Monday, October 25. 2010
Those so-superior French must have crappy lives, so retirement is all they have to look forward to.
From Foreign Policy's The Spectacle of the Society - France's half-century social-spending spree is coming to an end -- and Nicolas Sarkozy is stuck holding the bag.
The drama of rewriting the postwar social contract is taking place across Europe. Over the past generation, globalization has challenged Western economic dominance and forced wages downward throughout the industrialized world; the economic crisis that began in 2008 delivered the coup de grace.
Read the whole excellent cautionary tale.
The moral of the story, I feel, is this: when government becomes too dominant a part of life, people become more childlike and thus, instead of feeling gratitude towards their "leaders," they have entitlement tantrums when they feel deprived.
Is America unique in having many work settings in which managers feel the need to have "forced retirement" by age 70 or 75? And is America unique in having so many people who build second careers after retirement?
Anchoress linked this quick online test from 2008. Yes, I know online quizzes are dumb.
Some folks think we at Maggie's are being facetious when we term ourselves a Centrist website, but that's how I came out on the quiz: Socially Moderate, Economically Conservative - Centrist.
Most of my friends view me as a Conservative, but maybe Conservatives are Centrists nowadays.
Sometimes a fellow just wants a big bowl of Bob Evans sausage gravy dumped on top of a pile of good biscuits.
Many doctors claim the gravy smooths your arterial linings, thus extending life. The biscuits provide serenity and peace of mind in this troubled world, and many peer-reviewed studies confirm this. It is settled science.
I love to have excuses to travel to places where you can get good biscuits and gravy for breakfast, but I have too few opportunities to do so.
What's your favorite way to dine on this treat? Crumble the biscuit? Split the biscuit? Dump it on top of an intact biscuit? Such details matter in life.
That dramatic � even inflammatory -- title, �Is �Palestinian-killer� the new �Christ-killer�?�, is the first question that occurred to me as I read news reports that a meeting of Catholic Bishops from the Middle East condemned Israel, called for withdrawal to 1967 borders, and that Jews have no Biblical right to Israel.
I just read the actual statement of the gathering. The initial impression I had was wrong, largely due to the poor news reporting and due to the press conference by the archbishop president of the gathering that went beyond the meeting�s report and beyond Catholic Church doctrine. Further, the report itself is not the official position of the Catholic Church. The Pope will consider it before issuing his final statement.
That impression given the world, that the Jews of Israel are, in effect, �Palestinian-killers�, consonant with the catechism of the Left in trying to delegitimize Israel�s very existence, was conveyed by the president of the gathering at a Vatican press conference:
�The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands,� Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, Greek Melkite archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Boston, Massachusetts, and president of the �Commission for the Message,� said at Saturday�s Vatican press conference.
�We Christians cannot speak of the �promised land� as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people � all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.
�Even if the head of the Israeli state is Jewish, the future is based on democracy.
The Palestinian refugees will eventually come back and this problem will have to be solved,� the Lebanese-born Bustros said.
The Israeli reply was sharp:
Continue reading "Is Palestinian-killer the new Christ-killer?"
Sunday, October 24. 2010
Well, I hesitate to term these "professional" conferences, because by my definition unionized people cannot really be considered professionals. But, putting that aside, here's Academic Conferences: the Oppressed Versus the Oppressors. One quote:
A preliminary program for the National Council of Teachers of English conference (Nov. 18-21, Orlando) lists a session, "Leading Out Our Profession Through Advocacy," that blames Ronald Reagan (whatever happened to blaming Bush?) for scripted lessons and mandates handed down to classroom teachers in the cause of school reform: "During the Reagan years, systems and structures were set in place so that corporate giants and government would have more control over education," resulting in policies such as No Child Left Behind and now even the Obama Race to the Top. The NCTE workshop's answer to all that? "Critical reflection, dialogue, and action toward an educational reform and advocacy that enables teachers and learners to collaborate, explore, engage, and renew ourselves through positive, empowering, professional advocacy."
