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.
Since lead shot was (rightly) outlawed for waterfowl hunting in North America in 1991, the varieties of alternatives have been growing.
Steel shot was the first to appear but steel has low density (hits softer, travels shorter, and thus requires larger shot size than lead). Many folks were reluctant to put magnum steel loads through older or valuable shotguns, it altered choke functioning, and many felt that steel produced too many crippled birds. (I thought so, but I am usually not a very good shot with waterfowl unless I am in the groove.)
Then came Bismuth, and Bismuth-Tungsten - all much more expensive than steel, but with densities closer to those of lead, and presumably gentler on the barrel than steel. Plus you use the same shot sizes as with lead, say, #4 for decoying ducks and BB for geese.
The non-toxic shot I've been hearing about lately i Hevi-Steel, an iron-tungsten shot which is as cheap as regular steel but with a density approaching that of lead. There's a good, detailed review of Hevi-steel here. Given the price, it sounds like an excellent choice for those giant flocks of Snow Geese.
I think Bismuth is my first choice for ducks, especially since I can do everything the same way I used to do with lead, but I wonder what our readers like to use for ducks and geese because I am no expert on this.
"I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others."
Actually, I'm going to Georgia first, to visit a whole passelful of relatives I haven't seen since I was a teenager.
Wail, howdee, nay-bah! Whuzzup heah in ol' Jo-ja?
Just practicing.
For those of you just tuning in, I'm off to beautiful Mehico to have a cancerous tumor removed. Or, in doctor's parlance, I'm "being treated for my condition". Doctors never use ugly words like "cancer" and "tumor" because it'll cause me to dwell in the depths of despair forever. The back story is here, and it's not too late to donate a few shekels to the cause. I'm still facing some serious post-operative costs.
And certainly my deepest thanks to those who helped make this possible. I honestly thought when I first heard the verdict diagnosis that it was a death sentence, simply because I knew I'd never have the money even for a cut-rate (no pun intended) operation down in Mexico. But, between selling almost everything I own (they can have my Honda Civic when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers), the gang at my mom's rest home (they actually held an official PBS-style 'fundraiser', with skits and songs and magic acts by the residents to entertain the troops during the event), and, of course, the generous people here and on Instapundit.
As for my recuperation and getting back to blogging, I have no idea what to expect. Naturally, I've been hearing wildly different scenarios, although I think the worse ones are referring to a full-fledged colostomy, which is a far cry from what I'm getting, thank God. I have an extremely comfortable computer chair, and, being on a boat, the galley and head are just five feet away, so I should be able to get along just fine. Because the boat's a liveaboard, I've got tons of food and water at the ready should the global warmists be wrong and dirt reaches the point of spontaneous combustion far sooner than expected and I need to quickly head out to sea so I can be boiled alive.
(there's something wrong with that last sentence, but I just can't place it)
And, of course, no Big C update would be complete without a cartoon or two from my two dear, dear friends who have done their utmost to keep my spirits buoyed by sending me every gruesome, morbid, soul-eviscerating cartoon they come across. Bless their little hearts.
And it occurs to me that not only do Americans live longer than Britons, Australians and Canadians, but Hispanics, as well. Or, to be precise, "have more liveable time' than the others.
You know all those extra letters Britons use in words like "colour", "neighbour", "programme", etc? Well, all those little seconds it takes to type those extra letters adds up over time. If it takes 1 second to type the 'u' in 'colour', 'neighbour', etc, times one million uses over a lifetime, that's 12 days, or almost two weeks of wasted life.
And then we notice the unnecessary upside-down exclamation and question marks in Spanish. Again, countless days, wastefully thrown away.
In other words, compared to every Briton, Australian, Canadian and Spanish-speaking person in the world, you just gained 12 days of life.
Springtime is the time to plant annuals, but fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees as I explained earlier.
Today, spring bulbs. You do not want to plant them until nights are regularly below 50 degrees F or the bulbs will either rot or try to send up shoots.
However, early enough to get some roots into the soil.
We should all be very glad that we have a Democratic president right now; otherwise the news would be terrible. We would be seeing a rash of horrible and depressing stories in the newspapers about strategic failure, with unremitting second guessing and belittling of a president who agonized for months before the surge and then saw his plan fail. We’d be hearing non-stop reports in the media about the incompetent and klutzy leader who torpedoed his own policy by announcing a withdrawal date; the man who tried to please everybody and do everything—and failed at all he tried.
Why does Secretary Clinton regard “F** you, God” as a fun toe-tapper for all the family but “F** you, Allah” as “disgusting and reprehensible”?
The Terrorists’ Veto - Around the world, a campaign of religious intimidation and murder intensifies.
A Tale ofTwo Secret Videoshe ASecretary Clinton regard “F*** you, God” as a fun toe-tapper for all the familaker the White House Can No Longer Ignore D'Souza: The Author & Filmmaker the
The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand; Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Many horse owners, and pretty much all owners of horses of any value, purchase insurance packages including medical and death benefit.
