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.
Went to take a look at the Lewis Chessmen this weekend. Made of walrus tusk, found on the Isle of Lewis but most likely carved in Norway in the 1100s.
It is believed that Chess, invented in India, found its way from Moorish Spain to northern Europe where it was indeed a game for the wealthy. In Europe, the Vizier was changed to a Queen, the Warder to a Castle (rook), and an elephant to a Bishop.
Took a few pics at The Cloisters, then we took a little drive around Inwood and Washington Heights before driving down Broadway (Manhattan's original highway and first an Indian trail) through Washington Heights (in recent years mostly Central American, now very mixed), past Columbia-Presbyterian Med Center, through Harlem, then back uphill to the Columbia campus, down the Upper West Side, and then cut thru the park at 96th St to get to our lunch date on the East Side.
All I can say is that the City looked great, right through Harlem (which seemed to have plenty of Chinese people now). Not a single boarded-up shop. There are several urban hikes on my agenda, and one is from Inwood to Columbia - the 180s to 114 St. Alexander Hamilton's farmhouse was (is) in Inwood.
The Cloisters this weekend:
A few pics of the pleasant Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan below the fold -
Artworks that mimic soft porn, showcase embalmed animals, mock the Pope, and otherwise offend propriety are filling auctions, museums, and galleries. Is there anything left to be upset about?
Not a bad essay. Which feels more obsolete in our culture today - propriety or "avant-garde"?
I still believe that Thomas Kincaid did more epateing of the bourgeoisie than any of the new "shocking" artists. He truly upset them with his comfortable, un-hip, and highly-profitable corny pictures:
Punch-card looms were invented in 1801 and remain in wide use today, mostly computer-controlled now but it's the original principle and basically the original loom mechanics.
The fact is that the MCAT contained, until 1977, a major component called "General Knowledge." This covered areas like history, geography, art, music, psychology, and literature, and was far too broad-ranging to possibly study for. I don't know why that part was removed.
...more ominous is the condition of the family. The most fundamental component of civil society, it has also become the most vulnerable. Civil society is often identified (thanks largely to Tocqueville) with “voluntary associations.” But the traditional family is not, or at least did not used to be, a voluntary association. Indeed, it is important precisely because it is not voluntary, performing the natural, elemental, even biological functions of bearing and rearing children. Today, as a result of divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, single-parent families, and single-sex parenting, the family has become, in a sense, voluntarized. We are sometimes assured that these “alternative lifestyles” are merely variations on the old, serving the same purposes as the “nuclear” or “bourgeois” family. In fact, these families—“broken families,” like “broken windows”—are often literally “dysfunctional,” incapable of performing the natural functions that define the family.
Civil society has been described as an “immune system against cultural disease.” But much of it has been infected by the same virus that produces the disease—a loss of moral integrity and purpose. What is required, then, is not only the revitalization of civil society but its reform and remoralization—the reform of those institutions that parody government agencies, and the remoralization of those that have lost their moral focus.
My Life as a Failed Country Gentleman - P.J. O'Rourke on his fields of crabgrass, trout-free trout stream, Federalist-era wiring and dashed dreams of tweedy refinement
A beautiful Portuguese word that has no English translation: the "...vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist ... a turning towards the past or towards the future."
Here's Part 4 of Charles Murray's intervew with Peter Robinson on social capital. When I first heard Murray discuss social capital, I did a Venn diagram of the positive communities (even including the virtual community of Maggie's Farm) of which I am a part. It was illuminating, and I think I can say that I am quite involved in my community and in many sub-communities and thus have a good store of social capital in Murray's use of the concept.
Of course, my religious communities are there, too. Mead discusses here: Religious Are Key to American Revival. I don't particularly enjoy apologetics for religion which include things like "it's good for society," or "it's good for you," but he makes some points.
An enjoyable game to watch, and the play-by-play is wonderful. The moral is that when your opponent sacrifices a rook in the early-middle game, watch out because he has a plan. H/t Dino
I'd enjoy playing this game out with the lad on a chessboard, but I think we are scheduled to do some brush-clearing instead, this weekend.
And for some pretentious (but stunningly-filmed) Bergman fun 'n games:
It's been a giant cultural change in medicine. Half of medical students are women these days. Many of them are Asians.