If I can peer clearly through the edubabble, I think this is a union training session. Not certain, though. By the way, what's a "learner"?
Purists might object, but these things are made of "resin," not wood. They are heavy. They have been outdoors for over a year and had accumulated mildew and dirt, so I decided to give them a bleach spray bath last weekend. It worked like magic.
I asked Mrs. BD whether she wanted me to put them inside someplace for the winter and she told me not to bother. "They're resin." I said "You mean plastic." I never realized it. I am happy to know that a lifetime of scraping, painting, and replacing rotting Adirondack chairs is over.
Seaside Casual Furniture, from Rhode Island. Only somebody like Sipp would notice that they aren't the real thing.
Saturday, October 23. 2010
Somebody asked me this weekend what is meant my the common legal term "in the state's interest."
When you think about it, it does sound like a term from feudal times; an odd turn of phrase for a democratic republic. On the other hand, in socialist or communist countries, they use the term "the peoples' interest" as a euphemism for the same thing.
There is a good brief definition and discussion here, as the term applies in the US.
My problem with this basic legal concept, when I think about it a little with my small brain, is this: What happens when The State becomes a special interest of its own, looming over all other interests? Well, James Madison et al anticipated all of that, didn't they? Very shrewd and wise old dead guys with unfashionable ethnicities.
I have a fatal disease in my large, probably 100 year-old Copper Beech tree. I have diagnosed it as Beech Bark Disease. I've seen the same bark disease on many old Copper Beeches recently - areas of shedding bark on the trunk and dying branches high overhead. It's a damn shame.
Friday, October 22. 2010
A re-post of Shrinkwrapped's fine and thoughtful essay on the causes of poverty in prosperous and opportunity-filled places. He begins with a quote from Heather MacDonald:
A welfare mother in Central Harlem is not poor for the same reasons that a subsistence corn farmer in Mexico is poor. That’s just one of the many self-evident conclusions to emerge from a dangerously misguided antipoverty program begun by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. Bloomberg’s initiative, Opportunity NYC–Family Rewards, bestows cash rewards on (for the most part) single parents and their children if they act responsibly—by attending school, for example, or by working. Interim results for New York’s effort, which is modeled on a program in Mexico that targeted agricultural peasants, are now in. Not all of them are as blindingly obvious, though, as the fact that multigenerational urban poverty in America is far different from Third World rural poverty. One detail in particular stands out: that the lives of America’s underclass are characterized by a degree of disorganization that is rarely grasped or acknowledged. The implications of this revelation will be difficult, if not impossible, for the welfare industry to accept.
We have often discussed here that modern life is not only packed with opportunity, but that it is more demanding and challenging than that of the life of a serf on a Lord's estate or of a slave on a plantation. Freedom and free markets are part of what makes it challenging and worthwhile.
America is about opportunity, not security. That's why people want to come here. People who just want freebies go to England or Germany.
Perhaps this sounds like a heartless post during an extended recession. We believe in charity, but we also believe in holding people accountable for their fates and expect them to take charge of their lives as best they can. Furthermore, we do not view truckloads of money as the ultimate goal of life.
Our shrink friend has another post on the topic this week: The Culture of Poverty.
Those without socialist ideologies know that poverty in America is often temporary, often by life-style choice, sometimes by bad luck, and often because of dysfunctional life choices and/or character flaws and mental disability and illness.
And, for contrast, here's the view from the Left.
 Beers range between around 3% to around 9% alcohol by volume. I prefer the lower numbers because it is pleasant to enjoy a few brews without really feeling it.
You can look up your favorite beer's alcohol content (and calories) here.
Thursday, October 21. 2010
Over the transom:
One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift... The next year, I didn't buy her a gift.
When she asked me why, I replied,
"Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!"
And that's how the fight started.....
____________________________
My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, 'Do you want to have Sex?' 'No,' she answered. I then said, 'Is that your final answer?'
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying, 'Yes..'
So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."
And that's when the fight started...
