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.
Of course it is. It is not the Court's job to reinforce culture, customs, taboos, and traditions other than their own. We can label some things or people as immoral or depraved, but there is freedom too.
Pop culture changes as Judeo-Christian standards decline. Adultery used to have a death sentence unless you were royalty or an aristocrat. Today, it seems unremarkable as habits of the lower classes and those of the rich and powerful converge.
UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, who insisted that there’s no difference between the once supposedly unassimilable Irish Catholics and East European Jews and the new Pushtun goatherds and Mogadishu hoodlums. It’s one of the curious aspects of self-proclaimed “multiculturalists” that they are, essentially, uniculturalists: they think everybody’s the same. But sometimes history doesn’t repeat itself — and Emma Lazarus’ lousy poem is an even lousier guide to social policy.
...the long-belated saga of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment may also make a broader point about how science gets done: it suggests just how difficult it can be for new evidence to see the light of day when it contradicts widely held theories.
Well, you have to laugh. Socrates would have laughed, because these children are 100% immersed in Enlightenment Western Civ, and don't even want to know what it is or where it came from. I have seen plenty of willful ignorance in my life, but this has to take the cake. SAT-bright students, voting for ignorance of Homer, Plato, the Old Testament, Paul, Beowulf, Augustine, Aquinas, Lorenzo de Medici, Michelangelo, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Newton, Adam Smith, Martin Luther, Locke. Wow. They won't know bupkus and thus will not be worth a serious conversation.
And since all of modern physics, chemistry, medicine, and engineering are aspects and products of Western Civ too, perhaps they might consider eliminating those oppressive white male patriarchal things.
Ignorant kids, standing on the shoulders of giants while denying it. Fascinating phenomenon, the hubris of ignorance.
If I were there with a microphone and videotape, it would be fun to ask them what civilization they might prefer to know - or live in.
What strikes me about it is the utter pointlessness of it. The endless posing and posturing has no end because it has no end point. A faithful Christian at least has the serenity of his communion with God. The Muslim, at the click of the detonator, knows he will be with Allah. Climate change fanatics have nothing but a hopeless misery. Even if all of their policies are enacted, nothing comes of it.
Problem is that the climate moonbats discredit worthy efforts at habitat conservation and the like. Serious air pollution, for example, almost eliminated in the US. That's good.
A bunch of government lawyers can mess up your life for a long time, even if they are wrong. Makes more sense for a business to not be a hero - just shut up and pay the extortion.
Climate models appear to have no predictive capacity. Very short-term meteorological models have some use, but are often wrong. Economic models are famously wrong. Ordinary common sense people like me anticipated, planned for, and profited modestly from the internet bubble and the housing bubble. Not the professional math geniuses. Why not?
When people who have been loyal to conservative causes and conservative politicians their whole life find themselves being called racists and bigots by those people they supported, they start to feel like they have been conned. When ruling class organs publicly argue that vast parts of the culture must be destroyed, that traditional America must be wiped out, people hear a declaration of war. The response is not going to be “yes sir, may I have another.” The response, to quote the late Andrew Breitbart, is going to be “Fuck you. War!”
The Incredible Cluelessness of Donald Trump - Trump has demonstrated over and over again
that he doesn't know the slightest thing about policy. The GOP is
supporting him anyway.
Creatives, we are multi-dimensional creatures. Let’s not let our abilities be defined, limited and constrained. Let them flourish like the enlightening work we do… The work we do is important and it is empowering, particularly when it is bringing awareness to social justice issues. Much of creative work does exactly this while other sectors of society refuse to acknowledge the social ills we endure and even erases them.
It was 23 F. in NYC this morning. Warm would be welcome at this point. When you figure a day's temp varies 30 degrees, what matters 1 degree per century? Even if it is real? Who cares?
When over 30% of working age men aren’t participating in the labor force, trouble is brewing. It’s even worse when you consider the 25 to 54 year old male participation rate has declined from 97% in the 1950’s and 1960’s to below 88% today. Much of the anger building in this country is the result of men in their prime earning years seeing their jobs shipped overseas, outsourced, or taken by HB1 workers. The backlash against illegal immigrants is understandable.
The politicization of the humanities was well under way when I was an English major in the early 1990s, and my education suffered as a result. This wasn't because I was so oppressed as a conservative, but because in roughly half my classes, there was no easier route to an A than to argue that some long-dead author was a sexist pig, racist cretin or homophobic jerk. Being, like so many college students, not overfond of unnecessary labor, I’m afraid I all too frequently slithered along the easy path to the 4.0.
