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.
You know you are reaching true adulthood when you read articles about The Kids These Days and end up grimacing. We have posted about the hooking-up culture in the past, about "friends with benefits," and about how the youth are mating randomly and promiscuously like rabbits in the woods and yet are spared the reputational problem which would have occurred when I was 20.
Voyeurism is fun, but tacky. From what I see in life, which is quite a lot, it seems to me that these stories are the exception rather than the rule. From what I see, the average middle-class American girl avoids casual sexual encounters and wants to be treated respectfully if not lovingly. There is a bell curve, and the left tail of the curve is sociopathic.
So much for the girls. For the 20's guys, there is no doubt that it has gotten very easy to get lucky in the bars these days, if that is how one chooses to live. The modern trends of feminism are great for the guys: they get much more sex and sexual variety without committment, and the women make their own money. Unless you feel that relationships are a serious matter and that using others is a form of low life, that is.
I had been under the impression that the reason to spend big bucks for an elite education in prep schools like Andover, Exeter, Choate, Deerfield, etc. was for a very rigorous classical education, traditional and strict moral standards, and, in general, a special culture set apart from ordinary society and its fads, from factory-style public education, and from ordinary mindless and immature teen pursuits.
If these sorts of schools no longer aspire to be different, what's the point?
So now Geoff Chaucer, the father of modern English, is voiceless and the whores have voices? Thus the culture progresses, forgetting the Wife of Bath - and the Whore of Babylon.
It's the dumplings that make it worth eating. Good stuff. Otherwise, it's sort of like Chicken Soup or Chicken Stew, which are good if you have the flu but, otherwise, not too exciting.
A national "common core" for lower ed? I do not like that idea at all. I do not approve of any national authorities involved in education, much less curricula. Why do we have local school boards?
Gee, I almost forgot. We have them to apply for federal grants, which are, in turn, used to control state and local education from Washington.
Given the increasing centralization of everything, at least one fellow has something on the ball: David Coleman, Education Hero.
When young, most Americans never saw any tuna that did not come out of a can. Tuna Noodle was indeed a classic and, for Fridays, a Catholic standby. Cream of mushroom soup in it, of course: Tuna Noodle Casserole.
I would not want to eat it today unless I were starving. Was not even Catholic, just had enough of it.
Shucks, I almost forgot the notorious Tuna Surprise, aka Tuna Disappointment.
Italians do love their Mediterranean Tuna, and you can Google plenty of tasty Tuna sauce pasta recipes. Here's one: Italian Tuna and Pasta
I've discussed the Gambler's Fallacy in the past (eg if you flip nine heads in a row, what are the odds the next toss will be a tail?). The inverse is another matter. Wiki gives this example:
Suppose a man walked into a room and saw someone rolling a pair of dice. Furthermore, imagine that the result of this dice roll is a double-six. The man entering the room would commit the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy if he said, "You've probably been rolling the dice for quite a while, since it's unlikely you would get a double-six on your first attempt."
You get a mess of big old quahogs or sea clams (steam open and then chop them up), or some chunks of fresh Codfish, Haddock, or Monkfish - or just a bag of frozen corn.
The base of your Yankee chowder is the same, whether Clam, Cod, or Corn. See Grandma's Corn Chowder for the base (substitute other ingredients for the corn).
You can add a little thickener if you want, corn starch or whatever. Not necessary, though.
My Mom would serve chowda with Bisquick biscuits. Good memories: Mom cooking up a chewy, clam-packed chowder with the basket of quahogs we kids had harvested from the low-tide mud off Great Island in Wellfleet.
Fellow parents: Our job is to build sustaining memories and traditions as best we can, isn't it?
You haven't heard of Peter Buck, PhD, but it's a story. Buck was an nuclear engineer, I believe for GE in Bridgeport, CT, and teaching an engineering class at the University of Bridgeport when he loaned a bright and hard-studying local student in one of his classes named Fred DeLuca $1000 to open a submarine sandwich shop to help him pay his way through college after the kid's family ran short of cash. That was 1965.
(I remember that first shop. I think it said "Submarines" on the sign, and I wondered what that was. I had had "grinders," but never a submarine. Just a 12" deli sandwich with lots of good stuff in it, as it turns out.)
A couple of years later Buck lent DeLuca a little bit more to open a second shop in Bridgeport, even though the first was not too profitable.
