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.
Despite their grimly statist ways, the utopians continue to pass themselves off as well-meaning hipsters, anti-establishment rebels and earthy pro-underdog types, united by a devotion to freedom and tolerance. This has to be the most successful PR exercise in history – no less astonishing than if Hitler had convinced the world he was an avid Judeophile. The people responsible for hate crimes, speech codes, the smoking ban, debilitating taxes, and a soul-sucking state bureaucracy would have us believe that they are chilled-out hepcats, who totally dig your scene. If you think what they think, do what they say, and accept the terms of their ‘generosity’, it might be possible to enjoy their simulacrum of freedom as though it’s the real thing. But wander too far from the coop and soon you’ll soon collide with the chicken wire.
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Young people once looked forward to the day they would escape the family home and forge their own path through life. Holding down a job, managing their finances and taking responsibility for their actions were what defined them as adults. And a society of such people, working together, was the cornerstone of Western civilisation. But for the past few decades, the Left has sold us a different dream. They have promised to look after the boring admin of life, so we might set off on its great adventure, like Georgian gentlemen embarking on Grand Tours. Even if this vision had not soured to a living nightmare, it would have still been profoundly dehumanising. Coping with the vagaries of life is life. It’s how we express our individuality and become more mature, rounded human beings. By seeking to liberate us from life’s challenges, the Left has turned us into a nation of children, trapped in a shabby, impoverished society, the primary function of which is to subsidise its least productive members.
Grade inflation, in my view, is a quite deliberate project of our most elite schools to secure the elitist advantage of their students from effective competition. Indeed, the center of grade inflation is the Ivy League. As far as I can tell, the grade inflation is meant to protect the "brand" of the meritocrats earned by being admitted. To be sure, it's not that the students at Harvard or Princeton don't work hard. It's just that their efforts occur in a safe and secure environment. They're protected from real competition from excellent students at lesser schools. Nobody is ever to say that an A at my Berry College is as good as an A or even A minus at Harvard. So we professors in the sticks can't really win by sustaining grading standards too different from those used by our most prestigious schools.
The Heimlich Maneuver and CPR should be known by every responsible citizen. As I regularly remind readers, the CPR procedure has been revised and simplified.
The difficult thing about CPR is knowing who needs it. I have heard stories of people doing CPR on people who were choking, and on people who simply fainted.
The Late, Great American WASP - The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy?
... the WASP elite had dignity and an impressive sense of social responsibility. In a 1990 book called "The Way of the Wasp," Richard Brookhiser held that the chief WASP qualities were "success depending on industry; use giving industry its task; civic-mindedness placing obligations on success, and antisensuality setting limits to the enjoyment of it; conscience watching over everything."
Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP rule, stability, solidity, gravity and a certain weight and aura of seriousness suffused public life. As a ruling class, today's new meritocracy has failed to provide the positive qualities that older generations of WASPs provided.
Only WASPS know what "NOCD" means - but we often marry outside our tribe nowadays, just as Jews do. I am a loyal tribalist, myself. I think it works out for the best, speaking the same language, having the same social, psychological, moral, and behavioral expectations, finding familial comfort after the cultural adventures of youth. Every tribe has its own snobbery, its own unspoken language, and its own zone of comfort. Birds of a feather...We recognize our own peeps in an instant.
My tribe, my cultural ways, may not be dominant in the US anymore but, like other American subcultures, we retain and protect our ways of living and of doing the things we do within our own domains. There are lots of those domains left, but mostly private - and churches.
Christians believe, as I understand it, that Jesus was the "son" of God, "son" being used figuratively to describe a human-like incarnation of the deity which was made manifest by the resurrection and other remarkable phenomena.
Don't ask me to explain the Trinity - it's a mystery to me.
To non-believers, it sounds like science fiction, but even non-believers and Doubting Thomases have no doubt that Jesus (the Latinized version of Yeshua, Joshua) was an inspired and spiritually revolutionary rabbi who has been rocking the world since he lived.
For Christmas, the Beatitudes (beginning with Matthew 5), the beginning of The Sermon on the Mount.
