There is a difference.

Thanks KA-CHING!

My favorite tech guy, Scott Blitstein, takes a pass on the whole spring forward thing.

A Newark New Jersey school has hired a recess coach to make sure that the students are active during recess.  The coach is also assigned to curb bullying on the playground.  The goal of organizing every waking moment of our children's lives moves forward.  I wonder if they have any math or science coaches?

For the rest of the world's students, I post the Andy Griffith episode dedicated to bullying here, here and here - the real excitement starts at the third here.  (Warning:  The Andy Griffith Show offers a politically incorrect method for dealing with bullies).

Clouded Leopard

National Geographic has stunning photos of seven rare jungle cat species captured in a single forest: the Jeypore-Dehing lowland rain forest in northeast India.

The House Reconciliation Bill that will be used as the vehicle for the health care overhaul plus student loan "reform" (which starts at page 2101) is now available for your reading pleasure here.

Sing along if you like.  I can dig the dressing gown:

How to make an award winning movie trailor:



Thanks NLT.

Historian, Paul Johnson, looks at the results of the Keynesian revolution and is unimpressed:

"The Obama Administration and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government both chose to meet the credit crisis and subsequent recession with huge increases in public spending and debt. Brown even boasted that by doing so he had 'saved the world.'"

And:

"Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are still deeply mired in recession,having acquired a vast amount of new government debt to no constructive purpose. No amount of juggling with unemployment figures can obscure the fact that in both countries real jobs are still being lost and that the creation of phony government ones is not altering the drop in family incomes. The public senses the truth, and the signs point to voters taking a fearful revenge on the Keynesian 'miracle workers.'"

Read the rest of Johnson's piece at Forbes.

Thanks, David.

We were walking through the mall last weekend and came across a display for the Smart Car.  Having a family of seven, our options are thankfully limited to the dumb, large variety.  Ben walked up to the car, gave it a cursory look, smiled and said, as he walked away, "not too smart on the highway with all those regular-sized cars and trucks."

Flash forward and I saw this sad clip at Mark's blog on Detroit's mistakes in the auto business and as a city.  I also recently watched this advertisement for the first Corvette.  I thought of the excitement I've experienced toward cars - the Chevette never moved me, I remember my buddy, Dave's Gremlin for all the wrong reasons.  The Challenger, Charger, the Grand Prix, those I remember.  I think of the Prius and the Smart Car in the same way as the Chevette and Gremlin.  And it isn't all about money either.  But it seems we are selling cars on guilt these days.

The topper for me was this advertisement from Mercedes, via Tim Blair.  Now THAT is a car:

The Bellamy Brothers ask the age old question:

Thanks, KA-CHING!

At About Last Night, writer and critic Terry Teachout reviews "The Miracle Worker" and includes this footage of the real Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.  Think you can't learn something new?  Watch the video.

Some classic Genesis from Foxtrot - "Watcher of the Skies" live.  Rock On:

"It is important to grasp the difference between laws and commands. Laws are impersonal rules, general, disinterested, usually negative in form ('Thou shalt not kill').  As Oakeshott says, they don't specify what substantive actions we are to perform, but merely attach 'adverbial conditions' to whatever courses of action we may happen to choose. Commands, on the other hand, are positive expressions of will. They leave no alternatives. ('And the king said, Bring me a sword.') Laws are 'observed,' commands are 'obeyed.' To live under the rule of law is to be a citizen; to live under commandment is to be a subject or even a slave."

Joe Sobran
Pensees

1. Use the Constitution (Remembering the 10th Amendment, please - and yes, we can keep the 16th Amendment).

2. Eliminate commands disguised as laws and regulations and their commensurate taxation.

3. Taxes are maintained for common infrastructure (safety, roads, bridges, water, sewer).

4. We hold true to some higher, simple rules or common law (well-demonstrated by Richard Epstein):
     - Self-ownership or Autonomy - The universal recognition that we own ourselves.
     - First Possession - In thriving economies, property rights are held as one of the highest principles.
     - Contract Rights - Once we recognize individual right of ownership, we understand that all individuals have equal contract rights.
     - Torts - "keep off" or the power to protect our things.
     - Necessity - To protect against imminent threats to life and liberty.  We don't sell water to a person dying of thirst.
     - Coordination - For matters of divorce and damages.
     - Just Compensation - To address awards in disputes and torts.
     - Take and Pay - Adequate compensation for property needed by the government for transportation or infrastructure needs.
 
Problems?  Sure.  But imagine these principles taught in our schools, espoused by our leaders, promoted in society.  The proposal will allow a generous timetable for smooth transition.  We have land to distribute in an orderly manner, regulations to roll back, government deals to change.

But I predict that conditions and the general welfare would improve.  
    

"Planted alfalfa seed last Saturday (March 7) in muddy field.  Finished north and south broad cast on March 8 (Sunday) and part of the east and west second broad cast.  On the 12th almost finished.  Most of the field is settled smooth crust with about a half acre sanded.  The part that was not plowed but just disked is porous and lumpy looking like a more favorable seed bed.  There was quite a blizzard or severe snow squall while I was sowing yesterday.  The dogs stole my marking stake one and I was mystified to know what had become of it because it was no where to be found near where I had placed it.  I saw the two dogs romping across the field ahead of me and this gave me an inkling.  There lay the limb that I was using as a marker, out in the middle of the field.  While I was walking away from it, Rowdy pulled it up and rollicked out there with it.  Ritz was also a party to the fun.  Rowdy still has wonderfully strong teeth.

Burt McKee died March 11.  His funeral will be tomorrow, the carriers (D.C. was a postal carrier) acting as pallbearers."

D.C. Richard's Journal
March 12, 1936

More about D.C. here.

St James Style has the story.

So, I need a silk dressing gown, a smoking jacket, Allen Edmonds Grayson's size 10, and a new humidor.

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

"[R]esearchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard provide the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious and that it spreads from person to person to person."

Read the article here then go forth to spread the disease.

Health care policy analyst, Bob Laszewski, no right-winger he, on the Democrat's push to pass health care reform:

"What the polls don't measure is the anger I hear from people who can't believe what is going on. After the last few recent state elections and all of the polls that overwhelmingly say, 'stop' or 'start over' they just keep plowing along anyway. To defend themselves, the Dems point tot he many times the Republicans have used the legislative tactic of reconciliation before—the Bush tax cuts, Part D, welfare reform.

They are right. But those were popular bills."

Thanks to KA-CHING! for the Pelosi video.

If life is a massive river of information, discernment is the ability of pluck the right things from that river.

Discernment is experiential.  Like wisdom, it builds out of the hits and misses of life.  I love to watch it in action.  Some examples:

• The supervisor who knows who to listen to when and what parts of the story to accept.
• The analyst who sorts through reams of financial data and extracts reality.
• The executive who can hear the lengthy report and zero in on the important stuff.
• The speaker who can take bits and pieces of information and develop them into a clear picture.
• The person who knows whose advice to take and whose to discard.

It is an art developed over years of listening, paying attention, watching, checking and acting.