The privately-owned Subway now has 30,000 franchised restaurants worldwide. I don't believe that Dr. Buck ever worked for Subway or made any substantial further investments in the business but, based on their original deal, DeLuca and Buck have shared the profits ever since, 50-50. No lawsuits.
If you ever wondered why the Subway bags say "Doctor's Associates Inc" on them, it refers to Dr. Buck and his young engineering student Fred DeLuca, who remains the President of the Subway chain's corporation, Doctor's Associates.
The Buck and DeLuca families both still live in Fairfield County, each in fairly modest and quiet ways despite their unexpected wealth. Yes, I do like those Subway sandwiches, especially the Italian combo with Swiss cheese and some jalapenos on it. Oil and vinegar on top.
Their bread is too mushy for my taste, though. As Dr. Merc suggests, experiment with their different bread varieties. Still, compared to the burger chains, Subways are a treat when on the road, and they really do use prime and fresh ingredients.
I cannot eat a whole one. Just a half at most, and save the rest for later. My skinny daughter eats the whole thing.
There are some grim aspects to her report from the front lines of the follow-your-impulses approach to life, but, in the end, I have to comment that I think it's just great that, in America, there is the freedom and opportunity to construct a life any way one chooses.
As long as I do not have to end up supporting it, that is. Despite all of her opportunities, I fear we all may end up supporting her in her old age, if she achieves it. True bohemians are supposed to die young-ish, of TB, cirrhosis, drug overdose, AIDS, broken heart, or other such romantic maladies:
This is entertaining, but the alert and fast-talking Ben Shapiro makes one disputative error which might seem minor, but is not. His error was in answering the question "Why does anyone need an assault rifle?"
The right answer would be "I don't know what your definition of an assault rifle is, but nobody has to justify his wants in America. It's a free country. Piers, why do you need a polluting Town Car and driver to bring you to work?"
When white kids are killed, it's a catastrophe. When young black gangbangers die in Chicago, it's a non-story. The more I listen to all the hysteria, the more I want an AR-15 to play with even though I tend to prefer more aesthetic, old-school firearms, with wood in them. It appears that they are on back-order anyway.
Just had to repost the Hello Kitty AR-15. I would not mess with this pleasant lady:
They called it "Beef Stew" because I don't think they put any wine in it. Mom served it on rice or on slices of white bread.
Good for the cheapest cut of beef you can find because it will tenderize any cut, and the poorest cuts have the most flavor.
It probably tasted similar to that Dinty Moore dog-food-tasting canned thing, because it had no bacon, no garlic, no wine, etc. Tasted good at the time, though.
A more up-to-date recipe for a crock pot is not too bad: Crock Pot Beef Stew With Red Wine. Gets closer to a real Boeuf Bourguignon.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty.
His focus on natural rights is the main issue. In my big-picture view, American citizens do not have delimited rights, but government does have delimited powers over the citizen. Neither the "common good" nor the "greater good," however construed, are citizens of the US.
In non-American history, the masses and peasants were forbidden ownership of arms (back when the penetrating weapon of choice was the sword). America was, and remains, different, revolutionary.
Governments are always uncomfortable with an armed populace. Canada, which just gave up on its program of national firearm registration, should not have been surprised to discover that a giant and costly registry of honest gun owners was of no use at all.
That's the Lefty mantra this week, re firearms. So let's ban cars, which are far more deadly. Or urban gangs and urban drug gangs, who do, by far, most of the killing in the US with illegally-possessed handguns.
If it only saves one life, maybe we shouldn’t ban handguns because one of them was used Monday night in Ohio to save two lives and may help take a robber off the streets.
Mind you, I am entirely in favor of banning firearms, or any other weapons including baseball bats, from violent criminals and the criminally insane. However, that is already the law. Crims ignore laws, obviously, worldwide. Criminalizing the law-abiding seems one more example of A nation formed by geniuses and run by idiots.
A rational government would want the law-abiding armed, and the crims disarmed. I happen to believe that our government wants me disarmed. Me, who have been burglarized four times, held up at gunpoint once, threatened with death once, have had an armed home invader running through the area recently, and have never harmed anybody who did not deserve it - and never with a firearm but only with words.
When government and police give up guns, and government officials and celebrities and newspaper offices give up their firearm protection, and security guards begin carrying squirtguns, and the crims give up their guns and we establish the Peaceable Kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb, then we can talk.