______________________________
My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.
I asked her, "Do you know him?" "Yes", she sighed,
"He's my old boyfriend.... I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since."
"My God!" I said, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"
And then the fight started...
A few more below the fold -
Continue reading "How to start a fight"
Wednesday, October 20. 2010
From an article about the wonderful Dr. John Ioannidis of the above title in The Atlantic (my bolds):
In poring over medical journals, he was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science “never minds” are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesn’t really help fend off Alzheimer’s disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries.
But beyond the headlines, Ioannidis was shocked at the range and reach of the reversals he was seeing in everyday medical research.
Clinical research always must be taken with a grain of salt, and today's "best practices" will be tomorrow's worst. The general press is utterly incompetent at evaluating such studies. I think they just grab at potential headlines, eg Study: Broccoli Cures Causes Cancer.
I know plenty of folks who have been told to "Take it - studies say it might help, and won't hurt." Who knows? I find it amusing to think that today we are no longer certain of a direct relationship between cholesterol levels and heart disease.
Quoted in an otherwise appreciative City Journal review of a Normal Rockwell show, this supercilious comment:
Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik, who in reviewing the show derided Rockwell as the cowardly, “aw, shucks” epitome of Middle America. Rockwell “doesn’t challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes,” wrote Gopnik. “From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.”
I can't stand people who write like that. I almost thought it was satire, at first.
Whoever decided that art was meant to afflict comfort? Comfort is a good thing, and difficult to obtain. Sure, art ought to be stimulating in some way - like any other sort of entertainment - or nobody would buy it. Art is entertainment. We love looking at pictures and designs of all sorts.
Here's Rockwell's 1962 Saturday Evening Post cover pic, The Connoisseur. It makes me think new thoughts and try new acts, and I think his Pollock imitation is better than Pollock:
Tuesday, October 19. 2010
Murchison: How Big Should Government Be? A quote:
No genius can figure out what government could do "for us" if it really tried. Easier to figure is what it might instead do "to us" once it really decided to save us: narrowing choices, curtailing the varied freedoms of action Americans still enjoy. That's why there's this lawsuit in Florida (as in other venues), where the wait-a-cotton-picking-minute spirit has Our Protectors at least momentarily on the defensive.
If the Feds can tax a non-activity (ie not buying the insurance plan they want us to buy), they can tax anything we don't do, "for our own good."
I am annoyed with Obamacare for at least three additional reasons:
1) I am very happy with my catastrophic ("major medical") insurance plan. It covers nothing elective or "preventive," no obstetrics, no vision, no dental, and has a $5000 deductible. I can see any physician I choose. Even including the deductible, it's relatively cheap. Under Obamacare, I cannot own this insurance.
2) The politicization of medical care promises to be an unholy mess.
3) There will be perverse incentives for your doctors to under-treat you.
Carl Sagan's bunkometer list, via SDA re global warming climate change climate disruption:
- Whenever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts”
- Encourage substantive debate on the “evidence” by knowledgable proponents of all points of view.
- Arguments from authority carry little weight as “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that there are no authorities; at most; there are “experts”.
- Spin a variety of hypotheses. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each. The ones that survive are the ones to do in depth study on.
- Do not become attached to any hypothesis just because it’s yours. Find reasons for rejecting all, including your own, hypothesis.
- Quantify. If whatever you are explaining has a measure, quantify it so that measurement is more possible. Vague hypothesis, or those difficult to quantify will be the most difficult to prove or disprove.
- If there is a chain argument, then each and every link must work, including the premise.
- Use Occam’s Razor; which is to choose the hypothesis that explains the data in the simplest terms.
- Ask: is the Hypothesis testable and falsifiable. Hypothesis that are not testable are not worth much. Could you duplicate accurately, at least theoretically, the hypothesis?
I am reading - or trying to read - McDonogh's 2007 After The Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift. It's about the horrors inflicted on ethnic Germans by the Allies in the years following WW2. Prussia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany.
