Saturday, July 31. 2010
Who do you think has the firmer handshake? The fellow has some strange submissive, unmanly impulses. Perhaps Harvard removed his testosterone and replaced it with a dose of narcissism. This via Vanderleun via Fausta:
Thanks, Opie, for these photos with the data, which came in over the transom. I cannot source it, but kudos to whoever put this together. It is interesting not only to see the different sorts of families (extended, nuclear, large, small, desert, middle-class) but to see what they typically eat in a week.
Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide. Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07. (I guess that included the wine and beer)
Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo: Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53
Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo. Food expenditure for one week: $31.55
On continuation page below, USA, Bhutan, Mexico, Poland, Chad, and Italy:
Continue reading "Food and Families around the world"
It’s not for me to argue Catholic teachings, but my friend The Anchoress Elizabeth Scalia’s reply to Anne Rice's problem with whether Christians are living her political liberalism probably comes as close as to the Catholicism I learned being raised a Jew in a Catholic and Jewish neighborhood. Rice, like many or most of various religions, confuses politics with faith or, worse, substitutes politics for faith.
There’s a universal message, whether from scripture or Pope, that works: Open your heart and G-d will walk in. Close your mind and G-d’s presence is clouded, at least until your heart is set free.
Struggle with that as you wish or need to find meaning and salvation. Struggle is important in building strengths and to advance. That allows the confidence and trust that ultimately works, to accept the faith in man and in our actions being truer to G-d’s missions for us.
There’s a practical measure each can easily know, if not denied: Are you living life’s struggles with contentment instead of anguish or anger.
There are varying interpretations of whom Jacob wrestles, the result of which is his renaming as Israel. There’s agreement, however, that wrestling spirits with spirit is transforming.
A poem I just dashed off (revised in keeping with the form):
I
Am Nothing
Struggle Makes Us
Strong Enough To Accept
The Guiding Light To Make
Something Better Of I
G-d’s Better I
Is All
Us
Rembrandt's depiction of Jacob's wrestling is one of engagement, not separation.
Those holes are rocket launchers, also found on custom cabs and ambulances.
 Brilliant ad for Linda McMahon in CT. We think she has a real chance against Blumenthal.
Tim Pawlenty talks. He seems like Mr. Rogers.
A Dagestan wedding. Good grief.
Bruce told me about the 1949 movie, The Third Man. Sounds wonderful.
A reader sent this link which explains Gramsci's cultural hegemony
More about the sleazy Sherrods
Powerline: Whatever happened to the Constitution? Apparently it is too radically right wing for modern times, with all its focus on individual freedom and restrictions on state power. I like to remind myself that King George lll had nothing close to the power that our modern federal government wields today.
Reason: Growing Pains - ObamaCare won't stop rising health care costs.
A basic component of air remains illegal
Justice Department Encourages Voting by Felons as It Suppresses Military Vote
VDH: The Truths We Dare Not Speak About Illegal Immigration
Forbes: Why Keynes Was Wrong
Did The Government Cause The Gulf Oil Spill? Indirectly, yes. But the government directly caused the housing bubble and housing bust.
Maybe it’s Time For Jews to Fess Up. Evil Jews run the world. Everybody knows that. More about the evil Jews at Legal Ins.
The Screw-Guns
(A Screw-Gun was a small mountain ("mounting") cannon. Like many of Kipling's poems, this has been put to music, with wonderful success. Sadly, I cannot find a Youtube or midi-file of the tune, but I can hum it for you.)
Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army
that handles the dear little pets -
Refrain:
For you all love the screw-guns - the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
o' course you will know what to do
Jest send in your Chief an' surrender -
it's worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don't get away from the guns!
They sends us along where the roads are, but mostly we goes where they ain't:
We'd climb up the side of a sign-board an' trust to the stick o' the paint:
We've chivied the Naga an' Looshai, we've give the Afreedeeman fits,
For we fancies ourselves at two thousand,
we guns that are built in two bits -
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
If a man doesn't work, why, we drills 'im an' teaches 'im 'ow to behave;
If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is grave.