Until then, Maggie's HQ is defended with legal citizen arms just as Mayor Bloomberg and the President are. That's how honest country folk think, who cannot afford security guards and have no gendarmes for many miles. In the country, one must be one's own gendarme. That's the American way. I grew up with guns around. Just tools, like all the others. We kept a .22 revolver in the kitchen drawer with the pliers and screwdrivers. My Mom shot a roaming Copperhead with it one time, when a little one was outdoors in a basinette.
I have written about the illusion of a state of Happiness in the past here. In doing so, I have always pointed out that it's a term without a meaningful definition. However, it has always seemed to me that happiness implies, for some, an imaginary infantile state in which all wants and needs are met rather than the state of stress, difficulty, and challenge which many of us seek.
For a simple example, I have a friend who never feels "happier" than when struggling for hours in a fruitless effort to master a Chopin piano piece.
Transient joys and delights certainly occur, as can periods of contentment with their implication of acceptance of, or resignation to, the limits of reality.
Leszek Kołakowski poses the question Is God Happy? (h/t Althouse) as a way to reflecting about the human capacity for happiness. He says:
Happiness is something we can imagine but not experience. If we imagine that hell and purgatory are no longer in operation and that all human beings, every single one without exception, have been saved by God and are now enjoying celestial bliss, lacking nothing, perfectly satisfied, without pain or death, then we can imagine that their happiness is real and that the sorrows and suffering of the past have been forgotten. Such a condition can be imagined, but it has never been seen. It has never been seen.
Kolakowski clearly adopts the definition of happiness to which I alluded earlier, ie, the serene absence of any disturbing thoughts or feelings. Sounds more like a mindless beach vacation to me than something anybody would aspire to for more than a few days. Sounds like heroin.
Regarding the question re God's happiness, it's an absurd question. God is not human.
You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You can get arrested for expired tags on your car but not for being in the country illegally.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... A seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for calling his teacher "cute" but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... The Supreme Court of the United States can rule that lower courts cannot display the 10 Commandments in their courtroom, while sitting in front of a display of the 10 Commandments.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Children are forcibly removed from parents who appropriately discipline them while children of "underprivileged" drug addicts are left to rot in filth infested cesspools of a crackhouse. ==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Hard work and success are rewarded with higher taxes and government intrusion, while some slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and free cell phones.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... The government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work).
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Being self-sufficient is considered a threat to the government.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Politicians think that stripping away the constitution is really protecting the rights of the people.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... The rights of the Government come before the rights of the individual.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You can write a post like this just by reading the news headlines.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor defaults on his mortgage (while buying iPhones, TV's and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars).
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you "safe".
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You have to have your parents signature to go on a school field trip but not to get an abortion.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... An 80 year old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a Muslim woman in a burka is only subject to having her neck and head searched.
My kids have all had various internships, paid and unpaid, some very well-paid. Internships are an opportunity for the student and, in most cases, a bit of a hassle for the person offering them.
If a person thinks it worth their while to take an unpaid internship, why not? If they were paid, they might not be offered at all.
The only way to finance a big European-style state is to have it paid for by massive taxation of everyone, mostly the middle class. Right now, we are avoiding honest debate on this fact.
There will be large tax increases on the middle class. There is no getting around it, if people want so many government benefits. Those Obamacare taxes are just the beginning. With that will come ever-slowing growth of jobs and income.
The Mrs. recently reported a conversation she had had with a tennis friend who had a rotator cuff repair, and had prematurely discontinued her physical therapy because the insurance coverage cut off after the predetermined number of sessions for that surgery.
This friend of hers drives a new Mercedes every year, owns three houses in various vacation spots, and spends three months/year traveling around the world. However, the notion of actually paying (pocket change) for her own physical well-being eluded her imagination. And her shoulder still hurts.
People have been well-trained to expect to get what they need "for free." And somehow have been trained to imagine that, if insurance doesn't cover it, it must not matter very much. A childlike, entitlement culture.
Who wants a statistician for a doctor?
As I have mentioned before, I have inexpensive major medical insurance with a $10,000 two-year deductible for my family. (Some other Maggie's folks have similar.) After that, it's unlimited. If anybody (God forbid) gets very ill or injured, I will keep my humble abode.
When I see a doctor, I enjoy the look of surprise on the faces of the office staff when I pull out my checkbook. I like to pay doctors. What better use of money is there (other than buying cigars)?
