Gus Van Horn

Good Calories, Bad Calories

I started reading Gary Taubes's Good Calories, Bad Calories recently. I will only get to read this in pieces, and may not finish it for a few months, but I have been pleasantly surprised (and in more than one sense, even relieved) to have found it to be much better than I expected.

My regard for the general state of knowledge in the science of nutrition has been, to put it, in G-rated terms, extremely low, and I have not made a habit of hiding that contempt in the past. Astonishingly, the first third of the book shows that the field (or at least much of what passes as its conventional wisdom) has been even more of a mess than I suspected. Furthermore, what you don't know about this can hurt you.

In addition, this book provides a good case history of how government interference in science can cause mistaken theories to become medical orthodoxy, and provides a look at some aspects of how science is done, which is to say, more messily in some respects than many people realize.

I recommend the book, because, even without finishing it, I have realized value from it. That said, I must stress that I have not finished it, and want to be clear that this recommendation is not a comment, good or bad, on the positive arguments Taubes takes up later. I may discuss these if I find myself strongly agreeing with or strongly disagreeing with him once I am finished with the book.

I will say that even if I do find myself strongly disagreeing with some aspect of Taubes's positive argument, that this is the best work about nutrition that I have ever encountered.

I thank Monica Hughes and Diana Hsieh for bringing this book to my attention.

Old Idiom, Whole New Meaning

Reader Dismuke tips me off to an amusing story about a letter arriving by post seventy-three years after it was sent.

The likeliest explanation (though not the only one): The letter made it to Stockton's main post office, which then was in the Federal Building, 401 N. San Joaquin St.

It fell into a crack, and there, a mere two blocks south of its destination, it stayed for seven decades.

"Back then, all the letters were handled manually," Ruiz said. "If you can imagine a floor full of cases similar to what Ben Franklin used to work with, pigeonholes, that's how mail was sorted back then."

The post office moved out of the Federal Building in 2008. The building has undergone remodeling. Perhaps the letter popped out and someone dropped it in a mailbox, Ruiz theorized.

Unsurprisingly, both the sender and the recipient were already dead.

Hudson's Baked Tilapia

We enjoyed this simple recipe for baked tilapia and a sauce last week. As usual, I rewrote it as follows:

Preparation Time is 30 minutes.

Ingredients

lemon, 1
tilapia, 4 4oz. filets
pepper to taste
Tony Chachere's, 1 tbsp
mayonnaise, 1/4 cup
sour cream, 1/2 cup
garlic powder, 1/8 tsp
lemon juice, 1 tsp
dill, 2 tbsp

Directions

1. In parallel with the next two steps, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place tinfoil on a baking sheet and lightly grease.

2. Thinly slice lemon.

3. Season the tilapia fillets with pepper and Tony Crachere's on both sides. Arrange the seasoned fillets in a single layer in the baking dish. Place a layer of lemon slices over the fish fillets.

4. In parallel with the next step, bake uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

5. Prepare the sauce by combining and mixing the mayonnaise, sour cream, garlic powder, lemon juice, and dill.

6. Serve tilapia with sauce.

I love fish, and the fact that we live a block away from the grocer means that we can enjoy it more often than we used to.

Weyerbacher Simcoe Double IPA

Some weeks ago, my wife and I visited with some of her coworkers in the South End, where I noticed a large (for my general area in Boston) beer and wine emporium. I made a mental note of it and visited yesterday on my daily walk. I was rewarded by finding a beer I had once, something like five years ago, at a brewing club meeting back in Houston.

Double Simcoe IPA, 9.0% abv, is our incredible reward for Hopheads seeking the intense hop flavor in a Double IPA, without the harshness. It is brewed untilizing only the Simcoe hop variety. This hybrid hop, developed and trademarked by Select Botanicals Group, LLC in the year 2000, was created for its high alpha acid content, maximum aromatic oils, and low cohumulone(harshness) levels so that brewers can really put a lot of 'em in a beer and not create an overly harsh taste.

