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.
They might be a bit too Greenie, but mainly outdoor-oriented. All sorts of (affordable) programs for kids and adults. They even have useful wilderness medicine programs.
A couple of years old, but still fresh and smart. Mr. Dalio makes it all sound simple, common sense. He views markets on the large scale, global scale; buys and hedges entire international markets and currencies, never individual securities. (FYI, here's a piece on the All-Weather Portfolio)
He advises people with lower net worth (eg under 10-50 million) to stay away from the equity casino where the master poker players will beat you, but ordinary people like me are naturally a bit greedy and ignore wisdom. As a commenter says, "The man knows exactly what he doesn't know and builds his portfolio around that. Genius." As I listen, I see the huge role that central banks and governments play in the international games of money. There are no free markets today.
His funds require a minimal investment of many millions. Enjoy this, despite an annoying Maria. And who is she to call him "Ray"? I'd like to ask him about the necessity of central banks and their role in creating the economic swings.
The problem with this, of course, is that most respectable medical research turns out to be wrong too. I recently read that coronary bypass has no value compared with the alternatives, but they are done constantly. I also read that prostate cancer surgery may be pointless after age 65 or 70, yet they are performed constantly.
...while coming up with eye-catching theories is relatively easy, getting reality to bear them out is another matter. The great majority collapse under the weight of contradictory data when studied rigorously. Imagine, though, that five different research teams test an interesting theory that’s making the rounds, and four of the groups correctly prove the idea false, while the one less cautious group incorrectly “proves” it true through some combination of error, fluke, and clever selection of data. Guess whose findings your doctor ends up reading about in the journal, and you end up hearing about on the evening news?
When politics gets involved, it all gets worse. If you need a doctor, get one with grey hair (who has seen it all) and a male (not bound by all the idiot rules).
I recently learned that "HD" - Hoarding Disorder - is now a reimbursable and nameable disease. It has long been considered just an eccentricity.
What drives the disease craze? Big Pharma, and insurance. Normal variants are labeled as diseases and disorders. Think ADD, ED, infertility, fear of dying, and on and on. I term them, smirkingly, "life-style disorders."
It's not too cheap, the hassle factor is huge, but it is great cold weather fun and excellent exercise.
Like many, I grew up skiing at a small local place with rope tows and poma lifts, and one two-seater chair lift, and slowly advanced to more challenging places as funds permitted.
I love it. For me, winter means skiing, spring means fishing, summer means boating, fall means hunting. It's that simple.
We have said here at Maggie's, for years, that a "healthy diet" cannot be defined without evidence, and there has never been any evidence. "Healthy" has just been bias, old-wives tales, and happy-sounding ignorance like "eat your peas and kale and fruit". All nonsense.
It's a big deal that even the slow-witted government finally comes around to what we have all known. America, go easy on the carbs, eat veggies only if you like them, use butter and olive oil, enjoy a fine steak when you can afford it, and do not become food-obsessed.
Sorry, Whole Foods, food quacks, and food faddists. You have been wrong all along. Docs finally now feel free to share the real facts, which they have known for years. I've never known a doc who would refuse a rare ribeye steak or filet mignon. Never known a vegetarian doc either, or a scientist who ate organic food. In fact, the biological scientists I know like to go to fancy French and fancy Italian restaurants as often as possible.
Government regs always disadvantage the little guys. That's why the bigs guys don't mind too much.
Over time, regulatory systems degrade: they become more corrupt, less effective at dealing with real risks, and increasingly suppress innovation and competition rather than promoting them.
All of these puddings require something to be served on top. For Bread Pudding, I've seen Rum Sauce, Lemon Sauce, Vanilla Sauce, etc etc.
Or the old standby, English Custard Sauce. No need to make it yourself - you can buy Bird's at Amazon. Ol' Mr. Bird invented it because his wife had an egg allergy. A bird, allergic to eggs...
"... where did the Magnum come from? Again, it was Doug Wesson who made the call. The Major was a renowned connoisseur of fine champagne, and in the vintner’s world the term “magnum” refers to a slightly larger than standard bottle. When Wesson went out to dine, he never ordered anything less than a magnum bottle, and it seemed to him a natural extension of the term to the slightly larger than standard case of the new cartridge. And so was coined one of the most enduring—and misunderstood—labels in firearms and ammunition history. "
When President Obama cited the Crusades as an example of Christian bad behavior toward Islam, he wasn’t speaking with historical accuracy. But you’d never know that if you only know the conventional wisdom about the Crusades.