"And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you....
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?"
This was written by a former POW in Hanoi, Mike Benge. To know more of his astonishing survival, read his POW bio.
Every one of our servicemembers must know that we will never forget nor abandon them. The punks in the Obama administration are the only ones who deserve to be abandoned. Their cowardly perfidy will not be forgotten.
Christmas Lights over Hanoi
The lighting of the Christmas trees in Washington, DC and New York are beautiful sights. And the Christmas lights in Denver and other cities are outstanding. However, the most beautiful Christmas lights of all were those of the Christmas bombing of Hanoi in '72. The flash of the Sam missiles, the flares dropped from the plane, the arclights hitting the city, and yes, even when a Sam hit a plane, it was all spectacular, for this gave us all hope and we knew we were soon going home.
Bless that noon time reccie who flew up the train tracks blowing past our camp for the past year with a sonic boom while gaining altitude and turning across the Red River heading for home. It gave us hope, and we knew that when the bombs started falling, we wouldn't get hit, for Uncle Sam knew where we were.
When the bombs started falling, we all cheered, and for a minute the guards threatened to shoot us if we didn't shut up, but they soon were crouching in their hidey-holes and shitting in their mess kits as the bombs started falling and they were too scared to say anything more.
I was a liberal once. I knew that liberal policy was wrong — but I also knew that conservatives were evil. Racist, sexist, uncaring, one step from Nazis. This was a religious truth to me. Well, of course it was. All leftists are taught this. That’s how the left keeps you in the fold despite the evidence of your own eyes. Leftists do to their followers what the townspeople did to Jim Carrey’s character in that movie The Truman Show. They teach them to fear and hate the unknown so much that they won’t test alternative ideas no matter how bad things get. “Life in Liberal World may be a mess, Truman,” they tell you, “but oh the horrors that wait for you out there in Conservative Land!”
Asperger's Syndrome has been removed from the DSM and folded into Autism Spectrum. I'm not convinced that people with Asperger's-like symptoms have anything in common with what was traditionally termed Autism, and my suspicion is that Asperger's is just a normal human variation which, a while ago, might have been termed "slightly eccentric."
My favorite Christmas cookies are either Ginger cookies, or those plain Christmas cookie-cutter cookies with some sprinkled colored sugar on top, and maybe red-hots for the eyes in the reindeer.
How come it's OK for Muslims to hang gays and to hate them, to endorse bestiality, child marriage/sex and rape, but not ok for some Christians to opine that homosexual behavior goes against Biblical teaching while still loving them as God's children?
Multiculturalism gets quite complex. Above my pay grade, as Obama would say. Or is everybody just scared of Muslims? Nobody is askeered of Christians, and rightly so. Christianity teaches that we are all fallen, all sinners, all in need of redemption through Christ. I believe that, and I do not dislike gays at all although I do find all of the LGBT stuff very weird and distasteful.
Is it a college's job to teach people to write a coherent, legible, well-structured adult essay? It's not rocket science. In my job, I have to do two or three daily.
Colleges are admitting unprepared students. It's about the money. Follow the money.
Of course it is, Camille. Christianity and Judaism are not PC. Thought Crime requires Thought Police.
But hey, remember this: MSNBC Host "Rev." Sharpton Hurls Homophobic Slur – “You’re a Punk Fagg*t!”. The rules about who can say what are getting confusing these days. Our approach is to say whatever you think, but to show decent manners not out of fear, but out of civility.
The DSM is ultimately an instrument for weakening human resilience, self-reliance, fortitude, and resolve. It turns human beings into mechanisms, deprives their conduct of meaning, and makes them prey to entrepreneurs of human misery. The authors, one could say, suffer from PNOD—psychiatric nosology overvaluation disorder—the criteria for which are as follows:
A: The grandiose belief that all human weakness can and should be divided into valid diagnostic categories.
