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.
"Is there a doctor in the house?" is likely to be increasingly heard in coming years, according to one of the largest surveys ever of doctors. The Physicians Foundation contacted most of the doctors in the US and had the replies checked for statistical representativeness. Among the results:
A whopping 61 percent of doctors said they would retire today if they had the ability to do so. That's up from 45 percent in 2008.
More than 68 percent of doctors have a negative view of the current state of the medical profession. Just 3.9 percent have a "very positive" view.
Nearly three-quarters of all doctors have a pessimistic view of the future of the medical profession. Just 3.1 percent have a "very optimistic" view.
More than 59 percent of doctors have a more negative view of the medical profession as a result of ObamaCare. Just 18.5 percent of doctors have a more positive view as a result of ObamaCare.
Nearly 56 percent of doctors believe that more widespread use of health savings accounts will improve quality and reduce costs.
Nearly 73 percent of doctors believe that less government regulation will improve quality and reduce costs.
More than 35 percent of doctors have closed their practice to Medicare and/or Medicaid patients. That's up from 24 percent in 2008.
I tend to think of the Caribbean as a place for sailing. Nothing else to do there unless you like to sit in a chair and order umbrella drinks like Milton Waddams. Get to Tortola, grab some snorkeling gear, lease a bareboat and island-hop around the BVI while imbibing rum is a good plan.
But Guana Island is another thing: a nature preserve, a privately-owned 800-acre island, and takes only 30 guests at a time. I'll call it Jurassic Park because they are dedicated to restoring native species. No Limbo Rock, guaranteed.
(The "Enter" button doesn't work. Stop pushing it. Use my link.)
Current affairs afficionados like me - and like many of our readers - are probably on the thin end of the bell curve of voter information. Since we usually talk to roughly equally informed and interested people, we need to remember that many people are minimally-informed or not very interested in public affairs or policy.
Fox news interviewed some "WalMart Moms" this morning, and the Moms agreed with this statement: "We don't really know enough about the candidates yet."
I suppose this is why image, identity, and emotion are so important, especially in national elections. I suspect that this was true even before TV. I wonder what percentage of voters occupy the "low information" category.
The Pirate found these great examples of low-information voters, not at WalMart but at university:
Obama is 1/2 black (half-cool), of seemingly ambiguous sexual orientation (cool), wants to be friends with Jihadists (double-cool), and wants to make the grown-ups give us youths free stuff (triple-cool). It is literally a "no brainer."
I was that unwise in my callow youth, but I knew more than these morons who probably could not locate Libya on a map. How did these bozos get into college?
Mrs. BD and I stopped by the Villa Zuccari last summer, in the wine country of the Valnerina (the valley of the Nera River) outside Montefalco. It's only an approx. 3-hour drive from the Rome airport. The Appennines in the distance. It's an easy rural drive to Spoleto, Spello, Assisi, and, of course, our favorite village of Norcia which means GOOD FOOD. We checked out the Villa's menu, in which nobody could be disappointed.
We felt it would be a perfect spot for a destination wedding. Here are a couple of my pics:
I'm not going to even try to delve into the actual history within which this film takes place nor the religious context. That's flavor, but the meat is simply one of the most powerful films I've seen about how men think, wrestle, reach decision, come together in the face of life and death and moreso in the face of their meaning on earth.
I'd missed this movie last year so I went to see a showing at the local community college. For two hours, the audience was entirely silent, barely a stirring, and left the theater quietly and deep in individual thoughts.
I doubt this movie could have been made in Hollywood. Hollywood's films exalt the rebel against the establishment, standing against the group, and with little respect for traditional values. This French film exhibits the importance of community, of spirit, and how very individual men bravely reach common agreement about their mission.
The film takes place in the Algerian mountains in the mid-1990s. It just as well takes place within all our communities. The choices we make may not be as immediately fearful but are just as dire for our standing before Gods and Men.
At least, that's my take. If you've seen this movie, I'd be interested in your Comments.
