Curious

Photo: Laura Poitras / Praxis Films

A member of the US Senate was caught this week trying to make a rather conspicuous edit to Edward Snowden's Wikipedia page .

In a move sure to grind the gears of conspiracy theorists everywhere, a member of the US Senate recently edited Snowden’s Wikipedia page from describing him as a ‘dissident’ to a traitor, according to the entry’s changelog. The user’s IP address was quickly traced back to the US Senate.

It is not clear if the person is an active Senator, a staffer or an intern, but the change certainly came from the Senate.

The attempted edit, made August 2, was rejected by a moderator on the grounds it ‘seemed less than neutral.  

Read the whole article here ~ Daily Mail

PARTY

I made a comment the other day that perhaps deserves further attention: Our elected representatives represent the interests of party over the interests of their constituencies.

Washington

In what has come to be known as his farewell,  our first president published the following advice:

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

Partisan Politics

So the question is,  was he correct?   Are our representatives more representative of their party than their constituencies?

The Bard of Salford

John Cooper Clark

Is an English performance poet also known as the poet of punk.  I recently stumbled across this,  part of which was used in an ending of one of the episodes of The Sopranos.  Not sure why, but I kind of like it.  It does conjure up fairly vivid imagery of life in the council flats (projects) of England.  

Evidently Chicken Town

the bloody cops are bloody keen
to bloody keep it bloody clean
the bloody chief's a bloody swine
who bloody draws a bloody line
at bloody fun and bloody games
the bloody kids he bloody blames
are nowhere to be bloody found
anywhere in chicken town

the bloody scene is bloody sad
the bloody news is bloody bad
the bloody weed is bloody turf
the bloody speed is bloody surf
the bloody folks are bloody daft
don't make me bloody laugh
it bloody hurts to look around
everywhere in chicken town
the bloody train is bloody late
you bloody wait you bloody wait
you're bloody lost and bloody found
stuck in fucking chicken town

the bloody view is bloody vile
for bloody miles and bloody miles
the bloody babies bloody cry
the bloody flowers bloody die
the bloody food is bloody muck
the bloody drains are bloody fucked
the colour scheme is bloody brown
everywhere in chicken town

the bloody pubs are bloody dull
the bloody clubs are bloody full
of bloody girls and bloody guys
with bloody murder in their eyes
a bloody bloke is bloody stabbed
waiting for a bloody cab
you bloody stay at bloody home
the bloody neighbors bloody moan
keep the bloody racket down
this is bloody chicken town

the bloody pies are bloody old
the bloody chips are bloody cold
the bloody beer is bloody flat
the bloody flats have bloody rats
the bloody clocks are bloody wrong
the bloody days are bloody long
it bloody gets you bloody down
evidently chicken town
the bloody train is bloody late
you bloody wait you bloody wait
you're bloody lost and bloody found
stuck in fucking chicken town

Wife Cooks, Husband Camps

Michelle Catalano had been researching lentils online,  this led to a Google search for pressure cookers, meanwhile her son had been researching the Boston Marathon bombings and her husband was looking for backpacks.

You see where this is going.

This activity led to a visit by six armed members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Atlantic Wire

Salon

The Guardian

Thus ends the Great American Experiment

 

It is, perhaps, a fact provocative of sour mirth that the Bill of Rights was designed trustfully to prohibit forever two of the favorite crimes of all known governments: the seizure of private property without adequate compensation and the invasion of the citizen’s liberty without justifiable cause…It is a fact provocative of mirth yet more sour that the execution of these prohibitions was put into the hands of courts, which is to say, into the hands of lawyers, which is to say, into the hands of men specifically educated to discover legal excuses for dishonest, dishonorable and anti-social acts.

H. L. Mencken

The greatest fear of America’s Founding Fathers has been realized: The U.S. Constitution has been unable to thwart the corrosive dynamics of majority-rule democracy, which in turn has mangled the Constitution beyond recognition. The real conclusion of the American Experiment is that democracy ultimately undermines liberty and leads to tyranny and oppression by elected leaders and judges, their cronies and unelected bureaucrats.  All of this is done in the name of “the people” and the “general welfare,” of course.  But in fact, democracy oppresses the very demos in whose name it operates, benefiting string-pullers within the Establishment and rewarding the political constituencies they manage by paying off special interests with everyone else’s money forcibly extracted through taxation.