This is indeed a tale which nobody wants to hear, and it is gut-wrenching to read.
Probably 3 million ethnic Germans were killed after the war ended, including around one million surrendered soldiers. From Nigel Jones' excellent review:
The two million German civilians who died were largely the old, women and children: victims of disease, cold, hunger, suicide - and mass murder.
Apart from the well-known repeated rape of virtually every girl and woman unlucky enough to be in the Soviet occupation zones, perhaps the most shocking outrage recorded by MacDonogh - for the first time in English - is the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by their vengeful Czech compatriots. The survivors of this ethnic cleansing, naked and shivering, were pitched across the border, never to return to their homes. Similar scenes were seen across Poland, Silesia and East Prussia as age-old German communities were brutally expunged.
Read the whole brief review to get an idea.
Seems to me that the Czechs were the most brutal and bloody to the Germans in the German-majority Sudetenland, but the Red Army was close behind. In this time period, the Czechs reduced their prosperous German population from 3 million to the handful today - ethnic cleansing by murder, torture, forced death marches, exile, and in concentration camps (the camps were widely used to incarcerate, starve, torture and kill Germans in the Red Army regions).
Sunday, October 17. 2010
 As I live and learn, I no longer view Roman civilization as "ancient." Old, but not ancient. Those folks were a lot like us, and lived a lot like us.
Roman floor mosaics and wall paintings were the usual fashionable decor of the time, and typical for the homes of the prosperous. Naturally, the floor mosaics are better preserved than wall mosaics or wall paintings.
In 2009 we were fortunate to make our way to the Bardo Museum in Tunis to see the world's largest collection of Roman mosaics. They have so many, you even walk on them to get from one display room to another. This was decor, mind you - not fine art.
The Lod mosaics are a recent find, very-well preserved. They are now displayed in NYC.
Here's the story of the Lod mosaics.
 Any Hoyt Axton fans at Maggie's? (He died in 1999.)
He wrote Joy to the World, Greenback Dollar, etc. His Mom wrote Heartbreak Hotel. Bio here.
Saturday, October 16. 2010
 Maybe our most common winter sparrow in the NE, the White Throated spends most of his time on the ground and in low shrubs looking for berries, seeds and hibernating bugs. Likes bird-feeders.
He'll be coming down from the breeding grounds in Canada around now, and will give us a chance to hear his familiar pleasant songs (the link has songs).
Friday, October 15. 2010
Here is a re-posted sample of a few decent places to stay for your New England grouse hunting, ranging from the simple to the quite comfortable (some have fishing too):
 Bosebuck Mountain Camps
Miramichi Inn
King and Bartlett
Partridge Cabins
Lopstick Cabins
and in the Adirondacks, The Hungry Trout
These are just some of the places we've been to or heard about first-hand. Here's a good source for Maine outfitters.
Photo: A cabin at Bosebuck, where the only heat is your wood stove and your dog, the bunks are lumpy, the Canada Jays steal the dog kibbles of a slow eater, and where the locals cruise the dirt roads and shoot the partidges along the road from their pick-ups, while the sports in their expensive attire bust the brush with their dogs. Grouse huntin' ain't shopping. It's a rare occasion when I've limited out at 4 birds in an 8-hour, leg-testing day in the woods and marsh edges (think 8 hours of singles tennis in mud, bogs, raspberry brambles and cage-like alder thickets). It's a work-out. At some point, you start wondering how long it is to cocktail hour. The Woodcock keep it interesting and varied. It's a 20 ga. sport, or even 28 ga.
Hunting grouse is wonderfully difficult, challenging, and frustrating - but you get to spend time in the wild woods with dogs and pals and guns, smoking at will and accumulating precious memories to re-live in your old age.
Last night, Professor Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center in Israel, and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, author of over 50 books, was the guest of the San Diego Israel Coalition (SDIC).
The SDIC, with about 600 Jewish and Christian members, near packed the large auditorium in La Jolla, and heard good news from Israel. This may have come as a surprise to many, accustomed to the gloomier commentary in the US from supporters and adversaries of Israel.