We went down there with some friends and family to see a young playwrights presentation recently. A real slice of New York. NY is to drama what LA is to movies. NY has Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, Off-Off-Off Broadway - a hundred indie theater companies. It's a world unto itself. In NY, people go to the theater. It's a theater town. This indie black box theater we went to on Suffolk St. was sold out with 150, and after the performances there was a party with dancing etc. but we old folks did not stay for all of that. Too late for us.
We walked about Suffolk, Riverton, etc. There were hordes of highly-attractive, polite young people all over. Perfectly safe, lively, but with plenty of the good old grittiness and funkiness which indicates that it has not been gentrified. (Unlike Chelsea and now even Hell's Kitchen which are being so improved that I call them "Disney NY". Too quaint.) Lower East Side is a place for youth. People talk to strangers on the streets, pleasantly. "Where ya going?" No cops needed, no cops around. Tons of pubs, cafes, music clubs, and little restaurants of all sorts. Like Greenwich Village c. 1960 - or like the old medieval city centers in Europe.
Ambitious and well-educated young people from all over the US flock to NYC to test their mettle, and to mate. I did that, too, but it's much better and more fun now. The challenge is affordable places to live. Always roommates, always cramped. But you do not stay indoors - you go out and just use your place as a dormitory. Work 14-hour days, work two jobs, go to clubs and pubs and hang out and meet pretty people with all sorts of interests and ambitions. Network. It works.
I envy those youth in NYC today, living in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side (being priced out of the West Village, Chelsea, and Hell's Kitchen now).
The Lower East Side of Manhattan has a colorful history, from the old farms and orchards on Orchard street, to the starting point of immigrants from the 1860s through the turn of the century, to the large Jewish dominated immigrant population, to crime and drugs when those immigrants moved uptown or to suburbia in the 50s and 60s, to its present "transitional" wonderfulness.
Hey, Jacob Riis: Those terrible tenements were welcome, neighborly housing for immigrants coming from nothing at all. There was lots of cultural support without government intervention. Riis was a self-made entrepreneurial Danish immigrant, but failed to understand that the tenements - with a chance for economic improvement and freedom - were a Godsend to the Germans, Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Puerto Ricans, etc, where they started their lives in America. Riis had no faith in the immigrants' moxie.
Truth be told, my daughters, when starting out, lived in quarters similar to those in the Tenement Museum. Many people still do, without complaint - except they have toilets in their apartments.
You can get a good history of the Lower East Side on wiki.
Small streets and small venues make for a neighborly atmosphere. For such a colorful, lively, multi-ethnic, youth-dominated friendly neighborhood, it remains fairly inexpensive thus far - by NY standards. Here's a random one on Riverton.
Around 20 years ago a colleague bought a brownstone and a five-story walk-up building down there, back when it was not nice and you could see guys with needles in their arms in the gutters - and when they were giving buildings away. He moved there. At this point, his retirement (which I very much doubt that he will ever desire) would be assured in great comfort should he ever sell one of them now.
My only problem with that neighborhood is that I do not understand the trains. I do not know these trains. F Train? What? Have to use Uber to get around some of these places in NYC. Why Uber? Because cabs mainly hang around midtown, where there is most of the business.
Note to Bulldog: Our next urban hike has to go through there, and then up through the East Village (technically still Lower East Side. Blame the realtors.)
Of course not. They never do. Every issue has to be called a crisis these days, to the point that the word has no impact.
It is a fact that housing costs in desirable urban areas are high, and you do not get much for your money. So while market forces are at work, market forces are also contending with all sorts of government interventions which distort housing markets and have unintended consequences: zoning, subsidized housing which is often termed "affordable housing," rent control, multi-year hurdles for new construction which only people like Trump can overcome, etc.
One thing I know for certain is that, if you want "affordable housing" in a fancy neighborhood of Manhattan, you had better have a friend in the Mayor's office. You get government friends with money.
"Only William Goetzmann--an archaeologist, art historian, and esteemed finance scholar--could have produced this masterful exploration of money and investing through the ages. Money Changes Everything is at once deep, broad, sweeping, and gorgeously illustrated. It is a book that readers will savor and refer to again and again."
Image from 
The 6 elements 
Image: That 
Were I a Stanford alum, I'd never give them another penny. Not that they need it anyway.
Image stolen from 
The real pain 
Pic of Connecticut resident Keith Richards, 
