Trip details are now settled and I've even, in a fit of paranoia, had blood tests and a chest x-ray to double check that nithing is brewing that might flumox my health and mess up the trip ( Read more... )

On this day, July 17th, in 1914 the German Imperial Army’s Quartermaster General, Count Waldersee wrote to Gottlieb von Jagow, Foreign Minister, that “I can move at a moment’s notice. We in the General Staff are ready: there is nothing more for us to do at this juncture.” Given this reassurance, von Jagow informed the Kaiser that an aggressive ( Read more... )

"Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment."

Why are Republicans so angry? The text above (that I just cut and paste from Wiki) suggests why.

Consider that ( Read more... )

You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo - the I.R.S.

-- Republican Governor Paul LePage of Maine

Well, lets see...The Gestapo rounded up Jews, Free Masons, union leaders, Jehovah's Witnesses and other "enemies of the state" and sent them to death camps to be gassed.

The IRS collects taxes.

Yup, the comparison makes perfect sense...to a ( Read more... )

Went to the Oncologist today. I'm showing no evidence of disease! This so against the odds that its amazing.

Time to really start planning for Paris in September/October.

Click to view

The American Library in Paris was founded in 1920 by the American Library Association with a core collection of books that had been sent by the Library War Service, a massive project to send books to the doughboys fighting in the trenches.

Its motto was "Atrum post bellum, ex libris lux" (After the darkness of war, the light of books.)

It remained ( Read more... )

Celebrate! For Persephone, daughter of Demeter, is free from her annual sojourn with her husband, Hades, and her mother, who is the Earth rejoices. The bitter winter that Demeter visits upon the land while her daughter is away from her vanishes and the world blooms again.

Celebrate! For the Children of Israel have escaped the bondage of Pharaoh and ( Read more... )

It's National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day!

Did you know that the average American consumes 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the age of 18?

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/30/149712274/stock-markets-had-best-first-quarter-since-1998

Well, I guess that either Socialism is, in fact, the solution to our problems or that the people who have been calling Obama's policies "socialism" are a bunch of ignorant jackasses who haven't a clue as to what constitutes socialism.