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.
The federal snack rules take effect this year for school districts across the country that participate in the federal free and reduced lunch program. They restrict snack foods sold at schools to those with at least 50 percent whole grain, with low sugar, fat and sodium content. Each snack must also come in under 200 calories, according to the news site.
Viking 'ring fortress' discovered in Denmark - Historians believe distinctive geometric fortresses may have been built by Sweyn Forkbeard as a military training camp from which to launch his invasion of England
First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. Now they say there is a pause (or “hiatus”), but that it doesn’t after all invalidate their theories.
On domestic policy, liberals see history as a story of progress from tiny government to ever-larger government — though never stating exactly how far that movement should go.
The Most Expensive Train Station in the US The Wall Street Journal has a humdinger of a piece that beautifully illustrates why we can’t have nice things
Failure on the Home Front- Where is the domestic prosperity that the president’s global retreat was designed to enable?
Jason Riley believes that African Americans ought to pursue their lives like everybody else does. In other words, he does not see brown-skinned people as handicapped or as government-dependents.
"Married black Americans in the US have the same average incomes as married white Americans."
College selectivity did not significantly affect the graduates’ chances of employment, the authors write, and neither did gender, race or parental education.
To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.
How has it come to this–that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.
“Why are we here today?” she asked. “To make revolution,” they answered. “What kind of revolution?” she replied. “The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted. “And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded. “By destroying the American family!” they answered. “How do we destroy the family?” she came back. “By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly. “And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied. “By taking away his power!” “How do we do that?” “By destroying monogamy!” they shouted. “How can we destroy monogamy?” “By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.
The Establishment cannot grasp that religion, race, and nationalism are far more powerful motivators than is economics. Globalism, with its hollowing out of the state, is in fact paving the way for more primal war, fought for age-old reasons by entities that are not states.
Good article. Readers know that my opinion is that all of the insanity of this conflict-ridden world is not my problem. I do not really care what Putin does (a "Hitler"? Give me a break). Iraq? I don't care. Memo To Washington: Iraq Is Not A Nation And You Can’t Build One There With Bombs
This administration goes from stupid to stupid, but so did the Bush admin. I am in favor of benign neglect unless those morons step on my toes in NYC or anywhere else in the US. Most other places are just tar babies, and ungrateful in the end. Beheading people? That's what they like to do. Everybody knows that. I am not shocked, but it's news to John Kerry.
Consider Vermont. Unlike my own state of New Hampshire, it has a bucolic image: Holsteins, dirt roads, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Ben & Jerry's, Howard Dean… And yet the Green Mountain State now has appalling levels of heroin and meth addiction, and the social chaos that follows. Geoffrey Norman began a recent essay in The Weekly Standard with a vignette from a town I know very well — St Johnsbury, population 7,600, motto "Very Vermont", the capital of the remote North-East Kingdom hard by the Quebec border and as far from urban pathologies as you can get. Or so you'd think. But on a recent Saturday morning, Norman reports, there were more cars parked at the needle-exchange clinic than at the farmers' market. In Vermont, there's no inner-city underclass, because there are no cities, inner or outer; there's no disadvantaged minorities, because there's only three blacks and seven Hispanics in the entire state; there's no nothing. Which is the real problem.
Israel’s
Decision to Declare 988 Acres of West Bank Territory as State Land -
See more at:
http://jcpa.org/israels-988-acres-of-west-bank-territory/#sthash.EceSqJjB.dpuf
Israel’s
Decision to Declare 988 Acres of West Bank Territory as State Land -
See more at:
http://jcpa.org/israels-988-acres-of-west-bank-territory/#sthash.EceSqJjB.dpuf
The Middle East: These barbarians will be killing and fighting for the next 1000 years just like the past 5000 years. It's their natural way of life, and they like it. They like to kill, rape, and die. It's their culture, and we must be sensitive to it. By Western Civ standards, they are all nuts and the notion of a civil, Western-style secular nation does not really interest them. To them we are decadent and ungodly and we may be, but the Western World has not been a civil one for very long either. Leave them alone with their tribal and religious furies, but just keep the barbarians far away from me. My life without Moslems would not diminish my life one bit...well, I do like falafel.
