I’m not sure I agree with the use of “boredom” in this article. “Idleness” isn’t quite right, either. Perhaps, “unplanned” or “unstructured” time is better.
But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods — while checking e-mail, while changing lanes on the highway — to consider whether we are giving up a good thing? We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works. Granted, many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing. But is accomplishment really the point of life? There is a strong argument that boredom — so often parodied as a glassy-eyed drooling state of nothingness — is an essential human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science, and even love.
“If you think of boredom as the prelude to creativity, and loneliness as the prelude to engagement of the imagination, then they are good things,” said Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Sudbury psychiatrist and author of the book “CrazyBusy.” “They are doorways to something better, as opposed to something to be abhorred and eradicated immediately.” …
That means steeping in uninterrupted boredom may be the first step toward feeling connected. It “may take a little bit of tolerance of an initial feeling of boredom, to discover a comfort level with not being linked in and engaged and stimulated every second,” said Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor of social work at New York University and co-author of “The Loss of Sadness.” “There’s a level of knowing yourself, of coming back to baseline, and knowing who you truly are.”
In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the “burn” rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.
Beyond 2008, working with “best-case” and “realistic-moderate” scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.
Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.
Think Progress » 452: Number of days President Bush has spent at his ranch in Crawford, TX. His stay there this past weekend with the the Danish prime minister marked Bush’s 70th visit as president. President Ronald Reagan, one of the modern presidency’s most “famous vacationer[s],” spent just 335 days at his ranch in Santa Barbara, CA.
Think Progress » Bush incoherently praises Odierno for ’snatching defeat.’
President Bush thanked Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who until recently served as the No. 2 commander in Iraq, for his service in Iraq. In attempting to apply the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” Bush offered this nonsensical praise for Odierno:
I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeatout of the jaws of those who were trying to defeat us in Iraq.
Along with his signature bright white hair, the most striking aspects of Senator John McCain’s physical appearance are his puffy left cheek and the scar that runs down the back of his neck.
The marks are cosmetic reminders of the melanoma surgery he underwent in August 2000. …
Mr. McCain has had four melanomas. …
The most serious melanoma was spotted on his temple in 2000 by the attending physician at the United States Capitol after it had escaped the eye of Mr. McCain’s personal physician at Mayo Clinic Scottsdale. (The Capitol physician also spotted another melanoma that was in situ.) …
In Mr. McCain’s case, the Mayo Clinic team of surgeons reconstructed the skin and soft tissue overlying the left temple, face and neck by pulling up skin to close the wound. …
Mr. McCain is occasionally asked on the campaign trail about his age. But he is almost never asked about his health.
Think Progress » KBR Dodges $500 Million In Social Security And Medicare Taxes In Cheney-Backed Scheme
No private contractor has financially profited from the Iraq war more than Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which until last year was a subsidiary of Halliburton. The firm currently has more than 21,000 employees in Iraq, and between 2004 and 2006, received more than $16 billion in government contracts — far more than any other corporation.
Yet KBR hasn’t been passing on these enormous profits to American taxpayers or even its own employees, thanks to a plan that Vice President Cheney helped establish. Today, the Boston Globe reports that KBR has avoided paying more than $500 million “in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies” based in the Cayman Islands. …
KBR’s practices are extreme, even compared to its competitors. Other top Iraq war contractors — including Bechtel and Parsons — pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their employees.
The Bush administration has aided this tax dodging. One of KBR’s shell companies is Overseas Administrative Services, which was set up two months after Cheney became Halliburtion’s CEO in 1995. Since at least 2004, the Pentagon has known about KBR’s practices, but chosen to ignore the issue.
Change Could Usher in Extinction CHANGE IS in the air— or so we hear. That is the mantra. All our presidential candidates, to some extent or another, are promising change. But change to what, and for whom? Plans for additional governmental control over human activity seems to be the theme. Education and health care are major topics. Yet increasing bureaucratic involvement in these areas has resulted in poor performance, fraud and a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. Producers of current energy supplies will be hampered by more regulations and taxed to near extinction in favor of subsidized “designer” alternative fuel companies. Damn the market, the politicians and environmentalists know what is best. Do not question them, they are inspired and determined and not deterred by facts. Producers of goods and services will face energy shortages, government manipulation of the money supply and blatant political favoritism. Businesses asking for handouts will be the norm. Integrity will become an antiquated notion. Stores filled with food, clothing and consumer goods will be a thing of the past. Shortages will abound, lines will form and primitive man will emerge. We may be the most prosperous nation in history to self-destruct and the last generation to enjoy what we have today. What we eat, drink, drive and do will be controlled by our saviors. Crises will be constant and control absolute. What is left of property rights and individual liberties will finally be laid to rest. We will live in fear, unable to think beyond our own survival. As in most of the world, and throughout the history of man, life will be brutal and brief. AB
In Mr. McCain’s case, the Mayo Clinic team of surgeons reconstructed the skin and soft tissue overlying the left temple, face and neck by pulling up skin to close the wound. … 
Mr. McCain is occasionally asked on the campaign trail about his age. But he is almost never asked about his health.