Double Simcoe IPA is a full-flavored ale with hints of pineapple and citrus upfront, a good malt backbone in the middle, and a clean finish that doesn't linger too long. Check it out, and you'll soon see why everyone's talking about it. Double Simcoe is available year-round.

Named 2006 "PA Beer of the Year" by Beer Author Lew Bryson, at www.LewBryson.com.

All I'd remembered was the name "Simcoe" and the fact that the hop taste was quite distinctive. It'll be nice to be able to crack one of those open once in a while.

-- CAV

Posted at 6:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Backlinks

A little over a week ago, I discussed an email I received regarding the latest political cure-all: a proposed twenty-eighth amendment, which would require the effects of any legislation passed by Congress to apply to everyone. Towards the end of the post, I stated the following:

[I]f we explicitly forbade ObamaCare from the Constitution, the underlying disease of the body politic would remain: That too many people accept (or leave unchallenged) the premise that it's okay to steal from other people so long as the government does it, and passes out the loot equally.

So long as this idea retains its undeserved respect in our culture, we will elect bandits to office, our state and federal governments will compete in a race to be the main gang in our neighborhoods, our wealth will be sapped in one way or another (since loot has to come from somewhere), and everyone will be looking for a way to make sure everyone else is equally screwed.

Please note the locution "equally screwed," gird your loins, and hack your way through the tangled verbiage of the following passage, taken verbatim (minus some formatting) from an email I received last night.

Retribution is less than 1 year away!

Take a look at this and just remember elections in November 2010.

1. U..S.. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises.
2. They voted to NOT give you a S.S. Cost of living raise in 2010 and 2011.
3. Your Medicare premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years
4. You will not get the 3% COLA: $660/yr.
5. Your total 2-yr loss and cost is -$1,600 or -$3,200 for husband and wife.
6. Over these same 2-years each Congress person will get $10,000
7. Do you feel SCREWED?
8. Will they have your cost of drugs - doctor fees - local taxes - food, etc., decrease?
9. NO WAY.

Congress received a raise and has better health and retirement benefits than you or I.

* Why should they care about you?
* You never did anything about it in the past.
* You obviously are too stupid or don't care.
* Do you really think that Nancy , Harry, Chris, Charlie, Barny, et al, care about you?

Send the message to these individuals --- "YOU'RE FIRED!"

In 2010 you will have a chance to get rid of the sitting Congress: up to 1/3 of the Senate and 100% of the House!

Make sure you're still mad in November 2010 and remind their replacements not to screw-up.

It is ok to forward this to your sphere of influence if you are finally tired of the abuse. Maybe it's time for Amendment 28 to the Constitution..

28th Amendment will be as follows:
"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."

Let's get this passed around, folks - these people in Washington have brought this upon themselves! It's time for retribution. Let's take back America ..

If you don't forward this to all your friends you're just part of the problem of national apathy.

Notice which Congressmen are in in the crosshairs. That's right. Once again, we have grassroots "opponents" of Barack Obama calling for laws passed by Congress to apply with blanket equality to everyone, regardless of merit or propriety. And this opposition is based not on a principled support for individual rights, a desire to begin phasing out the welfare state, or even a return to a proper understanding of what "equality before the law" really means -- but on a vague, softly egalitarian notion of equality.

If this blindfolded, half-cocked effort is the opposite of apathy, we're better off with apathy, because frustration will be the best possible result.

Once again: I don't want an equal share of loot. I want freedom.

-- CAV

Posted at 4:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Backlinks

Via email comes the following from Stewart Margolis of ARI:

In case you or people you know are interested, we wanted to let you know that the final application deadline for the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center 2010 -- 11 academic year is July 30, 2010. We also wanted to be sure you were aware that auditors are always welcome. And feel free to mention this on your blog!

The OAC is our premier program for individuals who want to systematically study Ayn Rand’s ideas and her philosophy of Objectivism.

• Our courses guide each student in developing the tools necessary to communicate effectively, logically and rationally. It is also the perfect place to meet other students interested in Ayn Rand’s writings and their relevance to today’s world.
• The OAC’s one-of-a-kind curriculum provides an opportunity to learn Objectivist methodology in a way that cannot be found anywhere else. We offer full tuition waivers and phone reimbursement for full-time students.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.