Instead of condemning ISIS barbarism as barbarism directed at Christians, Obama has sought to divorce the barbarism from theology. There are many reason for this, reasons covered by many others here at PJ Media and elsewhere. Among them is the fact that Obama and his movement see the world through such thick secular lenses that they are incapable of understanding the vast majority of the world (and the United States) that still sees the world through theological lenses.
Obama and his followers are a radical secular minority attempting to manage a theological world...
All of us in positions to employ people know that a college degree, in many or most cases, is meaningless credentialism much of the time, these days.
For life-enrichment or for the hard sciences, college can great, especially if money is no object and if the kid is a natural scholar. The latter is, at most, 5-6%.
In choosing friends, we might prefer people who know a lot about a lot of things, but for employees one applies different metrics. We train all of our own people, including our paralegals. We use a marine corps boot camp system. Many wash out, but are better for it. Some even thank us for letting them discover what level of effort and learning is expected from work in the for-profit world.
Many times, college is a negative from a business standpoint. We exist to make money honestly and nothing more. When we hire, all we ask ourselves is "Can this person make, or save, us money?" And in case they do not, can we let them go without a lawsuit? I would never say that we avoid women, older folks, or minorities, for that reason because there are laws, but we have had enough expensive troubles with that in the past. We just want the highest performance and we want you available 24 hrs/day if needed, no excuses.
Do an extraordinary job, exceed expectations, go the extra mile, make yourself attractive, and spread good cheer? We will reward you handsomely with money, benefits, love and appreciation.
When we hire new lawyers (rarely in recent years, unless they come with deep portfolios of corporate clients), of course they have degrees. We ignore their degrees, bearing in mind that legal work required degrees only recently (historically). We see people with recent law degrees working in Starbucks and living with their parents.
All real law is learned in apprenticeship, preferably under a genius mentor. All real learning is, ultimately, self-education.
- Please, if you must walk, or walk your dogs, in the street in the nightime dark or the morning dark because the sidewalks are snowdrifts, wear something light-colored instead of black. Sheesh. I swerve over the icy roads to try to avoid hitting you.
- I love the wintry cold. Problem is dressing. You go from outside frigid to frigid-then-warm auto, then to cold again, then to heated building. There is no way to dress for the changes.
- Feeding birds. Either do it daily, or not at all. They become dependent on your food to survive, like people on welfare. If you miss a day, they will die unless neighbors are feeding them. If you don't feed them at all, they will figure it out on their own. Or go south.
I was wondering whether Gore is now working on a second documentary, “An even more inconvenient Truth – I was wrong”. But of course he is not doing this. Ideas that have become an ideology do not admit falsification. Global warming has become an ideology, mostly but not exclusively concentrated in the progressive portion of the political spectrum. Its three central propositions have become axiomatic among progressives: that significant global warming is in fact occurring (“the science is in”); that its consequences will be dire; and that its major cause is industrial pollution (especially by evil American capitalism—never mind the fog of pollution hanging over the cities of India and China). Deeply committed progressives are as eager to sign petitions to stop this or that “carbon footprint” as petitions to pull American troops out of Afghanistan or to boycott Israeli products. The only (rather ambiguous) concession to the notion that, just maybe, all the science is not in, has been a shift in language from “global warming” to “climate change”. Critics of the ideology are pelted with pejorative labels—political reactionaries, uneducated ignoramuses (comparable to creatonists or flat-earth theorists), or agents of the petroleum industry.
I am not a climate scientist. But I can claim to be a specialist in ideologues who claim to be privileged epistemologically and thus entitled to disdain anyone who dares to reject their alleged truth...
In the piously denied but ongoing clash of cultures, Islam has multiple advantages. Most are not self-made: the PC-defined victim contributes them. Whatever presents itself as a “religion” benefits from a tolerance that is unwarranted by the facts. Curtailing religious liberty is harder than it is to limit the freedom of speech. In the case of secular opinions, free expression is granted but not unlimited. Example: the exploitation of freedoms to abolish democracy. The softness against extreme leftists shows, the assertion against all subversives determined to abolish democracy suffers from the one-sidedly applied Nazi precedent.
