We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
One of the problems facing the United States is deteriorating infrastructure. Everything from highways, byways, airports and freight facilities are in need of some sort of repair, renovation or downright replacement.
Recently at the launch/commissioning ceremony for the USS William McClean (part of the Navy’s Prepositioning Program) Fred Harris President and CEO of General Dynamics NASSCO (NASSCO is a large shipbuilding complex outside of San Diego) spoke of the need for a National Marine Highway System . Mr. Harris made the case that vital part of the national transportation is being neglected – mainly the Maritime Coastal routes and facilities.
What Harris is talking about is using what used to be called “coasters” – basically small ships to handle freight movementalong coastal routes. His point addresses a larger issue – that our maritime industry has fallen on some hard times.As a nation that relies on sea power to extend our military and diplomatic reach across the world, we have basically relegated our Merchant Marine to other nations to build ships and transport goods.Our Maritime tradition not only extended from the Merchant Marine through the Navy and Coast Guard, but at one time, the world’s second largest Navy was the United States Army!
The problems, of course, are simple – we just aren’t competitive in terms of labor costs and building/maintenance facilities. Our Merchant Marine is highly unionizedwith the attendant costs associated with union shops – including feather bedding.We’ve lost our ability to produce the tons and tons of high quality steel needed for a vibrant ship building industry.And the same infrastructure problems facing our highway and railway system also affect the Maritime routes that already exist.Our intracoastal waterways system is seeing less and less dredging needed to keep it open and traffic flowing.While the Gulf system seems to be fairly stable in terms of maintenance, the Atlantic system is in dire need of dredging and width repair in several places along it’s length. The last time I brought a boat down that route (a53 foot Viking sport fisher) there where places in the Atlantic system where we were plowing through the sand and silt – not a good thing for raw water cooled engines. Tugs and barges are also restricted in certain parts of the Atlantic system.
There are otherchallenges facing a new, bigger and better maritime system.NIMBY is a huge factor in the placement of facilities to off load or on load goods and raw materials. The recent contretemps in Narragansett Bay over the LNG facility is a good example.“Honest” Dick Blumenthal when he was Attorney General of Connecticut killed the Long Island Sound LNG/oil platform facility with misinformation and downright lying about the facilities impact on both the LIS ecosystem and it’s financial impact. Last, but certainly not least, access to distribution points are almost not existent due to the sale of port facilities to real estate developers to build hotels, convention centers, sports stadiums and private marinas. Harbor real estate is expensive and the competition is fierce to obtain and develop it.
Mr. Harris has the right idea – a strong national maritime system able to move cargo, goods and materials using our long seacoasts and river systems should be a priority.I’m certain private investors would welcome the opportunity to be involved in building small ships, tugs, barges and facilities – as long as the government and the Maritime and Port labor unionscan be kept at bay.
The President’s descriptions of the situation are comprehensive and urbane. He correctly identifies the forces at work. He develops interesting policy ideas and approaches that address important political and moral elements of the complex problems we face. He crafts approaches that might, with good will and deft management, bridge the gaps between the sides. He reads thoughtful speeches full of sensible reflections.
But the last few weeks have cast him as the least competent manager of America’s Middle East diplomatic portfolio in a very long time.
and, Mead continues,
Netanyahu beat Obama like a red-headed stepchild; he played him like a fiddle; he pounded him like a big brass drum. The Prime Minister of Israel danced rings around his arrogant, professorial opponent. It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters go up against the junior squad from Miss Porter’s School; like watching Harvard play Texas A&M, like watching Bambi meet Godzilla — or Bill Clinton run against Bob Dole.
WILL AMERICA SEE EUROPE-STYLE RIOTS?Newsweek sounds hopeful, but in America, unlike Europe, it’s usually the taxpayers who are behind the revolutions, not the parasites.
Nobody knows what we should eat. I believe we should eat whatever the heck we want to, and ignore the experts and the nannies. We're all gonna die. Just take some Lipitor and hope for the best.
We stumbled onto this joint last week while taking a flyer down local roads en route from Bevegna to Spoleto. Wonderful drive on narrow winding roads through olive orchards, vineyards, small farms with patches of wheat, fava bean, and lentil, and tiny antique villages. But, of course, in Italy, when you stop for a coffee, a "coffee" means a 1/2 inch of intense espresso at the bottom of a tiny cup. A delicious half-mouthful if you add a bit of sugar, but nothing to linger over or to put in your car's cup holder.
