September 08, 2009
Simon Newcomb
There is at the present day too great a disposition to regard the will of the majority as that of each individual of the community.
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September 02, 2009
Adding Catholic feast days to a Google calendar
See
How to Easily Add the Catholic Liturgical Calendar to Google Calendar on ProductiveCatholic.com
Probably the most notable online source for everything liturgical is Universalis. Universalis offers the Catholic Calendar, daily and Sunday Mass readings, and the Liturgy of the Hours online.
Thanks to Catholic Culture for the pointer.
Also see the Holy Days of Obligations at one of the sites below and then set them up to repeat annually - there are only 10 HDOs in the US.
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August 22, 2009
"To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."
Among the very rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
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December 16, 2008
Fred Thompson explains bailouts
Dropping money from helicopters will not work because some people have bigger rakes than others.
But we can have some people dig holes and then hire more people to fill them up!
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Posted at 11:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Economics
November 14, 2008
Obama and the new age of sobriety
‘Bush is an alcoholic who has never been treated’, said Frank. ‘[H]e needs an intervention… I think the only way to deal with him is to isolate him, and neutralise his behaviour, which would mean blocking everything he proposed, and refusing to go along with it: sanctioning him, quarantining him, censuring him, and impeaching him. He needs to be removed from office. He’s a very destructive man, who is not in touch with his destructiveness.’ Well, what are the democratic wishes of 50million American voters compared with the diagnosis of one doctor? The demand to treat Bush, or quarantine him, even to topple him, reveals the reactionary streak in the moralistic, borderline Catholic critique of his sinfulness. Many of the liberals who criticised Bush for his denigration of liberty and democracy in the name of politics seem happy to denigrate liberty and democracy in the name of therapy.
Obama, in contrast to Bush, is not only healthy and organic, he has also talked openly about his former ‘abuse’ of drink and drugs (though he still struggles with his addiction to cigarettes). This is one of the essential differences between Obama and Bush, argues the influential commentator Juan Cole: Obama wrote about his personal problems, and ‘honesty is the highest form of leadership’. In other words, Obama seems to accept the Gospel According to Oprah, built upon the Old Testament of Alcoholics Anonymous, which decrees that we must all accept our personal powerlessness and open ourselves up to external intervention. The spectre of the religious right was always partly the product of fevered liberal minds; the far more powerful religious force in the US today is the religion of therapy, with its emphasis on self-esteem over self-belief and meekness over ambition. At least part of the reason why members of the cultural elite are loudly celebrating the victory of healthy Obama over self-destructive Bush is because he better represents their irrational faith.
"Obama and the new age of sobriety," by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked!, November 10, 2008
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November 12, 2008
Real Estate Downfall
“We had some very good years but a lot of people over-capitalised,” he says. “They bought $300,000 new boats, $300,000 new houses, and new trucks, never putting anything away for a rainy day. But here it is, pouring rain.”
"Maine lobstermen suffer as prices fall," by Rebecca Knight, FT.com, November 10 2008
More
- "A California town drowns as home values sink," by David Streitfeld, International Herald Tribune, November 11, 2008
- "Bonus Jackpot Can Be Yours in Five Easy Steps," by Michael Lewis, Bloomberg News, November 10, 2008
- Calculated Risk
- Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor
- Case-Shiller index - from Wikipedia
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November 10, 2008
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting...
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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August 04, 2008
"The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations"
The Financial Times has an interview with Gloria Steinem, a former Playboy bunny and founder of Ms. magazine who was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Steinem, who now backs Barack Obama, commits an amazing blunder:She believes women will vote for Obama even if Clinton doesn't get the much-mooted consolation prize of the vice-president's spot on the Democratic ticket--a job Steinem doesn't think is good enough for her anyway. Why? "It's not an independent position, to put it mildly. I would rather see her as the president of the Senate."Steinem apparently is ignorant of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, which stipulates: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate." Hard to believe both Playboy and Ms. had such low standards.
"The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations," by James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, August 4, 2008
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July 26, 2008
"Society is the same in all large places."