NOTE Update: A friend who is very knowledgeable Catholic priest tells me that this order portrayed in the film are not as pacifist as the script, so the screenwriter likely imposed some of his own characterization of how he thinks Catholic monks think and behave. The actors chosen to portray the characters, he feels, do an excellent job.
Home schooling has been around forever. Whether it was the wealthy with education via Moms and tutors, or poor immigrants working all day and then educating themselves in the New York Public Library, or pioneer kids like Abe Lincoln, it was all home schooling.
As one example, Teddy Roosevelt - who wrote more books and articles than any President ever - never attended any school until he went to Harvard College. (As I recall, though, he did have to cram his Ancient Greek and Chemistry a bit for the Harvard entrance exams. At home, of course.)
Here's a good update on the topic, explaining why the Education Establishment is hostile to home schooling.
Related to the topic is the latest educational egalitarian wackiness coming out of France. Schneiderman does a good semi-rant on the topic: Dumbing Down Education in France. Many are not aware that there are similar Harrison Bergeron movements afoot in the US.
It's a big mystery. It is difficult to find any evidence for anything "before" time and space existed, before "matter" existed.
For my practical purposes, in the beginning was logos - the Word.
Which brings me to my topic of thought and communication as poetry and metaphor. I just completed one of Prof. Robert Sapolsky's Great Courses, Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Neuroscience. It's only 2 DVDs, but it is an inspiring introduction.
“Geary . . . succeeds in making the case that metaphor is the meat of language and not a sauce.”
From a Platonic point of view, it's not just the meat of language, it's the meat of thought. Sapolsky says that most communication is the residue of poetry.
The practical validity of g as a predictor of educational, economic, and social outcomes is more far-ranging and universal than that of any other known psychological variable. The validity of g is greater the greater the complexity of the task.
When I applied to medical school, they gave us an IQ test and a personality-oriented interview (along with the usual exams we all took).
For every kind of task, g is the best single predictor of performance. Not the only, but the "best single" predictor for performance in all life settings (but diligence, adaptability, social skills, judgement, emotional maturity, integrity, collegiality, ability to delay gratification, sports skills, appearance, and all the rest of individual traits and talents and psychological traits obviously matter too, to varying degrees).
The claimed respect held by an organization of Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) anti-Israel California professors toward academic freedom and open exchange of views is contradicted by their actual activities and speech. On November 6, the electorate of California will vote on whether to increase their taxes, against the threat by Governor Brown that the state’s severe deficits will otherwise have to be made up by cuts to education funding. The letter from California Scholars For Academic Freedom and the facts behind it do not argue for taxpayers increasing their taxes in order to fund abusers and deniers of academic freedom.
Thirty-five of the 134 California Scholars For Academic Freedom (CSAF) wrote to each member of the California State Assembly denouncing their unanimous passing of House Resolution 35. As they say:
HR 35 does not create new law, but it calls upon university administrators to deny First Amendment rights to students and faculty. The Assembly resolution states,”[university] leadership from the top remains an important priority so that no administrator, faculty, or student group can be in any doubt that anti-Semitic activity will not be tolerated in the classroom or on campus, and that no public resources will be allowed to be used for anti-Semitic or any intolerant agitation.”
New York City has been governed by liberals for generations. Surely if blue policies could produce an egalitarian utopia with a strong middle class, we would see it in New York before we would see it anywhere else. If liberals were good at running cities, people from all over the world would be coming to study New York’s public schools, marveling at the extraordinary success with which unionized teachers were transforming the lives of low income kids. Our transit system would be the envy of the world as well; awestruck visitors from benighted places like Shanghai and Tokyo would come to gaze in amazement at the speed, cleanliness and economy of the New York subways. Small business formation would be booming as the bustling economy of manufacturing start ups created opportunities in the inner cities.
Yet, somehow, this isn’t happening. It’s great mystery.