All they want is more love and understanding? Well, so do I...and I am not getting any from them and, on a bad day, I don't even get enough tolerance from my girlfriend.
It's all interesting. However, it's all a repeat of ancient history. Except for the UK, most of the anglosphere has little to do with all of this. Who needs to watch out? Europe, the Saudis, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia. The US can get out of the way and let them all work it out. They have all done this before. Gates of Vienna, Poitiers, Lopanto, and all that.That's why I dislike the FOX warmongers and fearmongers, Yellow Journalism. Chill, and let the locals deal with their issues as they have always done.It's just a blip in a long history of cultural warfare. Let's include Thermopylae.
Mike Rowe has been, lately, one of my favorite commentators and pitchmen. His primary pitch these days is his foundation Mike Rowe Works, which is geared toward getting people to focus on trades and skills as opposed to higher education. I happen to agree with his view that higher education is not for everybody, should not be for everybody, and is not essential for a large percentage of the jobs available in the world today. Including mine. While my position, if posted, would require some college degree, I happen to work with someone who does not have a degree, and it is entirely likely this person could do just as good a job as I can. Though it took this person much longer to gain similar experience and background to me, this should not be an impediment to further growth.
From my perspective, a college degree is good for a few things. These are not limited to: expanding one's view of the world, improving one's own process of inquiry and learning (my father's old line is you go to college to get an education, not to get a job), and to become technically proficient in a variety of specialized fields where proficiency is otherwise difficult to achieve. I'd toss in that it's also a means of networking and learning social skills to improve future prospects in both life and work.
College is not the only place to learn these things, though it's probably one of the better places to learn them. You could say the same for the military, in some respects. Be that as it may, limiting one's view of a person's potential and capabilities to very specialized qualifications, such as college or military backgrounds, is a bit odd.
We jumped into a chilly and breezy NYC right after early church to catch the Lauder Cubism Show at the Met. Thanks, Leonard Lauder, for this amazing gift to the public. Tomorrow (Monday) is the last day.
In my opinion, pictures like these are best seen in a house, best lived-with, and not in a museum, but such is the world today. Regular people cannot afford them, but really nothing wrong with good prints. Fun.
81 paintings and drawings from 1904-1925 - spectacular but overwhelming. I am a Cubism fan. I consider it highly decorative - eye candy - interesting to the eye, and I imagine that my hero Cezanne would have been fascinated had he lived long enough to see it.
Below is Picasso's 1909 The Oil Mill. Cubism is as abstract as the genius Picasso ever got. His authority of line, color, and design never ceases to amaze me regardless of whatever style he was exploring or inventing. He kept moving but, for a while, he and Braque had a cool thing going with Cubist experimentation.
... the better way of looking at the great divide is between those who think there is a perfect social arrangement and those who do not. The former imagine there is a perfect way to order human affairs to achieve maximum happiness. That perfect way is both discoverable and achievable. Morality dictates that anything and everything be done in order to reach this state of social perfection. The Rousseau-ists are entirely focused on the end and are willing to use any means necessary to achieve those ends. It’s why the body count for the various Rousseau-ist cults is staggeringly high. The other mode of thought rejects the notion that there can be a perfect arrangement. The human condition is immutable. The best we can do is incrementally improve the material state of society by adding a few grains of sand, each generation, to the foundations of society. That necessitates preserving the traditional institutions, while adding to them as they are the storehouse of knowledge, built up over countless generations through trial and error. The Burkeans focus entirely on the means knowing the ends are beyond the ability of man to perfect.
and
One side is willing to use any means necessary to reach the promised land. The other side is restrained by the means they will tolerate and they are willing to accept less than optimal results. If the people prefer high tariffs, for example, that’s fine as long as it is debated and enacted in a constitutional process. The Right can argue for something on rational grounds, but accept less knowing that people are seldom rational. That’s the claim, least ways.
That would be great, if it were true, but it has not been the case for a long time now, at least in American politics. In fact, what we call “conservative” is pretty much just the same stuff we call “liberal” but with slightly different ends...
