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 study called into question America’s educational credentialing system. While few American test-takers lacked a high school degree, the United States didn’t perform any better than countries with relatively high rates of failing to finish high school. And our college graduates didn’t perform well, either.
Thomas may have played the part of the doomed poet, excused by his genius from following the conventions of decent behavior. But he was a genius: few are the twentieth-century English poets who wrote lines that not only were memorable but that also make the soul vibrate. Thomas was one of them.
Thomas was aware from an early age of his own genius. In his book of marvelously evocative stories about his childhood and adolescence, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, published in 1940, when he was 26, Thomas recalls reciting a poem he had written 12 years earlier, in which the lines appear:
The frost has known, From scattered conclave by the few winds blown, That the lone genius in my roots, Bare down there in a jungle of fruits, Has planted a green year, for praise, in the heart of my upgrowing days.
"The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths."
Hard Feelings: Science’s Struggle to Define Emotions - While it's possible for researchers to study facial expressions, brain patterns, behavior, and more, each of these is only part of a more elusive whole:
Around the mid-18th century or so, Dixon writes, these passions and affections were lumped together under the umbrella of emotion. In the early 19th century, Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown was the first to propose emotion as a theoretical category, opening the door for scientific research. But though he was eager to study it, Brown couldn’t define it.
“The exact meaning of the term emotion, it is difficult to state in any form of words,” Brown said in a lecture. And so it has remained.
“The only thing certain in the emotion field is that no one agrees on how to define emotion,” Alan Fridlund, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote to me.
"Emotion" is sort-of an artificial construct, is it not? It - whatever it is - can rarely be separated from cognition, perception, ideas, and all other mental processes and biological instincts. We easily can identify, in ourselves, lustful desire ("urge to merge"), rage, despair, joy, fear and anxiety - but these extremes are rare and still more expressible by poets and musicians than by scientists.
Our world-wide flight from family constitutes a significant international victory for self-actualization over self-sacrifice, and might even be said to mark a new chapter in humanity’s conscious pursuit of happiness. But these voluntary changes also have unintended consequences. The deleterious impact on the hardly inconsequential numbers of children disadvantaged by the flight from the family is already plain enough. So too the damaging role of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing in exacerbating income disparities and wealth gaps—for society as a whole, but especially for children. Yes, children are resilient and all that. But the flight from family most assuredly comes at the expense of the vulnerable young.
When people lose family bonds and family help, they pathetically turn to government, and government is always happy to make you dependent on them. It is a sick and sickening cycle of money and power, and weakens human spirit and integrity. Where's my money?
I am fortunate that my clan is tight, and from immigrant cultures (Poland + Italy), too proud and grateful to to America to look to government for anything. We were taught that freedom is our precious gift, and nothing more can or should be asked for. It's an American thing which relatively-recent immigrant (1920s) families appreciate best.
Today? I am not sure. We have a decadent gimme culture, it seems.
The problem with science isn’t that scientists can be wrong: It’s that when they’re proven wrong, it’s way too hard for people to find out.
Indeed. How long did many gullible people avoided eating eggs and beef when it's been clear for over a decade that the idea was nonsense? People didn't get the message that the cholesterol fuss was just myth.
On snowbound days, one pays attention to money. Unless one is a successful professional trader, we tend towards the Random Walk approach for savings. For value equity-picking, if you can beat Buffet and Munger over the long haul, good for you. However, 99% of professional equity investors cannot beat the S&P 500 over time - especially including fees. Not to mention bonds, real estate, precious metals, etc.
That's why we use only Vanguard Funds and ETFs, just as Buffet does with his funds for his family (he gives away most of his wealth to charity and is extremely stingy with his kids). Very cheap funds and ETFs. Only rarely do we purchase individual equities or bonds, and we do not have the wealth for venture funds or hedge funds.
Vanguard can help you with rational planning. They are not trying to get rich from you, and I almost consider them to be a public service.
They might be a bit too Greenie, but mainly outdoor-oriented. All sorts of (affordable) programs for kids and adults. They even have useful wilderness medicine programs.