Many companies offer it. It's a free market. See Google equine insurance.
What was most interesting to me about the topic is that all of the medical insurance is Major Medical (which I believe to be the only sensible medical insurance to buy, but increasingly scarce) and it is quite inexpensive. Why inexpensive? Because it doesn't cover birth control, poison ivy, or the sniffles.
I suppose one reason it is inexpensive is because you shoot a horse with a broken leg, which is thus an inexpensive and relatively quick procedure. However, surgery for colic can cost over $10,000. and is not reliably successful.
The NHS is well-known for letting the elderly ill pass away without care (no bullets or lethal injections yet), and Obamacare will do the same, in time.
I wish I could buy some of that inexpensive equine insurance for myself (minus the bullets unless absolutely necessary). I don't mind going to a vet instead of an MD.
Furthermore, I'd prefer a bullet or a bolt to drawn-out pain, misery, and incapacitation.
We are all weary of the drearily repetitive claims of oppression and the academic insistence on PC orthodoxy. Everybody is oppressed - especially in America. And white-colored males are oppressed by the "victims."
What is true at Bowdoin is more or less true everywhere.The power of the victims' studies departments lies not in what they say but in their ability to prevent inquiry that runs against their preferred narratives.They need not go to a lot of trouble to make this happen.They are more often like rocks in the stream.The regular flow of academic life simply goes around them.Few faculty members or administrators want the hassle of getting in their way.
Bawer's book is as vivid an account of the history, the shifting rationalizations, and the rhetoric of victims' studies as we are ever likely to have.This owes something to his insider status.An openly gay man whose 1993 book, A Place at the Table, advanced the cause for integration of gays into mainstream society, Bawer is deeply sympathetic to academic work that emphasizes the history of groups who have struggled against prejudice. Moreover, he has been a participant in some of the key debates that shaped these fields.His chapter on how "gay studies" ("a serious academic discipline") was displaced by "queer studies" (a celebration of "oppositional relation to the norm") is the centerpiece of the book.He recounts his own disputes with queer theorists such as David Halperin, who attack him for criticizing the late Michel Foucault, whose view that sex is "socially constructed" is the founding principle of queer theory.
If sex is a social construct, somebody needs to inform the birds and the bees because they did not get the memo.
The Times Of Israel has published my piece, "A liberal rabbi's wake-up call for liberal Jews." The central theme of the rabbi's wake-up call is that "with great power comes great responsibility", focusing upon Iran and upon the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel diatribes and harrasment that frequently occurs on US college campuses. Liberal Jews in the US cannot afford to avoid or look away from directly and vigorously confronting these existential threats. Jews must use the historically recently-won power to defend ourselves. Otherwise, the almost two-millenia of fear and hiding, of slaughter, can return.
When Jefferson returned to America about five years after he had left, he brought back “eighty-six crates with kitchen utensils and equipment, including a pasta-making machine from Italy.” He also brought various wines and cheeses, olive oil and mustard, “seedlings of fruit trees” including apricots, pears and figs, and 680 bottles of wine.
He knew how to travel. The article does not mention whether he tried the pizza (he seemed to stay mostly in Tuscany and the Piedmont where there is no pizza), but he did introduce Washington DC to Macaroni and Cheese. That was a good move, but he also brought home Italian (arborio) rice. Can't make Risotto without it.
Pic is Fettuccine Alfredo, aka Mac 'n Cheese. A touch of black truffle shavings, preserve, or black truffle oil makes it even better. I've even seen it in fancy joints with caviar on top. Like all pastas, it's meant to be a small Primi, of course, not a Secondi.
I have seen American kids grow big and strong, smart and athletic on Cheerios, Peanut Butter and Jelly on Wonder Bread (or Fluffernutter), and Mac 'n Cheese for supper.
If the Commerce Clause power had been upheld, not only would the enumerated powers scheme have gone away, but Congress could have changed the law to punish this or any future mandates by very extensive penalties, like high fines and even imprisonment. One last way of explaining the difference: Imagine that all the drug laws were justified under the tax power and not under the commerce power. All the drug laws we have are Commerce Clause power. But imagine they were only justified under the tax power, under the principle that Chief Justice Roberts identified. That would mean the only thing the government could do to you for violating the drug laws would be to charge you a reasonable, modest tax. They couldn’t even charge you a punitive tax, and they certainly couldn’t put you in jail. If we actually achieved that reading of the drug laws, it wouldn’t be a perfectly libertarian solution, but you’d have to open up the jails and let millions of people out under that reading of the Constitution.
It's been 45 days since my last post on spy drones. That's when I started saving links for this post. Want to guess how many links I saved in 45 days?
45.
The good news: People are trying to get the word out.
The bad news: Talk is cheap.
