Wednesday, July 17. 2013
 Today's image stolen from Am. Digest
Altho I am a Dunkin' guy, I do like the Starbucks House Blend.
The problem's not fatherhood, it's manhood
The New Puritan Parent
Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets Warped on
Vacation
Mining in Space – The Next Frontier?
The man with no memory: Navy vet wakes up, speaks only Swedish
Feds admit improper scrutiny of candidate, donor tax records - Justice has declined to prosecute any of the cases
Mort Zuckerman: A Jobless Recovery Is a Phony Recovery - More people have left the workforce than got a new job during the recovery—by a factor of nearly three.
There are now 175,000 pages' worth of federal laws. Local governments add more.
We are all felons
The Election of a Black President Has Meant Nothing
Sultan: Looking for racism in America
IGNORED BY LIB MEDIA: Zimmerman Was a Democrat, Voted For Obama, Tutored Black Kids
Althouse on Why Are Black Boys Expendable?
Confessions of a Racist
A George Zimmerman Tip Line Goes Horribly Wrong
I once saw George go to a white barbershop instead of a black barbershop
In
the postmodern, antifoundationalist world of the New Left, justice is
perverted into mob rule - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50102#sthash.VQfAipUi.dpuf
In
the postmodern, antifoundationalist world of the New Left, justice is
perverted into mob rule - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50102#sthash.VQfAipUi.dpuf
Tuesday, July 16. 2013
Sunday Morning in the Church of Beethoven
Trailer: Beethoven Ninth Film, Following The Ninth
University students are fleeing humanities courses. Among the reasons is the simple fact, reported here and elsewhere: humanities departments no longer teach the humanities.
 First off, to those few brave souls who donated a few shekels to my Help Keep Doc Alive & Online fund a while back, much-much thanks. It all helps. At the moment, I'm almost two thousand clams in debt to the hospital and my local GP and thus am still considering dumping my expensive $120/mo online service and just using the local library a few times a week, but we'll see. I'd still make the occasional post, but nothing like those monster video essays I'm famous notorious for. In case you missed them, recent essays include one on the great TV show NCIS, one on the Asiana airliner crash, the disinterment of Flight 800, the amazing answer to the crash of Flight 447, and a shorter one on golf movies.
The good news is that whatever ill effects I've been feeling since around last Xmas appear to be nothing more than ultra-high blood pressure (something like 195 over 155, aka Stroke City) and something about an "elevated red blood cell count", but I never pay any attention to the details. It's just "gimme the pills" and I'm outta there.
I did, however, make one real glaring error in my last post on the subject when, puzzling over the recent diagnosis of ultra-high blood pressure, I noted that I hadn't recently changed anything in my dietary routine.
That is, if you call your lunches and dinners going from 5% frozen TV dinners to 95% frozen TV dinners over the course of a year "not changing anything".
I honestly (because I had ultra-high blood pressure at the time is my best excuse) wasn't thinking clearly and had only dashed back a year in my mind as I typed the words. In truth, until a year ago, I've never been into TV dinners much, usually eating either sandwiches (homemade, deli, Subway) or canned goods for lunch and dinner. It was only after the operation, when moving around became such a chore, than I fell into the warm bosom of easy pop-in, pop-out, meals.
Worse, I then discovered how delicious some of them are. The Marie Callender's Salisbury Steak is totally scrumptious. That set me down the whole dark path of going through every Marie Callender's and Stofer's on the shelf, plus the lesser brands, only to end up one day at a notable moment in my life. I had turned down the canned goods aisle by habit, glanced over the beef stew and chili and spaghetti and... and then just kept walking. It was the first time in my life I'd ever done that. All I had eyes for was the frozen section.
Such are the depths of the addicted.
Well, these days, all tuned into the Daily Value (DV) figure on the back of the package, I have heart palpitations just reading the labels of the things I used to gobble down by the bucketful. With admonishments of "DON'T EAT ANYTHING WITH A DV OVER 20%!!!" blaring in my head, most of the TV dinners and canned meats out there are somewhere around the (cough!) 50% mark. And that's what I'd been piling down for both lunch and dinner for almost a year.