According to Barry Rubin’s view from Israel, Israel is in the strongest situation in decades. It is the West and Arab states that are in the weakest.
Continue reading "Some Good News From Israel"
Thursday, October 14. 2010
Brooklyn College English professor Moustafa Bayoumi’s books continue to be at the center of whether fact or fiction will prevail at Brooklyn College. This might even be viewed as indicative of the wider struggle within US academia over the influence of the Left and many of its adherents’ support of Islamist views.
Last month, as an alumnus, I posted my disinheriting the college in protest against one of Prof. Bayoumi’s books being the required sole Common Reading for incoming students. Unexpectedly, this touched a wider nerve which led to all three major NYC newspapers and many prominent blogs (here and here are follow-ups) reporting on the issue and one of the major newspapers blasting the college’s selection in an editorial.
The two books are Prof. Bayoumi’s required reading for entering students, the sole one, that Arab-Americans are excessively the brunt of discrimination, and his current book attacking the Israeli actions regarding the Mavi Marmara blockade-running attempt to deliver supplies to Gaza.
We have one of the college’s most Distinguished professors, Broeklundian Professor Robert Cherry of the Economics department, self-professed man of the Left, expert in discrimination against minorities in labor markets, revealing the false statistics at the core of Prof. Bayoumi’s continual arguments that Arab-Americans are disproportionately discriminated against.
We have the administration of the college continuing to act without transparency as to how Prof. Bayoumi’s book came to be selected for all incoming students to read, in the absence of other books or views, and failing to publicly address how that process may be improved in the future. Perhaps, Prof. Cherry’s talk next Tuesday at the college’s Hillel, of which I have the draft text (below the fold), will spur more procedural openness and caution against ideological recklessness.
Meanwhile, we have the Managing Editor of the campus newspaper, who in 2005 blessed (“Amen”) 9/11 Trutherism, writing a paean to Prof. Bayoumi’s collection of essays criticizing what the book titles the Israel “attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla” ship Mavi Marmara. Perhaps, students or faculty at the college may be spurred to pay attention to the news coverage, including from sources usually critical of Israel, to the contrary.
Both perhaps are to be hoped for, but not to be counted upon unless there is more pressure from within the campus and its alumni.
Continue reading "Fact and Fiction at Brooklyn College"
 Bake a split Butternut Squash until cooked but with the meat firm - not mushy.
Sautee some chopped onions with garlic, butter, and olive oil. Then toss in 1-2" cubes of the peeled squash, with salt and pepper, a teaspoon or two of sugar, and chopped sage, and sautee it all together for a little while, but don't let the squash cubes disintegrate. Add more butter and oil, and a little water, if it gets too dry.
Some people like to add hunks of turkey sausage, and some like to add a splash of brandy.
I think this sauce works best with a chunky pasta like Farfalle.
As I remind people, always stir pasta with the sauce in the sautee pan before serving. That's why they make big sautee pans - to mix the sauce with the pasta. Sauce plopped on top is not the right way to do it.
Top with a sprinkling of parmesan and some pignolis.
Wednesday, October 13. 2010
Via Reason, this remarkable portrait of a dead American city. It's not easy to kill a city without bombs, but unions, numbskull business managements, and corrupt pols did it there. Their "light rail" will be the tombstone before the whole city is plowed over to grow wheat or corn or trees or something.
Government did not build NYC's subways and trains. Businesses built those things to meet a profitable demand. Someday though, this absurdity in Detroit might be a tourist attraction - to ride a trolley through the vacant lots, wreckage, and abandoned buildings filled with feral dogs and cats.
Tuesday, October 12. 2010
 Ten Secrets to a healthy marriage. Good, basic advice, but with nothing about the importance of daily sexual bonding, regardless of age.
Photo is Helen Mirren at 64. I fully intend to look at least that good for my own self-respect and out of love for my loving hubby.
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