When we last left our exciting spy drone story, the airliner you were flying to Denver in had just run into an off-course traffic drone whose guidance system had just been fried by solar radiation and you ended up in a molten pile of burning aluminum and plastic.
U.N. officials describe several narrowly averted disasters in which drones crashed into a refugee camp, flew dangerously close to a fuel dump and almost collided with a large passenger plane over Mogadishu, the capital.
That'll be the real wake-up call. A 747 hits one just entering New York City air space. 293 dead including the crew, 187 on the ground.
And the nightmare of links below the fold?
Actually, I'd suggest you skip it. Why ruin a perfectly good day?
Childlike credulity about presidents’ abilities to subdue turbulent portions of the world by projecting “strength,” or to “manage” the domestic economy, encourages political infantilism.
The overwhelming political objective of the Democratic Party since the 1930’s has been to get as many people as possible enrolled in one government program or another, at least in part to guarantee their votes in subsequent elections: “Tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”
And now it’s somehow a scandal when a Republican notes that they succeeded, to the tune of nearly half the country?
In a state of national and international disaster, the worst possible gaffe is telling the truth about the state of affairs we are in. These gaffes disturb the party-goers signing up to work for non-profits and watching cheerful reports about the Arab Spring and the economic recovery while the ship sinks around them. And the party men and women react to it with the outraged demeanor of spoiled children.
Fees for services vary depending on the area of the country one inhabits.
I've been collecting some from my area of Connecticut:
- Private practice legal services, paperwork: $300-450/hr, with volume discounts and pro-rated for time - Private legal services, court time: $500-600/hr - Home health aide: $20-25/hr - Home health, Registered Nurse: $40-70/hr - Nurse Anesthetist: $200/hr - Prep and insertion of dental implant (not including the crown): $1800. for about 30-40 mins. - Veterinary check-up (dog) plus shots and lots of labs: $1200. - Independent financial/estate advisor (non-legal): $200-500/hr - Auto mechanic: $30-60/hr - Babysitter: $15-20/hr (more if more kids) - Live-in nanny: $300-400/week - Registered Dietician: $125-150/hr - Brief office visit to Internist (10-15 mins, no tests): $125 - Internist, routine "annual" physical, not including labs/tests: $600. - Short visit to Dermatologist, with minor slicing and dicing: $250 - Shrink visits: $300-400/hr (pro-rated for time) - Harpist for parties: $150-175/hr - Piper (Bagpiper): $150-175/hr - Electronics repair: $175/hr (rarely worth it nowadays) - Home computer services: $200/hr - Master carpenter: approx $50/hr, less with bigger job - Painter: approx $25-40/hr, more with bigger job? - Master gunsmith (wood or steel work): $60-80/hr - Per diem bookkeeper: $35/hr - Chimney Sweep: $175/first chimney, $125 each additional - Yard work: $100/man-day
If you wish to share fees of various services in your area, please do so in the comments.
Do you believe that man-made global warming is eventually going to cause dirt to reach the point of spontaneous combustion as the above Fox News headline indicates?
Do you believe that the 11% contribution of man-made CO2 to the .3% of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going to set off a chain reaction causing the other 99.7% of the atmosphere to turn into a fireball of death?
Do you believe that solar radiation plays no part in our global climate because your neighbor's SUV tailpipe is more powerful than the sun?
If so, then you're a true AGWer and you have my sympathy.
Because there was a headline floating around the other day that proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that man-made global warming is finally here and we're all going to die within months unless we immediately donate $100 to Greenpeace.
Thrilling, isn't it? To a devout AGWer like yourself, you must have shivered in delight as you clicked on the link, knowing that the final proof was here.
And that's when you discovered the cruelest link you ever done saw.
I... I really don't have the heart to say any more.
The rest of you will just have to witness the cruelality for yourself.
I disagree with the tone of that post. Fire is nature's way of rejuvenating, not man's. Fire suppression in national forests is no more than a subsidy to logging. Thanks to Bambi and Smokey the Bear, forest fire has gotten a bum rap.
It is time for a new way, a way in which Muslims will no longer have to learn about America and Americans will no longer have to learn about Islam, where we will give up on winning each other's hearts and minds, and stick to watching each other's property lines. That is the argument that needs to be advanced in the face of Obama's catastrophic Arab Spring failures and the alternative to it is four more years of terror and appeasement.
Since lead shot was (rightly) outlawed for waterfowl hunting in North America in 1991, the varieties of alternatives have been growing. 
¡Hola!
Springtime is the time to plant annuals, but fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees 
Jesuit
Dover Beach
Many horse owners, and pretty much all owners of horses of any value, purchase insurance packages including medical and death benefit.
Image via 
The guy travelled around France and Italy for years, eating and drinking everything new and tasty he could find. The Founding Foodie - 
It's been 45 days since my 
Fees for services vary depending on the area of the country one inhabits.