And that's before grabbing the salt shaker and giving everything a good blast. In my whole adult life, I've salted very few things (eggs, potatoes), but once you're in the tropics, aka Sweat City, you just naturally start adding salt to your diet to make up for what you drip onto the ground while walking out to the car.
As a couple of commenters noted in the thread, some people are much more susceptible to sodium kicking up blood pressure than others, and it appears I'm of that group. I can only say "appears", though, as I've been on blood pressure medicine since that day so I can't really measure how the sudden lack of salt in my diet affects it.
I'd also note that both Bird Dog and Dr. Bliss have recently linked to the latest findings by the CDC that salt isn't as harmful as has previously been the notion, although I have reservations about the overall "IT'S OKAY, EVERYBODY, EAT ALL THE SALT YOU WANT! YIPPEE!" tone of the articles. Since human beings are involved, we always have to be on the lookout for that classic human foible of jumping from one extreme to the other, and just because something isn't as bad as previously thought doesn't mean it suddenly goes into the Eat All You Want! column.
I have a few more notes below the fold, but that's the gist. Again, my deepest thanks to those who have tossed a little something into my Help Keep Doc From Gnawing Off His Right Foot fund. Any help with these nasty medical bills would be very much appreciated.
NCIS fans, be sure to tune in tomorrow for an intriguing update!
Continue reading "Health update 3"
Monday, July 15. 2013
 Owning a Home Isn’t Always a Virtue
What if your gluten intolerance is all in your head?
Yes, the middle-class has been disappearing, but they haven’t fallen into the lower-class, they’ve risen into the upper-class
McArdle: Why I Think the GOP Will Have Control in 2017
Obamacare Will Make the Primary Care Doctor Shortage Even Worse
The Economic Blunders Behind the Arab Revolutions
Obama Using the EPA as His Weapon of Choice
Zimmerman was No True Hispanic
Farm subsidies in Manhattan
Sunday, July 14. 2013
How is all this a victory for feminism?
"Only later did Haley begin to think of what had happened as rape — a disturbingly common part of many women’s college experience. In a 2007 survey funded by the Justice Department of 6,800 undergraduates at two big public universities, nearly 14 percent of women said they had been victims of at least one completed sexual assault at college; more than half of the victims said they were incapacitated from drugs or alcohol at the time.
Another victory for contemporary feminism!"
From the article by Lawler. One quote:
The humanities, in the old view, are about the purposes or ends of being human. Technology is about the means--money and power--that should be subordinate to those ends. Instrumental reason, by its very name, should be at the service of properly philosophical and theological reflection. So those with a technical education should be taking orders from those with a fully liberal education, as they have been, in fact, through most of our history. Jefferson and Lincoln had a deep appreciation of the place of technology in American flourishing. But they understood the difference between cultivation of the means for the pursuit of happiness and happiness itself. When Jefferson thought of happiness, we learn from his letters, he gave us two exemplars: the philosopher Epicurus and his version of the Jesus of the Bible. And of course "the self-evident truths" could only be genuinely evident to a self who has reflected seriously--with the help of the key books of the West--about who each of us is.
Althouse asks "What is the difference between a tourist and a traveler?"
I suppose the tourist goes to see certain things, eg The Grand Canyon or Harrod's or St. Peter's. The traveler goes to "be there" and meander and to soak it up.
Mrs. BD and I are somewhere in between. We like to rent a car and pop into unknown places, farm town greasy spoon in Colorado, a little local ristorante in an unknown village in Italy, but we also want to see the cathedral, the Norman castle, and the famous gardens. My lad, a true traveler, just likes to wander with a backpack. If he sees a ferry to Sardinia, he hops on. If something looks interesting, he'll walk in.
My pic of the piazza on the dock at Bellagio on Lake Como. There is nothing much to see there, but it's a nice little place to hang out for a while.
Luke 10:25-37
10:25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
10:26 He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?"
10:27 He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
10:28 And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."
10:29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
10:30 Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.
10:31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
10:32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
10:33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.
10:34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
10:35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.'
10:36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
10:37 He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."