Today, college men are beginning to consider it to be a chick profession. Including cardio-thoracic surgery. Heck, I even know a lady urologist in Boston. Why not?
Many of the young women I know are going into Emergency Medicine. If you walk into your local ER, you will see if full of cute young ER MDs. Women going into medicine today tend towards the areas where they can work definite hours for a paycheck, work part-time, and have no on-call duties. ER, Radiology, Dermatology. They want a regular paycheck, benefits, and regular hours, and do not want the burdens, stress, and risks of opening a private practice. And, as as a gender, I think we tend to be more comfortable with rules and protocols than men and thus make better employees. Male docs hate rules and enjoy defying them.
The culture of medicine is changing, for better or worse. The older male docs will say, in confidence, that medicine is becoming "pussified." Their old school view is that medical practice is not meant to be either convenient, comfortable, or a partial dedication, but rather more like a priesthood.
Worse case, I can see a future of salaried docs happy to be working in government clinics. You patients will not like that.
I grew up in my working class neighborhood with friends of different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. Although there were stereotypes and jokes that, in retrospect, are embarrassing, we all talked openly and understood each other. That bred mutual respect and defense of each’s rights to fair treatment based on merit, whether socially, in school, jobs or sports. We carried that into our adult lives and actions.
Inside Higher Ed, respectfully liberal, published the results of a study of college students’ attitude toward the question, "How important to you personally is helping to promote racial understanding?" To the researchers’ surprise, it became less important as the students went from freshmen to seniors, and that finding held across races. The conclusion as to Backwards on Racial Understanding:
"These findings cast doubt on research and conventional wisdom that argues for the liberalizing effects of higher education on racial attitudes. Instead, it suggests that, for some students, negative experiences with diversity may dampen the relatively progressive racial views they hold when entering college," write the authors in their conclusion.
Look at the right side of the linked page for some job listings for “diversity” positions at colleges. Multiply. Such positions are the fastest growing category of jobs at campuses.
Preaching “multiculturalism” but not practicing it due to allowing and encouraging narrow campus “victimology” groups’ vituperance aimed at other groups and their shouting down or criminalizing contrary ideas may stifle but, at the same time creates resentment and dislike. The actual experience for many students is the noted reduction in commitment to promoting racial understanding.
The study does indicate that having friends of different races and ideas does increase mutual understanding and engagement in promoting racial understanding. That is often referred to as civil discussion. That is increasingly difficult to accomplish on campuses where division and extremist challenges are common and defended by “diversity” ideology that promotes division and protects extremism.
College is the beginning for most students of competition to rise in society. If the rules absorbed are that one must be defensive, instead of mutually supportive, then no wonder commitment to promoting racial understanding declines. As merit of behavior and argument is given second place behind relativistic notions, justice is reduced and society’s future leaders become hypocrites mouthing multicultural platitudes but practicing defensive seperateness.
Melissa Keith, also of KSU, continued the anti-West, anti-imperialist theme by recycling 1970s feminist theory in her paper titled, "Defining the Erotic Mystical Global Paradigm: From Inanna to the Bhagavad-Gita to Audre Lorde." The feminist discovery of the "wild" (thanks to Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Judy Grahn) dismantled the archetypical story of the West, that of the hero, with God as the patriarch. Lorde's rescuing of the "erotic" from its association with the "pornographic" and overturning--again--the old "dualities" of spirit over nature, was enthusiastically hailed. "Reclaiming" and "renaming" private body parts (this was soon after the Vagina Monologues season, after all) leads to staking out "intellectual space." As for implementation, Keith said teaching the explicit poetry of Judy Grahn in a small class of "mature" students provides "quite an amazing experience."
I first went to Las Vegas in 1954. Somewhere in my garage are the black-and-white photos I took with my Kodak Brownie. We stayed at the TravelLodge on the Strip, where the Imperial Palace now stands. The Strip ended a short way south from there. Most hotels had a Western theme. Downtown, there was only the Golden Nugget and Fitzgeralds, now the Fremont Experience of lights and tacky. After 5PM, men wore suits or sport jackets, women wore cocktail dresses. Dinner and a show, with top headliners, was $10. All-you-can-eat Prime Rib was $1.99. Gorgeous women in skimpy outfits served free drinks to gamblers. Pit bosses gave free decks of used cards to kids. When my poor family in Detroit migrated to LA in the 1930s, my trusting great-uncle Sam was suckered out of a week's wages, a few dollars, for a tiny parcel of desert land. In the mid-'60s, he got twenty-thousand dollars for it, equal then to two-years of middle-class salary, where the Luxor now stands. For twenty-years I stayed at the Desert Inn, until it was the last of traditional, classy Las Vegas, and haven't returned for 17-years.