B: At least two of the following: a firm and unshakable belief that all human distress arises from malfunctioning serotonin metabolism; a firm and unshakable belief that functional MRI scans will soon teach humans how to live; a firm and unshakable belief that the seven deadly sins have been scientifically superseded by psychiatric diagnoses.
Long ago, Paul Shaffer and The World's Most Dangerous Band performed a brief songlet which caught my ear.
I was just out of college, and my sense of humor, as well as the tune, was off-kilter enough to generate a chuckle, as well as stick in my head for...oh, about 23 years.
Bermuda!
It's a cuckoo kind of place,
A nutty, nutty kind of space.
Bermuda!
Yes, that's about it. So when I was trying to think of places to take a four-day respite with the (much) better half, I thought why not someplace nutty? Bermuda was booked, my parents agreed to watch the dog and the house-bound son, and we went winging our way southeasterly. It's only a 2 hour flight from NYC, and just like that the cold weather was a temporary memory.
Best with mashed taters, Yorkshire Pudding, and plenty of horseradish. Maybe some vegetables for the health nuts, but I would never waste my appetite on them with something this tasty to enjoy.
Rule of thumb is 1 lb of meat per person, so it's difficult to make for over 8-9 people, really, without a commercial oven. That's why people make filet instead of prime rib for parties and have their prime rib in restaurants - but I think most people prefer a prime rib (technically "choice," not "prime" and technically, as reader notes, "standing rib roast"). It's the perfect food for human beings, along with mashed potatoes.
The government thinks they know how to practice medicine better than we docs in the trenches do. They have no clue.
I'll admit that some of what doctors do, many expensive things, are purely defensive medicine. Lawsuits are inconvenient and no fun, but we all get sued. Most of the time, we either win or our insurers pay them to go away, but it's a major interference with our work and our mental bandwidth.
Each and every medical decision can be questioned, because it's all an individualized art requiring individualized judgements.
Physicians take a solemn oath to do what they believe is best for their patient. It's always a complex dance, of course, with the doctor recommending and the patient thinking about what they want.
We accommodate patients' desires all the time, even when we believe that they are wrong. It's a free country, is it not? We work for, and with, the patient. Nobody else.
Christmas Eve supper is traditionally fish. We tend to make poached salmon with yoghurt-dill sauce. Usually asparagus and some potato on the side. It's ready when we all get home from Christmas Eve church.
Christmas Day dinner is the major feast. We often join relatives for this, but sometimes we host. Our relatives tend to make filet, which is always good. Our greatest success, I think, was Stuffed Crown Roast of Pork. If you don't stuff it with apple/cornbread stuffing, you can serve that on the side, with applesauce, mashed taters, and some root vegetables.
Regular Roast Beef is great, of course, but a Beef Wellington is even better if you don't have too many guests. It's easy:
Remember when liberals, including David Brooks, advocated for a weaker Chief Executive while Bush was in office (and will surely do the same if a conservative wins in 2016)?
He actually said this: "We don’t need bigger government. We need more unified authority."
Maybe you need unified authority, David, but I do not. In fact, I find that to be a profoundly weak and pathetic thought, unsuitable and inappropriate for a hearty American citizen. That's not how Americans roll. We distrust authority, instinctively. It's an American gene, and a healthy one.
The American spirit is that government and politicians are our employees, not our "authorities." We, and God, are our authorities.
Whence this desire to submit to authority? It feels sort of perverted to me. We have no "moral and intellectual superiors." In fact, our "leaders" tend to be our inferiors. Why else would they do those jobs instead of doing something useful and productive?
When I take those online ADD screening tests, I come out as "ADD Likely." I have always been impatient, physically restless, and had trouble concentrating on dense material even though I got a B+ in Physical Chemistry (the best, toughest course I took at U Mass). I don't think I'm on the thin end of the Bell Curve.
This article in the NYT makes no distinction between ADD and ADHD, but it seems to me that there is a big difference: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder -The Number of Diagnoses Soared Amid a 20-Year Drug Marketing Campaign.
Anyway, all of us at MF have untreated ADD. Are amphetamines performance-enhancers? Of course.