Saturday, July 13. 2013
 "Cape Cod Turkey" is Codfish. One of our favorite recipes used to be Baked Stuffed Cod, the way the Portuguese restaurants make it. I was reminded of this by our dinner a couple of Saturday nights ago at the Lobster Pot (still fun and crowded as usual, but maybe not as good as it used to be) in P'town.
Here's how I make this rustic, home-cookin' meal:
1. Thickest filets you can find of Cod, Scrod, or Haddock.
2. The stuffing (you don't need to stuff the fish, just put it as a bed under the filets, skin down): Plain bread crumbs mixed with chopped onion, shallot, shrimp, crabmeat, lobster, chopped clams, whatever. Obviously you sautee those added things in butter first, then soften the stuffing with clam broth or fish stock. Salt and pepper, and parsley.
3. The sauce: Sautee in plenty of olive oil: chopped onion, chopped garlic, maybe chopped leek, some chopped red or green pepper, then add chopped plum tomatoes, some tomato paste, white wine, oregano, a little rosemary - and cumin to taste. The comino is the key. I use plenty of it. Some salt and pepper, of course.
4. Dump some of the sauce into the baking pan. Shape the stuffing as a bed to fit under each filet, and mound it on top of the sauce. Place the filets on top. It is normal to top the filets with onion and green pepper slices. Salt and pepper, and a shot of white wine to moisten.
5. Bake 25-35 minutes at 400, depending on thickness of filets, until they begin to flake properly. Never overcook a nice hunk of fresh Codfish. Baste with pan juices or white wine while baking.
Make sure each plate has a good dose of sauce, with the stuffed cod on top. Serve with pan-roasted potatoes or boiled potatoes with parsley. It's often served with spaghetti, but that makes no sense to me. And no vegetables, please. Vegetables cause cancer - but everybody knows that. But if you have to add a vegetable, I think a sauteed sliced yellow summer squash might fit in well, along with some bread to soak up all the sauce. Bread is a healthy vegetable, isn't it? This hearty dish deserves a red wine, not a white. (Whites and champagne go with shellfish, but not with real salt-water fish.)
If you are off carbs, make it the same way but forget the stuffing. It's almost as good that way.
Regardless of rationality, Leftists always seem to want to control others. That's a truism.
It has always seemed to me that if a person can control himself, and his kids, that is plenty challenge enough in life.
The Secularization of Notre Dame: Is There Hope?
Sonnet #30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
Friday, July 12. 2013
I've had pleasure remembering many of the songs my Dad was fond of singing (badly) while driving. Here are two of his favorites to sing.
His "opera Italian" was pretty good. He loved performing this tune (sorry, but our Youtube embedding still is on the blink):
Also, this tune
The article is from Mead:
Of the 33 states granted a waiver (from No Child Left Behind) last year, 27 now have different achievement goals for different groups of students. And the Obama administration fully supports this measure, “as long as the low-performing students are required to make greater rates of progress, so that the gap between struggling students and high-achieving students is cut in half over six years.”
Different performance standards depending on skin tone and eye shape? They have gone insane. With the President being 50/50 white/black, to what standards should he be held? I suppose he should be held to the lower dark standards, because that's his skin tone.
 My Dad died this week in the same way that my Mom died in February: complications following emergency hip surgery. A generation gone in little more than four months.
He and my Mom raised five half-decent kids and educated us all privately and to the max.
I'll tell you just a little about Dad. He was a grad of Phillips Andover and Harvard College (which he entered aged 16), served in the US Army from 1942-45, went on to graduate studies at the great University of Chicago and then was called back to the Army from 1951-53. After that, he began an academic career combined with private consulting and retired as a full Professor at Yale with a folder full of teaching honors and awards and two generations of grateful students to his credit.
His devotion to intellectual pursuits and lifelong learning have been an inspiration. I clipped this bit from the obit my sibs are working on:
He was known for his sharp wit, brain power, and intolerance of fools. He was an omnivorous reader and a life-long student. A confirmed atheist, he could quote the Bible (and Shakespeare) at will. A Christian at heart. He did not care for TV and for most of his life would not have one in the house or at the farm. He had no patience for movies. He loved outdoor labor, planting trees, his vegetable garden, liberal politics, all sorts of conservation causes, The New York Times, The Metropolitan Opera, ballet, Shakespeare, travels to England, Tuscany, and Scandinavia, the Tanglewood Music Festival, Cape Cod, the farm in Massachusetts - and his beloved wife of over 50 years and his large family (12 grandkids plus a great-grandson) which was always around.