NYC thrives and is vibrant despite its government, not because it it. It's just lucky enough to be a people-magnet. A magnet for talented and/or ambitious young people from all over the world.
It's still Fall Planting Season in the temperate zone. Most of these laurels will not thrive above Zone 7 unless in a shaltered location.
Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the Lauraceae family. Bay Laurel and Avocado are true laurels.
Our eastern Mountain Laurel, the state plant of CT which grows in dense, impenetrable 20' high thickets on our hills, is not a true laurel. Neither are the Cherry Laurels, which are (strangely) in the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus - same genus as roses, apples, and cherries. (Seems anything can get called "laurel" if it has glossy oval evergreen leaves.)
The Cherry Laurels (Prunus laurocerasus) appear in several forms, subspecies, or cultivars in the US, and few are native to the US. Here are a few of them. I like them for the lush, tropical evergreen appearance, and the birds like them for winter cover and for spring nesting.
Like hybrid Rhodadendrons, Zone 6 is pushing their limit unless they are sheltered, next to a warm building, or near salt water. The southern US is really a better place for them, but I like experimenting. Although they are considered semi-shade or filtered light plants, up here they seem to enjoy plenty of sun.
I have three varieties: the big, upright, fast-growing "Skip" Laurels ('Schipkaensis') which make a great tall (10-15' hedge), a few small hedges of Otto Luyken English Laurel, and a couple of handsome Portuguese Laurels, a compact, slow-growing rounded type with nice red stems. The latter two were produced by Monrovia.
Wonderful plants, all things considered, and a much better bet than trying to make the very picky Mountain Laurel and hybrid Rhodys happy in this neck of the woods. Mountain Laurel, like Blueberry, only grows well where it feels like growing. If they don't like the conditions, they just die, slowly.
Photos: Above: small row of Otto Luykens in from the of the wall, and some tall Skips behind. Left: A Portuguese Laurel, about 5' high.
The following appeared at Contentions blog today. I'm reprinting it all for you to read. If you belong to one of these denominations, you might contact your local church's leadership and demand that this letter be protested. As this commentary says, "It should be specified that in most cases, these positions are largely the work of a small group of left-wing activists that dominate the public affairs policy work of their churches. Most rank-and-file members of Presbyterian, Lutheran and Methodist churches are, like most Americans, strong supporters of Israel and have little idea that this assault on Israel is being done in their name. But it is incumbent on them as well as other decent church leaders to denounce this letter and other BDS activities."
If you are not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
For mainstream American Jewish groups, it has long been an article of faith that strong alliances with liberal Protestant denominations with whom they shared a common agenda on domestic issues is integral to the safeguarding of the security and the rights of the Jewish community. That has been tested in recent years, as some of their liberal Christian partners debated supporting efforts to boycott, divest and sanction the state of Israel. But the latest instance of liberal Christians attacking Israel ought to cut the cord completely.
Keller seems to have written his glowing essay about the Liverpool Protocol, How to Die, without talking to any practicing American doctors. He is writing as an advocate of Obamacare, and speaks as if American doctors won't let people die while the English people will.
If he had spoken with American doctors, he would know that most American internists do something very similar with patients whose condition is hopeless, and do so routinely. Daily. Everybody dies. American hospitals have plenty of patients with "DNR" (Do Not Resusitate) orders on their charts, and hospice units and hospice centers are common in the US.
I see two exceptions, occasionally. One is when the family or patient is adamant about "Do anything and everything." These tend to be people who don't know much. The second is with some terminal cancer patients. I have seen terminal cancer patients, with widespead metastatic disease in the ICU, dying while the latest cancer chemotherapy is still being pumped into their veins. It's pitiful.
Generally, doctors know when to give up and do not view death as an enemy. Unfortunately, Bill Keller seems to be addressing a straw man.