If you request a cafe Americano, they just add some hot water to it.
This roadside charmer, like most such places in Italy, offers Italian pastries, beer, wine, cocktails, breads, sandwiches made to order, rustic pizzas, etc., to go or to eat there on plastic chairs in the A/C. Yes, you can have a smoke inside. Everybody does. Often, the serving people fix up your order with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths like the good old days, and I do not think they care deeply about what the EU or anybody else thinks about that.
Dunkin Donuts does not offer beer or wine, and you cannot smoke in there. We stopped for some water (water with "gas" - always - that evil CO2) and a quick cafe.
Never order pizza in Italy - it's terrible stuff. It was the Neapolitan immigrants to America who made it into a tasty treat - and the Italians have little interest in learning about the gastronomic arts from Americans.
I would remind the Italians of these facts: Tomato, from the New World. Potato, from the New World. Squash, from the New World. Polenta, from the New World. Pasta, from China. Risotto, from China. What did they eat before all of that?
Watched this movie on my flight from Paris to the USA earlier today (or yesterday?). Not a great boxing movie, but it does capture elements of the Irish (or could just as easily be Italian) blue-collar world of New England.
The movie is set in Lowell, MA, a rough working-class town outside of Boston. My olde New England contains a disappearing old Yankee breed, a disappearing semi-old multi-ethnic farming contingent (especially Poles from the later 1800s), and, in urban and semi-urban areas, large Irish and Italian-origin populations which stick to many of their old ways. Increasing numbers of Mexicans are appearing, too - some in the illegal drug biz and the better ones are masons or in the army of unskilled laborers.
The Memorial Day choice is not about whether to BBQ steak, chicken, hamburgers, or franks, although that's what it has become to most Americans.The Memorial Day choice is, rather, about choosing to remember and honor those who served in our military with fatal consequence in order to preserve our freedoms to choose.
Even if you haven't lost someone you knew, visiting a military cemetery will quickly acquaint you with many you would be proud to have known.Just knowing a few names, their service branch, and the year they died will set your mind to at least imagining their lost opportunities so that you can have some.
Just take a moment to raise the flag in their memory and to honor them.Take a moment to explain to your children that this day is to respect those who made their life more secure.
Then your BBQ will be more savory, flavored with love of freedom and gratitude for those who gave their all and everything.
"Once each May, amid the quiet hills and rolling lanes and breeze-brushed trees of Arlington National Cemetery, far above the majestic Potomac and the monuments and memorials of our Nation's Capital just beyond, the graves of America's military dead are decorated with the beautiful flag that in life these brave souls followed and loved. This scene is repeated across our land and around the world, wherever our defenders rest. Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves -- with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America's own have ever served and sacrificed. ... Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation's defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence. Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day. To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country's own."
Mrs. BD and I have concluded that Umbria is a more varied and interesting place to visit than Tuscany. I have a well-travelled friend who agrees. Umbria is, except for the tourist magnets of Perugia and Assisi, off the beaten track. We have been around much of Italy in the past, and the Latin and Italian scholar lad has been literally everywhere there.We had not toured Umbria and the old Via Flaminia (which it is still called). Mrs. and I just returned home from our delightful adventure. As I get my thoughts and pics organized, I will go over some of it: History, food, geography, etc.
I do have some ideas about how to make it more interesting and educational than a totally dull photo slideshow for Maggie's. Will do my best with a multi-part series of my travel snapshot journal. Bear with me: I will try to make it interesting.
Too tired to begin that now, but here's one photo to maybe inspire some interest in my posts to come, from one of Norcia's (pronounced nor' - cha) famous pork, cheese, and Black Truffle shops. They love their aged Cinghiale meats and sausages in Umbria (Cinghiale is Wild Boar, not our American feral pig which is not too tasty). In much of Europe, wild game is sold in markets (which is illegal in the US).
The market shops always have samples of their own aged ricotta dura (a harder and delicious version of ricotta which is good for salads), their superb Pecorino from sheep milk, or of their sausages. I was tempted to smuggle a large wheel of Pecorino Dura, but decided not to test the mysterious customs laws on importation of foods.
They roll the aged ricotta in toasted wheat for a skin, as below:
A patient told me that she had seen something useful on Oprah a while back. Some therapist-type had suggested that, when something about somebody bugs the heck out of you, write a letter to them telling them about it.