Lawrence Hunter

We Know Where You Are

Photo: Joe Ravi

No Expectation of Privacy

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the government can extract historical communications data from telecommunications carriers without a warrant.  It ruled that this activity was not unconstitutional because location data is clearly a "business record". This ruling applies only to the region of the 5th Circuit, but other cases are pending before 4th and 11th Circuit Courts. ~ New York Times

This has nothing to do with GPS

This technology is not dependent upon a phones GPS system, but instead relies upon tower contact and antenna sector information, although the records may contain GPS data if the function is enabled on the phone.

Just for Fun

If you curious, go to antenna search and type in your address or any address for a complete mapping of all cellphone towers and antennas within 4 miles of the entered address.  The searches take anywhere from a few seconds up to a few minutes depending on the density of towers and antennas... my home address only took a few seconds (two towers) although my search on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC took several minutes... undoubtedly as my request was most likely also routed to many federal agencies ;)

The picture is all the explanation you need

The New York Times reports that President Obama is reviving an old proposal to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent (and 25 percent for manufacturers). Obama's push to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent comes less than a year after he raised the top individual income tax rate, paid by many small businesses, to 39.6 percent. In a speech delivered Tuesday afternoon, Obama did not explain why he thinks it's a sound economic idea to raise the top marginal tax rate on small businesses but lower it for corporations. ~Weekly Standard

The speech was made at an Amazon distribution center,  a distribution center than only pays $11/hour.  Amazon had recently announced its intent to hire 5000 more workers at 17 centers around the country, undoubtedly also at $11/hour. ~NYT

These are not the jobs America needs

These are the jobs the administration needs to make the employment numbers look good and make you think we're doing better than we actually are.  Small business pays 40%, big business pays 28%... of course big business makes larger political contributions than small business does.  How about we apply this logic to the personal income tax?  The more you make, the less you pay?

PASSWORDS

Can I get a little Salt with that Algorithm and Database?

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders.  Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo declined to comment on whether or not they had received requests, Apple, Facebook, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast did not respond to queries.

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.  C/Net 

And you thought they were just listening to your phone calls and reading your email.

Governor Christie, New Jersey

 

Chris Christie, W.H. would like to give you the finger.

 

In honor of Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey,  I'd like to revive the Western Hero Finger Award.

 

Freedom is not an esoteric, intellectual debate and I'd like to point out that your chances of being the victim of terrorism are 1:20,000,000 while your chances of being a victim of violent crime in Newark are 1:84 so before you decide that the risk of the rest of us keeping our constitutionally protected freedoms is too great... 

FIX YOUR OWN F-ING SHITHOLE!  

Terrorism is the least of YOUR problems.

"this strain of libertarianism"

“The next attack that comes, that kills thousands of Americans as a result, people are going to be looking back on the people having this intellectual debate and wondering whether they put. …” said Mr. Christie, before cutting himself off.

FINISH YOUR SENTENCE

Me, I'm curious where governor Christie was going with this... what is the rest of the sentence?

"... wondering whether they put freedom ahead of safety"?

Would be my best guess given the context of the discussion

CAUSE THEY WORK

“President Obama has done nothing to change the policies of the Bush administration in the war on terrorism. And I mean practically nothing,” he said. “And you know why? ’Cause they work.” 

No one said they didn't work,  we said they were morally and ethically wrong.  I think you would find support for the efficacy of the measures from such diverse organizations as the MGB and Staatssicherheit.  

FRONT LINES

At a Thursday forum with Republican governors in Aspen, Colo., Christie spoke with disgust about “this strain of libertarianism” from people “not on the front line” who were criticizing tactics in the war on terror. ~ Slate

A picture of Mr. Christie "on the front lines"

On September 11, 2001 Mr. Christie was firmly entrenched in the front lines of the lobbying firm Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci.  The photo above is of Mr. Christie as the US Attorney for the District of New Jersey, an office he did not take until January 17th, 2002.

I got a good laugh out of this.  Aside from the name of his lobbying firm causing me to recollect the old joke about Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe... the mere mental picture of Mr. Christie on "the front lines" made me guffaw, although I suppose he would provide decent cover for our troops.

But I shouldn't make fun... Mr. Christie did do battle with Spear, Leeds & Kellog, the Ashcroft Group, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, some serious terrorist heavyweights.  

Christie's big terrorism case was that of Hemant Lakhani, an Indian rice trader and sari salesman convicted of illegal arms trading after purchasing a fake surface-to-air missile from a Russian intelligence officer in "an incredible triumph in the war against terrorism" in:

The arrest of Hemant Lakhani, a supposed terrorist mastermind caught red-handed attempting to acquire a surface-to-air missile. Only later did the government admit that the "plot" consisted of an FBI informant begging Lakhani to find him a missile, while a Russian intelligence officer called up Lakhani and offered to sell him one. ~ The Nation

A NO VOTE for Christie

I am a libertarian and a Republican, and I will not vote for Chris Christie, not in a primary and not in a national election.  

