School’s back in session, and fundraising with it — so much so that there’s been a viral photo floating around facebook, and featured on Slate, purporting to be a fundraiser in which parents donate to the PTA as an expression of their gratitude for not being asked to sell wrapping paper or candles. This is also the time of year when I place an order for, and start planning the site sale portion of the annual Cub Scout popcorn sale.... Read more
I’m late in posting these pictures, of the freighter Wilfred Sykes making its way from Lake Michigan along the Grand River to pick up a load of freight in Grand Haven, Michigan. Yes, there is still freighter traffic on the Great Lakes. More about the ship here, and here. Read more
I told you a couple days ago that I was working through this whole question: why was Carly canned? And what do the circumstances of her departure have to say with respect to her potential as a presidential candidate or even a president? This is a long post, so please bear with me as I work my way through this. It’s hard to untangle the story of what happened at HP. She has defenders everywhere and opponents everywhere, it seems.... Read more
I’m in the middle of drafting a post in which I attempt to resolve, for me at least, the question of whether the circumstances behind Fiorina’s termination from HP have something to say about her fitness for office. Needs work, though, as I’m working through some source material and putting together some thoughts and trying to think it through rather than tossing it off. But in the meantime: I’m still inclined to favor her over the other GOP candidates. More... Read more
Substitute Atkins, or South Beach, or Taubes, or any similar diet that promotes meat-eating, okays fruit and vegetables to varying extents, and limits carbohydrates, from grains, anyway. Do these diets work? I read Taubes’ Why We Get Fat a couple years ago, and found the notion that, so long as you severely limit carbs, you’ll automatically lose excess weight and, once you arrive at your ideal weight, effortlessly maintain that weight, hard to swallow. How, after all, in this “eat... Read more
The kids are at school, I have a mountain of things to catch up on for work, and what have I done? A late breakfast (because I spent the time before the kids left, filling out the forms at the last minute), prepped a pot roast in the crock-pot, read the paper, and a quick blog post. But there are two reflections on the French train attacks that caught my eye. The first, from Glenn Reynolds, aka instapundit.com, in his... Read more
Southfield is a middle-class suburb directly adjoining Detroit. I lived there for the first seven years of my life, in a three-bedroom ranch with a crawl space. Growing up, it was a fairly white place, with the only “ethnic diversity” being a significant Jewish population. In the last generation, though, the area has changed substantially, and is now 70% black, as middle-class blacks have fled Detroit. Periodically on a visit to my parents, we drive through the neighborhood and it... Read more
I’ve posted two excerpts from this book already: a passage on cultural differences, and a passage about women in business, but reading the whole book has been slow going because I haven’t had a lot of down time (or, rather, the down time has been family time). But I’ll present my summary to you, with more excerpts. And, yes, of course, this is Carly Fiorina’s life as she perceives it, and I’m not going to try to second-guess and talk... Read more
Was I there as a patriotic supporter of veterans? Actually, my son and I stumbled on this during our bike ride. Also, the Honor Flight around here has been expanded to vets of all wars; see here for the list of attendees and the wars they served in, and here for a local news article. And — to be honest, I’m ordinarily somewhat cynical of the Honor Flight concept, but the Belgian/France train attack-foiling was on my mind, and the... Read more
As you know if you’ve been following the reports on the Center for Medical Progress’s expose of Planned Parenthood, they have released multiple videos now, each more awful than the prior one. The most recent is an interview with a former procurement worker, describing her experiences, including that of a late-term baby with a beating heart. But if you read the Chicago Tribune, you’d know nothing, except that, according to an article in today’s paper, available online at the L.A.... Read more
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