important dates coming up for us all

Now that Groundhog Day is behind us, (result – more winter ahead), here are some more dates. In case you’ve forgotten – February 14th is Valentine’s Day. February 10th is "St. Paul’s Shipwreck Day". Celebrated only in Malta. Did you know that February 16th is Do a Grouch a Favor Day? I didn’t either, but … Read more

Five months of journaling

I started this journal on September 8th. It was begun on another journaling service and we moved to here within a couple of weeks. Coincidentally, this morning the 5000th visit came to the log. The numbers have risen from month to month and It’s now averaging 60-70 visits a day. I’ve done 165 postings and … Read more

My now-famous rugby-playing colleague has additional suspicions about Libby

It turns out that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, who I knew pretty well (See my previous posting Tom Faranda’s Folly: I played rugby with Patrick Fitzgerald )had additional allegations of lies by Libby. See this article – More Allegations of Libby Lies Revealed in the Washington Post. However, here … Read more

The State of the Union

For the first time since 2002 I actually watched the President’s SOTU speech. I thought it was excellent. But then, I believe in the Wilsonian principles his foreign policy is based on. And I liked the broad strokes of his domestic policy plans. I watched it on NBC and they (Williams and Russert) declared all … Read more

Interesting study of political party faithful and their brain wiring

I know not everyone visiting this journal will care about the attached excerpt but I found it fascinating, maybe because it reinforced my own thinking!

About a year ago I started receiving an unsolicited eletter from an investment manager, John Mauldin. I’d never heard of him, and usually when I get unsolicited stuff from investment people (who are mostly looking for business from me for my clients) I look at it once and then hit the delete button after that.

However Mauldin periodically has some good stuff in his email – about six weeks ago he did a good job on what is and what is not important about the yield curve inversion – so I usually look at it. (And he never has a sales pitch! No "I can make your clients 20% a year", blah, blah, blah)

Anyway last week he had a short piece about a neuro-physiology study at Emory University of people who were either devote Democrats or Republicans. Basically how they will re-arrange reality to fit their mindset. And the fact that we all do that in our lives, to a greater or lesser extent.

I cut and pasted the piece out of his email and If you wish to read it – it take’s about three minutes – just click below.

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Day 19 – transplant plus 11

The game plan is discharge either tomorrow (Saturday) or for sure on Sunday. The decision will be made tomorrow and I think it will probably depend on my platelet and red blood cell count. They may decide to keep me until Sunday, give me a platelet transfusion and then release me. One of the nurses … Read more

Latest read – “1776”

I finished 1776 today, and what a really fine, fine book. I couldn’t recommend it more. Gary McCullough’s narrative history of the year of the Declaration of Independence, from the human perspective of George Washington, his army and his opponents. There is some special interest for those of us who live in the New York … Read more

Dueling opinions on Judge Alito

Despite lying around in the hospital with lots of free time, I had no stomach to watch the senate judiciary hearings on Alito. Chemotherapy hasn’t given me nausea, but the senatorial windbags speechifying and playing to the cameras – that brought it on if I watched for more then two minutes at a time. Here … Read more