But do not mail it. Cross out their name, address it to yourself, and read it as if directed to yourself.
The psychology of how and why we tend to be so annoyed by things in ourselves that we wish to disown, and thus react against in others, is too messy for here. It's enough to say that we all have many tricks that we use, usually unwittingly, to feel OK about ourselves instead of sinking into painful self-reproach. It does not always apply, but applies often enough to be a good rule of thumb.
Give it a try. It is not much fun, but could be educational.
Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the Lauraceae family. Bay Laurel and Avocado are true laurels.
Our eastern Mountain Laurel, the state plant of CT which grows in dense, impenetrable 20' high thickets on our hills, is not a true laurel. Neither are the Cherry Laurels, which are (strangely) in the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus - same genus as roses, apples, and cherries. (Seems anything can get called "laurel" if it has glossy oval evergreen leaves.)
The Cherry Laurels (Prunus laurocerasus) appear in several forms, subspecies, or cultivars in the US, and few are native to the US. Here are a few of them. I like them for the lush, tropical evergreen appearance, and the birds like them for winter cover and for spring nesting.
Like hybrid Rhodadendrons, Zone 6 is pushing their limit unless they are sheltered, next to a warm building, or near salt water. The southern US is really a better place for them, but I like experimenting. Although they are considered semi-shade or filtered light plants, up here they seem to enjoy plenty of sun.
I have three varieties: the big, upright, fast-growing "Skip" Laurels ('Schipkaensis') which make a great tall (10-15' hedge), a few small hedges of Otto Luyken English Laurel, and a couple of handsome Portuguese Laurels, a compact, slow-growing rounded type with nice red stems. The latter two were produced by Monrovia.
Wonderful plants, all things considered, and a much better bet than trying to make the very picky Mountain Laurel and hybrid Rhodys happy in this neck of the woods. Mountain Laurel, like Blueberry, only grows well where it feels like growing. If they don't like the conditions, they just die, slowly.
Photos: Above: small row of Otto Luykens in from the of the wall, and some tall Skips behind. Left: A Portuguese Laurel, about 5' high.
Titled “The University Has No Clothes,”Daniel B. Smith’s article
reviews the exploding cost of higher education and the widening percentage of
the population that achieves or begins a four-year degree. Smith strangely
avoids the growth of for-profit universities and regrettably focuses his article on
efforts by successful venture capitalists—bogeymen for a leftist
publications like New York. But when even the unrepentant left
acknowledges that there is a problem in the universities, something big is
happening.
What seems to be happening is a fundamental shift in the goals and
capabilities of the American university itself, which may just ultimately spell
the demise of the current system of higher education as we know it.
I was surprised to stumble upon the fact that the common earthworm, the gardener's friend, is not native to the US and Canada: most worm species are "invasive" introductions from Europe, and have been spread across the country in plant material.
A few more interesting facts:
- The earthworm has been very destructive to several types of forest habitat by consuming deep forest litter (leaves). Ecologists consider them invasive pests in some habitats.
- Earthworms are killed by most pesticides. Fertilizer doesn't seem to bother them.
- Darwin calculated that earthworms can recycle and refresh the surface soil to the tune of 10 tons of soil per acre per year. Count me as a skeptic on that number, but they do churn the soil.
- Yes, some species of earthworm can regenerate lost body segments. No need for tears when you chop one with the shovel.
- Worms need food. For a wormy lawn or garden, it needs to be top-dressed or mulched with organic material. I do a generous top-dressing of peat moss or well-rotted cow manure once or twice twice a year, and after the heavy spring lawn growth, I leave the grass clippings where they fall. I like to mulch up the early autumn fallen leaves with the mowers, too.
A green lawn treated with pesticides, nurtured solely with inorganic fertilizers, and with automatic irrigation, is little more than a corpse with make-up.
It seems that, when I wasn't looking, secret Chinese agents replaced my trusted and faithful American bathroom mirrors with a mirror "Made in China." It is a hideous substitution and one that would go unnoticed except for the fact that from time to time I look in my mirror for this or that grooming ritual. When I do I know that the mirror has become a Chinese mirror because the effect is immediately and consistently horrifying. Briefly put, the person in the mirror is someone that does not resemble me at all. I don't know how he got in my mirror but he's got to go.
Vanderleun's a guy, so he's understandably unaware of the parable of age visiting a woman. Doorbell rings. Woman answers. "Hi, I'm age," the fellow at the doorstep says, then grabs both her breasts and yanks down on them as hard as he can. Unwisely, she turns around to run away, and, well...
