Something I learned about time zones on a visit to New Orleans: Louisiana is on Central Time, as are Mississippi, Alabama — and part of the Florida panhandle!
Jefferson Davis’s House
On a recent trip to New Orleans, we spent a night at the Beau Rivage Resort in Biloxi, MS.
Biloxi is also the site of Beauvoir, the former home of Jefferson Davis, now a museum and historical site.
Beauvoir is similar to a statue in that it’s a memorial to an eminent representative of the Confederacy, but surprisingly, even the most fanatical ideologue has not, to my knowledge, suggested that it be torn down . . .
Christmas In New Orleans
French Quarter
French Quarter – Cafe du Monde
French Quarter – Preservation Hall
French Quarter – Bourbon Street
Lafayette Cemetery #1
VooDoo BBQ
Beau Rivage Resort & Casino (Biloxi, MS)
Merry Christmas, New Orleans
I’ve been in and around New Orleans this week. No one has said “Happy Holidays” to me. “Merry Christmas” only.
People I Thought Were Dead
- Herb Alpert – trumpeter
- Max Baer Jr. – actor, “The Beverly Hillbillies”
- Barbara Bain – actress, “Mission: Impossible”
- Brigitte Bardot – actress
- Rona Barrett – gossip columnist
- Frank Borman – astronaut
- Roy Clark – musician
- Roger Corman – film producer
- Robert Crumb – cartoonist
- Bill Daily – actor
- Vic Damone – singer
- Angie Dickinson – actress
- Annette and Cecile Dionne – quintuplets
- Sam Donaldson – TV newscaster
- Hugh Downs – TV announcer
- Daniel Ellsberg – released the Pentagon Papers
- Barbara Feldon – actress
- Fannie Flagg – actress and game show panelist
- Larry Flynt – publisher of Hustler
- Whitey Ford – baseball pitcher
- A.J. Foyt – auto racer
- Ron Gallela – celebrity photographer, aka “paparazzo”
- Whitey Herzog – baseball manager
- Ernest Hollings – U.S. senator
- Cloris Leachman – actress
- Tom Lehrer – musical satirist
- Jerry Lee Lewis – singer and pianist
- G. Gordon Liddy – Watergate mastermind
- Rich Little – impressionist
- Peter Max – pop artist
- Kim Novak – actress
- Julie Newmar – actress
- Marion Ross – actress, “Happy Days”
- William Ruckelshaus – Nixon cabinet member
- Eva Marie Saint – actress
- Doc Severinsen – trumpeter and bandleader
- Jack Sheldon – singer and trumpeter
- George Shultz – cabinet member under Nixon and Reagan
- Lyle Waggoner – actor
- John Warner, U.S. senator and husband of Elizabeth Taylor
- Joanne Woodward – actress
- Herman Wouk – author
- Carl Yastrzemski – baseball player
Updates
- Brigitte Bardot – died 12/28/2025, age 91
- Frank Borman – died 11/7/2023, age 95
- Roy Clark – died 11/15/2018, age 85
- Roger Corman – died 5/9/2024, age 98
- Bill Daily – died 9/8/2018, age 91
- Vic Damone – died 2/11/2018, age 89
- Annette Dionne – died 12/26/2025, age 91
- Cecile Dionne – died 7/28/2025, age 91
- Hugh Downs – died 7/2/2020, age 99
- Daniel Ellsberg – died 6/16/2023, age 92
- Larry Flynt – died 2/10/2021, age 78
- Whitey Ford – died 10/8/2020, age 91
- Ron Gallela – died 4/30/2022 age 91
- Whitey Herzog – died 4/16/2024, age 93
- Ernest Hollings – died 4/6/2019, age 97
- Cloris Leachman – died 1/27/2021, age 94
- Tom Lehrer – died 7/26/2025, age 97
- Jerry Lee Lewis – died 10/28/2022, age 87
- G. Gordon Liddy – died 3/30/2021, age 90
- William Ruckelshaus – died 11/27/2019, age 87
- Jack Sheldon – died 12/27/2019, age 88
- George Shultz – died 2/6/2021, age 100
- Lyle Waggoner – died 3/17/2020, age 84
- John Warner, died 5/25/2021, age 94
- Herman Wouk – died 5/17/2019, age 103
See You in Hell: Cardinal Law
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Arrivederci Roma!
This is a tough one . . . hypocrites go in the Eighth Circle with frauds, but rapists go into the Seventh Circle for the violent.
Anyway, Cardinal Law says hi.
How appropriate that he was able to die before the end of 2017, when the Dictionary.com Word of the Year was “complicit.”
See you in Hell!
Likes and Dislikes
Likes
Dogs, books, spicy food
Dislikes:
Systems of thought that reduce the richness of human lives to impersonal laws, systems and numbers. Oxford commas.
The script of life is so unspeakably beautiful to read because death looks over our shoulder. — Martin Buber
Is Healthcare a Right or an Entitlement?
