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.
Like a cross between a kayak and a surfboard. Probably invented by cavemen on logs, but new again.
They look like good clean fun. A friend of mine takes her dog on it with her. Her husband fly-fishes for Stripers and Blues off one in Block Island Sound, and looks down on decadent fishermen on comfy boats. I can picture a thrilling Nantucket Sleigh Ride with a fat Striper on the line. Cool ride.
There is always space for new sorts of water fun. I was told that a local joint sold out of them on Father's Day, at $700-2000 per board.
Apparently you can surf on them, if you have some sense of fun, but getting wet is part of it all. Generally, you have to keep your knees bent to do the balancing thing when there's a good chop or wavy gravy, as in skiing or snowboarding. Paddleboards.
Do not go there. You will not like it. Nobody cool goes there.
The water is too cold for you as are the cones at Harbor Freeze or whatever it's called now; the people are mostly Liberals; everybody drives a Subaru with Obama stickers; the lobsters will snap at you; the air is way too pine-scented and salty; it's not fancy enough; you don't have to select your clothing; nobody has a hot tub; there are no swimming pools; it's cool and rainy sometimes and you need a sweater at night and you will get sunburned on the nice days; all the good food is just shellfish and fish; the beaches are too big and the ponds are too deep and dark; there are too many little kids in the restaurants; socialites, investment bankers, and politicians never go there; the blueberry-corn meal pancakes are terrible and the Portuguese seafood stews are terrible; the joint at Cahoon's Hollow is like totally bourgeois and their drinks are too big; there is too much surf on the ocean beaches not to mention the annoying seals; sea gulls and herons crap on your windshield; all the good walks are too long; you have to slam on the brakes for Box Turtles crossing the roads; you will get covered with mud digging your own clams and collecting your own oysters, and you will slice up your hands opening them; etc., etc.
Worse still, with the rapid rise of the oceans due to your car, it will soon be underwater (maybe in 3000 years). So don't buy out there. It's a big, temporary sandbar left over from the last Ice Age.
...as Eddie Palmieri told him, “You used Jewish musicians or you didn’t have a band!” And Tito Puente played bar mitzvahs....A bandleader and multi-instrumentalist, Harlow was referred to by the New York Times as “one of the most important figures in the history of salsa.”...
While in college, I bartendered at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel during huge Puerto Rican dance concerts (sweet smoke billowing from the bathrooms), listened to Puerto Rican music on the radio while cramming, and was fluent enough in Spanish to work in a store in a neighborhood with a large Puerto Rican population (rapid fire Spanish). Funny, they didn't look Jewish! -- BTW, Puerto Rican stew is the best, with tropical ingredients. Try it, you'll like it. Ess up.
We have mentioned many times here that actively-managed investment funds and accounts, after fees, perform worse than index funds.
Fund managers naturally hate that fact, as do investors for whom hope often conquers experience. You cannot dispute the facts: Active Fund Management Is A Loser's Game.
Despite the data, I often think that people want to know that there is a sober person behind the wheel, somebody you can phone when you want to. Somebody who cares. Somebody who is smarter than the markets. They pay for that fantasy.
How to protect your nest egg in the Land of ZIRP? Don't ask me. I bank 10% of my pre-tax income each year, religiously. My nest egg, paltry as it is, is 1/4 equity index funds, 1/4 bond index funds, 1/4 cash, and 1/4 in one really good hedge fund. It may all blow up someday, but I intend to never need the money anyway. The men in my family never quit working and I will keep that wholesome, old-fashioned tradition going unless or until disease or the grim reaper get me.
Retirement ages people, or most people. It ages them, mentally.
I think it is an old New Englander ethic: be stingy, save, resist temptations to buy stuff, and work forever. Use money for overpriced education, books, booze, theater, adventure, and travel.
...you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman! And now you’ve conquered high school... and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building...
But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.
There is nothing easy about leading an "ordinary" life - whatever that is - and you will always be precious to your parents.
...the single-mother revolution has left us with the following reality. At the top of the social order is a positive feedback loop, with kids raised in stable, high-investment, and relatively affluent homes going to college, finding similar mates, and raising their own children in stable, high-investment, and relatively affluent homes. At the bottom is a negative feedback loop, with kids raised by single mothers in unstable, low-investment homes finding themselves unable to adapt to today’s economy and going on to create more unstable, single-mother homes.