The Ukraine: Who cares? Russia is a crappy, deteriorating third-world country with a bit of oil and with Czarist imperial delusions. Not our problem. If Europe cares, let them put on their big boy pants and do whatever they want. Start a European war. Last I heard, the Ukraine was not one of the United States.
Israel? They can handle things themselves. Their battles will never end just as in biblical days.
China? They want to be a big deal again. Well, they are, sort-of. They own most of the US debt, sadly. But that's our fault. If they want to be a big deal, it's ok with me. Why anybody would chose to live there is beyond me. Horrible, charmless place of desolation, with too many people and the stupid, paranoid, autocratic government they deserve. To each his own.
These sorts of things are not "crises," they are just ordinary life on planet earth. The "American Imperium" isn't over - it never really existed. Go ahead, try a round of golf - and tell me why I am wrong not to be hysterical. Trouble, conflict, and war is the way of the world.
I am going fishing now, happy to be a rebel American.
Obama: “The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America...”
Is the "common good" - as if there were one of those - best served by freedom or by government expansion and intrusion?
Both Dems and Repubs are guilty of the latter, but during the Obama years it has reached a fever pitch. The EPA, the Dept of Education, the NSA, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, the IRS - etc. Why aren't these expansions of power - oppression really by our moral and intellectual superiors - over the individual, frightening to our political "leaders" of any stripe? Why not frightening to the mainstream press? Government has the power and the guns - and our money.
The federal government is out of control. Where are the Minutemen?
I have very little paranoid tendencies, but I am far more uneasy about what is happening here in the US than about ISIS or Russia or Syria or whatever other crappy shitholes where people can't or do not wish to get civilized. Israel can take care of itself, however it feels best.
One might think the small-government liberal shows up in the realm of personal choice. And it is true that on one very narrow band of issues — sex and abortion — liberals agree government should butt out. Yet this is where the butting-out largely ends.
For while liberals largely support, say, the legalization of marijuana, that is not owing to any broader sense that people own their bodies and should be free to do as they like with them — such as ride a motorcycle without a helmet, or engage in sex for profit, or drink a 64-ounce sugary soft drink, or forgo health insurance.
Rather, the contemporary mainstream liberal view of such things holds that individual choices affect the collective good. And since government’s job is to safeguard the collective good, government should therefore regulate individual choices. If it allows people to smoke marijuana, that is because it has decided a little reefer now and then causes less collective harm than the harm caused by prohibition.
In other words, the mainstream Democratic view asks how much personal freedom smart public policy should permit. It has little room for the notion that some personal freedom should lie beyond the reach of public policy in the first place.
Does that seem too strong? Then consider the campaign to eviscerate the First Amendment. Democratic leaders such as John Kerry, Sen. Patrick Leahy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and many others — including countless grass-roots activists — want to amend the Constitution to nullify the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, so the government can once again dictate what people can and cannot say about politicians in the weeks leading up to an election. Tellingly, the proposals include provisions stipulating that the press would still be allowed to speak freely about political candidates.
This is a tacit concession that everyone else would not. In that event, rights are no longer trumps; they are simply one more consideration to be balanced against all the rest. Which means they are not really rights at all.
In short, the Democratic Party is torn between a liberal establishment that wants more government, and an even more liberal wing that wants the same thing squared. At bottom, both wings believe the formula for perfection is simple: Put the government in charge of everything, and put the right people in charge of the government. Then just sit back and wait for Shangri-La.
She teaches part-time in the university writing program with courses focused on the representation of women and reading hip hop as poetry. Finally, she is a doctoral student in higher education administration with research interests including intersectional analysis of working-class students and faculty and their experiences on campus.
On the See The Stripes website, Carson says he wishes he would have known he was attending a “school on a plantation.” However, he says that even had he been more aware of the southern history of South Carolina school, he still would have chosen to attend the university after he explained his decision to his friends and family.
... the Democratic Party is torn between a liberal establishment that wants more government, and an even more liberal wing that wants the same thing squared. At bottom, both wings believe the formula for perfection is simple: Put the government in charge of everything, and put the right people in charge of the government. Then just sit back and wait for Shangri-La.
