Quote of the Moment: Liberty

"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" -Sam Adams

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." - James Madison

Learn from Past Mistakes

"There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy." -President-Elect Barack Obama, January 9, 2009

"With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true. Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth." -Open Letter from the Cato Institute

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: why do lawmakers never seem to learn from past mistakes? From a 2004 UCLA study on how FDR's policies prolonged the Great Depression by seven years (by Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian):

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

I think a stimulus package to the tune of $800-some billion equals "gum."

Quote of the Moment: Taking Proper Grammar Too Far

"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."

-Winston Churchill, quoted in Ernest Gowers's Plain Words (1948)

I ate my way through the cities this weekend.

It started on Friday with lunch at Bread & Chocolate (grilled cheese, salad with basil vinaigrette, and extremely tasty peanut butter cookie), progressed to Thai food for dinner Friday at Tum Rup Thai (sweet thai beef jerky, pad prig something-or-other not on the online menu, and toasted coconut ice cream that was to die for), cruised through Saturday dinner at my (probably) most favorite restaurant, Muffuletta (split the most awesome homemade mac'n'cheese and a good cob salad with a friend, as well as the creme brulee and bete noire), and culminated with Sunday brunch (amazing spinach, artichocke and feta fritatta, plus some incredible takeout for later) at Colossal Cafe, a place so small it only seats 12, but is totally worth it.

You'd think I'd feel a little sick after all of that food, but it was so good. Plus seeing friends and enjoying good conversation helped me manage to stuff it all down.

Quote of the Moment: Young Nation Does Not Allow for Childishness

From George Will's January 21st column:

"We remain," [Obama] said, "a young nation." Which, even if true, would be no excuse for childishness.

Feast Day of St. Paula the Bearded

According to my most excellent Christmas gift, the Forgotten English Daily Calendar, today is the Feast Day of St. Paula the Bearded, which I gather from today's entry dates back to the 4th century. When I went online to find out more about this, I realized that I missed the Day of St. Hilary ("patroness of lawyers"). (If it's "her" job to keep people from making jokes about lawyers, she's not doing a very good job protecting us.) However, I don't think that particular website is very accurate because I'm pretty sure Hilary was a man (so shouldn't it be "patron"?) and was apparently a Doctor of the church (instead of a doctor of the law).

Miscellany: Oranges

Oranges tastes much better when you haven't accidentally left them in your car and they froze. They may thaw, but they don't taste quite the same. They taste frozen.

Sorry to dwell on it, but weather is on our minds these days.

Yes, yes, I'm supposed to be a hardy Minnesotan. And while that may be true, that doesn't prevent me from talking about the cold weather.

I don't know what's worse: the actual air temperature (I think it was around -22* F this morning) combined with bitter winds (I have no idea what the wind chill is right now), or realizing that about a year ago I was sitting on a warm beach in the Caribbean frolicking in the ocean waves, using up an entire bottle of sun block in a week (still getting a bit crispy), and enjoying a very relaxing week.

I also find it rather amusing that My Way News this morning is reporting the following:

Forecasters issued lake-effect snow warnings Thursday for Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Wind chill warnings were posted for those states as well as Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Minneapolis.

I chuckle not because the weather itself is so amusing. It's how the states are listed. Well, areas. See, all the other states are listed with state names. Except Minnesota. Apparently the reporter, Mr. Curran, believes that our state is named "Minneapolis." I may not remember all the state capitals from my grade school days any longer, but at least I think I could get all the states down.

I don't know what has possessed me to do this, but on the two coldest days this week (Tuesday and today), I have opted for the skirt suit. What on earth is wrong with me? Thankfully I'm bundled up at 5:30 in the morning when I go out to start my car and drive over to the club to work out. But those short dashes from club to car and parking ramp to office in said skirts are a bit chilly.

Quote of the Financial Moment

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --Thomas Jefferson

Learning Something New Every Day

I discovered today that my name, Linnea, has been in the top ten for female names in Sweden every year from 1998-2007. It's also fairly popular in Norway. In the U.S., the highest it's ever been is 879th out of 1000 female names in the 1940s. If it weren't so socialist, maybe I should just move to Scandanavia. (Though more and more people know how to pronounce my name as I get older.)

Bah, stupid weather.

When it's not snowing, it's insanely cold for us around here. I'm kind of getting tired of it, but especially the weather forecasts that predict a day's high will not even get to zero. The good news is I'm working longer hours now due to session, so it's dark when I get to work and dark when I leave work, so it's not like I'd have any time to be outside in the snow or the cold.

Update (1/13): It's very disheartening to get in one's car at 5:30 in the morning, and the car thermometer tells you it's -16 degrees (F).

The Vatican (exhibit, not City)

Last week when I went to the Vatican Splendors exhibit at the MN History Center, I kept wondering why I was paying $20 to get in when I'd already been to the actual Vatican City. Then, when I discovered they had several paintings on display that had never before been exhibited to the public anywhere, I was okay with that. Well, maybe not twenty dollars okay, but okay with some form of monetary payment okay. The exhibit was quite good (and has been extended through later this month, so if you're in the neighborhood, you, too, can go see it should you so desire), but I'm still not sure if it was worth the whole twenty bucks. I mean, I'm quite positive I didn't pay twenty dollars to go to the Vatican, see the Sistine Chapel and some other museum areas and then climb the stairs to the top of the dome. (OK, maybe it was $20; right now it costs €14. Although when I think about it, I went to the Vatican so long ago that I actually paid with lire, anyway, so it might not have been so much...)

All this to say, the exhibit was interesting and very nicely done: not too little or too much information, and it combined a history of the papacy, Swiss Guard, all that, with actual Vatican artwork and objects.

My reading habits are at odds with themselves.

One day this [wonderfully, beautifully] long weekend, I read two different books (well, finished one in about an hour, have not yet finished the second) that are completely at odds with each other.

Nicholson Baker was recommended to me by a friend. OK, check that: she recommended The Mezzanine. I could not find a copy of the book easily (unless I bought it, and I am loathe to buy new, modern authors without testing them out first, even if the author was highly recommended by a person whose opinions I trust), but did find a couple other books by Baker in my local library. I read A Box of Matches last week and found it rather amusing (albeit without too much plot). The man can write about minutiae in a riveting way. Plus, it was a quick read. So I picked up Checkpoint. Not nearly as good. The man would do better to stick to everyday minutiae instead of entering the realm of politics - even if it is political minutiae. It only took an hour, but I kept wondering when the book would end or how much longer it would take me to slog through it. Never a good sign. (I do have higher hopes for the other Nicholson Baker I found at the good ol' library: a piece of nonfiction called Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.)

The other book I began reading that same day was the complete opposite to Checkpoint, and politically much more my style (though to be quite frank, I'm still not really sure what the political style of Checkpoint even was). I'm finally reading the most recent book of one of my favorite authors, Vince Flynn. So far, so good. And I definitely haven't been so bored I've had to wonder when on earth I would be done with it.