Free melodeon course...in Dutch, but very useful.

The girls rugby team posted this before the guys posted theirs. Everyone seems to be having fun.

Confessions of an Ex-Mormon

A personal history of America’s most misunderstood religion.

Now this is what a personal essay should be.

Current Events

Make the Euro A Joking Matter

Paul Johnson, 06.27.12, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated July 16, 2012

A strategic error was made in creating the euro as a common currency without aligning its members' financial and fiscal policies.

Why is the global economy finding it so difficult to emerge from the crisis of 2008? Increasingly the evidence points to that huge bureaucratic monstrosity, the European Union, as the source of the trouble.

During the past two years EU leaders have held numerous summit meetings, including tête-a-tête encounters between Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France’s former president, Nicolas Sarkozy. All were hailed as make-or-break opportunities to “save” the euro. All failed. Meanwhile, most of Europe is sinking deeper into stagnation or industrial decline and experiencing rising unemployment and psychological despair.

"Old Mother Merkel" indeed. But Romney is no Reagan. And, as Charles Murray demonstrates, the gift of our founding ("The American Way of Life") is squandered and derided these days. Gloom and doom. But, spem spiro spero. (while I breathe I hope), so let us carry on and see what happens. Lenin created a hellish system that lasted for six decades, but it did not last forever. Hope an Change are eternal, not the possessions of one party or man.

A CULTURE OF COVERUPS? Rand Simberg: After the Sandusky coverup, can we trust Penn State’s internal ClimateGate “exoneration” of Michael Mann? “We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?”

UPDATE: Reader Aaron Chmielewski writes: “It should be noted, Mann was a major revenue source for the university.”

Good question.

Practical English Handbook (1954)

Author: William B.Dillingham
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Language: English
Call number: 8953
Book contributor: Universal Digital Library
Collection: universallibrary

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Free English Handbook.

About the Author

Michael Creagan, the oldest of seven children, grew up in the city of New Haven, and then the town of Hamden, in Connecticut. He graduated in 1970 from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and has been working as a doctor ever since. For the past 28 years, he has worked as an emergency medicine specialist at San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland, California. For about 40 years, he has been writing poetry. This is his first book.

 

 

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Excerpts from True Love Stories and other poems:

Road Kill

You may have thought things would come right again If only you could sit quite still and wait. — Larkin Driving to the hospital late lastnight, I turned down a road that ran between dark fields. Up ahead, in the middle of the road, a small brown rabbit was sitting very still, looking down at a rabbit who was dead, a mangled corpse, run over by a car. Lit up by my headlights, he took off toward the fields. Slowing down, I drove by the dead rabbit, then stopped the car, and watched in the rear-view mirror. The rabbit came back and sat in the road again, resuming the vigil for his dead friend, or kin. Quiet, still, he sat and stared at him. Touched, unable to guess what you felt or thought, I found it hard to watch you suffer this. You have no words to understand what death is, no words to ease your sadness, to console, to mourn or pray, or tell your friend farewell. I hope you made it safely home last night and woke this morning in the warm sunlight. This morning, at my table under the trees, because you have no words, I’ve written these.

 

I read this poem in a magazine several years ago. All I could remember was the rabbit mourning its friend. My lady remembered the hospital and the idea that the speaker decides to give voice to the poor, mute beast. Armed only with that, the librarian at Massasoit found the poem. Librarians are awesome.

3) And a final practical remark: Young and healthy people may make the financial decision to skip insurance and pay the penalty/tax instead. Then, on the day they are diagnosed or injured, they can obtain insurance knowing that they can’t be refused for a pre-existing condition and that their premiums cannot reflect their newly acquired disease or injury. Meanwhile, as Ann Althouse explained well in her blog, the penalty/tax goes to the IRS and not the insurance companies, so they will not be compensated for those who opt not to observe the mandate. And when those folks do become insured the insurance companies will not be able to collect premiums commensurate with the risks they are forced to insure. Thus, over time, either the penalties will rise considerably and the funds used to prop up the insurance companies, or more probably, the insurance companies will cease offering policies altogether. This will then raise a clamor for single payer health insurance.

Was this a bug or a feature? Were the proponents aware of this potential and thus extremely clever, or was it just dumb luck? Inquiring minds want to know.

We're screwed.