How about you?

Classically Summer

Summer - Vivaldi

 

The Waltz of Flowers - Tchaikovsky

 

 

A Midsummer's Night Dream - Mendelssohn

 

 

I Thought Obama Saved Detroit?

It's too easy to blame the decline and fall of Detroit on the Democrat party, progressivism and modern-day liberals. That goes without saying. They've had Detroit in their strangle hold since Ike was president. Sure, the corporations have their share of blame, but there is nothing conservative about them.

Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government:  The Combustible Mixture that Blew Up Detroit

Big Business is now spilling over with Crony Crapitalists who would piss their pants if they had to make it in a free, unrigged market. Big Labor is made up mostly of apple-shaped bureaucrats who don't know the meaning of labor, but such is the state of things today in the Absurd States of America. And Big Government never met a law or regulation it didn't like.  Selling exemptions to them is a money-making machine no DC chiseler or state capital grandee in his or her right mind would want to dismantle.

And Detroit is the inevitable result.

Jonathan Chait is a reliable liberal, but I read him because he is prone to sporadic outbursts of candor refreshing but rare in today's party-line, doctrinally-pure liberals. Also, he's a good writer and he makes me look up words like "synecdoche," which I learned from The Free Dictionary, means "a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part, as in 50 head of cattle for 50 cows, or the army for a soldier."

Jonathan Chait is right. Detroit is America writ small:

Detroit is a synecdoche for America — not America’s future, but its past.

Everything that happened in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century happened in and around Detroit, but moreso.

He describes the racial downward spiral, the white flight, and the increasing racial animosity between the city and the 'burbs, concluding...

The worse Detroit got, the more whites hated and feared, fueling black racial paranoia, which made the city worse still.

Also, I love his sense of humor:

Some national commentators recently suggested that Mitt Romney be brought in to turn around the city, which is a bit like suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu would make a great Prime Minister for the Palestinians — hey, he’s from around there!

He also throws in this trite campaign phrase from one of the nation's greatest job destroyers, liberal Democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm:

“The only thing that should come between Detroit and Michigan is a comma.”

Chait grew up in a Detroit suburb, so he brings real-life insight to the article. It's an educational read blessedly devoid of stale liberal claptrap and cracked shibboleths that such liberal articles are usually littered with.

See also:
Why Liberals Won't Face Facts on Detroit
Stalled Motor City

Talk is Cheap

If Chris Matthews wishes to apologize collectively for whites, then he should have long ago moved to an integrated neighborhood, put his children in integrated schools, and walked to work through a black neighborhood to get to know local residents. Anything else, and his apology remains what it is: cheap psychological recompense for his own elite apartheid.
-- Victor Davis Hanson

I would only add that if President Obama, Al notSharpton, Jesse Jackasson and the rest of the noisy spokemouths  wants to speak for all blacks, they should live the black experience that tragically too many blacks (and whites as well) live every day.  Put their kids in shitty schools gripped in the stranglehold of teachers syndicates, worry about if their children and grandchildren will make it home without being shot, encountering a gang, or having drugs pushed on them.

You can bet your ass the Obama children have no gangsta friends and that their parents demand they do their homework and speak proper English, as their elegant and well-spoken parents do.  I'd also bet the farm that neither young lady uses the N-word, either ending in 'er' or 'a.'

I do cut Jackson, Sharpton and Mr. and Mrs. Obama some slack on the issue, because they did come up from humble beginnings.  Jackson and Sharpton faced the dogs and the firehoses, and I respect that.

But PC surrender victims like Matthews and his ilk auto-fellating themselves with such warm feel-good orgasmo-blabber should make any thinking person sick to his or her stomach.  And that goes for young men and women like Toure', whose worse experience was perhaps being surveilled by a marshmallow sales person at a Mervyn's department store.

But, such is the state of America today.  Conversation?  How is that possible when the Attorney General, fresh from selling weapons to Mexican Drug Gangs and lying to Congress, calls us cowards, as gasbags like Matthews and Sharpton suck all available oxygen from the conversation?