I'm looking forward to completing my final year of the program this fall.

-- CAV

Posted at 4:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Backlinks

Massachusetts has joined an effort started some time ago to basically do away with the Electoral College:

Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.

Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign's website.

State senate minority leader Richard Tisei says of the idea that it is "one of the worst ideas that has surfaced and actually garnered some support." Indeed it is. And physicist Alan Natapoff once actually proved (and Will Hively of Discover Magazine explained in layman's terms) that the electoral college is a valuable check against tyranny.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Shea Levy raises some interesting points I hadn't thought of in the comments.

Posted at 4:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | Backlinks

Welcome to the first installment of "Ask Uncle Gus," in which I take on questions submitted through Formspring. This series of posts starts as an experiment in creating new content for the blog over and above the post-a-weekday commitment I have already made.

I'll answer questions as they come up, but spend only "extra time" left over from normal blogging (or blog administration) periods to do so. You get questions answered. I get ideas for posts that might not otherwise have occurred to me. The drawback is that it might take some time before I answer the question.

In the short run, we both get more content without my having to make an inordinate time commitment to do so. In the long run, I get a chance to experiment with an intermittent style of blogging different from the one to which I am accustomed.

With that, let's move on to the first question...

Q: What do you think of this statement: Reason is powerless in the expression of love?

A: I think this sentiment is understandable, but mistaken.

The notion that there is no rational way to express love arises in large part because the nature of what is being communicated (love) is commonly misunderstood, the way an individual experiences it is intensely private, and the methods by which one would communicate about it aren't straightforward.

On top of that, all these things would present difficulties even for people who know they love something or someone. Additional difficulties are presented by the fact that many people aren't really sure about what or whom they love. We'll mostly set that kind of difficulty aside in the following discussion and, for brevity's sake, focus on romantic love.

For starters, let's consider a case in which a man knows he loves his wife and wants to communicate that fact.

The first thing we need to do is consider what it means to say that he loves her. I think Ayn Rand sums it up very well:

Romantic love, in the full sense of the term, is an emotion possible only to the man (or woman) of unbreached self-esteem: it is his response to his own highest values in the person of another -- an integrated response of mind and body, of love and sexual desire. Such a man (or woman) is incapable of experiencing a sexual desire divorced from spiritual values. ("Of Living Death," in The Voice of Reason, p. 54)

Crucial here is the fact that love is an emotion. This means that love is experienced in an automatic, instantaneous fashion, much like a percept. To begin to see how one could communicate about emotions, we can begin by considering how we do so regarding percepts.

When someone tells you something is green, or hot, or bitter, or loud, he is attempting to relay the way he experiences some aspect of the world. How, exactly does even this work? You really have no way to know exactly how other people experience "green-ness," heat, bitterness, or loudness, except that practically everyone says so, and over time, you learn that these generally correspond to each other from one person to the next -- and to what you experience as green, hot, bitter, or loud. That is, you learn over time through introspection, seeing how others report their experiences, and noting context that other people experience the world much as you do, and can thus reliably use words to communicate these experiences.

Going beyond the perceptual level, you learn that others might like similar activities or uphold similar ideals to yours, and you can have a fair guess that, as with perceptual responses, emotional responses, are likely similar from one human being to the next.

However, you also start to see differences. Cedric enjoys jetskiing, whereas you hate it, and would rather read. Marie's heart is stirred by the idea of all men sharing what they produce, while you are alarmed that someone could fall for socialism in this day and age. George finds fashion models attractive, but you like the looks of curvier women more. You see that different people -- because of different personal preferences, or because they subscribe to different ideals, or even because they are affected by different (and completely forgotten) developmental influences -- can have different emotional responses to precisely the same things.