Not only do we have more poverty, inequality, and immobility; we have the makings of a caste society, with an inherited elite and an entrenched proletariat. That’s not an America that anyone finds very attractive.
Raising kids as a single parent is something that only extraordinary people can do well.
Harvard's Michael Sandel is a rock star political/moral philosopher. I've never read him. All I know about him is from this review of his new book, What Money Can't Buy, in The Guardian.
So just a brief thought about the article, not the book. It seems to me as if Sandel has created a straw man of money - or maybe of markets, and wishes people would consider more elevated, more moral views of life.
But don't markets simply reflect what people want, and the decisions and choices people make? Many people seem to want to buy his ideas, which is why his book is making him big bucks in the marketplace of the bookstores.
Sandel makes the illuminating observation that what he calls the "market triumphalism" in western politics over the past 30 years has coincided with a "moral vacancy" at the heart of public discourse, which has been reduced in the media to meaningless shouting matches on cable TV – what might be called the Foxification of debate – and among elected politicians to disagreements so technocratic and timid that citizens despair of politics ever addressing the questions that matter most.
"There is an internal connection between the two, and the internal connection has to do with this flight from judgment in public discourse, or the aspiration to value neutrality in public discourse. And it's connected to the way economics has cast itself as a value-neutral science when, in fact, it should probably be seen – as it once was – as a branch of moral and political philosophy."
"Illuminating observation"? That's new?
It may be true that profs of Economics have attempted to make their area of study as value-neutral as physics, but economics as practiced by the individual person in a free society is as far from value-neutral as can be. After all, there are "markets" in values and morals too and everybody seeks different versions of these products.
Free markets in everything, from ideas, to religion, to dating, to education, to health, to business. That's America to me. Just don't expect me to approve of your choices.
Help me out, gentle readers. What contradictions can you see in Sandel, as seen through the article?
While leaning against a wall sweating after my heroic aerobics the other day, at 5:45 AM, I decided to interview a sweet little (but muscular and fit) trainer about some details on the roughly 60 people who show up when the doors open at 5.
She told me that it is not the same people every day, but it tends to break down like this:
- around 1/3 are Moms who do an early work-out before going home to make breakfast for their kids (while Dad is still home and the kids are sleeping). She said this early-bird approach is increasingly popular with Moms around here, where men typically leave for work at 6 or 6:30. - most of the rest of the folks, 50-50 men and gals - are there before work, with their dress clothes with them on hangers
Plus
- about 7-10 muscular hunks doing weight training - mostly guys but always a couple of gals - and usually an "anorectic or two" on the treadmills
Despite the cultural storms and waves, it it is the daunting job of royalty (or at least of Brit royalty who are currently, sort-of of German origin despite being Brit in culture and manner) to make the best stand for the core values of duty and service.
I have never met the Queen, but I have always liked the cut of her jib.
The Queen of Duty - In an era of irresponsibility, Elizabeth Regina always does what is expected of her.
In 1911, the poet-philosopher T. E. Hulme observed that “there must be one word in the language spelt in capital letters. For a long time, and still for sane people, the word was God. Then one became bored with the letter ‘G,’ and went on to ‘R,’ and for a hundred years it was Reason, and now all the best people take off their hats and lower their voices when they speak of Life.” I think Hulme was on to something, both in his observation about the inveterate habit of reverence and the choice that sanity dictates. I wonder, though, whether we as a culture haven’t shifted our attention from “L” for “Life” to “E” for “Egalitarianism” or “P” for “Political Correctness.”
It is noteworthy, in any event, to what extent certain key words live in a state of existential diminishment. Consider the word “Gentleman.” It was not so long ago that it named a critical moral-social-cultural aspiration. What happened to the phenomenon it named? Or think of the word “respectable.” It too has become what the philosopher David Stove called a “smile word,” that is, a word that names a forgotten or neglected or out-of-fashion social virtue that we might remember but no longer publicly practice. The word still exists, but the reality has been ironized out of serious discussion. It is hard to use straight. Just as it would be difficult to call someone “respectable” today without silently adding a dollop of irony, so it is with the word “gentleman.”