You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin' or fuss.
D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns?
By God, you must lather with us -
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
The eagles is screamin' around us, the river's a-moanin' below,
We're clear o' the pine an' the oak-scrub,
we're out on the rocks an' the snow,
An' the wind is as thin as a whip-lash what carries away to the plains
The rattle an' stamp o' the lead-mules -
the jinglety-jink o' the chains -
For you all love the screw-guns . . .
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: Kipling"
Friday, July 30. 2010
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office issued its own set of updated projections, but the frame of reference was the long-term, and not just the next 10 years. Unfortunately, the farther out one looks, the worse the picture gets. CBO’s latest projections again make it clear that the nation is rushing headlong toward a fiscal crisis, and the health law does nothing to head it off.
Read it all.
 The Volt: G.M.’s Electric Lemon.
Can somebody tell me how this piece of expensive and useless crap is supposed to save the world?
Where do people think electricity comes from? Thor?
Photo is a Yugo, not a Volt. But you knew that.
 Since News Junkie is taking off for August, and only the names and the dates change, here’s a guide to the daily news for our readers. Fill in the blanks.
CONGRESS:
Congressional Democrats Deny Scheme To _________________.
Congressional Democrats Propose Scheme To _________________.
Congressional Democrats Expect To Survive 2010 Elections Because _________________.
Congressional Democrats Poll Numbers Continue To Decline Because _________________.
Congressional Democrats Refuse To Investigate ___________________.
Congressional Republicans Have A Secret Plan to ______________________.
Congressional Republican’s Secret Plan Is Not To _______________________.
Congressional Republicans’ Chances Hindered By Extreme Statements About _____________.
Congressional Republicans’ Extreme Statements Are Only So To Leftist Journalists Who Say ________.
PRESIDENT:
President Obama declares urgency of ____________________.
President Obama puts off decision on __________________.
President Obama vacations in _____________________.
President Obama nominates ____________________.
President Obama’s nominee’s past reveals _______________.
President Obama recess appoints _________________.
President Obama’s longtime friend under the bus ______________.
President Obama says Bush at fault for _________________.
President Obama breaks another campaign pledge to _________________.
President Obama praises despot ___________________.
President Obama criticizes ally ________________.
JOURNALISM AND COMMENTARY:
Major media journalists ignore above news about ____________________.
Bloggers investigate and reveal facts about ___________________.
Major media find excuses for _________________________.
Bloggers persist about ___________________.
Major media run stories about bloggers not being journalists ____________________.
Polls indicate more people believe bloggers about _________________.
Major media continues to ignore facts about ________________.
Major media continues to shrink ___________________.
Major media appoints new liberal to masthead ___________________.
Major media reports scientist saying science says to ____________________.
Scientist’s science is based on faulty methodology ________________________.
Major media repeats scientist’s assertion about ___________________.
Smart person eloquently points out the obvious about ________________.
Smarty pants commentator points out purported minor exceptions to the obvious to disprove the obvious about _________________.
MAGGIE’S FARM:
Old server crashes again and excused as ________________________.
Bird Dog vacations in ____________________.
Photos of Bird Dog’s vacation in _________________________.
Debate continues on how much cheesecake is appropriate ________________________.
Big links to Maggie’s cheesecake from major blogger _________________________.
Serious subjects essayed at Maggie’s Farm arouse commenters about other subjects ____________.
Fun subjects at Maggie’s Farm arouse commenters to add to fun about ___________________.
Maggie’s Farm recipes and computer advice only work for blogger _________________.
Bruce interrupts permanent vacation to say (sometimes boring) _________________.
Joy Bliss pithily starts a subject and doesn’t finish about ______________________.
Great art and literature you never heard of about _____________________.
I think that the religious faith of most average Christians waxes and wanes over time, sometimes even in the course of a day. I do know people whose faith seems to be 100% and rock solid. In the end, I don't find thinking about the topic of strength of faith particularly useful or productive. God is a mystery to me, as is existence itself (and most other things too), but I believe that in prayer and in practice one can come into relationship with God - or at least with Jesus.