Today's announcement of the inaugural journalistic losers who won the Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity merits recognition:
First Place: Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Magazine, and Joan Juliet Buck, Author "For their stunning achievements in exemplifying the spirit of Walter Duranty, for their combined use of gumshoe reporting, headline packaging, impeccable timing and fearless dismissal of facts to produce Vogue's 2011 cover story, "Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert."
First Runner Up: Bob Simon, 60 Minutes/CBS "For the gross distortions in his CBS' 60 Minutes episode, "Christians of the Holy Land."
Second Runner Up: Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic "For his unsupported accusation, unfounded claims and multiple blog postings asserting that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin's own son."
Last April, I wrote that the qualifications for the new Walter Duranty Prize for dishonest reporting that caused great harm should parallel Walter Duranty's infamous career. At least the first and second prize losers who won meet the criteria, but the third place loser who won dates back 4-years, doesn't involve foreign policy or foreign affairs, and -- simply -- is such a disregarded fool that he doesn't even merit being beneath contempt. Further, my suggestion of the fourth qualification, to also honor a journalist who really merits it for courage and insight, was not taken up. Below are the four qualifications that I proposed:
1.In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be reporting on a foreign country. Walter Duranty’s infamous whitewashing of the starvation and death of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-3 will be hard to exceed, but there are enough terrible instances of widespread state brutality today that journalists who espouse the state line or distort the facts should be the priority.
2.In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be to a bureau chief for a major news agency, newspaper, or other prominent media, as Walter Duranty was the longtime bureau chief in Moscow for the New York Times. This ties the responsibility directly to the owners of the venue.
3.In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be the recipient of an award for journalism, as Walter Duranty was of the Pulitzer Prize for his. This ties the responsibility to the journalism profession.
For the presentation and more about the winning losers, read here. The recipients were not at the award ceremony, unless they were under the tables in their normal poses.
Forty years ago, affirmative action (designed for Americans With Some African Genetics) was instituted on a temporary basis in an effort to make up for years of presumed socio-economic marginalization, or as compensation for a history of American slavery, or as a political maneuver, or something.
As a concept, it seems unconstitutional on its face. Today, it seems like insidious nonsense (eg, Is Obama more a black man or a white man? Or does the one-drop rule apply?).
The progressives on the Court are likely to desire to continue this unconstitutional entitlement for another 40 years or, God knows, forever. Why? Who knows? A reflex to condescension? Justice Kennedy is probably the swing vote. Here's Justice Kennedy and Affirmative Action.
I think affirmative action is insulting and condescending. Some related items:
Fire Dept of NYC required by judge to alter entry exam until racially balanced. I've seen plenty of Irish, Italian, and Hispanic NYC firemen, some black guys, but never an Asian fireman (are Indians also Asians? At some point, one can begin to sound like a Nazi with all of this genetic obesession).
NAACP goes after admissions policies at NYC's three elite high schools (once majority Jewish, now overwhelmingly Asian): NAACP Tries to Kill the Golden Goose.
Because of all of the bright and ambitious new Asians, the gene counters are beginning to categorize Asians as "White." It's all insane because we're all the same species of ape: Homo semi-sapiens.
It must be clear that I hate the idea of racial or ethnic discrimination in academia or in employment of any sort, but it doesn't happen these days because people will hire anybody who can get the job done. However, I think there are two subtle factors which might be holding back opportunities for Americans with African genes: 1, you can't be sure they aren't affirmative action applicants and, 2, if they don't work out in a position, there can be hell to pay to get rid of them because of their privileged situation. Just ask any HR department about this.
Firing Barack Obama for poor performance would go a long way towards integrating Americans with Some African Genes into the normal mainstream of American life. The Peter Principle knows neither skin tone nor gender.
Sesame Street, a non-profit arm of PBS, makes over $200 million in profit each year. I think the show is retarded but, regardless, why does it need my money? Furthermore, I think the idea of government support of media is profoundly un-American. The nation and the world are going to hell, and Obama is advertising about Big Bird. Romney only brought it up as an example of something we ought not to be borrowing money from China to support.