And yet, you can understand that they like or dislike these things. If someone says, of an inspirational story, that it made his spine tingle, you have some idea what he means. How, exactly, we experience these different emotions will always mostly be a mystery to everyone else, but we can communicate generally how we feel, aided by such analogies. "It tastes like chicken." "It was like a breath of fresh air." "Whenever I see her, I feel like all my troubles vanish."

So we know that other people feel love, and can gather something about the emotion from what they communicate about it. We can learn further about the intensity of someone's love (and he can show it, often more truthfully than with his words) from actions. Does he say he loves his wife, but spend every evening out drinking with the boys? Or is he reserved about his feelings, yet always doing things for her, smiling whenever she shows up, and always affectionate? Actions are motivated by emotions, and serve as a means of communication -- whether a lover wants to show his love by purchasing a surprise gift, or notices an action motivated by love on the part of his beloved.

How much does someone love someone (or something) else in relation to everything else? Briefly, Ayn Rand noted that values are properly measured hierarchically. The man who gives up his life to save his wife does so because being without her would be unbearable to him. That's a pretty powerful expression of love, if you ask me. (And you did!)

Thank you for that thought-provoking question.

-- CAV

If you'd like to ask a question, just type it into the box at the upper right labeled, "Ask Uncle Gus."

Posted at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Backlinks

It can be easy to become pessimistic in the face of current political and cultural trends, even when one remembers prior examples of successful change for the better in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. For many of these trends to change, it will be necessary to challenge a large number of widespread and equally atrocious philosophical notions in such a way as to help a large number of individuals to see for themselves that they are mistaken, and to want to find a better alternative than the conventional "wisdom."

And yet, a couple of things I encountered recently make me optimistic that this can be done on the necessary scale within the few decades we can reasonably say we may have to do so. One key is finding the right place to start. Luckily, the opponents of capitalism often dangle it right before our eyes.

Why do I say this? Let's consider the examples.

The first is the following headline from Yahoo! News: "Hayward boosted BP's bottom line, but not safety." Yes, it is worrisome that something like this can actually make it into print, but what a golden opportunity this represents to defend the profit motive in ordinary conversation!

Should the spill come up, it would be incredibly easy to remember this headline, work it in, and say something like, "Hah! Obviously not. BP's bottom line would have been better served by more attention to safety." In doing so, one has helped challenge the laughable notion that the profit motive is somehow at odds with safety. Subsequent conversation may well introduce other, similar opportunities, including, for the better-informed, to discuss how government involvement actually made the problem worse.

Our intellectual establishment has degenerated to the point that it has become a tree full of low-hanging fruit like that, ripe for the plucking.

But what about higher-level abstractions? Take the following oratorical gem, which I found recently en route to other things:

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

In this fine example of gold-plated foolishness, the speaker, socialist Eugene V. Debs, is (among other things) plainly ignoring why criminals get locked up, and what might happen to him should he get what he is wishing for. Variants of this idea are commonly accepted, and are destroying civilization. And yet, despite the eloquence, the projection of moral certainty, and the destructiveness of the ideas behind this passage, my immediate reaction was to laugh out loud when I read this.

Why? Mainly, it was because I comprehend with immediacy how stupid this really is. In addition, though, it is because I and many others have the knowledge and moral certainty to make mincemeat out of this. Too, socialism has been around long enough that its moral appeal is spent, and there are plenty of examples to draw upon when talking about something like this. Today's socialists are far less eloquent.

Things are tough now, but aspects of causing cultural change are made simple by the smallness of the opponent, as well as by the fact that at least on some levels, many, if not most Americans remain open to reason. Question fallacies like these enough, and the questions will start to occur to Americans without our prompting.

And then we can move on to the less-obvious.

-- CAV

Posted at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Backlinks

Capital Flight

Financial regulations have become onerous to the point that German firms that once sought listings on the New York Stock Exchange in order to benefit from America's business climate are now fleeing -- to the relative freedom of their home country:

The double-digit costs [in millions --ed] of SEC compliance, however, are paltry compared the hundreds of millions of dollars in liability -- either through lawsuits or investigations and prosecutions -- to which a US listing can expose foreign firms. Shareholders can take companies to court far more easily under SEC regulations than those of Germany's stock market regulator. And the US Justice Department and the SEC have been more assertive in investigating publicly traded companies following a wave of investment fraud schemes...