Now? Don't ask. OK, I'll tell you anyway. The hotels are humongous and glitzy and expensive. Almost everyone is in jeans and shorts and T-shirts. Has-been shows cost a small fortune. Buffets are $15-$30. There are half as many cocktail waitresses and, really, most are 40-70 years old. One moved so slow, we looked around for her walker. (The pretty young things are off-Strip, like at the Rio.) Used decks of cards have to be bought for $5 or more. Corporate Las Vegas squeezes every penny of costs and dollars out of tourists. Fortunately, always being with my pesky, wandering boys, and my eagle-eyed wife, probably saved several thousand dollars, as I never escaped to the tables.
The family and I spent the past week in Las Vegas. Most visitors don't get far from the Strip, but if they did they'd see some knockout scenery.
Before leaving, Gavin blew away the track at his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.
On the drive to Las Vegas, we stopped in a great '50s diner, Penny's in Barstow, then went over to the Railroad Museum showing some of the trains from Barstow's rail hub history.
On the way back to the highway, we stopped for this memorial to the New York Fire Department heroes who perished in 9-11.
Several years ago, my wife purchased a gift card as a Christmas present for my parents. It was for a meal at Rat's Restaurant on the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. My parents used the card 2 years ago, they have since returned twice. Their third visit was two weekends ago, and we joined them. Unfortunately, some personal issues limited our time on the grounds prior to dinner, but for 45 minutes we wandered among the artwork. What we saw was impressive and enjoyable.
The Grounds for Sculpture opened in 1992, the vision of J. Seward Johnson (of the Johnson & Johnson family). He took 42 acres, formerly the NJ State Fairgrounds, and transformed it into part botanical garden and part sculpture garden and museum. Johnson creates some of the work, though most is provided by other artists. It is an eclectic mix of styles, designed to fit within the existing environment, although at times the environment is altered slightly to work with the art.
In 1984, J. Seward Johnson, sculptor and philanthropist, envisioned a public sculpture garden and museum in Hamilton, NJ. His desire was to make contemporary sculpture as an art form more accessible and to offer people from all backgrounds the opportunity to become comfortable with contemporary art. Grounds For Sculpture was conceived as a place where audiences could experience sculpture in a familiar, accessible, and informal setting.
Glenn Reynolds, with his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, captured something yesterday that I had been collecting a few links about, in Faith in science? Why skepticism is rising. A quote:
...while one should trust science as a method — honestly done, science remains the best way at getting to the truth on a wide range of factual matters — there’s no particular reason why one should trust scientists and especially no particular reason why one should trust the people running scientific institutions, who often aren’t scientists themselves.
In fact, the very core of the scientific method is supposed to be skepticism. We accept arguments not because they come from people in authority but because they can be proven correct — in independent experiments by independent experimenters. If you make a claim that can’t be proven false in an independent experiment, you’re not really making a scientific claim at all.
And saying, “trust us,” while denouncing skeptics as — horror of horrors — “skeptics” doesn’t count as science, either, even if it comes from someone with a doctorate and a lab coat.
There are a number of reasons it makes good sense to be always skeptical of scientific claims (as scientists are trained to be). Here are a few:
1. Careerism and greed - there is big money to be made in science these days, especially if you come up with the "right" results 2. The use of computers for data-mining - which is not the scientific method 3. The reluctance of journals to publish negative results in favor of positive results 4. The lack of scientific literacy in journalism 5. The impression that scientists often have an ax to grind and cannot be impartial about their pet ideas
There are others. Those are just for starters.
Without getting into the huge global climate boondoggle, here are just a few examples from my medical profession:
On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.
Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, speaking to the panel, said he blamed a hypercompetitive academic environment that fosters poor science and even fraud, as too many researchers compete for diminishing funding.
"The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high-profile journal," said Fang. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior."
44% is not very good. More on that story: Can Most Cancer Research Be Trusted? - Addressing the problem of "academic risk" in biomedical research
A pal of Mrs. BD was astonished that Mrs. BD was not a Downton Abbey follower, so she obtained the 2010-2011 episodes.