Ron Rosenbaum speaks up for the Enlightenment agnostic in everyone: An Agnostic Manifesto - At least we know what we don't know. One quote:
Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Just because other difficult-seeming problems have been solved does not mean all difficult problems will always be solved. And so atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to prove by logic the possibility of creation "ex nihilo" (from nothing). His eventual explanation entailed a Supreme Being standing outside of time and space somehow endowing it with existence (and interfering once in a while) without explaining what caused this source of "uncaused causation" to be created in the first place.
This is—or should be—grade-school stuff, but many of the New Atheists seemed to have stopped thinking since their early grade-school science-fair triumphs.
Right, sort-of (I don't think we even know what we don't know). Science is not a religion. It's just a formalized, rigorous mode of inquiry from which most of the data and facts and theories are inevitably replaced over time. It is incapable of handling the Big Questions and Big Truth, but it sure can be useful. For example, we currently believe that "gravity" doesn't exist as a "force," but it's a handy concept anyway. Someday, our talk of "forces" wil be viewed as little more than 18th century gods.
Chesterton: ""If there were no God, there would be no atheists."
I am taking a mental health break from Maggie's for August. I love Maggie's, but I am sick of having to see all of the outrages du jour. As that guy Drinking with Bob says on the radio, "What next? What next!"
We lease one of these babies:
Good site, discovered by Vanderleun: I Want a New Left
NEA Removes Post Encouraging Teachers To Celebrate Chinese Communist Revolution
Poll shows opposition to health care overhaul declining. Of course. It hasn't gone into effect yet.
Dalmia: The Death Of The Global Warming Movement
Galston: How Americans’ Shifting Political Ideologies Threaten the Democrats
Ann McElhinney:
“So when my husband and I came to America, we heard a story about conservatives. We heard that these conservatives are a really really weird lot. Nutjobs, basically. And these conservatives, they’re obsessed with sex. They’re obsessed with sex and they’re obsessed with what you’re doing in your bedroom. It’s all they think about. They’re just constantly worrying about what you’re up to in your bedroom.
But you know something? Since we’ve moved here, we haven’t found that. But what we have found is that liberals, are in every other room in your house. They’re in the fridge. They’re in your car. They’re in your air miles. They’re in your clothes. They’re in your hair. They’re in your cleaning products, and your washing machine and the refrigerator. They’re all over the place! And they’re in your light bulb! And I want to say them .. This is America! Get out of my light bulb"
Once again: Schwarzenegger Declares Fiscal Emergency in California. They needed a real man like Chris Christie.
Lopez: Ohio Wants Something Different
Kafka-trapping:
"The longer the playing of the race card continues, the probability that someone will deny the accusation, and thereby provide proof of the accusation, approaches one."
Sissy reminded us of this excellent Am Thinker post: Cultural Marxism
How science led the Third Reich. Totally related via Q&O: Why "science" has a problem:
If science wants to redeem itself and regain its place with the public’s affection, scientists need to come out every time some politician says, “The science says we must…” and reply, “Science only tells us what is. It does not, and can never tell us what we should or must do.” If they say that often enough, and loudly enough, they might be able to reclaim the mantle of objectivity that they’ve given up over the last 40 years by letting themselves become the regulatory state’s ultimate appeal to authority.
Thursday, July 29. 2010
For the second day in a row, our home-made mini-nuke plant in the basement, which provides the power to the Maggie's servers as well as to our milking machines and our a/c, went down due to mice. Today, I picked up a cat at the shelter to live in the basement. Nuclear power problem solved.
In apology, and since I am headed to Vienna soon, I offer something from the King of the Waltz, Johann Strauss Jr:
Not to be confused with his dad, Johann Strauss Sr., composer of the Radetzky March among much other music. Dad, famously, never forgave his son for going into music instead of banking.
Neither are related to the great German composer Richard Strauss:
Conscious guilt causes agony while unconscious guilt can shape a person.