A few links, just in case Bird Dog didn’t return in time. I heard he got arrested at Walgreens for developing the TRUE photos of what he’s been doing, or having done to him. Transgender? Does this mean Bird Dog is now Bird Bitch?
Kennedy explained that he needed tutors because he "had spent so much time . . . knowing people who could help him become president that he knew very few . . . who could help him be president." ...Mr. Kempe's point is that Kennedy's indecisiveness in the early stages of the crisis produced the wall itself, an exponential increase in East-West tension, and, in the half-century that followed, other fateful consequences that included the Cuban missile crisis—and, though Mr. Kempe doesn't say so, the Vietnam War, along with social and strategic spores that lodged in the American psyche and darkened world opinion with results yet to be revealed. It also provided, as Mr. Kempe puts it in the final sentence of this mind-shaking work of investigative history, an example "of what unfree systems can impose when free leaders fail to resist."
17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
17:23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
17:27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
17:28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
17:29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
17:30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
17:31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
No man loves marshes and bogs more than I do. The variety of life they contain, protect, and support, from protozoans to minnowsto bass to amphibians to snakes to deer to woodpeckers to geese and ducks to eagles to bears is astonishing, and feels primeval.
Except for river-fed or run-off-fed marshes, though, most sizeable fresh-water marshes are ephemeral geographical features. In the northern US, most are the remnants of post-glacial ponds and lakes, gradually filled in with plant detritus and, just before they become the damp meadows that the Moose enjoy so much, the sphagnum bogs which, in Canada, are the source of most of our soil-enhancing peat moss.
The only sources of new marshes in the US are man (who is more inclined to fill them for building lots than to create them or rehabilitate them - except for Ducks Unlimited), and the Beaver:
And that is one reason we appreciate the remarkable beaver so much. He not only creates marshes, but he recycles them. I doubt that there is a single beaver marsh in the US which has not been used, on and off (until they have eaten or cut down everything they can find) over the several thousands of years since our last Ice Age buried Manhattan under a mile of ice.
Here are some of the critters I see (or hear) most often in the immediate vicinity of our small (8 acre) beaver marsh in western MA over the past few years - off the top of my head and probably omitting some:
Beavers (of course) Otter Black Bear Raccoon White-tailed Deer Red Fox Coyote (alas)
Wood Duck (nesting) Black Duck (nesting) Mallard (nesting) Canada Goose (nesting) Pileated Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Hairy Woodpecker Red-bellied Wodpecker Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Veery Wood thrush E. Phoebe Wood Pewee Great Blue Heron Green Heron Tree Swallow Barn Swallow Kingfisher Swamp Sparrow Grasshopper Sparrow Song Sparrow Barred Owl Screech Owl Great Horned Owl Baltimore Oriole (Northern Oriole) Marsh Wren Turkey Goldfinch (nesting) Warblers of all sorts (during migration) Turkey Vulture Red-Tailed Hawk Sharp-Shinned hawk Red-shouldered Hawk Broad-winged Hawk Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel) E. Bluebird E. Kingbird Ruffed Grouse Cedar Waxwing Catbird
Wood Turtle Eastern Painted Turtle Snapping Turtle Garter Snake Eastern Water Snake Black Snake
Bullfrog Eastern Newt (and their Red Efts by the trillions in the adjacent woods) Leopard Frog Green Frog American Toad Wood Frog Spring Peeper E. Gray Tree Frog
I like to keep track of our wildlife. It is one way of loving and embracing this world.
There are two sorts of people: those who love breakfast, and those for whom breakfast is nothing more than coffee and a cigar or, some days, a glass of OJ and five aspirins.
Breakfast is my favorite meal, but I rarely bother with it beyond a couple of cups of coffee. If I had breakfast every morning I would weigh 30 lbs. more than I do.
What are my favorite breakfasts?
- Home-made fresh cut-up fruit in a bowl - including Pineapple - Creamed Chipped Beef on toast. Or grits with biscuits 'n gravy - Kippered herrings with (white) toast and grilled tomatoes - 2 eggs sunny side up with bacon, sausage, home fries and white toast. And ketchup. - Blueberry pancakes with sausage and bacon. - Codfish cakes with toast - Smoked salmon on a toasted bagel with cream cheese, with capers - Eggs Benedict - Leftover pizza
I cannot pick a single favorite. Love 'em all.