DOOM & GLOOM

0 - 1700

There was a rather depressing article in NY Mag recently about macroeconomic growth and the anomaly of the industrial revolution. It's a fairly long (5-page) article but the basic gist of it is as follows:

Between the time of ancient Rome and say about 1700 in the west not much changed for the vast majority of us.  Believe it or not, the quality of life for the average family in Rome was not all that much different than that of the average family in Britain at the dawn of the industrial revolution.  Everything we know and have come to expect in life has pretty much been defined by the period between about 1750 and 1970 which was one of unprecedented growth.  Now we get to the depressing part... That exponential growth from generation to generation is over, it was a blip, nothing more than an anomaly and while the after effects of the industrial revolution will continue to spread throughout the world,  eventually we will reach another stasis where life will be pretty much the same for the next few thousand years or so.  Are we there yet?

Innovation and the Future

Now I don't take the dismal view of the future that Robert Gordon does,  but I will venture to guess that economic life 100 years from now will be very different from today.  The question  then is are we in for stagnation or a renaissance?  What are your thoughts?

It's a Boy

Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

Heir to the Throne

I have to admit, I'm fairly indifferent when it comes to royalty although my wife, talking on the phone with a friend, was somewhat excited at the announcement of the birth .  When I was in London I did stand at the base of that statue and before those gilded gates, but frankly was more interested in the architecture than the occupants. Nevertheless, some are excited and some sources estimate that the birth will stimulate around $400 million in economic activity for the British economy.

So what do you all think of this new baby who may one day be By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith?  All seems kind of silly if you ask me.

Are We Better Off?

(c) Finntann

Are we better off today?

The house above was my grandfather's house, he was a Stationary Engineer and a union member.  He lived in that house with my grandmother, a housewife, and ten kids.  He had steady work through the depression, earning twenty-five dollars a week (that's five dollars a day... or less) working on the steam plant at the YMCA.


FT made two interesting observations in yesterday's thread:

It was INDIVIDUAL VISION, INGENUITY, INITIATIVE, CREATIVITY and AMBITION that developed the PRIVATE INDUSTRIES that BUILT this country and made it as great as it was -- "The Envy of the World" -- as it was called in my youth.

My grandpa, who never earned more than twenty bucks a WEEK, raised EIGHT CHILDREN, and was able to save enough to build a three-storey house with a wraparound porch on ACREAGE in New Jersey with an apple and peach orchard and room for a large vegetable garden.

I easily make more than fifty times what he did, and yet could not afford a house like that (unless apparently given yesterday's post I am willing to move to Detroit!).

So are we better off?

Medically we are mostly better off,  the ten children he lived with were out of 13 that survived childhood, two died in infancy and one at 3 years old.  Although my grandfather did live to 68,  an age today that one wouldn't be overly surprised to hear that one died at.  His father made it to 70, his mother to 76,  and his wife made it to the then ripe old age of 84. He was one of eight children, six of whom lived into adulthood, although he did have a sister who died of tuberculosis at the young age of 28.

Physically, one has to wonder.  An Australian study of 19th century lifestyle habits revealed that the average person then spent three times more calories going about their daily business than we do today.  The study also points out that these were normal everyday townsfolk, merchants and the like, not lumberjacks or ditch diggers who would spend five times the energy we do today.  In other words, these weren't couch potatoes.

But what about quality of life, you may ask.  I don't know for certain, but I have plenty of old family photos going back to the start of the 20th century depicting picnics, baseball games in parks, trips to the shore (beach for those of you not east coasters), etc.  All normal run of the mill things we do today (or not if we are too busy). I do notice one thing though,  there are far more people gathered together in the old photographs than I find in mine today.

Innovation

There is an organization here in Colorado known as the Stapleton Foundation and on the grounds of the old Denver airport they are constructing a series of new and innovative Stapleton communities.  Communities with parks and open space,  front porches, designed for pedestrians where you can walk to the local grocery store and local shops and tied to public transportation.  They call it "walkable design" and they call it innovative.  Funny, sounds like the neighborhood I grew up in.

Are we that much different?

I leave you with this,  a road trip in 1921... have things really changed all that much?

(c) Finntann

I was a little bit skeptical about the date when I saw the "I'd walk a mile for a camel" ad but did a little research and it does jive with the date.
 
  

Have we got a deal for you

Charles Fisher House, Photo by: Andrew Jameson

Boston-Edison

Once the premier neighborhood in Detroit, home to such illustrious folk as Henry Ford, S.S. Kresge, Benjamin Seigel, Walter Briggs, and of course Charles Fisher as noted above, is the largest historic residential district in the country.  I was amazed to find the prices that some of these homes are now going for...  how would you like a six bedroom, six bath, almost six thousand square foot home for only $126,000 on the same street that Seigel, Kresge, and Briggs lived?

Check out some of the properties available at the Historic Boston Edison Association website.

Farmland?