...

"All it takes is one person in the company to make a mistake and (an executive) can go to jail." Executives who sign off on incorrect financial statements can face a sentence of up to 20 years. [one minor edit]

As reader Dismuke put it in an email, "[A]ll of this is because of laws Bush signed into effect. God help us all by the time the recently signed Wall Street 'reform' kicks in."

Several Interesting Posts

Part of why the Paul Graham article I encountered over the weekend resonated so much with me is that I'm being tugged in several directions mentally (and will be for several more weeks) -- right after a couple of weeks that saw me away from my computer most of the time.

If, like me, you haven't been by ReasonPharm or Thrutch in some time, go to either and start scrolling.

At ReasonPharm, I particularly recommend Stella Zawistowski's post on fetal damage:

Here's the problem I have: once the child is born, an actual human being has been harmed by the actions of its mother. Suppose, say, a woman were being treated for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, with thalidomide. (Yes, that thalidomide, the stuff that caused babies to be born with grotesque deformities in the '60s -- it also works against certain types of cancer.) Suppose further that she's of the right age to get pregnant and she ignores her doctor's warnings about the risk of birth defects. Nine months later, she gives birth to a baby with no arms. In that, case, it was the woman's action that directly caused an actual human being to have no arms. According to Dr. Peikoff, such an action would be monstrous and immoral (agreed!) but shouldn't be legally punishable (here's where I'm not sure).

...

But, to me that's a case for why the state must leave a woman alone during her pregnancy, ... However, if she takes a particular drug during her pregnancy and it can be proven after the child is born that her actions caused it irreparable harm, I maintain that a crime has been committed.

I have to admit that this is something I haven't considered before. Paul Hsieh's suggestion that tort law might provide a solution sounds reasonable to me.

And, over at Thrutch, it's orchid time again. I always enjoy the orchid pictures.

Paul Hsieh on ...

... "Donald Berwick, the Pro-Gun Control Lobby, and Paternalism," this time.

Lordy mercy! He's writing 'em faster than I can read them now.

New Blog Feature

Keep a sharp eye out for a new blog feature based on reader questions from Formspring. In a minor moment of inspiration yesterday evening, I came up with a good name for it, but that's a surprise. Until then, I didn't really have a particular plan in mind for these, but I do now.

If I keep getting questions like the three I got over the weekend, it ought to be fun.

Alfred Hitchcock did it with more finesse.

That's what she said.

-- CAV

Posted at 4:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Backlinks

After noticing, among other things, that startups seemed to get little done once they went into fund raising mode, venture capitalist Paul Graham makes one of the most profound identifications I have ever seen regarding the creative thought process:

Everyone who's worked on difficult problems is probably familiar with the phenomenon of working hard to figure something out, failing, and then suddenly seeing the answer a bit later while doing something else. There's a kind of thinking you do without trying to. I'm increasingly convinced this type of thinking is not merely helpful in solving hard problems, but necessary. The tricky part is, you can only control it indirectly. [In a note, he calls this "ambient thought". --ed]

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

Graham goes on to discuss two types of "top idea" -- by which he seems to mean something like "primary area of mental focus" -- that can easily come to dominate one's "ambient thinking", crowding out what one is really interested in. These are (1) the problem of raising money (i.e., when that problem is too conceptually distant from or practically disjointed from the desired "top idea"), and (2) disputes.

It is impossible to avoid either completely, but Graham illustrates examples of each and offers some suggestions for reaching the ideal situation of having the top idea you want in its proper place as often as possible.

I feel like I'm gilding the lily when I attempt to add anything to this essay, but I'll try anyway. I think the principle one needs to gain some measure of control in such situations as Graham describes is that values are hierarchical. This allows one to gauge whether a given, unwanted top idea is really worth all the attention one is giving to it and, if so, to realize the importance of dispatching with it quickly, even if it is something one does not particularly wish to deal with.