A word to the wise: If you tell them you are paying out of pocket, most docs will give you a discount because it's no staff time, it's instant payment, and because it just seems right to pay for a service - same as an electrician or plumber or lawyer.
If you are on Medicare or Medicaid, or if some insurance pays your bills, what do you do personallyfor your doctor to let him or her know that you appreciate their care for you?
PS: My Internist tells me that a couple of wines and two or three cigars daily is just about right for a guy like me. Like most Americans of my middle age, I take Lipitor and BP meds, and I always take care to use extra salt. The occasional Viagra? I'm not saying. He is a good, sane, practical doc who individualizes things, and thinks it's narcissistic for people to obsess about their health. "Get the most out of life, while you have it" is his motto. "You can't save life for later because 'later' is just a theory."
Why "Shepherd's"? Because it is traditionally made with ground lamb or mutton. That's how Alton Brown makes it.
Americans use ground beef, usually. Ground mutton is not a typical supermarket item. Go ahead and use instant mashed potato if you must - the recipe don't care.
I am hoping some Mom will try each of the recipes in this series, and report back on family response.
Readers know my interest in the workings of the human conscience and the structures of human morals. The (our) devils are relentless in pursuit of the low-life, the dark side.
The Mommys of America commonly made winter casseroles using cans of Campbell's soups. Mushroom soup, especially. We're getting into Hotdish territory here.
In the good old days, eating in restaurants was not routine as it is now, but instead was a special treat for birthdays and anniversaries. Take-out Chinese, much less Thai or sushi, did not exist. Moms used to have food budgets, but no more because good food has, blessedly, become such a small component of an American family budget.
I sure hope moms still make stuff like this: Easy Creamy Chicken Casserole because it is good, and heart-warming. Ritz cracker topping. Wow. Put it on white rice.
Then home-made chocolate pudding for dessert with Jiffy Whip or Cool Whip on top. Perfection. Thanks, Moms of America!
How's that for a catchy end-of-holiday-season header? (Metazoans is the new name for the Animalia Kingdom - those creatures with differentiated tissues like sponges, earthworms, and people.)
I have been attempting to familiarize myself a little with the rapidly-expanding science of Epigenetics lately. When I took pre-med Genetics, it was a marginal topic. Now that the fundamental workings of DNA are fairly well understood, epigenetics has become a hot field ("epi" because it's the things - heritable things - that effect cell-differentiation, growth and development, etc. on top of the basic DNA template, but are affected by the environment). Shades of Lamarck.
Epigenetics is interesting partly because it's one of the ways that a metazoan species can be affected by environmental influences during growth and development. Molecular tools for shaping the final product. The complexity of metazoans (as contrasted with fungi, bacteria, and protozoans, for example) requires complex epigenetic processes. Heritable things which switch on or switch off gene expression.
Here's the simplest short piece I could find: What Is Epigenetics? Easy to follow if you ever took intro Bio.
The wiki entry is actually a good intro, but tough sledding unless you had a decent college education or are a bio reader.
It's the dumplings that make it worth eating. Good stuff. Otherwise, it's sort of like Chicken Soup or Chicken Stew, which are good if you have the flu but, otherwise, not too exciting. 
When young, most Americans never saw any tuna that did not come out of a can. Tuna Noodle was indeed a classic and, for Fridays, a Catholic standby. Cream of mushroom soup in it, of course: 
You get a mess of big old quahogs or sea clams (steam open and then chop them up), or some chunks of fresh Codfish, Haddock, or Monkfish - or just a bag of frozen corn. 
A freshened-up re-post:
They called it "Beef Stew" because I don't think they put any wine in it. Mom served it on rice or on slices of white bread. 
Judge Napolitano 
That's the Lefty mantra this week, re firearms. So
I have written about the illusion of a state of Happiness in the past here. In doing so, I have always pointed out that it's a term without a meaningful definition. However, it has always seemed to me that happiness implies, for some, an imaginary infantile state in which all wants and needs are met rather than the state of stress, difficulty, and challenge which many of us seek.
The Brits and Aussies call it "Cottage Pie." 
Readers know my interest in the workings of the human conscience and the structures of human morals. The (our) devils are relentless in pursuit of the low-life, the dark side.
The Mommys of America commonly made winter casseroles using cans of Campbell's soups. Mushroom soup, especially. We're getting into Hotdish territory here.