I watched the first episode. It's an Upstairs, Downstairs-like drama, beautiful to look at, but perhaps more of a chick thing. Maggie Smith is great. The BD daughter would say "perfect production values."
Perhaps it's about nostalgia for the Britain of the past, comfortable warts and all.
Obama claims that free-market capitalism doesn't work. Some retort that it has not been tried lately. Obama certainly never tried it (except with his ghost-written books), but I tried it. Easy to do. Here's how I joined the 1% and got filthy rich in the intertunnel through the miracle of free-market Capitalism (with good tips for other bloggers and website owners):
- Dunkin Donuts pays me $100 k per year for publicity. That's a good deal for them. Plus I get free coffee and jelly donuts, like the cops do.
- Bob Dylan pays me around $100 k per year for free publicity, plus free concert tix. Don't care much for his musical efforts, but the money's good and my kids appreciate the tix. OK, OK, he does have some decent lyrics
- Best Nest offers $1000 per link up to four per year, but also sends me free stuff. I have bird houses coming out of my ears. Ouch. Splinters. They need better sanders.
- D'Artagnan compensates us with $500 of their wonderful produce per link
- my contract with Amazon pays me a paltry $500 per book or item link.
- Sippican pays me $600 per link, limited to 1/month. I would try to squeeze more out of the guy, but I like him and his family so I don't. Pays me double for each Rumford Meteor link - best little newspaper in Maine.
- Brooks Brothers pays me $10,000 for one annual advt., plus one free three-hour shopping spree during their January sale and a bonus for each additional link. What do I need the clothes for? I live in my Brooks Brothers pajamas...and I never go outdoors. There are bears out there.
- Costco pays me $4000 per mention. Cheap SOBs. Evil big business taking advantage of us toilers.
- Don Surber's paper pays us a lousy $75 per link, which is why I link Surber so often - I have to make it on volume or the invoice is hardly worth the stamp! He's pretty good, though, so it's OK despite his liberal slant. Gateway Pundit pays better, per link. Insty doesn't pay a penny, so I hate to link the darn guy. Vanderleun, TigerHawk, Mead, Theo - too holy and pure, or too cheap - to put up the necessary, but our persuasive VP of Sales will visit them again soon for cocktails and dinner at the truck stop lounge of their choice. As for Zero Hedge - he pays us double what we ask for but in the currency of his choice. Filthy Capitalist. Obama needs to raise his taxes.
- Home Depot pays us $8,000 per linked mention, limited to 3/year. Nice check, but always arrives late. I still have to pay when I get stuff there.
- Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce: $750 per Cape Cod photo posted. I have lots of Cape Cod photos, so they limited me to one per month
- What do I get from Big Oil and Big Gas for pretending to be a climate skeptic? My contract with those good old boys prevents me from making the details public but I can say that it is a satisfactory arrangement for now. Plus they fly me down private to Texas and treat me to bird or pig hunts and barbecue anytime I am free. Sent me a custom cast-iron smoker too. Not as good a deal as Anthony Watts gets, but not bad at all.
- Exploitation of workers: I pay our eager contributors nothing (suckers). I am a tough negotiator. My plan for 2012 is to begin to charge themper wordfor each post. After all, our virtual ink and paper costs are going up, as are duct tape costs to hold our servers together - not to mention Obamacare for our elves and farm hands and the rapidly-increasing cost of paying Google to keep us on the top of "Maggie's" searches.
OK. That makes for a profitable day thus far. Heck, everybody has to make a living somehow, and a little extry comes in handy (the girls all want Loro Piana and Anne Fontaine stuff for their birthdays as I am sure your girls do too - there's two more quick n' easy payola ka-chings for me!). Please patronize our benefactors, and assume that every link we provide is paid for in some manner. I don't have time to list all of the rest of the good payola and kickbacks I benefit from at Maggie's, but it is enough to keep my banker on Grand Cayman busy processing the check and (preferably) Fed-Exed cash payments.
All it takes for website success is a good, sweet-talkin' VP of Sales with an appealing product and who just likes to have fun - and thanks for the check, John Deere:
Went to take a look at 
It's been a giant cultural change in medicine. Half of medical students are women these days. Many of them are Asians.
Allan Bloom
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