"Society is the same in all large places. I divide it thus:
1. People of cultivation, who live in large houses.
2. People of cultivation, who live in small houses.
3. People without cultivation, who live in large houses.
4. People without cultivation, who live in small houses.
5. Scrubs."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) (writing while a medical student at Harvard)
More
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - from Wikipedia
- Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes at Project Gutenburg
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - from Wikipedia
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July 23, 2008
Counsels of St. Francis de Sales
Live + Jesus!
"I found Him, whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go."
"Gaze on God simply and straightforwardly and let Him do as He pleases."
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July 18, 2008
Time for Some Campaignin'
Time for Some Campaignin' - from JibJab on YouTube
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July 16, 2008
Happy Yorkie and owner
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July 06, 2008
Globalization and Its Discontents
Red State Update: Budweiser Bought By Foreigners? - YouTube
"Country Boys Can Survive: The Boys of Red State Update have Risen from Murfreesboro Obscurity to National Fame," by Jim Ridley, The Nashville Scene, September 20, 2007
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July 04, 2008
"Bachelorhood And Its Discontents"
It wasn't just that the bachelor was untrustworthy, wrote [George] Ade, he was also a “draft dodger” and a “slacker,” one who had exchanged the traditional male role of provider for that of refusenik. Or, as another wag put it, “The bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.” Until quite recently the office bachelor was seen as a serious liability, and earned considerably less than his married counterpart. Vance Packard, in his 1962 book The Pyramid Climbers, noted that, “In general the bachelor is viewed with circumspection, especially if he is not well known to the people appraising him…[However] the worst status of all is that of a bachelor beyond the age of 36. The investigators wonder why he isn’t married. Is it because he isn’t virile? Is he old-maidish? Can’t he get along with people?” By contrast, the married man was the steady one, the stable lot, not least because, in Tallyrand’s memorable phrase, "a married man with a family will do anything for money.”
"Bachelorhood And Its Discontents," by Christopher Orlet, New English Review, July 2008
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July 02, 2008
"Sources Warn Miley Cyrus Will Be Depleted by 2013"
The Onion: Sources Warn Miley Cyrus Will Be Depleted by 2013
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May 25, 2008
Bumper stickers: "both popular and ineffective"
It is a fact that white people will never turn down an opportunity to enlighten other people on the correct way to think. While this is very easy to do through email or face to face conversation, it is exceptionally difficult to do while driving a car. Fortunately for white people there is a solution that is both popular and ineffective: bumper stickers.
#100 Bumper Stickers, Stuff White People Like
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May 22, 2008
Redneck Update, er, Red State Update
A few videos from Red State Update....
Catching Up With Edwards, Biden, Huckabee:
Hillary Wins Kentucky, Obama Takes Oregon:
From Red State Update
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April 17, 2008
These Yorkies love riding on the Piaggio MP3
Useful Yorkie Stuff | Piaggio MP3
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February 29, 2008
Counsels of St. Francis de Sales
Live + Jesus!
"Contemplation takes a completely simple, unified view of the object it loves. It is a simple gaze."
"Do all by love and nothing by force; love obedience rather than fear disobedience."
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January 20, 2008
Dogblogging
Gratuitous Yorkie pics
Ollie
Baxter - embarrassed by a recent trim; it will grow back
Useful Yorkie stuff
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January 19, 2008
"Humanity, thou art sick"
"In my mother’s generation, shy people were seen as introverted and perhaps a bit awkward, but never mentally ill."
So writes the Chicago-based research professor, Christopher Lane, in his fascinating new book Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness. ‘Adults admired their bashfulness, associated it with bookishness, reserve, and a yen for solitude. But shyness isn’t just shyness any more. It is a disease. It has a variety of over-wrought names, including “social anxiety” and “avoidant personality disorder”, afflictions said to trouble millions’, Lane continues.
Lane has taken shyness as a test case to show how society is being overdiagnosed and overmedicated. He has charted - in intricate detail - the route by which the psychiatric profession came to give credence to the labelling of everyday emotions as ‘disorders’, a situation that has resulted in more and more people being deemed to be mentally ill.
"Humanity, thou art sick: Shyness is now ‘social phobia’, and dissent is ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’. How did everyday emotions come to be seen as illnesses?" a review by Helene Guldberg of "Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness," by Christopher Lane, in spiked, December 2007
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January 13, 2008
Yorkies
Two happy little campers...