Everybody knows that there is a dysfunctional black urban subculture, and that there is not a single thing that liberal white folks can do about it.
There are deeply dysfunctional white, mostly rural, subcultures too, but nobody cares at all about them. There will always be people on the fringes of society.
I work alongside black Americans. They are totally normal nice people. Living in NYC, I no longer even notice race, ethnicity, etc anymore. A waste of mental bandwidth. But when I (rarely) encounter a member of my tribe (New England Christians, gun-owning Red Sox fans with some immigrant blood), it's a fun moment of reunion. A shock of recognition.
Happens to me all the time. "You're white - so let me give you a great job with more money than you want, and I will never fire you. Plus free cupcakes." Being white is way cool.
A monkey's diversion. Hmm. You know, Darwin didn't have a clue compared to Gregor Mendel, but we are just monkeys when examined dispassionately. I've never heard the Internet described properly until just now, in my head. I asked Google what the Internet was, which I was afraid to do at first. If you ask the Internet what the Internet is, that's like dividing by zero. I could have broken the darn thing, and then everyone would be angry at me. So I asked with some trepidation, but nothing much happened, good or bad, just like when you search for anything else. It told me this:
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion devices worldwide. It is an international network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government packet switched networks, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), the infrastructure to support email, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing and telephony.
No, that's way too many words. I hereby declare: The Internet is A Monkey's Diversion. Someone go update the Wikipedia page, will you? Now on to some desultory links, with crabby commentary. A Monkey's Diversion!
Be flexible. Line up work in advance. Get banking set up. Don't plan to work 40 hrs/wk. Travel light (28L backpack). Go.
Regulation has plunged us back to the hunter-gatherer stage, this time for pixels. If this behavior bothers you, don't fret. Everyone young that tries to copy this method will never procreate.
It all began, as these things so often do, with a drink. One drink, which led to another, then more besides. Each one, generously given by a genial customer. Each one eagerly slurped by the monkey chained to the bar
That reminds me. I can't wait until Saint Patrick's Day!
A recent report from Reuters has also suggested Apple is in talks with multiple health providers at Mount Sinai, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Allscripts, with the company pushing HealthKit and its Health app as an all-in-one patient data resource for medical professionals.
The biggest heist ever committed in America was bribing politicians to make Apple the defacto computer used in public schools. They were useless for any sort of productive work, which made them wildly popular with academics. Apple smells sweet, sweet Obamacare money now.
Knowledge Vault is a type of "knowledge base" – a system that stores information so that machines as well as people can read it. Where a database deals with numbers, a knowledge base deals with facts. When you type "Where was Madonna born" into Google, for example, the place given is pulled from Google's existing knowledge base.This existing base, called Knowledge Graph, relies on crowdsourcing to expand its information. But the firm noticed that growth was stalling; humans could only take it so far.
Asking the Internet for facts is like telling a bicyclist to go get moon rocks. Facts aren't located on the Internet, dudes. But you knew that. They're looking for their brand of facts.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go through training as an ISIS terrorist? Or better yet, where you would go to find such advanced training? All you have to do to find the answer to these questions is turn to the nearest ISIS media twitter account and click on that bright blue Justpaste.it link. Let’s take a look at the photos posted in July showing one of the Islamic State’s training camps in Ninewa Province and see what we can learn.
Please note the trivial amount of effort it takes to find where these nests of vipers are located. But we're married to proportional response now, I guess, if that. Please also notice the comment section that immediately devolves into: But Christians teach Creationism in Texas Public Schools!
Life has become a complicated muddle, hasn't it? There are many big decisions. Should you become a newsreader because you have a lisp? Should you become an athlete because you're missing limbs? Should you join the military because you're a pacifist?
College calls. It needs deconstructivists like you. The NBA needs midgets, and the NFL needs gay men. International politics needs a low handicap, and international banking needs wizened ovaries, bad. There's a place for everybody, and you just have to follow the signs and portents to figure out where you fit in.
The only really big question is if you should have any hair below your eyebrows. The rest is easy.