I tend to see more people wracked with conscious guilt. Sometimes it's neurotic (ie, irrational in proportion), and sometimes it is good old ordinary guilt for rotten behavior and/or evil thoughts.
There are many causes of self-defeating or self-sabotaging behavior besides unconscious guilt (for examples, avoidance of difficult things or avoidance of risky challenges), but guilt is always on the list of considerations.
Dr. X discusses the topic here and here.
Washington Rebel found a remarkable rant from Takuan Seiyo in Brussels Journal: Shotgun Marriage In Europe. One quote:
... to return a Western democracy to its rightful owners requires a majority of votes. Such a majority can no longer obtain for any political platform that would tackle even the top three major problems that bedevil the West: bankrupting socialism, nonwhite immigration, and implanted Islam. Not to mention the next dozen grave problems: irredeemable debt, the tyranny of the metastized State, the Looters’ coalition’s chokehold, sham global economy, fraudulent financial capitalism, minoritarian tyranny, shattered social capital, barbaric mass culture, nihilism, democracy turned idiocracy, breakdown of sexual norms and results (i.e. no babies), and falsehoods and self-hate careening through the land like a band of headless horsemen.
h/t, Theo. This is off Cape Town. I think the whale is practicing for a Moby Dick re-make.
The asteroid. I read on the internet that global warming causes asteroids.
Did you know that the govt is giving out free cell phones and free airtime? (h/t, Moonbattery)
Anatomy of a Microburst. Often mistaken for tornados.
Is being a slut liberating?
Pre-Cambrian life forms
The Boy Scout parade
SEC Says New Financial Regulation Law Exempts it From Public Disclosure. Huh?
New Calculator Shows How Much More Taxes Will You Pay Next Year
NYT Reporter Surprised at Lack of Gratitude in Texas for Obama-Care Handout
Heather MacDonald: What Judge Bolton’s Injunction Doesn’t Say
The President Wears Prada
We have had quite a few posts about Woodrow Wilson lately. This from Scott at Powerline:
Reading the scholarly work of Woodrow Wilson is an educational experience. It is shocking to read the expressions of his disaffection for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the intellectual roots of modern liberalism lie in an assault on the ideas of natural rights and limited government. They eventuate in an administrative state and rule by supposed experts. Obamacare represents something like the full flowering of modern liberalism.
I want to go the the museum at the Belevedere Palace in Vienna more to see the Kokoshkas than to see the jazzy Klimts. Klimt is fine, but Kokoshka is one of the gnarly German Expressionists that I get a kick out of. Well, Austrian in this case.
I have a good Klimt quote though:
I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women...There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures.
Kokoshka's famous 1914 Bride of the Wind:
Wednesday, July 28. 2010
A quote from his interview:
You know what that rally was? The "me first" rally. "Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line." Well, you know what? I'm not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we'll shine a bright light on it, and we'll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that's how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest."
It's the right time to take on the greed of government unions. Somebody's got to do it before every Dem state goes bankrupt. As I always say, the marriage between government unions and the Dem party is an intrinsically corrupt conspiracy against the people.
Bob Dylan's use of the phrase, "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows" in Subterranean Homesick Blues encouraged the young to make their own decisions, including about drugs, to know what's happening based on changing conditions in order to know about what's coming. It's based on the nautical phrase to know the windward side.
This latest chart of ObamaCare only shows about a third of the complexity of the hurricane and where it is blowing us.
In the garage I still have a copy of the chart for HillaryCare. It was simple, Alice's Wonderland was easier to wend through, compared to this maze, a maze we're doomed to wander in search of care.
Only repeal is real.
 Not my fault. I blame Bush.
Meanwhile I learned about the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, via which you can travel from Rotterdam to the Black Sea by water if you want to.
Could be sort of like America's Great Loop, without the loop.
The Viking/Normans, who explored the Danube from the Med, would have enjoyed that canal.
This article is from the British paper The Star.
This is one of those rare moments in life when you realize you've just read something such as you've never read before, nor may ever read again.
ON 21 July, we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.
We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged plans.
We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.
It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.
We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.