They sure aren't. That's why we don't term them "diseases." But it's more complicated than that. Psychiatrists address most complaints which concern the mind.
Some are caused by wiring abnormalities in the brain (eg autism, PDD, probably schizophrenia), some by brain damage (eg strokes, Alzheimers, hydrocephalus, trauma). Many complaints seem to combine brain vulnerabilities of some sort with the mind and personality of the person (eg OCD, Bipolar spectrum problems, severe depressions, etc etc). However, most often in outpatient settings we deal with complaints which appear to be "all in the mind" or mostly so (eg neuroses, personality problems, relationship problems, character flaws and weaknesses, fears and phobias, addictions - first in the mind, then engraved in the brain -, emotional immaturity, major life dilemmas, milder and reactive forms of depression, etc etc).
Dalrymple's post is about Dr. Oliver Sachs' determination not to label his symptom as a neurotic one. There is much comfort in believing that one's complaint is "physical" or, as we often term it, "organic."
In fact, many Psychiatrists today seek to over-medicalize Psychiatric complaints. Did your beloved spouse of 60 years just die? Oh, you have Depression, a chemical imbalance requiring 40 mg of Paxil daily.
Our trademark term "Psycho-utopianism" refers to the idea that we would all be thoroughly happy and fulfilled in life were we only given the right drugs or psychotherapy. Reality would be undone, and Eden restored.
Thus there can be a sort of conspiracy between patients and Psychiatrists (perhaps aided and abetted by the structure of the DSM and the drug companies) to view all or most complaints and symptoms as external or alien to the mind, so to speak, instead of, often, embedded in it or part of it. Part of oneself, that is.
During one of my residency inpatient rotations, we were to sit with hospitalized schizophrenics, addicts, and Borderlines for 4 hours/week. We were instructed not to attempt any "therapy" or to try to fix anything, but just to use the time to try to comprehend where they were coming from, what was going on in them, and how they were interacting with us. This was a remarkable experience in more ways than I have time or space to write.
The neuroscience craze of the 1990s grossly overpromised future clinical usefulness. My advice to the neuroscientists is to be as humble as Eric Kandel because Oliver Sach's hysterical paralysis will never be located in brain matter just as my love for tennis never will.
Related: Was it really me? - Neuroscience is changing the meaning of criminal guilt. That might make us more, not less, responsible for our actions
The despairing but amusing and detailed post at Zero Hedge begins with this fine paragraph:
The majority of Americans seem OK with just waddling through life, accepting the lies and misinformation blasted from the boob tube and their various iGadgets by their owners, gorging themselves to death on Twinkies and Cheetos, paying 15% interest on their $10,000 rolling credit card balance, and growing ever more dependent on the welfare/warfare state to provide and protect them from accepting personal responsibility for their lives. A minority of critical thinking people have chosen to question everything they see and hear being spewed at us by the propagandist mainstream media, the corporate fascist government, and the powerful banking cabal that has an iron grip upon our throats as they choke the life out of the global economy in their never ending desire for more riches and more power.
Read it all. He predicts decline, mostly due to American character weakness and degeneracy.
Among many other wonderful details, the book undermines the notions that the Europeans arrived to find a primeval land on which the Indians left hardly a footprint. Quite the opposite is true. For example, the Northeast Indians had 100-acre cornfields, scattered wherever the soil was rich, and did massive burnings of their woodlands every year to rewind forest succession, for game management, and to clear the underbush. They viewed the woods as their gardens and farms, and when they made fields, they cleared them to the point of removing the stumps. No slash-and-burn: permanent farm fields that were hard-won with stone axes and fire. The Pilgrims took advantage of their abandoned fields in Massachusetts.
Similarly, the Amazonian Indians turned the rain forest into their own orchards. At least 20% of the Amazonian forest is believed to be dominated by fruit- and nut-bearing trees planted by Indians for their use. That's not to mention their manioc plantations. And the South American Indians, like the Meso-Americans, developed massive irrigation systems to support their populations.