Baxter, aka Mr. B
Ollie
Baxter and Ollie
Ollie and Baxter
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Looking "at economics from the standpoint of Christmas"
[I]f we can look at Christmas from the standpoint of economics, why not look at economics from the standpoint of Christmas?
. . .
To justify Christmas giving we need to look past the hasty confusion of the "consumer," so described by economics, to the soul of the giver and see how it is improved by the virtue of generosity. The benefit of giving is more to the giver than to the receiver--a paradox better known to common sense and the Bible than to economics. For having a generous soul saves one from living in the relentless anxiety of never knowing whether one has enough for oneself. Of course, to be generous one must calculate what one can afford, and one must observe the chosen recipient carefully to see, not merely what he wants, but what good thing he can be induced to enjoy. Thus economics has an honorable role in the service of generosity, a role more useful, hence more economical, than attacking generosity.
And let us not forget the advantage of generosity to liberty. The commonest form of slavery is slavery to money, and generosity is a kind of liberation as well as utility for yourself. A country gentleman generous with his rustic hospitality had a better inkling of that liberation than Adam Smith with all his studied devotion to natural liberty. With the aid of a little feudalism lingering in our democratic, materialist age you can have the two great goods economics wants you to have but does not know how to achieve on its own. You can then crown these goods by taking a reasonable measure of pride for having spent your money well. Instead of damning a commercial society for being materialistic, instead of despising Christmas giving for not being properly materialistic, you can do your part to soften our materialism and make it more intelligent.
"When the Giving Is Good: Saving Christmas from the economists," by Harvey Mansfield, The Weekly Standard, January 14, 2008
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January 05, 2008
Counsels of St. Francis de Sales
Live + Jesus!
"'Learn of me,' He said, 'that I am humble and gentle of heart.' That says it all; to have a heart gentle toward one's neighbor and humble toward God. At every moment give this heart, the very heart of your heart, to our Savior."
"The iris is said to draw its petals together at the sight of the sun. Similarly in recollection our powers and faculties assemble and gather together within us out of respect for God's presence."
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January 01, 2008
Ring bell for psychic?
Doesn't the "psychic" know you're there?
Unclear on the concept.....
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December 30, 2007
Christmas in NYC
Spent a lovely five days and nights in NYC at Christmas.Saw two fun shows - "Spamalot" and "Is He Dead?" - and the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall - all highly recommended.
Enjoyed several evenings wandering through the holiday shops and watching the ice skaters at Bryant Park. Although the ice rink at Rockefeller Center is the famous one, Bryant Park is beautiful and it is not crowded so you can watch from the rink wall, shouting out encouragement to the newbies of all ages. Great fun, and some of the skaters are excellent.
In front of the ice sculptures at Bryant Park
Took youngest child to see Santa at Macy's. Although the Macy windows were a disappointment (the Bergdorf Goodman and Lord & Taylor windows were much better), the Santa we visited at Macy's was the REAL SANTA! The beard, the voice, the laugh, the Santa outfit - SPECTACULAR! And despite having dealt with crowds for hours, ALL the elves were smiling and full of Christmas cheer.
Window at Lord & Taylor
The Macy's Santa Train Conductor
Macy's Santa Elf "Lightfoot"
SANTA!
The Christmas tree at the Met was, as always, beautiful and worth the trip.Had an outstanding meal in Chinatown at Sanur and good dim sum at The Chatham. Also had a very good lunch at Toasties and enjoyed the jazz brunch at Rare Bar & Grill in the Shelburne Hotel.
FDNY: "Chinatown Dragon Fighters"
The holiday train show at Grand Central is always fun.Midnight Mass at St. Malachy's on West 49th had good singing and music - good homily, too!
The 7-day unlimited ride Metro card for only $24 made it easy to go all over the city using the subway and buses. An amazing bargain.
Merry Christmas!
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The Best 19 Movies You Didn't See in 2007
From "The Best 19 Movies You Didn't See in 2007," by Alex Billington, FirstShowing.net, Dec. 24, 2007
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
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