Rick Moran led us to the real meaning of Dog Days. Via Wiki:
For the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the season of the Nile's flooding, so they used the star as a "watchdog" for that event. Since its rising also coincided with a time of extreme heat, the connection with hot, sultry weather was made for all time.
Sirius is the shiny dog collar tag in Canis Major:
Here. It was Edwardian: high-fashion with post-Victorian mores and plenty of mineral water. Edward Vll himself loved to hang out there and pick up chicks. Back then, being a bit pudgy was not a problem. We remain in his debt for making tweed respectable, and for replacing white tie and tails with the simple black tie of today.
To enhance Bird Dog's experience with Customs when he visits Europe in a few weeks, we've ordered some stickers for his luggage. Yeah, full body search. If you visit the site, there's one for his female companions.
 
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Richard Feynman, via The Difference between ‘True Science’ and ‘Cargo-Cult Science’ at Pajamas
 City and County Government Associations: Obama Economy Will Create or Save, Eh, I Mean Destroy or Eliminate 500,000 Public Sector Jobs. Toon borrowed from that piece at Ross.
The “does it make me look fat?” question
Caddell: Our Divisive President - "Barack Obama promised a new era of post-partisanship. In office, he's played racial politics and further split the country along class and party lines."
Hawkins: Seven Deceptive Mainstream Media Techniques
Reason.tv: Arthur C. Brooks on the Battle Between Free Enterprise and Big Government
"Temporary marriage" in Iran: "We call on all our sisters who are virgins" to put out for the lonely pilgrims - for cash.
At Thompson:
Greg Lukianoff on knowing why you think what you think.
One of the great harms of speech codes and campus censorship is that it leaves students with the false impression that censorship is what good, compassionate people do.
Reynolds: Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime: Analysis. "Too many officials think taking photos is a crime. Here’s why they’re wrong." h/t Ace
"Set up a motion-activated camera at a stock water tank in South Texas and you'll catch all manner of critters."
Good advice: Surviving the Low-Level Job. People will need to get used to this.
Tuesday, July 27. 2010
I once booed Jewel at a performance. It was the year she toured with Bob Dylan, and I saw them in New Haven. (She once said that she thought Bob was gay because he didn't hit on her during the tour. Disappointed by that, it seems.)
I booed because she had to bring some political snark into her chatter, assuming as such folks do that their audiences are all on the same page politically. Rude of me, but that sort of presumption bugs me. As usual, my friends were embarassed by my behavior. She was not really known, then.
Here's the whole song that was chopped up on Dr Merc's fun post:
It's good to hear Tom Sowell say it: How Smart Are We? Elites may have more brilliance, but they can’t have as much experience as the people whose decisions they preempt.
One quote:
One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control, and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course. It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.
"Things taking their own course" means, of course, people exercising free choice.
Some of us here have been accused of being elites ourselves. If I am in that category somehow, put me in the subgroup that has no interest in controlling anybody but myself. Just that is difficult enough, and often impossible.
 One pesky little computer problem is when you run a program most of the time the computer is up, like an email program, but it minimizes to the Task Bar and clutters up the place with its icon. For 'permanent' programs that run all of the time, the better routine is to stick the icon in the SysTray (the area just to the right of the Task Bar) and leave the Task Bar area for current projects.
Some programs have a setting in their Options that tells them to minimize to the SysTray, so check that first.
To solve this little poser, we have a program with the cheek-pinchingly cute name of Trayconizer. It's not promised to work on every program, but it's worked on the three I've thrown at it.
Home page is here. Get the 'Unicode build'.
Unzip the file to its own 'Trayconizer' folder in a place you'll later be able to locate. This is, if you put the Trayconizer folder in a 'Tools' folder, remember it for the next step.
To set up a program for trayconizing, go to the Start Menu, find its icon, right-click on it and open the Properties.
In the 'Target' box, put the full path to Trayconizer before the path to the program.