Please post your favorite breakfasts in the comments.
The word bites like a fish. Shall I throw it back, free Arrowing to that sea Where thoughts lash tail and fin? Or shall I pull it in To rhyme upon a dish?
If you want to understand the “right of return” issue, read this to know its genesis. The early, narrow work by historian Benny Morris is often cited by pro-Palestinians, ignoring his fuller following work. In this piece, Morris shows how the pro-Palestinians also ignore the first half of the 1947-8 “civil war,” facts being inconvenient to their narrative.
The above Rapes gang-bang just took a few minutes to gather. Perverted politics.
“Real leadership is rare,” says retiring Sec. Of Defense Robert Gates, who served under 8 Presidents, at the US Naval Academy graduation:
Gates told graduates that great leaders have some of the same qualities: conviction, self-confidence, moral courage, integrity and common decency.
“Above all, remember that the true measure of leadership is not how you react in times of peace or times without peril,” Gates said. “The true measure of leadership is how you react when the wind leaves your sails, when the tide turns against you.”
"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man."
Adolph Hitler, 1933. There is no doubt that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a Socialist movement. The only thing about it that could be construed as at all "rightist" was its ardent nationalism.
My question is this: If the National Socialist Party had left the Jews alone, would the Nazis have been heroes of the Left, as Stalin was?
I am a regular reader of fellow Psychoanalyst and Psychiatrist 1 Boring Old Man. Most of his posts go straight to the heart of the turmoil and controversy which is going on in our field today.
That's why I hope he receives this message from me: Your fonts are too small to read, and the color contrast between your print and your background is too slight. Those of us without 25 year-old eyes need a magnifying glass to read your good and interesting posts.
If you are one of those folks who keep the house at 55 both summer and winter, you can ignore this post. Otherwise, you may be grateful for this reminder about the ideal serving temperatures for red wines - 55-62 degrees F.
That is cellaring temperature, not room temperature. In the summertime, you will enjoy your reds much more if they are chilled a bit, rather than drinking them at 85 degrees. Yuk.
You spray a little stuff on the stains, then throw it in the dryer with the special paper thing. She says it works well for her skirts, jackets, and sweaters.
The Washington Times has the straight skinny on the downstream effects of our porcine federal government's expenditures. There's the usual stuff about billion dollar toilet seats without holes in them and so forth, but there's one gem hidden among the awful offal that makes the annual three trillion spree worth it. Oh, yeah. Shrimp on a treadmill!
Well, that's cooler than a HUD block grant, I'll say that much for it. But I gather everything the government does isn't nearly as essential as that.
Is "jello wrestling at the South Pole" a euphemism for something actually naughty? Or is it just dull, useless, ugly people wrestling in jello at great expense, in between bouts of fudging statistics about how hot it is in the Antarctic because I drive a four-door car? I'm sorry, it's hard to keep up with these hipsters. Next thing you know, you're going to tell me Pabst Blue Ribbon is popular again.
At constant fertility, Israel will have more young people by the end of this century than either Turkey or Iran, and more than German, Italy or Spain….The right way to read this projection is backwards: Israelis love children and have lots of them because they are happy, optimistic and prosperous….Europeans, Turks and Iranians, by contrast, have very few children because they are grumpy, alienated and pessimistic….
A new survey commissioned by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans found that 80% of respondents were found to have "little" or only "some" knowledge of the military holiday while just 20% of respondents claim to be "very familiar" with the day and its purpose.
No Democrat votes for any budget proposal -- Why Dems don’t want to present a budget: “The Peterson Foundation's Solutions Initiative brought together six think tanks -- two conservative, two liberal and two centrist -- and challenged each to present a detailed plan to solve our fiscal crisis-in-waiting, using the same uniform assumptions.” Read on
Before 1700s, dogs were considered vicious and disease-ridden
"Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens."
Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Law on Hiring Illegal Immigrants: “The decision did not involve an even more controversial immigration measure passed by Arizona lawmakers. That measure requiring police to check the immigration status of individuals in certain circumstances remains under separate legal challenge, and could likewise eventually reach the Supreme Court.”
The latest report by media watchdog group Just Journalism compared the coverage of Israel to the coverage of the “Arab spring” countries—Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia—during 2010. The group found that the attention given to the Arab spring countries (before the uprisings) was almost nonexistent….Israel was scapegoated as the root of Middle East unrest for years, while the oppression and corruption throughout the Arab world were largely ignored.