The Adam Smith Institute examines currency reform in Ancient Rome Pertinax embraced deflation,reformed the denarius, and ordered that NOTEWORTHY GOOD SENSE be engraved on all the coins. His bodyguards stabbed him to death 86 days into his rule. And you wonder why Ben Bernanke had an easy money policy.
I only read the "newspapers" when I cover for Bird Dog. Do you people really read that stuff, and act on what you've read as if it's informative?
Oops, did I just call our readers "you people"? Jeez, I'm sorry. I meant to say, Do us people really read this stuff...
No, that won't do. Does we people really reads that stuff...
I can't remember all that subjunctive gobbletygook from my McGuffey's Reader, so let's just agree that the newspapers all suck and move on. On to the news -- or whatever it is:
Counterfeit U.S. Cash Floods Crime Forums These counterfeit bills will do more to stimulate actual commerce than Quantitative Easing ever did, because they'll make it into the private economy instead of into the government economy. The Treasury will save on printing costs, too. It's a win/win.
Later advances in neuroscience revealed that schizophrenia is disorder of thought processes rather than of thought content, associated with subtle differences in brain structures and in brain chemistry, consequently no amount of psychotherapy can "cure" schizophrenic delusions. However, thanks to modern medicine schizophrenia and similar disorders are quite controllable with the use of antipsychotic medications.
There's a lot of words until you get to that paragraph right there, the only one worth mentioning: It really doesn't matter what crazy people believe. They're crazy.
Unlike Americans, Nordics/Scandinavians have a conversational culture which treasures the silences. This comes from a significantly increased comfort with silence compared to their American counterparts. Nordics/Scandinavians have a very turn-based structure and style. While the Finnish are notorious for the slow pacing of their conversations and their extreme comfort with what would otherwise be considered painfully uncomfortable periods of silence, it is a trend present to a lesser extent across all of the Nordic countries. The result is a conversational practice which is heavily turn based with definite gaps to signify the closure of a point. In this way a traditional Nordic conversation much more closely resembles the structure of formal debate than a round table free-for-all discussion.
A Norwegian extrovert looks at your shoes when he's talking instead of his own.
Running kind of late this morning. I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!
Fancy a waterslide that takes you straight from your dance floor to your swimming-pool? What about an unobstructed view of the crystal clear Mediterranean Sea? Believe it or not, this property exists… and it could be yours for a reported $400 million.
This is where Janet Yellen's funny money ends up, one way or the other: Dissipated when there's nothing productive for it to do.
Mitt Romney: Obama worse than even I expected That lack of imagination might have cost you the election. He's exactly what I expected: Barack Hussein Huey Curley James Michael Long
I've decided not to riot today. I'm fairly certain I'm not going to loot anything. I don't feel like overcoming, or singing about overcoming. I'm overcome with not overcoming, actually. I believe I can resist the urge to lock arms for days at a time. I do not wish to be quoted in the press. You can quote me on that. On to the news.
There is a story about the great Catalan surrealist painter Salvador Dali. It is said that in the last years of his life, when he was already famous, he signed checks knowing that they would not be submitted to the bank for payment. Rather, after partying with his friends and consuming the most expensive items the restaurants had to offer, he would ask for the bill, pull out one of his checks, write the amount, and sign it. Before handing over the check, he quickly turned it around, made a drawing on the back and autographed it. Dali knew the owner of the restaurant would not cash the check but keep it,put it in a frame, and display it in the most prominent place in the restaurant: “An original Dali.”
History may be evolving away from the Westphalian State, with its unitary national culture, flags and traditions and moving towards affinity groups whose allegiance is primarily to themselves; which only form temporary alliances based on expedience in competition with other affinity groups.
It’s hip, it’s entertaining—but where are the families?What is a city for? Ever since cities first emerged thousands of years ago, they have been places where families could congregate and flourish.
A city is a place where everyone is lonely together.
Search continues for mountain lion 
Viking 'ring fortress' discovered in Denmark
A book: 
The Truth We Won’t Admit: 
"Working"
Government publishes detailed instructions 
Is the "common good" - as if there were one of those - best served by freedom or by government expansion and intrusion?
Image via Ace 
I can use words like hammers, and be paid for it. I do. 