(capital letters are only used for clarity in the following)
For example, if you placed the Trayconizer folder in a 'Tools' folder, the path would be:
C:\Tools\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe <existing path to program>
If you stuck it in a folder with a blank space in the name, like 'Program Files', you need to put the whole path in quotes:
"C:\Program Files\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe" <path to program>
If there's an error in the path, Windows will let you know when you click 'OK' to close the box. If you get stuck, open the Properties of the Trayconizer icon, highlight the 'Location', copy it to memory with Ctrl-C, paste it into the 'Target' box with Ctrl-V.
Now when you minimize the program the icon should go to the SysTray. Single-click on it to get a few options, double-click to pop the program back open.
Good video summary of the American aircraft carrier. Most of our readers probably know it all, already.
For our hillbilly friends, safely below the fold -
Continue reading "Dear Abby"
 I thought it might be interesting to go over a few food combos that sound just terrible when mixed together, yet go great together when a third food is involved.
This will be one of those famous "user participation" posts you read so much about in Blogger's Digress. As we did in Bag O' Links, I'll add any additions left in the comments to the list ASAP. The rule is, two of the foods have to evoke a "Yuck!" when mentioned together, but go perfectly well when a third food is introduced.
Probably the classic is ketchup and grape jelly, or any kind of jelly or jam. Can you imagine eating a bite of jellied toast, then tossing a spoonful of ketchup into your mouth? Yuck! Or eating some french fries with ketchup, then suddenly eating a teaspoon of grape jelly? Uck-yay!
Then you'll be sitting there eating some scrambled eggs with ketchup, and halfway through the chew you'll take a bite of the jellied toast, and there's your ketchup and jelly. And, amazingly, they go perfectly together because of the scrambled eggs.
And there's another small anomaly in the same meal. Would you mix ultra-sugary and ultra-salty foods together? Not usually. Yet there you are, chewing on the ultra-sugary jellied toast while stuffing another piece of ultra-salty bacon or sausage into your mouth, again brought together by the eggs.
Another oddity is pepper on bananas. You never see anyone peppering a banana, just because it would look too weird. In secret, or in the confidence of a mate, perhaps. I wouldn't know, I've never tried. It would just look too weird.
Yet I've peppered tons of bananas in my life. Sliced, on sandwiches. As soon as you add the bread and mayo, the pepper just seems to magically fit and the results are delicious. I'm not sure I'd eat a banana sandwich without pepper, just because it adds so much to the taste.
And here's one I bet you've never tried. How about munching on some barbecue potato chips... then washing them down with chocolate milk? Doesn't sound very appealing, I admit. We're back to that salt-sugar clash.
But, assuming you like egg salad sandwiches, the next time you have one, buy a bag of BBQ chips and your favorite brand of chocolate milk. It's just amazing how well the three go together.
How about garlic bread and soy sauce?
"Yuckypoo!"
Exactly. But there I was the other night, eating some garlic 'Texas Toast' with some Chinese eggrolls, dunking the garlic bread in the soy sauce on the plate. Somehow the eggrolls magically tied everything together.
If you have your own favorite food quirk, toss it in the comments and I'll slap it on the list. If you'd like to include an accompanying blurb like the above, please do so.
Continue reading "Food Quirks"
Monday, July 26. 2010
As I always do before trips, I am catching up on history. This trip will be Vienna and the Danube. I view these places historically as the hinterlands, but you cannot fault their production of music in recent centuries. Music, wars, and sort-of hideous baroque architecture.
Vienna had been a Roman frontier outpost, but surely had been a barbarian settlement before that.
I do recall that European History in high school made my head spin from the endless alliances and endless wars and the reconfigurations of empires, kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and nations. With my ADD, it's a wonder I did so well with it. Forgot most of it. The War of the Spanish Succession.
I did not forget some details of the devastating Franco-Prussian War, but I certainly had forgotten that "German Austria" wanted to be part of Germany after WW1, but the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations forbade it. German Austria reached down into the (still) German-speaking areas of northern Italy. The Austria of today is a relatively brand-new nation (1945 or 1955 - pick the date) although it was a Babenburg duchy in 1156 and later was roughly the core of the Hapsburg's power for 640 years.