Mrs. BD is good with flowers and other things. It always amused me that she thought she invented flat flower arrangements until a flower arrangement judge informed her that her multi-level blue-ribbon construction was pave (with accent aigu), but inventively layered to a 6' height. Pave, once a popular avant garde style, is commonplace nowadays. It's good because it does not block cross-table conversation.
I was fortunate to recently hear a noted quartet play one of Brahms' masterpieces, his Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op.25, in an intimate setting. I am fortunate to live where there is plenty of live chamber music, and I am always happy to go listen.
I love chamber music as much or more than orchestral (too bad chamber music didn't have drum sets, though) but, with my tin ear and my slow brain, it takes me several hearings to get the structure, intent, and the direction of a composition unless I have studied it in advance. (Folk, blues, and pop are easy for my brain.) I mentioned this disability to Mrs. BD in reference to the G minor, and she replied "What do you mean? This is as clearly structured, developed, and disciplined a chamber piece as I have ever heard. The structure is transparent."
Listen to the whole piece for a day or two, if you need that as I do. It's a musical journey.
Here's just the familiar Finale, Movement 4 - the Rondo alla zingarese - a dance piece if there ever was one:
Mrs. BD and I have been taking the William and Mary course in Medieval History (with the delightfully Asperger's-ish Prof. Daileader via The Teaching Company) and we are enjoying it immensely. I do not like to sit unless I am at work, but this course gets me into a chair after work. (We live and thrive on the Teaching Company courses at my cottage, as readers know.)
The Prof says that the wealth of the Middle Ages came from a combination of trade and the renewal of currency in the form of the Italian Florin, the introduction of the heavy plow, the replacement of slavery with serfdom, a doubling of Europe's population - and the Medieval Warm Period which made it possible to grow better crops much further north than in the Dark Ages - and further north than today. Greenland was farmland.
The Warm Period was far warmer than the world today. People benefited. That's why we pray for Global Warming (but also doubt that humankind will be so lucky. With our luck, we'll get the next Ice Age and all be screwed except for Dr. Merc).
It was after morning recess in Mrs. Winter’s sixth grade class at Mapleton School. I remember the moment precisely, when the boy behind me, right in the middle of the lesson, leaned over his desk and my shoulder to whisper in my ear that if I’d take a nickel down to Woolworths at Broadway and Pearl, I could buy this fishing “thing” with which I could catch lots of fish out at East Dagues Lake.
In The Secret of Amazon.com, I reveal how one can buy older books for upward of an entire penny, assuming your wallet coin purse can withstand such a blow.
Well, I found out something even more amazing about Amazon.com the other day. This tale won't just introduce you to some new product or service; it'll introduce you to an entire new genre of item that you probably never even knew existed...
...and, if you own a printer and do much printing, you might want to very much.
"Crap! Out of printer ink again? What? Cyan? How the hell can I be out of cyan if I haven't printed anything in color in over a year?!?"
You probably know the feeling.
What happens is that every time you turn the printer on, or even in mid-print if it feels the need, it cleans the printer heads. And every time it cleans the heads, it shoots a little ink down the nozzle and, after you add up a bucketload of cleanings, you're out of cyan. Or magenta. Or yellow.
Again.
So you cruise into Office Depot. $63 for the 4-pack. Hmm. Clearly, there must be a better way.
You check the Office Depot online site. $56. Hmm. Clearly, there must be a better way.
(you're repetitious, but thorough)
So you check Amazon.com. Ah-ha! $31. Now we're talkin'. You sniff around the page and see an "11 new from $27.20" link and figure you've hit rock bottom. $63 down to $27 in five minutes? Not bad, you old pro, you.
Then it happens.
That's when you spot the link next to it, and you humbly realize that, as smart and seasoned a shopper as you are, there's an entire genre of ink cartridges out there that you never even knew existed:
Used ink cartridges.
And no, I just couldn't stop myself. The ad's gone now (there was only one in stock), but I grabbed the 4-pack listed for — are you ready — $9.95.
It arrived yesterday and all four cartridges are brand new inside of their factory-sealed vacuum packs.
Having sent Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden, do we propose to deal with Gaddafi by unleashing fierce lawyers at the Hague?...
Our current notions seem to reflect the cosmopolitan notion that we must care about everyone equally. In 2005, one of the leading theorists of cosmopolitan ethics, David Held of the London School of Economics, defined it this way: “Humankind belongs to a single moral realm in which each person is regarded as equally worthy of respect and consideration.” If you take this seriously enough, you will find it very hard to fight a successful war.