Like most religions, the Green movement attempts to define codes of right behavior. It contains an original sin: Existing. The battle against entropy requires the consumption of resources and the production of waste. These actions wrack the environmentally conscious with tremendous guilt, which can only be assuaged with an act of contrition.
A friend researched where our local recyling goes. It all goes to a landfill in West Virginia, along with the rest of the garbage.
When Judith Somerby married Tristram Coffin in March of 1653, she was a widow with three children: Sarah, who was eight, Elizabeth, who was six, and Daniel, almost three. (Another son had died in infancy.) In the next sixteen years Judith gave birth to ten Coffin children, all of whom, remarkably, survived infancy. There is an almost saucy irony in the family name, as though some wind of Yankee humor had swept Puritan Newbury. Death seldom visited the Coffins.
By the time Judith's last baby was born in March 1669 she already had six grandchildren. From 1667 until her death in 1705 - twenty-eight years - at least one grandchild was born each year. In the most prolific period from 1686 to 1696, thirty eight infants were born, almost four a year. Judith's gravestone should probably be taken literally when its says she lived to see 177 descendants...
You need to have spare money to run a hobby farm, whether it's vegetables, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, etc. Often, such things are set up as tax dodges (agricultural land), never expected to make any meaningful profit themselves.
During the Obama administration, the last two goals of the American Left have been set on paths to completion: government control of medical care, and open borders.
So do they announce that their domestic mission is accomplished and that all they need to do now is to be good stewards of what they have done? Nope. They have been busy forging a fresh agenda for the future, just as all organizations tend to do after their goals have been met.
I was raised on these things. In winter, baked beans with hot dogs and toast. Ketchup on the side as the vegetable. I still like that old, filling, Yankee poverty food.
To get it right, probably should use dried Navy Beans, but the canned would work too. A crock pot item? Why not. It should come out firm, not soupy.
Most writers have written disparagingly about shopping malls. It is easy to do. People like to say that they would prefer the old (now, half-abandoned) Main St. with its old, familiar, family-owned shops - but would they really?
I have seen plenty of towns with thriving downtowns with no malls nearby. Lucky towns. The shopping streets of cities, too, are basically shopping malls without a roof.
Doctors have known that dietary fats are harmless, for years. Most were a bit afraid to say so, though, for fear patients would view them as ignorant.
I have been preaching low-carb, high-fat/high protein diets for ten years or more. It just goes to show how behind the government is, in most things. Not to mention the ultimate fate of most "expert opinion."
What other past superstitions disappear with this? The supposed special healthiness of fish and tofu, the evils of bacon, butter, red meat, eggs, cream, and chicken skin - and lots of others. It's about time, but it's tragic to think of all of those wonderful meals so many people passed up over the years because of junk science.
Photo is a wholesome American breakfast. Grains? No, except for a slice of bread to soak up the egg yolks. A little carbs are ok if you aren't on a diet.
A good organization: Maine's 
Thanks to ski lifts, snow cannons, and plenty of dynamite, 
My favorite winter puddings are Indian Pudding, Bread Pudding, and Plum Pudding (with hard sauce, please).
"... where did the Magnum come from? Again, it was Doug Wesson who made the call. The Major was a renowned connoisseur of fine champagne, and in the vintner’s world the term “magnum” refers to a slightly larger than standard bottle. When Wesson went out to dine, he never ordered anything less than a magnum bottle, and it seemed to him a natural extension of the term to the slightly larger than standard case of the new cartridge. And so was coined one of the most enduring—and misunderstood—labels in firearms and ammunition history. "
J Christian Adams:
All of us in positions to employ people know that a college degree, in many or most cases, is meaningless credentialism much of the time, these days. 
It's chilly in olde Newe Englande. I like to say "invigorating." Five below zero F here, with blustery wind. Almost like a normal day in Minneapolis. 
Indeed we do because we refuse to 
Nobody told these people that they were creating a hobby farm, not a real business: 
I was raised on these things. In winter, baked beans with hot dogs and toast. Ketchup on the side as the vegetable. I still like that old, filling, Yankee poverty food.
Most writers have written disparagingly about shopping malls. It is easy to do. People like to say that they would prefer the old (now, half-abandoned) Main St. with its old, familiar, family-owned shops - but would they really?
Doctors have known that dietary fats are harmless, for years. Most were a bit afraid to say so, though, for fear patients would view them as ignorant.