The Hapsburgs are credited with keeping the Ottomans out of Europe in 1683, but the King of Poland, Jan Sobieski, deserves lots of credit. There were 300 years of resisting the Ottoman Empire's invasions. I have never understood why Middle-Easterners coveted Europe, but they still do.
I find it amusing to think of what was going on in the wilds of the American colonies at the same time. Only Spain really cared, because of the gold. Otherwise insignificant except as pawns in larger European power games.
In the early 1700s, the Hapsburgs counted among their imperial control Belgium, Sardinia, Corsica, the Duchy of Milan, Naples, and Sicily. Two hundred years earlier, HRE "Emperor" Charles V in 1516 also happened to be King of Spain, bringing Spanish America, for a while, into the bounds of the Holy Roman Empire - such as it was: A crown, a flag, a bunch of castles and palaces, a title, and some truly snazzy outfits with fancy medals on them to impress the gals. Being King of Spain, on the other hand, was probably a cool gig with plenty of perks and babes.
The modern European nations are all younger in their configurations and their governmental structures than the US (except for the post-Empire island core of Britain).
One thought this perspective gave me is that the EU may be little more than an expanded reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire - combined with the old Roman Empire. In time, it will pass too.
Photo below, Palace Schoenbrunn, first constructed as a hunting lodge in the early 1700s. "Hey, honey, have you seen where I put my camo and my ammo?"
That's from a time when royal governments lived off the labor of the people. Not like now, right?
Stumbled across this web site today. An oasis of calm in a world of chaos. As a semi-amateur photographer, I'm always amazed at the way creative people come up with new ways to make and create new and interesting photos: Mila's Daydreams.
An email from a buddy:
 I came across a Japanese Type 14 Nambu pistol. These were reasonably well made Japanese semi-autos, used from mid-1920's until end of WWII. The ammo is available for around $25/box of 50. I had planned on using it for a project that didn't work out
If interested, I can email photos. I'd like just what I paid for it - $300.
I don't need one and do not want one, but it's an interesting firearm from an historical point of view.
Everything about the Type 14 here.
From a review of Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character:
...Made in America is not simply an entertaining narrative history. It is also an argument, or rather a set of arguments, about character and culture. The first is that "modernity" entailed less wrenching and negative change than most today believe. In the realm of culture and society, continuity -- or the intensification of already apparent patterns -- was the rule. Fischer writes, for example, that his is "not one more account of how American character was corrupted by rising individualism, egoism or selfishness." Instead, Americans "remained by Western standards remarkably committed to family, church, community, job and nation." Second, like Potter, Fischer sees abundance as the engine of American history: not simply economic wealth, in his telling, but an ever-increasing stock of security, health, social opportunities, political freedoms, and self-mastery. Third and most significant, he declares a Tocquevillian "voluntarism" -- a highly socialized individualism that led Americans to join groups and build communities -- to be the substrate of national character, the key trait that binds Americans together.
This Sherrod story. I thought I was sick of the story even before it started, but I guess this is a slice of America too. Every country has moonbats but, as Palin would say, these are "sick puppies," determined to live in anger and hatred.
Glassman: Notes on Europe’s Economic Decadence. "Prosperity creates sloth."
Axe falls on NHS services
Examiner: The calamitous effects of Obama's tax hikes. Related at Powerline: Coming Soon: The Biggest Tax Increase Ever. There's nothing like a big tax increase to work wonders on a struggling economy.
Vernon Smith says "no more government spending,...avoid new taxes."
Ariz. law comes after years of mounting anger
Malanga: The Muni-Bond Debt Bomb
Am Thinker: We The Serfs...:
Your tax dollars at work in Rhode Island. How long before those sidewalks are cracked with weeds growing through the cracks?
VIDEO GOLD: Howard Dean Gets A$$ Handed to Him On FOX After Misplaying His Race Cards
From Cato's Investors: Fear the Process That Gave Us ObamaCare, Not Efforts to Repeal It (my bolds):
... the problem is not that the political system is breaking down. That system is working pretty much the same way it always has and always will: it promotes irresponsibility. Republicans and Democrats are merely responding to the incentives created by the system in which they operate. (If they didn’t respond to those incentives, the political system would throw them out and replace them with people who do.) If investors don’t already understand that, the sooner the better.