Gateway Pundit: “Like with everything Obama does, there’s no more than a two degree of separation between him and some America-hating leftist radical.”
VERY cool graphic: which supplements have evidence of working for various conditions, or not (go to "show me" tab on right side to see which work for which conditions; higher and bigger on the scale is better)
Neptunus Lex:" “Possible UN sanctions” for a Syrian nuclear plant that was destroyed almost four years ago? Talk about barn doors and fled horses.”
Surber: Lefty on the Lefties:“firebagging lefties constantly project on anyone with the temerity to question their paranoid conspiracy theories and character assassinations.” – There’s a HuffApp for that
Anomalocaridids. Say that 100 times, fast. They’d eat you or a distant ancestor.
Remembering The Brave. This slide show consists of photos taken at a formal dinner at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, VA. It is a beautiful presentation of the honor, commitment and pride today's heroes share with yesterday's.
Senate votes: Obama budget 0-97; Ryan House Budget 40-57 – Inching closer to facing the facts?
So one naturally asks: do the Democrats have something better to propose? The answer is: No. The Democratic Senate has not come up with a budget in two years, thereby violating federal law. President Obama has not proposed a replacement for his laughable FY 2012 budget, which not a single member of Congress is willing to support. The Democrats have no budget; no plan; no path out of the fiscal disaster into which they have led the United States. They are bystanders and political opportunists, utterly unfit to govern.
War is in some ways the most human of activities: it is about defining and achieving objectives in cooperation with some people, all-out opposition from others, in a contest that draws on every talent and tests every virtue that we have. Even those of us whose life plans do not involve storming up a hillside under enemy fire can learn from the way Clausewitz analyzes leadership and war. More, to ignore war in an education is to leave students ignorant about one of the central features of civilization and human life.
Long Live the Industrial City - New York City’s garment district illustrates that manufacturing can still be vital to the innovation that cities foster.
A quote:
Fashion is an intensely iterative process in which time becomes an obstacle. “When you move into higher-end design, there is so much spontaneous creativity happening that you don’t want to wait a month to see your garments,” says Tina Schenk, owner of the pattern-making company Werkstett. “One design is based on another. You want to keep the process going, you want to continuously look at the things that you’ve been designing.” Andrew Rosen, a third-generation garmento who founded Theory, a fashion company that now grosses half a billion dollars a year, remarks, “Just from an efficiency point of view, I can make clothes faster here. Which is not to say we haven’t shortened the lead times in China—we have. But there’s a lot more logistics that need to happen from 12,000 miles away than from 12 blocks away.” As Edward Glaeser notes in his new book The Triumph of the City, one thing cities do well is eliminate the “curse of complex communication.”
And as any Project Runway viewer knows from those trips to Mood Designer Fabrics, the massive garment district emporium where the reality TV show’s contestants scout for chiffon and charmeuse, it’s important to have the raw materials of fashion within easy reach. Fabric needs to be touched. “It’s not a flat medium you’re working in,” says veteran designer Anna Sui. “When you gather a piece of fabric, sometimes because of the thickness of it or the loftiness or the bounceability of it, you never know how it’s going to react.”
I still miss the blocks of garment racks blocking all the sidewalks over there, and the hordes of rude and crude "garmentos."
I have been thinking about it. As I commented then, sociologists tend not to discuss psychology. A good rule of thumb is that a person's character traits - personality traits - determine a lot about their adaptation to life and to reality - their success in making goals, and pursuing their goals, for themselves.
It doesn't matter where character traits come from: genetics, examples, or wherever. What matters is the balance between the useful ones and the detrimental ones.
Furthermore, some character traits, like obsessionalism, are good for some things (eg being a pilot or surgeon) but detrimental for others (eg being a jazz musician, or displaying emotion in relationships). For another example, the capacity for controlled violence (useful for cops and soldiers and, in fact many other jobs too including my own, at times). People are even beginning to talk about the usefulness of Asperger's traits.
Each of us is our own stew of traits and strengths and weaknesses. Mature adults do not blame the world or others for their difficulties, but look at themselves, try to identify their shortcomings, and try to improve them if they chose to.
I do not view social class or income as a measure of life success or life adaptation. In my professional world, we use other, less superficial measures such as quality and stability of relationships, breadth of interests, responsibility and reliability, self-control, active engagement in life, and so on.