Read it all. There is all sorts of good stuff in it.
We attended a delightful Jubilee party that some Brit friends threw yesterday. Jolly good fun. Buckets of Pimm's Cup. Our friends were also celebrating their achievement of American citizenship, about which they feel proud. There are tight citizenship quotas for northern European immigrants despite our friends' being a Cambridge-educated economist and mathematician. I think he has waited ten years, working with a green card. Their house was flying both Brit and American flags for the occasion.
One of a bunch of cool pics from the year of the Queen's coronation (h/t AVI). What are those bags hanging on the wall?
Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907). Ronald Lauder paid 135 million for this painting in 2006. It resides in NYC's Neue Gallery. (Gallery, and the restaurant, are a nice touch of Vienna.)
A pupette and I spent a very pleasant day seeing the Klimts, and other good stuff (Schiele, Kokoshka), at the Belvedere in Vienna two years ago, then moved on by foot, trolley, and subway to lots of other fun things and tasty food treats - Viennese pastries and beers - along the way. She likes Schiele.
Do you like the concept of Scrabble and dominos, but don't like the actual games? Would it be fair to say that Scrabble is extremely frustrating because of the limited number of words you can play, and dominos seems like a kid's game?
Well, that's because you haven't played Unscrabbleink and Grandma's Dominos yet.
Below the fold is the way to play these two great games.
From VDH's Culture Still Matters -You can learn a lot about a country’s destiny by just watching how people behave:
A warm sunset with an ouzo on a Greek-island beach may be more relaxing than schnapps on the foggy Rhine shore, but to learn why Greeks will probably not pay back what they owe Germany — and why they do not believe that they should have to — take a walk through central Athens and then do the same in Munich.
On the small scale, these seem to be close to universal in studied American populations. On the large scale, quite rare.
From the WSJ,Why We Lie - We like to believe that a few bad apples spoil the virtuous bunch. But research shows that everyone cheats a little—right up to the point where they lose their sense of integrity:
We want to install locks to stop the next Bernie Madoff, the next Enron, the next steroid-enhanced all-star, the next serial plagiarist, the next self-dealing political miscreant. But locking our doors against the dishonest monsters will not keep them out; they will always cheat their way in. It is the woman down the hallway—the sweet one who could not even carry away your flat-screen TV if she wanted to—who needs to be reminded constantly that, even if the door is open, she cannot just walk in and "borrow" a cup of sugar without asking.
Some of our readers were discussing trust and "trust cultures" the other day, in the comments. I suppose, when I consider the word "trust," I refer to the confidence that a person will not lie (except for white lies), cheat me, steal from me, be unreliable, or try to harm or take advantage of me.
In other words, trust is a gift given to someone that says "I have decided that you will behave reasonably benevolently towards me - or at least not malevolently - regardless of how you may feel about me." That is a big gift, and not lightly given until earned.
As our commenters noted, cultures vary in degrees of trust (as we in the Western world define it), and, of course, different cultures have entirely different expectations of others which would not meet our definition of trust (eg you can "trust" an Istanbul rug dealer to never offer you his best price, even if you are his best friend).
Oxytocin, not Oxycontin which also, I hear, produces warm, fuzzy feelings: Kin and Kindness.
I aspire to fulfilling the Golden Rule in my life. Who would wish to grow old and to feel that they had not done so during their brief time here? I aspire to forgive those who sin or trespass against me too. It's all a struggle because I tend to react against fools, jerks, jackasses, the malevolent and the arrogant, but it's a worthwhile struggle anyway, with the Lord's help.
The Golden Rule comes easier with kith, kin and tribe, doesn't it? In a way, it's a definition of community. Ostracism is the community's curative; its purgative, but that is another topic.
Paul Fussell Jr., was born into an affluent family in Pasadena, Calif., on March 22, 1924. His father was a prominent lawyer. Paul attended Pomona College, from which he was drafted by the Army in 1943. Too late for the Allied invasion at Normandy, he nevertheless saw brutal action in Europe, where, in southeastern France, at age 20, he lay wounded while men under his command were being killed in an artillery barrage.
