fill it with McMansions on 1/4-acre lots with no woodchucks, no horses, no goat, no meadows, no snakes, no barn pigeons, no barns, no barn cats, and no firearms. Safe and sterile.
Like most states with some creepy urban zones, most firearm crime is done by career crims and sociopathic and drug gangs, but I do not see our wise legislature attending to that at all. There are no dainty female suburban votes in that.
If I were a horny college student today, I think I'd feel more comfortable chasing the townie girls. But that runs up against this advice: Princeton mom: Women have a 'shelf life'. Why that article got so much attention is beyond me, because every gal knows it even if they decide to wait a while.
Neither Jesus nor any of the twelve apostles could get a job in any self-respecting mainline church in America today; none of them had a degree from an accredited seminary.
Christ is my Pastor, my Lord, my teacher, my guide, and my friend. Happy Easter, readers. The Barrister team is off to occupy our (mainline but distinctly non-Progressive and verging on evangelical) New England Congregational church, then a long brunch-lunch with cocktails and champagne, oysters, clams, squid, lobsters, foie gras sliders, rare prime rib with horseradish and rare lamb chops, Halibut with caper and tuna sauce, ridiculous desserts, then (for me) naptime. Why not?
Smart move by Amazon. A heck of a lot more people read Goodreads than read the NYT Book Review or, God knows, the NY Review of Books or The London Review of Books. I do enjoy the intelligence of the London Review.
People still love books but, with the appealing Teaching Company DVDs, it's tough for me to do more than a book per week.
Obamacare is not medical insurance in any real sense of the term "insurance." It is set up to pay your medical bills. It is no freebie, however. It's expensive.
I have two annoyed comments, and a few brief questions:
- Would my hernia repair have cost me $18,000 to the hospital if there were no insurance?
- Obamacare will render my medical insurace plan, an old-fashioned family Major Medical, illegal next year. So I can't keep the insurance I like.
- Will it be illegal for businesses, and rich folks, to self-insure under Obamacare? How would that work? And what about people like me, who like to pay their doctors themselves? Will that be permitted? What if I want to take Granny to Switzerland for herbal treatments for her dementia?
Just as in ancient times, traditional marriage is becoming a thing of the prosperous, educated, and tradition-minded. The solid citizens, the pillars of communities; the stable people with predictable lives.
In my humble view, marriage is, or can be, two separate things: a secular property contract, and a religious covenant. Both are quite serious matters. I happen to believe that it is a difficult and challenging, but rewarding, structure for a good life. Seems to be good for kids too, which should not be surprising.
Making relationships that work is not an easy thing, given how neurotic everybody is. It can be worth the trouble, however.
Accelerated Learning Would Add Trillions of Dollars in Wealth - If students could complete their
education a year faster, the many benefits would include increased
personal wealth, decreased government spending, and more sustainable
entitlement programs.
When Bill O’Reilly and John Stossel discussed affirmative action for
conservative professors, as they did this past December, did they
believe that it would inspire more 22-year-olds on the right to apply
for graduate study in Princeton’s English department, which tells
prospective students that “we offer a wide range of theoretical
specializations in fields such as feminist theory, gender studies,
psychoanalysis, Marxism, New Historicism, environmental studies,
political and social theory, and cultural studies”?
The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of Unwed Mothers: An Economic Mystery. The real question here isn't "Why so many babies?" It's "Why so few marriages?" And we have an answer.
As we say here, building a complex life with social pleasures, financial stability, family structure with continuity, traditions, and reliability, and the general comforts of life, is difficult without marriage and family.
School choice is not a Democrat-Conservative split. Nobody likes the government monopoly and everybody wants school choices, the same school choices that the Obama kids have. Inner city families long for school choices for their kids. The only problems the Dems have are to deal with are their wealthy allies in the teachers unions.
"There is no magic point at which a genuine college-level education becomes an option, but anything below an IQ of 110 is problematic. If you want to do well, you should have an IQ of 115 or higher. Put another way, it makes sense for only about 15% of the population, 25% if one stretches it, to get a college education. And yet more than 45% of recent high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges. Adjust that percentage to account for high-school dropouts, and more than 40% of all persons in their late teens are trying to go to a four-year college--enough people to absorb everyone down through an IQ of 104.
"No data that I have been able to find tell us what proportion of those students really want four years of college-level courses, but it is safe to say that few people who are intellectually unqualified yearn for the experience, any more than someone who is athletically unqualified for a college varsity wants to have his shortcomings exposed at practice every day. They are in college to improve their chances of making a good living. What they really need is vocational training. But nobody will say so, because 'vocational training' is second class. 'College' is first class.
"Large numbers of those who are intellectually qualified for college also do not yearn for four years of college-level courses. They go to college because their parents are paying for it and college is what children of their social class are supposed to do after they finish high school. They may have the ability to understand the material in Economics 1 but they do not want to. They, too, need to learn to make a living--and would do better in vocational training.
There is great risk in that life plan. I often remind people that being put out to pasture is a quite modern invention. Originally an ideal of European Socialists, in the US it did not become a plausible plan until the Depression when it seemed politically useful to take "mature" adults - "seasoned citizens" - out of the labor force to reduce unemployment.
I have never understood what is so ideal about being unproductive and useless with a life of recreation, errand-running, and lawn-mowing. In my experience, people thrive on productivity and responsbility (while bitching about it of course) and frequently decay without it. If Heaven entails floating around blissfully on clouds all day, I have no interest in it. Anybody who wants that can have it today. It's called heroin.
Still, people pursue a degree of economic security, because constant worry is no fun. Except for the most ambitious and talent-driven, it seems to me that most people will be as resourceful as they need to be to try to construct whatever life they desire. I just hate to see people seduced by phoney pop-cultural dreams of lying in the hammock or farting into the sofa for 25 years.
Along with Washington and Jefferson, Calvin Coolidge is in our presidential pantheon.
At Maggie's Farm, we reject the notion that the "greats" are those who expanded central power in Washington. What's so great about that? America was designed in opposition to centralized power. Is "freedom" a dirty word?
There are several wonderful things about legal training, but the best is its versatility. Legal training is a useful background for almost any ambitious endeavor.
From Mead on 