-- CAV

Posted at 5:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | Backlinks

Recently, I was honored to be the best man at the stateside ceremony celebrating the marriage of a good friend, who had met his wife while on linguistic field work in Mongolia and married her there not long before. The below is the toast I gave at the reception, with his permission. Names have been changed and a few other minor edits made.

I was a little worried beforehand that my sense of humor might not go over well due to cultural differences or, perhaps, that too much might get lost in translation, but it went over very well, much to my relief.

-- CAV


I'd like to start by thanking everyone who has made it here today to celebrate the wedding of Gerry and Sarah, particularly Sarah's family, who traveled all the way from Mongolia to be here. I'd also like to thank everyone who provided transportation; Bethany, for her assistance tonight; Bob, for the reading; and Mother Rita and Alice for officiating. Last but not least, I'd like to thank Gerry's sister, Maria, who, although she was unable to attend, did much of the planning. I am honored and especially happy to be here now to celebrate this wonderful day with my friend and his bride.

I first met Gerry about twenty years ago through a mutual friend in Dallas, where I had gone to college, but it was when I came back to Texas for grad school at Rice University several years later that we really became friends. A man for whom every intellectual pursuit is an adventure, he has, over the years, introduced me to lots of my favorite music, shared anecdotes and jokes with me that are often entertaining on multiple levels, and proven to be an excellent person to bat ideas around with. Whether I need an intelligent opinion or a good laugh, I can easily find one in a conversation -- or even an email exchange -- with Gerry.

It is this adventurous mind and sharp wit that brings me to a few short glimpses of Gerry and Sarah's romance in Mongolia. Until yesterday, I had not had the pleasure of meeting Sarah in person, but I had heard lots about her over the past couple of years through email.

To pursue his interest in the language and culture of the far away and mysterious land of Mongolia, Gerry moved to an apartment in Ulan Bator, and soon thereafter met a neighbor named Sarah when his friend Boudreaux's wife, Rachel, sent her over to retrieve some mutton from the freezer.

Soon after that introduction, Gerry mentioned that Sarah seemed to be interested in him. The interest turned out to be mutual, and seemed to increase over time. (In fact, I learned that it was Gerry's ready wit that first got Sarah's attention.) From another email I learned that Sarah not only taught chemistry, but was a published poet. Gerry was clearly excited to have met such a beautiful and accomplished woman. They also had lots in common. I quote the following from the end of one email: "[S]he loves Schwarzenegger movies, John Wayne westerns, and classical music!"

And she was getting serious about him, too. Like many women, including my wife when we were dating, Sarah undertook a campaign to make her boyfriend better looking. He gave her the same kind of warning I gave my wife: "You're never going to get George Clooney out of this."

It was good to see romance blossom from afar on the Asian steppes, but was it serious? It's certainly plain when you see the joy they bring to each other in person, but in an email correspondence, you have to pay attention to the little things. Did I begin to suspect that there was something special going on? No. It snuck up on me, but going back through my email, I found clues all over the place.

For example, Gerry's work in Mongolia involved getting people to read long lists of words into a recorder. He chose his new neighbor, Sarah, as his first victim. She read only 486 of the 1200 words on the list he gave her -- and in a sarcastic tone at that-- before boredom set in and she quit altogether. She must have been very keen on him, to have known about that going in!

And then, much later, I learned about Sarah's taste in pizza toppings, which is dubious to American sensibilities. Quoth Gerry, "[I] discovered that my dear wife's favorite pizza is tuna fish, onions, and extra cheese." And yes, he did try it!

We laugh about such stories because they make us happy. What most people would barely notice or shrug off comes to life in unexpected ways in the eyes of a lover.

Western wedding vows frequently include the phrase, "forsake all others." It's clear to me that this is unnecessary with Gerry and Sarah. Each has achieved a success with the other that would make Genghis Khan envious. As he once said, "It is not sufficient that I succeed -- all others must fail."

With that, let's raise our glasses in honor of Gerry and Sarah. May they always succeed where all others fail, in making each other very happy.

Posted at 4:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Backlinks