There was little of the New World that had not been shaped by Indian activities, except for the mountains and deserts - and the Incas populated the Andes quite successfully.
I also liked learning about the Indian prophet Deganawida, the Northeast "Peacemaker" born, it was said, of a virgin birth. Hiawatha, the great Indian orator and politician, was one of his followers. Some of those folks are some of my ancestors.
Finally, the book got me interested in Cahokia, the largest Indian city north of Mexico with a top population of 15-20,000 farmers. The mound-building city in Illinois was abandoned 300 years before Columbus. Image on right is what Cahokia's mounds looked like.
(For a variety of reasons, many mysterious, the New World experienced enormous population declines from their millions before Columbus, making conquest and colonization immigration a much easier task. European illnesses like the common cold and flu viruses which could be fatal to Indians just made it all worse, it seems. )
Besides going after the infantile zero-sum narrative on economics, he extols the miracle of growth and productivity - the growing pie. One quote:
It was not until the Agricultural Revolution that men began to break free of the zero-sum existence of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For the first time, production allowed men to increase the food supply—to expand the size of the "pie." No longer did one person's gain entail another person's deprivation. With the gradual increase of production under a division of labor, and with free trade among those producing specialized goods, the "pie" of wealth began to grow rapidly. With the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, living standards, which had remained at subsistence levels since the dawn of man's presence on Earth, suddenly began to soar, and so did life expectancy. But while the zero-sum social world was disappearing, the zero-sum Narrative did not vanish from the minds of men.
Bow is the way to do it, the hard way. That's a lot of meat. A reader sent us a link to his pics. Here's one of them (I still think it's best game management to harvest the cows instead of the alpha males, but whatever).
I always wonder how one walks around the woods with a rack like that. I could not do it.
Two more of the Obama administration’s crony corruption cheats are crumbling. These are but two of the lower profile Obama crony enrichment schemes that will need to be eliminated should we get a Republican administration after next November, and indicative of schemes we must be sure to expose should any Republicans try their version of crony capitalism.
I’ve often written about the scheme to tax tourists to the US to subsidize the highly profitable US tourism industry, companies like Disney. My exposes led to a 7,000 word expose in the Washington Post that scuttled the legislation, that is until President Obama and his heavily Democrat Congress took power after the 2008 elections. Then, the legislation was passed and signed. The leaders of this tourism travesty were heavy contributors to the Obama campaign. I last wrote about this boondoggle here (with links to earlier reporting.) The Washington Free Beacon has been keeping up with the story. Here’s its latest (with links to its earlier reporting).
The federal government’s latest taxpayer-funded effort to promote U.S. tourism is dogged by lavish spending, cronyism, and questionable accounting, according to a report released Thursday by two U.S. Senators.
Thermal windows can often add quiet or temperature moderation. But, exaggerated claims for the economic payback of energy efficiency are getting increased Federal Trade Commission attention. What a surprise! Several of the leading offenders are significant Obama contributors who received significant subsidies from the Obama administration’s so-called stimulus and at least one is now a failing business. McClatchy news service:
The FTC actions shine a spotlight on an industry that benefited from millions of dollars in “green” tax credits offered as part of the 2009 economic stimulus, and they reveal some of the pitfalls of zealous marketing, in business and in politics.
For all the caterwauling by Democrats about Bain, there’s no indication of corruption. That finger, actually, points at the Obama administration. But, it is a fair question to candidate Romney what he will do to end crony capitalism within his administration. And, then, let's hold his administration to transparency.
. That's flavor, but the meat is simply one of the most powerful films I've seen about how men think, wrestle, reach decision, come together in the face of life and death and moreso in the face of their meaning on earth.
It's 
It's actually about general intelligence, aka "g," of which IQ is a standard measure. 
Ya gotta laugh about this PBS/Big Bird thing.
I have just finished reading 
Finally, the book got me interested in 