A couple of years old, but still fresh and smart. Mr. Dalio makes it all sound simple, common sense. He views markets on the large scale, global scale; buys and hedges entire international markets and currencies, never individual securities. (FYI, here's a piece on the All-Weather Portfolio)
He advises people with lower net worth (eg under 10-50 million) to stay away from the equity casino where the master poker players will beat you, but ordinary people like me are naturally a bit greedy and ignore wisdom. As a commenter says, "The man knows exactly what he doesn't know and builds his portfolio around that. Genius." As I listen, I see the huge role that central banks and governments play in the international games of money. There are no free markets today.
His funds require a minimal investment of many millions. Enjoy this, despite an annoying Maria. And who is she to call him "Ray"? I'd like to ask him about the necessity of central banks and their role in creating the economic swings.
I recently learned that "HD" - Hoarding Disorder - is now a reimbursable and nameable disease. It has long been considered just an eccentricity.
What drives the disease craze? Big Pharma, and insurance. Normal variants are labeled as diseases and disorders. Think ADD, ED, infertility, fear of dying, and on and on. I term them, smirkingly, "life-style disorders."
It's not too cheap, the hassle factor is huge, but it is great cold weather fun and excellent exercise.
Like many, I grew up skiing at a small local place with rope tows and poma lifts, and one two-seater chair lift, and slowly advanced to more challenging places as funds permitted.
I love it. For me, winter means skiing, spring means fishing, summer means boating, fall means hunting. It's that simple.
We have said here at Maggie's, for years, that a "healthy diet" cannot be defined without evidence, and there has never been any evidence. "Healthy" has just been bias, old-wives tales, and happy-sounding ignorance like "eat your peas and kale and fruit". All nonsense.
It's a big deal that even the slow-witted government finally comes around to what we have all known. America, go easy on the carbs, eat veggies only if you like them, use butter and olive oil, enjoy a fine steak when you can afford it, and do not become food-obsessed.
Sorry, Whole Foods, food quacks, and food faddists. You have been wrong all along. Docs finally now feel free to share the real facts, which they have known for years. I've never known a doc who would refuse a rare ribeye steak or filet mignon. Never known a vegetarian doc either, or a scientist who ate organic food. In fact, the biological scientists I know like to go to fancy French and fancy Italian restaurants as often as possible.
All of us in positions to employ people know that a college degree, in many or most cases, is meaningless credentialism much of the time, these days.
For life-enrichment or for the hard sciences, college can great, especially if money is no object and if the kid is a natural scholar. The latter is, at most, 5-6%.
In choosing friends, we might prefer people who know a lot about a lot of things, but for employees one applies different metrics. We train all of our own people, including our paralegals. We use a marine corps boot camp system. Many wash out, but are better for it. Some even thank us for letting them discover what level of effort and learning is expected from work in the for-profit world.
Many times, college is a negative from a business standpoint. We exist to make money honestly and nothing more. When we hire, all we ask ourselves is "Can this person make, or save, us money?" And in case they do not, can we let them go without a lawsuit? I would never say that we avoid women, older folks, or minorities, for that reason because there are laws, but we have had enough expensive troubles with that in the past. We just want the highest performance and we want you available 24 hrs/day if needed, no excuses.
Do an extraordinary job, exceed expectations, go the extra mile, make yourself attractive, and spread good cheer? We will reward you handsomely with money, benefits, love and appreciation.
When we hire new lawyers (rarely in recent years, unless they come with deep portfolios of corporate clients), of course they have degrees. We ignore their degrees, bearing in mind that legal work required degrees only recently (historically). We see people with recent law degrees working in Starbucks and living with their parents.
All real law is learned in apprenticeship, preferably under a genius mentor. All real learning is, ultimately, self-education.