However, as Murray implies, social class can be a very rough measure of human adaptation for people with material ambitions: people in the upper middle class tend to be more adaptable and able socially and intellectually, and those in the lower class tend to either have more adaptive problems, or to cause more problems for others (which includes governmental or charitable dependency, crime, disorder, etc).
Before I run out of space, I want to say a word about social capital, as I constructed my own practical understanding of it. In my simple-minded way, applying one's social capital means participating in and contributing to one's community, whatever that may be. Being a constructive part of it, beyond the bare minimum of holding down a job or raising a family.
Whether it's as simple as introducing people to each other, throwing holiday parties, getting a stop sign on a corner, helping a kid find a job, volunteering at church, raising money to sustain the local chamber group, running a Boy Scout troop, attending town meetings, joining clubs, starting a softball team, or coaching soccer, we all have ways to contribute to our social network, our neighborhoods, and to our communities. I do know how corny all that sounds, but I believe it is very important.
Our social capital is truly the kind of capital which we must either spend or waste before we die. People who do not jump in and spend theirs before they die are selfish, mean, and un-American, in my book.
"I drink beer whenever I can get my hands on any," Merton confessed. "I love beer, and by that very fact, the world." But even in the hermitage, Merton struggled with other people's infatuation with his hermit identity.
In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself" I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else. Rather, it seems to me that when one is too intent on "being himself" he runs the risk of impersonating a shadow. . . I am accused of living in the woods like Thoreau instead of living in the desert like St. John the Baptist. All I can answer is that I am not living "like anybody." Or "unlike anybody." We all live somehow or other, and that's that. It is a compelling necessity for me to be free to embrace the necessity of my own nature.
The weakness of all Utopias is this: that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motorcar or balloon.
G.K. Chesterton (h/t Dr. Bob, who seems to have quit writing)
Why New York's future is fleeing -- Actually, its future has been fleeing since the ‘60s and ‘70s. When I left, NYC was THE only crazy city to live, as sanity was sought elsewhere. The infection has spread to most other cities. Many of the NYC emigres carried it, along with their liberal politics.
The Dems' 'breathtaking' refusal to pass a budget: “The most amazing thing about all this, to Republicans, is that Reid’s abdication of responsibility has attracted so little attention. In a country drowning in debt, where’s the outrage?” – Senate Democrats:Bujeets! We don’t need no steenken bujeets
The Keynesian end point --The truth? "QE2 has created a massive new bubble in dollar-based financial assets, from stocks to gold. Meanwhile, it has had zero visible effect on the real economy."
How the Left Went Wrong on Islam: “The Soviet Union had tried to turn Muslim identity into a Communist identity. And that effort failed badly. The Communists remained infidels. Now we are trying to turn Muslim identity into a Democratic identity, and failing just as miserably.”
Prediction: In September, President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy blows up in his (and our) face(s). It’s totally obvious and yet no one is focusing on it.
I’m not referring to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for unilateral independence at the UN. I’m referring to the Egyptian parliamentary election.
It is totally obvious that in that election Egypt will elect a radical, anti-American, hate-Israel parliament which will then write the country’s new constitution….
On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the United States will be watching the triumph of the ideology and movement--not Usama bin Ladin, of course, but his smarter counterparts--in much of the Middle East.
PS: Here's an excellent guide to Egypt's political parties so far which proves my point . Note that there isn't a single serious moderate party. Amr Mousa isn't forming a party while Muhammad ElBaradei, Obama's favorite, isn't doing anything but complain. There is a "Facebook party." So far it has 1000 "likes." Egypt has about 85 million people.
Bipartisan foreign policy: “House lawmakers from both parties are siding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over President Obama in their differing approaches to the Israel-Palestine border dispute.” – Plus, Netanyahu gets more standing ovations than Obama, and without a teleprompter Netanyahu actually connects with authenticity.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that "of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." Rulers who just want to exploit us may relax once their greed's sated.
But "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience," Lewis said.
Classic newsreel: 
Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the 
I was surprised to stumble upon the fact that the common earthworm, the gardener's friend, is not native to the US and Canada: most worm species are "invasive" introductions from Europe, and have been spread across the country in plant material.
There are two sorts of people: those who love breakfast, and those for whom breakfast is nothing more than coffee and a cigar or, some days, a glass of OJ and five aspirins. 
In 
From 