I encountered something I had never seen before, at a Christmas party last Saturday night - a home pipe organ.
Our host's two-manual organ console was built into the wall of their roughly 24X24' foyer, with the array of pipes located under the curved staircase on the other side of the foyer. The organ had been installed when the gracious but unpretentious home was built, 1926.
I had not known that pipe organs had been a hot item for prosperous home entertainment. But if funeral parlors had them, why not? The organ in question had a player feature, and our host had boxes of player rolls for it.
Naturally, they had hired an organist to play Christmas carols with all joining in and filling the east and west hallways with merriment, projecting the words on the walls for those with dementia. This organ was manufactured by Skinner Organ Co., Boston.
This good fun prompted me to learn a little more about pipe organs. Until the invention of the telephone switchoard, the pipe organ was the most complex manufactured product. Here's a wiki history of the pipe organ. Like most things, it goes back to the Greeks, who cleverly aligned pipes with a hydraulic bellows.
Electricity made it possible to distance the pipes and their complex inner workings from the console, and to provide a steady supply of wind (fans) for the pipes without people pumping on the bellows in a closet
To my delight, I found a home pipe organ for sale on the internet. Even if I could afford it, I doubt I could afford to have it installed. Also, I can't play a keyboard worth a darn. It is called "lack of talent," and lacks of talents suck if I may say so. I know: I lack many of them
People joke about how bitchy and cranky, if not downright hostile, many women become around menopause. Bitchy, cranky, and raging may drive family members and friends away, but are not depression in themselves. On the plus side, sometimes, women become much more horny as their estrogen lowers in proportion to their testosterone (yes, women's bodies do produce some of that).
Turns out that an A is the most common grade given at Harvard College. Clearly, then, only an A+ would signal somewhat exceptional achievement. The elite schools are all "A" schools now except in math and the hard sciences. After all, you pay lots of money for these distinctions.
However, I do understand the challenge of grading six or seven very smart, avid kids in a Chaucer seminar, each one of whom contributes interestingly and each one of whom memorizes verses in Old English and writes a fine, inventive, well-structured, and perfectly-grammatical essay on some aspect of the Canterbury Tales or The House of Fame.
Of course, any demanding prep school would expect the same.
You can use any sort of fresh mushroom you want, but use shallots, not onions. This recipe is about right but it can take 1/2 hr on the stovetop to get the water out of the mushrooms, and to get the reduced flavor back into them. Constant stirring.
What are they good for?
- Stuff a boned quail from D'Artagnan with it, then the quail jus or gibier on top. - Put in a puff pastry for a treat. - Add some grated gorgonzola and stick them in wontons for a very fine ravioli. Cream sauce on top. Would work as darn good potstickers too. - Put in little tarts - use for crostini - and it's the stuff in Beef Wellington
Perhaps nowhere is that degradation of the general education curriculum more evident than at the flagship public university in North Carolina – the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill – where students can cherry pick their general education classes from a list of 4,700 courses that run the gamut from “Love, Sex and Marriage in the Soviet Culture” to “The Gardens, Shrines and Temples of Japan.”
It’s a university at which the course “World Society: Sports and Competition” fulfills the same general education requirement as the class called “Comparative Economic Systems.”
The Late, Great American WASP
Christians believe, as I understand it, that Jesus was the "son" of God, "son" being used figuratively to describe a human-like incarnation of the deity which was made manifest by the resurrection and other remarkable phenomena.
My favorite Christmas cookies are either Ginger cookies, or those plain Christmas cookie-cutter cookies with some sprinkled colored sugar on top, and maybe red-hots for the eyes in the reindeer. 
Long ago, Paul Shaffer and The World's Most Dangerous Band performed a brief songlet which caught my ear. 
Best with mashed taters, Yorkshire Pudding, and plenty of horseradish. Maybe some vegetables for the health nuts, but I would never waste my appetite on them with something this tasty to enjoy.
The government thinks they know how to practice medicine better than we docs in the trenches do. They have no clue.
You can use any sort of fresh mushroom you want, but use shallots, not onions. This