This is why responsible people want to take responsibility for our health care, etc., out of the hands of politicians.
Sunday, July 25. 2010
Encinitas, where I live, is the last refuge of traditional laid back Southern California beach towns. We have the usual run of art shops selling third rate paintings to tourists, any town's laughing-up-our-sleeves joke on the gullible.
But, the beachside bronze paid for by the local Cardiff Botanical Society (WTF does surfing have to do with botany?) has run into disdain for its insufficiently iconic image. Locals don't consider it realistic enough, and aren't to be treated as gullible by purveyers of public art who foist their artistic sense (or not) upon the populace.
The statue, disdainfully titled "Cardiff Kook" by surfers, has been dressed in tutu and bikini, but the latest Encinitans-gone-wild prank is the best yet.
Overnight, a huge papier-mache replica of a great white shark was erected devouring the statue.
The Sheriff Lt. at the scene said, “It wasn’t considered vandalism because there wasn’t any permanent defacing.” The sculptural addition will be removed, to the sorrow of locals and the crowds who consider it an improvement and stop to admire and shoot photos.
Encinitans will strike again.
What public sculpture in your town would benefit from a puckish aesthetic addition?
While feasting on late after-dinner hazelnut gelati a little over a week ago in the relatively non-touristy lakefront village of Baveno, just up from the small piazza on the main drag, we were drawn to the sounds of a church choir, and sat on the stoop of the side door of the sanctuary for a half hour listening to them practice as darkness fell.
Nothing can make a 20-person choir sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir the way a small stone 900 year-old church can. Excellent group, too, with an exuberant organist.
Saint Gervaso is the patron saint of Baveno. Like many old buldings in Italy, the church was built of stone previously used in Roman buildings, some still bearing Roman markings and lettering. Recycling. We noted that they never took stones from the Roman bridges or aqueducts, though. Smart - and a conservative message.
This is no famous church, just an ordinary village church. Clearly pre-Gothic. The church and tower were built in around 1100 (but the front of the sanctuary was expanded a bit since then), the Baptistery in 1628, and the open hall of the Stations of the Cross probably in the 1700s, when Baveno became wealthy from its quarries of pink marble (which are still in use).
Palm trees right up there near the Swiss border.
More photos of this small, unknown parish church below -
Continue reading "Santi Gervaso e Protaso: a re-post from 2008"
No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong.
Stanley Fish. h/t, Dr. Bob
Edge: Getting at the Neuroanthropology of Morality
Los Zetas drug cartel seizes 2 U.S. ranches in Texas. Is this story true? Possibly not.
Coming Soon: Tax Tsunami
Reid to Netroots: "We're Going To Have a Public Option"
Britain Plans to Decentralize National Health Care
More government intrusion into private sector pay
Race realist Jared Taylor declares the "civil rights struggle was won long ago"
A guy who doesn't want you to have a/c: The Big Chill: Giving AC the Cold Shoulder
Dino: What happened a year ago to permanently change public opinion?
Powerline: The case against Elena Kagan
Obama’s Solar Energy Fantasy
The Lottery Makes a Strong Statement About Charter Schools
From Insty: "THE YOUNG AND THE JOBLESS: New Evidence That The Minimum Wage Has Hurt Teenagers."
Climate and budgets from Coyote:
The climate modeling approach is so similar to that used by the CEA to score the stimulus that there is even a climate equivalent to the multiplier found in macro-economic models. In climate models, small amounts of warming from man-made CO2 are multiplied many-fold to catastrophic levels by hypothetical positive feedbacks, in the same way that the first-order effects of government spending are multiplied in Keynesian economic models. In both cases, while these multipliers are the single most important drivers of the models’ results, they also tend to be the most controversial assumptions. In an odd parallel, you can find both stimulus and climate debates arguing whether their multiplier is above or below one.
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