Sunday, April 25. 2010
I have always thought that Cape Dory made fine boats.This pretty 33' Cape Dory is for sale.
Psalm 23
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Saturday, April 24. 2010
A reader minded us that the Polka and the button box came to North America via eastern European immigrants, and became Tex-Mex in a happy if unlikely union with the Mexican sound. Always was fond of the Texas Tornados, with the late greats Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender, plus Flaco Jiminez, Augie Meyers, et al. A motley crew, and good fun.
Got your Camaro?
I know The Barrister has fond memories of the old Bar Cars on The New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad (now Metro-North). I have some such memories, also.
People smoking and drinking Scotch, and the bow-tied, white-jacketed bartender who knew everybody's choice. A cozy cheerful place on the 6:14 from Grand Central. A smoke-filled decompression chamber between work and home.
The famously alcohol-fueled and adultery-fueled bar car on the branch line from Stamford up to New Canaan and Ridgefield, CT used to have their own web site, but I can't find it now.
Photo below from the NYT photo essay. I never saw a bar car like that one, though. In my time, usually more packed with people (including chic gals and MILFs on their way home from shopping and hair-dos at Kenneth's) and so full of fragrant and wholesome tobacco smoke that you couldn't see from one end to the other.
Addendum: A reader has kindly sent us a Bar Car site
For the cranky contrarians among us (h/t, Blair):
 Genius Stanford educational experts started a charter school. Their ideas didn't work.
But will they learn anything from their experience?
I continue to believe that the average schoolkid learned more in the US in 1830 in one-room schoolhouses with hornbooks and the teacher armed with a good paddle, with the teacher supported by donations either in kind (eg firewood, or housing a teacher or providing him or her food) or in cash, by the parents of the kids who ran, and paid for, their school.
And don't tell me "it's a more complicated world" now. It is not. Try training a horse, building a barn, making a living on a farm, making a winter coat from a couple of sheep, or smithing every iron item a family might need. Life is easier now. We don't even need to make our own beer, and 99.9% of us do not even understand how computers work. Including me.
Readin', writin', and 'rithmetic haven't changed one bit since then.
 Dr. Roy Spencer's new book. Related: Global warming scare industry suppresses benefits of CO2
Unbelievable: CNN promotes AGW-volcano nonsense. And Newsweek: The 100 places doomed by global warming.
Carpe Diem: Environmentalism as religion. Yes, it is a primitive paganism.
The New Coke in Bolivia. Of course, the original American Coke "tonic" had some coke in it too.
Paul Ryan: Obama Leading America on ‘Dangerous Path’ to Welfare State. Yup.
Theory: South Korean ship sunk by crack squad of 'human torpedoes'
Sissy says it's about "Fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets" . Related, It's the year for GOP Reformers
Related, Kudlow: It's America's Constitutionalist Revolt
From Goldstein's “The next Obamacare target: Your bacon sandwich”
The argument that an increased federal involvement in the health care industry will over time lead to ever more intrusive regulations on our bodies “for our own good” is one I’ve been making for years now. For my troubles, I’ve been called “paranoid” and “foaming” — and been accused of backing the kind of dogmatic libertarianism that would allow businesses to poison customers while the market sorted things out.
Of course, such a complaint is ludicrous. My point has always been that giving the government such a vested financial interest is dangerous precisely because the feds wield the kind of regulatory power that can take away our freedoms, all the while justifying such decisions based on a combination of what they’d call sound fiscal responsibility and improving “public health.” The result? Liberal fascism.
Fannie & Freddie Reform Excluded from Finance Bill Warmth causes CO2. From Item #21 here:
Global warmings result in an increase in atmospheric CO2 as warmed oceans emit their dissolved CO2. Global coolings result in a decrease in atmospheric CO2 as cooling oceans absorb atmospheric CO2. Temperature variations precede those CO2 variations by several hundred to a thousand years, thus indicating that it is the temperature variations that cause atmospheric CO2 changes and not the reverse. The human contribution to the cycle is trivial and furthermore the so-called “greenhouse effect”, touted as the mechanism by which atmospheric CO2 controls weather, has long been known to be devoid of physical reality. Accordingly, proposed measures of “carbon control” will have no effect on the weather but instead will seriously damage the Nation’s economy and the reliability of its electric generating capacity: a system that is currently working quite satisfactorily and is entirely independent of foreign sources of energy. Clearly, that system for supplying the Nation with its essential need for reliable electricity “ain’t broke”…and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
The World is Too Much With Us (1807)
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Friday, April 23. 2010
Mr. Spock Set to Hang Up His Pointy Ears
I was there when Spock uttered his first iconic Live long and prosper.
We'd heard about some cool new space series coming up and eagerly tuned in for the first episode. It certainly did not disappoint. The show looks pretty corny now, but everything about it was state-of-the-art for 1966, from the concept to the design of the ship to the aliens.
And over the ensuing half century, while starlets and action heroes rose and fell, one of the true constants in the Hollywood universe was the logical mind of Spock. Whole continents could roil in upheaval, but Spock would know what to do.