That’s the title of a lengthy article on LinkedIn in which the author makes the following argument:
- I had to spend more than $30,000 on cancer treatment.
- Therefore, healthcare is a right, not an entitlement.
Because having a “right” to something implies that you have the right to force another person to work and pay for that thing. Someone else must exert positive effort to help you – and not because you make it worthwhile for that person to exert that effort on your behalf, but because the government will ultimately imprison him or her if he or she refuses to supply you with that to which you have a “right.”
You can add a level of abstraction, i.e., “the government should pay for my healthcare” sounds more appealing than “another person should pay for my healthcare” but where do you think government gets the money to pay for things?
The article also offers this: Prisoners get free healthcare and shouldn’t we get the same rights as prisoners?
Of course, prisoners give up a lot of rights in exchange for free healthcare but if you think it’s a good tradeoff, commit a crime and go to prison.
If we, as a country, did what they do in countries with “free” healthcare, that is, add up the cost of everyone’s healthcare and then split the bill, most of us would pay more than we do now, the reason being that a disproportionate amount of healthcare spending goes to people who are old and/or sick.
We’d overpay most of our lives for the privilege of possibly underpaying if and when we get old.
If you had the bad fortune of getting cancer, you’d pay less than you would with the current system, but if you don’t get cancer you’d pay more, because you’d have to pick up your share of the cost for everyone who does get cancer.
There is at least one potential cost-saving option of putting the government in charge of healthcare spending and that is that if you’re very old or very sick, you’re not going to get all that technology and all those drugs to maybe keep you going for another couple of years. It’s too expensive, so we’re going to let you die.
Berkeley Sunset
Notes on Existential Well-Being
I’m taking an online class on existential well-being . . . posting some notes and thoughts:
Well-being implies physical health, comfort, pleasure.
It is also essential for human beings to have relationships with other people and to have a place in society.
We speak of personal well-being when a person is able to develop their talents and feel at peace with him or herself.
Beauty, compassion, truth, love — these are experiences of the “life force” or the “spirit.” In these spiritual experiences we transcend our limited self. We become part of something bigger and participate in universal qualities that nourish and enhance life.
We are conscious of the physical, the social, the personal and the spiritual dimensions of human experience. We make no hierarchy between these dimensions.
We recognize that human life is also characterized by suffering, pain and many limitations. We acknowledge that because of limitations, we are challenged to use our full potential to realize our physical, social, personal and spiritual existence in our given situation.
What Did You Think “Woke” Meant?
It's weird that sweeping, prejudicial generalizations about race, gender and sexual orientation are now offered by some and accepted by others as woke. https://t.co/A8udKbtVh6
— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) December 12, 2017
Year in Search 2017
The annual Google search trends are available for 2017.
A couple of surprises to me:
- The third most searched for person in the world (behind Matt Lauer and Meghan Markle) was Nadia Toffa, whom I’ve never heard of.
- The most searched for “How To” item was “How to make slime.”
See You in Hell, Ed Lee
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Ed Lee was the mayor of San Francisco, a sanctuary city.
My plan was to have Ed shot to death by an illegal alien but he outsmarted me by dying of a heart attack before I could put all the pieces together.
See you in Hell . . .
Every Male Journalist Will Be Famous for 15 Minutes
Either for a sex-related termination or for botching another “bombshell” Trump story . . .
He Was in No Other Place
Cross and Christians, end to end, I examined. He was not on the Cross. I went to the Hindu temple, to the ancient pagoda. In none of them was there any sign. To the uplands of Herat I went, and to Kandahar. I looked. He was not on the heights or in the lowlands. Resolutely, I went to the summit of the fabulous mountain of Kaf. There only was the dwelling of the legendary Anqa bird. I went to the Kaaba of Mecca. He was not there. I asked about him from Avicenna the philosopher. He was beyond the range of Avicenna . . . I looked into my own heart. In that, his place, I saw him, He was in no other place.
The Country is Turning Into One Big Junior Prom
Former Fox News anchor says Trump once tried to kiss her https://t.co/G3YakLpyaC pic.twitter.com/ZYVm4AqIvQ
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 9, 2017
That’s interesting. Have any other men tried to kiss her? Or is that the whole list? Why does anyone need to know about this?
I’ve tried to kiss women. I hope Al Franken is saving a place for us in the unemployment line.
There seem to be an awful lot of apparently adult women who should not be allowed to leave home without a chaperone . . .
Liberalism and the Wrath of the Privileged Whites
The largely white and affluent solid liberals are notionally egalitarian and opposed to white privilege, but they include many of the most privileged whites in America. . . .
Millions of working-class whites felt that Obama was talking about them, too, when he said, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”
And many of those same Americans knew that Hillary Clinton was talking about them when she ranted about the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it” deplorables.
All the Elements For Your Happiness Are Already Here
Be yourself.
Life is precious as it is.
All the elements for your happiness are already here.
There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle.
Just Be.
Alien-Earthling Relationships