Mike Rowe has been, lately, one of my favorite commentators and pitchmen. His primary pitch these days is his foundation Mike Rowe Works, which is geared toward getting people to focus on trades and skills as opposed to higher education. I happen to agree with his view that higher education is not for everybody, should not be for everybody, and is not essential for a large percentage of the jobs available in the world today. Including mine. While my position, if posted, would require some college degree, I happen to work with someone who does not have a degree, and it is entirely likely this person could do just as good a job as I can. Though it took this person much longer to gain similar experience and background to me, this should not be an impediment to further growth.
From my perspective, a college degree is good for a few things. These are not limited to: expanding one's view of the world, improving one's own process of inquiry and learning (my father's old line is you go to college to get an education, not to get a job), and to become technically proficient in a variety of specialized fields where proficiency is otherwise difficult to achieve. I'd toss in that it's also a means of networking and learning social skills to improve future prospects in both life and work.
College is not the only place to learn these things, though it's probably one of the better places to learn them. You could say the same for the military, in some respects. Be that as it may, limiting one's view of a person's potential and capabilities to very specialized qualifications, such as college or military backgrounds, is a bit odd.
We jumped into a chilly and breezy NYC right after early church to catch the Lauder Cubism Show at the Met. Thanks, Leonard Lauder, for this amazing gift to the public. Tomorrow (Monday) is the last day.
In my opinion, pictures like these are best seen in a house, best lived-with, and not in a museum, but such is the world today. Regular people cannot afford them, but really nothing wrong with good prints. Fun.
81 paintings and drawings from 1904-1925 - spectacular but overwhelming. I am a Cubism fan. I consider it highly decorative - eye candy - interesting to the eye, and I imagine that my hero Cezanne would have been fascinated had he lived long enough to see it.
Below is Picasso's 1909 The Oil Mill. Cubism is as abstract as the genius Picasso ever got. His authority of line, color, and design never ceases to amaze me regardless of whatever style he was exploring or inventing. He kept moving but, for a while, he and Braque had a cool thing going with Cubist experimentation.
Like most religions, the Green movement attempts to define codes of right behavior. It contains an original sin: Existing. The battle against entropy requires the consumption of resources and the production of waste. These actions wrack the environmentally conscious with tremendous guilt, which can only be assuaged with an act of contrition.
A friend researched where our local recyling goes. It all goes to a landfill in West Virginia, along with the rest of the garbage.
When Judith Somerby married Tristram Coffin in March of 1653, she was a widow with three children: Sarah, who was eight, Elizabeth, who was six, and Daniel, almost three. (Another son had died in infancy.) In the next sixteen years Judith gave birth to ten Coffin children, all of whom, remarkably, survived infancy. There is an almost saucy irony in the family name, as though some wind of Yankee humor had swept Puritan Newbury. Death seldom visited the Coffins.
By the time Judith's last baby was born in March 1669 she already had six grandchildren. From 1667 until her death in 1705 - twenty-eight years - at least one grandchild was born each year. In the most prolific period from 1686 to 1696, thirty eight infants were born, almost four a year. Judith's gravestone should probably be taken literally when its says she lived to see 177 descendants...
You need to have spare money to run a hobby farm, whether it's vegetables, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, etc. Often, such things are set up as tax dodges (agricultural land), never expected to make any meaningful profit themselves.
Most writers have written disparagingly about shopping malls. It is easy to do. People like to say that they would prefer the old (now, half-abandoned) Main St. with its old, familiar, family-owned shops - but would they really?
I have seen plenty of towns with thriving downtowns with no malls nearby. Lucky towns. The shopping streets of cities, too, are basically shopping malls without a roof.
There's an ignorant nut always ready to believe anything: The Food Babe: Enemy of Chemicals - How one woman mobilized an army against food additives, GMOs, and all else not "natural."
The human species should be thanking God for GMOs.
A good organization: Maine's 
Thanks to ski lifts, snow cannons, and plenty of dynamite, 
All of us in positions to employ people know that a college degree, in many or most cases, is meaningless credentialism much of the time, these days. 
Nobody told these people that they were creating a hobby farm, not a real business: 
Most writers have written disparagingly about shopping malls. It is easy to do. People like to say that they would prefer the old (now, half-abandoned) Main St. with its old, familiar, family-owned shops - but would they really?