“Before that day was over I was sprayed with the contents of a soldier’s torso when I was lying behind him and he knelt to fire at a machine-gun holding us up; he was struck in the heart and out of the holes in the back of his field jacket flew little clouds of blood, tissue and powdered cloth,” Mr. Fussell wrote in a 1982 essay in Harper’s Magazine called “My War.” “Near him another man raised himself to fire, but the machine gun caught him in the mouth, and as he fell he looked back at me with surprise, blood and teeth dribbling out onto the leaves.”
During his tour of duty he won the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts — he was wounded in the back and legs — and he emerged with a disdain for those who would justify wars, especially those who never fought.
If you've got the day off and plan on kicking back, I've recently added some goodies to my Special Videos area:
Sherlock Compilation — a 30-minute condensation of an episode in the new BBC series 'Sherlock', about a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.
The Mystery of 'North' — The story of a movie that was never released to DVD, and you'd never guess why.
The Challenger Disaster — It need not have happened.
The Columbia Disaster — No one to blame, nowhere to run.
The Concorde Disaster — One of the most beautiful eras in aviation ends because of the most insignificant thing.
The F-35 Debacle — How to shoot yourself in the foot, government style.
Straight Up — A very interesting documentary on helicopters.
Besides the 'Special Videos', there are a number of interesting things in my art gallery. There are three 'Web Vids' pages with what I consider to be the best short videos posted to the Web, lots of pictorials, and if you like watching movie 'trailers', I have my own version in the 'Bag O' Clips'.
Well, that is retarded. Very few of the things humans eat have not been genetically-engineered by humans. Bear meat, for one. Fish and shellfish. Mushrooms, I suppose, also preserved from the scourge of genetic engineering.
But why should we stop improving our foods now, after 5000 years of doing it with remarkable success? We're much better at it now because we figured out the mechanism.
Hunger was once the norm. Now obesity is the "problem." I think obesity is just fine, for those who want it. Cheap and plentiful high-carb and tasty food is thanks to human ingenuity, and we all now struggle not to be over-fed. What a terrible problem, a human tragedy. Too much food.
Even our dogs are genetically-engineered. Nobody wants to sleep with a wolf at the foot of the bed, and nobody wants teosinte-on-the cob.
Photo is the pre-genetically-engineered teosinte, from which ancient central Americans engineered maize (corn, to us). Who would eat that mangy weed at a Memorial Day cookout?
By the way, corn (maize) is a high-carb food and is not on your weight-loss diet. It's like bread, grain.
I got so sick and tired of renting the Rug Doctor machine from the supermarket, on weekends, for our carpets that we finally tried Stanley Steemer.
Great guys, very pleasant, professional, hard-working, quick, and cost-effective. Turns out they clean and wax floors too, clean tile floors and walls, clean grout and re-grout tile - and even install tile as needed. They did the carpets, cleaned and waxed the wood floors, cleaned all the tile and re-grouted as needed. They use powerful machines.
How handy is that? I am not afraid of work, but I do have a day job, after all, so I can't do everything.
We told them we need them to come once a month. That's a load off my mind, and one more hassle removed from my otherwise beautiful life.
In a short while, every room on ye olde farm will be ready for royal guests at short notice. A home should not be otherwise.
Friends with benefits? Prostitution? Quasi-prostitution? Arranged dating? Men do need their animal comforts and pleasures. Where does one draw the lines in these definitions?
On the differences between men and women... Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine.
He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.
And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud...
Like a cross between a kayak and a surfboard. Probably invented by cavemen on logs, but new again.
We have mentioned many times here that actively-managed investment funds and accounts, after fees, perform worse than index funds.
My Mom, an avid gardener and an avid reader, recommends Richard Mabey's 
Do you like Scrabble and dominos? 
On the small scale, these seem to be close to universal in studied American populations. On the large scale, quite rare.
If you've got the day off and plan on kicking back, I've recently added some goodies to my 
Insty noted that California is considering 
Friends with benefits? Prostitution? Quasi-prostitution? Arranged dating? Men do need their animal comforts and pleasures. Where does one draw the lines in these definitions?