He was an anchor. A hope. A symbol that one day mankind would cast aside its petty grievances and jealousies and grow up.
Yes, I was there when Spock uttered his first iconic Live long and prosper.
And his last.
J. Robert Smith has exactly the right metaphor at American Thinker. Who gets to be Zoo-Keeper, though?
Speaking of zoos, Dalrymple recently visited some government zoos in the UK, and it was not pretty. Old steel towns where the main jobs involve welfare administration.
Editor's note: I dropped this Sen. Feinstein post since nobody could find any confirmation of the quote -
Via Chicago Boyz:
…There is also the problem of the elite’s lack of humility. I’m a pretty smart guy, and I think I could do a decent job of re-ordering the world if given absolute power.
But … It wouldn’t be right. It is not up to me to tell my fellow humans how to live. I think bowling, for instance, is stupid, though many people enjoy it. What/who gives me the right to tell bowlers that they should be going to the symphony instead?
But nobody is forcing me to go bowling and nobody is using my tax dollars to subsidize bowling, so I don’t care. Not my business, and not a problem. This is the essence of liberty.
For a thought experiment, substitute guns, french fries, or abortion for bowling above and see how you feel. The realization that you do not have the Moral Authority to try to construct a perfect world that eliminates what you dislike is the essence of humility. Many very bright people lack humility.
I am not kidding. A Dad explains Obamacare to a little kid.
 Well, no problem. I am not "offended." Maybe a bit hurt, but that's OK too.
Christians are used to this sort of thing. Worldly powers are never too comfortable with the Christian message.
I like Franklin Graham very much.
Hunters sue guide over bad trip. h/t, Overlawyered
No Surprise: Times Readership Easily Most Liberal of Any 'Objective' News Outlet
Update: Last Atlantic Yards Property Owner Agrees to Sell His Land Under Threat of Condemnation
VDH: Obama and the New Civility
Derbyshire:
The dirty little secret of Wall Street is that investing isn’t a whole lot different from speculating. In the end, it’s all a casino. If you can’t handle that, get a savings account.
About that GM debt repayment
"Raise My Taxes! Raise My Taxes! Raise My Taxes!"
England the least patriotic country
Who drinks the most booze, England or Ireland? Hey, who's the designated drunk tonite?
Pajamas: Bigots to the Left of Me, Dingbats on the Right
Britbart quoted at Class Val:
the greatest thing that the left does, and it uses the the media to do it, is that it accuses you of what they're doing to you.
Thursday, April 22. 2010
We have recently commented, several times, about our admiration for the brains and savvy of the Goldman Sachs crew. Here's more evidence of it.
Yes, I do own shares. Foolish not to.
Am Thinker: San Francisco Tea Party Out-Alinskys the Left
Maybe Chris Christie has learned from Alinsky too. Quote:
In the state that has the nation’s fourth-highest percentage (66) of public employees who are unionized, he has joined the struggle that will dominate the nation’s domestic policymaking in this decade — to break the ruinous collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers whose affections the officials purchase with taxpayers’ money.
No wonder labor leaders are going berserk.
Christie is doing what Arnold never had the cojones to do - to go after the unholy alliance of pols and government unions.
We're at kind of a juncture right now as different CPU configurations make market inroads. Traditionally, we've just had one big CPU chip and every effort by the manufacturers was thrown into making it faster and faster.
However, because an increase in speed means an accompanying increase in heat, the industry has hit something of a wall lately and now you're hearing about "dual-core" and "quad-core" CPU chips as the manufacturers take a fresh approach.
In brief, a dual-core CPU is basically two CPU chips in one, and certain applications will correspondingly run twice as fast. Quad-core CPUs are another doubling up of CPU power, although in general they only increase certain functions 25% over a dual-core system and are considered something of a 'marketing gimmick' by us geeks.
To note is that it's up to the programs, themselves, as to whether or not they can utilize the multiple CPUs.
Here are two video compression programs that do the exact same thing:
And, as expected, the first one does the chore in half the time, ten minutes compared to twenty. Run it six times and that's an hour saved.
As to identifying your own system, simply right-click on the Task Bar, open Task Manager, click on the 'Performance' tab and look. If you have two windows, like the above, it's a dual-core system.
As such, if you do any kind of routine CPU-intensive process, you might want to take a peek at ye olde Task Manager and make sure the program's up to speed — literally. In the case up above, I had used DVD2One for years, but as soon as I bought the new dual-core rig and saw how DVD2One performed in Task Manager, it went straight to the scrap heap. If it had just been one of those 'percentage stories', where one program outperforms another by a blistering 2.38%, I wouldn't have bothered.
But twice just can't be argued with.
 Do something brainless, useless, and ignorant today to make yourself feel good! Like this gal.
After all, appreciating ourselves and finding our own redeeming "meaning" for our pointless lives are the most important things, aren't they?
"Is democratic behavior that which democracies like to engage in, or is it behavior that will preserve a democracy?"
Aristotle. Discussed at Reb
|