Some enterprising people have come up with the brilliant idea of converting abandoned city lots into farmland.  The most expansive proposal being Hantz Woodlands,  to turn roughly 1500 vacant and abandoned housing lots into a 170 acre commercial hardwood woodland.  People have looked at everything from golf courses to amusement parks

What innovative use can you come up with?

The MOTOWN History of Detroit

We start out in the vibrant heyday of Detroit, The Motor City:

Dancing in the Street with Martha & Vandellas

For Detroit's Politicians over the years

We continue the story with Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles

The Fall of Detroit

We get to more recent history with Inner City Blues by Marvin Gaye

Modern Detroit

For the past few years Detroit is represented best by Barrett Strong's Money (That's what I want)

Detroit Today

With the filing of Chapter 9 bankruptcy what can I say other than Ain't Too Proud To Beg by The Temptations

 

 

The Paris of the West

Photo: Albert Duce

Largest Municipal Bankruptcy in US History

The City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy yesterday in the face of a two billion dollar immediate shortfall and roughly 20 billion in long term debt.

The unemployment rate sits at 16% and the population has decreased 63% from its high in the 1950's from roughly two million to 700,000 today. The population has decreased 28% since 2000 and the tax base can no longer support the city's debt and expenses.

The average police response time in Detroit is 58 minutes and only 8.7% of crimes are solved.

30% of the city's police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances are not functional.

40% of the city's street lights are not functioning.

There are over 78,000 abandoned properties in the city.

Of the 20 billion in city debt, roughly half is owed to two retirement systems, the General Retirement System and the Police & Fireman Retirement System which have sued to block a reduction in pensions.

America's Disgrace

What do you do with a city no one wants to live in?

While abandoned homes may be familiar to most of us,  the concept of abandoned skyscrapers is almost surreal.  We give away 50 billion in foreign aid every year while what was once one of America's premier cities looks like this.  It's not hard to look at Detroit on Google Maps satellite imagery and find entire blocks bereft of houses or blocks with only one or two left, and that view gives you no indication of what is abandoned yet still standing. If you need help getting started just google "Alfred Street and John R Street, Detroit, Michigan" and scroll around.

The intent of this post isn't to point fingers and place blame, for as G.K Chesterton said:

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

The question is, what the hell do we do about it?

 

You Are Being Watched

On May 16th you left your office at 11:13 am,  at 11:27 you were at the McDonald's on First Street,  you returned to your office at 12:05 pm.

We're not quite there yet, but soon will be:

Police across the USA are using automatic cameras to read and snap digital photos of millions of car license plates to help solve crimes, but in the process stores information on millions of innocent people, the American Civil Liberties Union says in a report out Wednesday.

License plate scanners are "in effect, government location tracking systems recording the movements of many millions of innocent Americans in huge databases," said ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump, the report's lead author.  USA TODAY

So, how do you like being tracked?

 

The Most Overrated Things

I've been reorienting my priorities over the past year, so an article containing a list of the most overrated things grabbed my attention. I lost the link to the below list, but you can find similar lists all over the internet with a little Yahooing






These were the items on the list I agree with:

Celebrity Gossip
Professional sports
TV
Facebook
Starbucks coffee
Nightclub
Champagne
Movie Stars
iPhone
New Years Eve
Justin Bieber

I'm agnostic about these...

Extravagant Weddings
Getting a Ph.D
IQ

... because it all depends. If you can afford an extravagant wedding, I say go for it. Same for a Ph.D. Basically, if you're doing it with your own money, it's your own business.

I also don't discount IQ. Intelligence is important, but there are also valuable smarts that are not measured by standardized testing. Release an intelligent Ph.D among Mongolian yak herders, or into the wilds of Yemen or inner city America, and see who's the smart one...

I disagree with these items that appeared on the list:

Career
Religious sentiments
Sex

Career is important. Having a rewarding career can be a source of happiness and satisfaction. It can provide a measure of autonomy that comes from earning your own money and determining your own future.

I don't even know why religious sentiments made the list. What do people have against others holding their own beliefs?

And sex... Well, it goes without saying, and it depends on why it's on the list. I  wouldn't call it overrated, but I do believe it's overexposed.  It's great when people keep it to themselves, but do we really need so much attention on it in our culture?

My Short List of Overrated Things:

Automobiles
Anything emanating from government
Politicians
Political pundits
Conventional wisdom
Arguments over sports
Partisan arguments
Eating out

My Short List of Underrated Things:

Classic Literature
Philosophy
Playing a musical instrument
Spending time unplugged
Freeware and shareware
Home cooking

What's on your list of overrated and underrated things?