Dad was 6'3", wiry but muscular, and good with chain saws, farm tractors, and tools in general. An inspiration and an impressive, masculine, tough, frequently caustic, hard-working and good man. Some thought he resembled Gary Cooper. He was stern, and not a "have a nice day" sort of person. He was good with firearms, but after two wars he had seen enough of them and quit them after training us kids. A New England Yankee born and bred, he disdained the pursuit of money, and ostentation. His intolerance of things of which he disapproved could be intense. As his kids, he was highly effective at keeping us scared straight, mostly.
We'll be keeping his apple trees at the farm pruned for many years, God willing.
Photo is my photo of a photo of Dad at the farm a while ago.
Thursday, July 11. 2013
Sometimes.
Emergency help on the street did work for Gerard, but the one time I did a sidewalk CPR the 45 year-old ended up with brain damage, but alive. Of course, the most difficult part for amateurs is to diagnose the need for it. People who turn pale and faint do not need CPR.
From the article:
Many veteran physicians have begun to opt out of the resuscitation practices they often administer to their patients. In a 2012 article published in The Guardian, "How Doctors Choose to Die," retired physician Dr. Ken Murray reveals that members of his profession frequently turn down everything from chemotherapy to CPR.
He notes that years of witnessing and administering "medical care that makes people suffer" leads many doctors diagnosed with terminal illnesses to choose to spend their last months or years at home and without medical treatment. Murray recalls some fellow physicians who go as far as getting tattoos that read "no code" to remind rescuers to forgo any attempts at revival.
Murray is still an advocate for learning CPR, but he warns against hoping for miracles.
Obama's sexual harassment policy for campuses:
"... in late June, Arizona senator John McCain penned a letter to the Justice Department, co-sponsor of the blueprint, along with the Education Departments's Office of Civil Rights. It asked--wholly reasonably--under what authority either the DOJ or the OCR interpreted Title IX as giving them the right to create a "blueprint" to impose campus speech codes. (Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, which the OCR apparently doesn't consider a binding precedent any longer, stated that sexual harassment must be "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit.") McCain quoted from a letter critiquing the "blueprint" penned by the AAUP's Committee on Women in the Academic Profession (not exactly a right-wing group) before posing a series of questions of his own.For instance, he wondered to what extent "the broad nature of the new and judicially untested 'unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature' standard [might] increase the risk of a wrongful conviction."
That an influential U.S. senator expressed concern about the OCR's efforts--a rare event, indeed--might have led to more robust public condemnation of the administration's years-long assault on campus due process. Instead, if anything, the reverse has occurred..."
My, how these things do evolve.
Bulldog and I were yakking away in email the other day. Such terms as "loads of sugar", "M&Ms" and "Hershey Kisses" were bandied about, an indication of the somber tone the fabled bloggers of Maggie's Farm take on when discussing life's most serious issues in private.
We got to talking about the recent Korean-owned Asiana Air crash at SFO and whether cultural conditioning played any role. I mentioned I was thinking of doing a short post on it. As I said:
1. If Asians are involved, and
2. it seems inaction was the sole cause of the crash
then it's a pretty good guess where, deep down, the problem lies.
This was just after the crash where, with everything else seeming to be functioning normally, simple inaction was the only thing left on the table.
Bulldog (known as 'Big Drool' to his bar buddies) mentioned author Malcolm Gladwell, who had tied together two Korean Air crashes due to "cockpit culture", along with an Avianca crash; a company based in Colombia where the same 'militaristic hierarchy' existed in the airline industry.
So, thanks to Droolie, I then had to track down this Gladwell character and I came across this:
Gladwell did not return a request for comment, but in summarizing his ideas for Fortune magazine in November 2008, he said Korean Air's problem at the time was not old planes or poor crew training. "What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical," he said.
"You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S." he added. That's dangerous when it comes to modern airplanes, said Gladwell, because such sophisticated machines are designed to be piloted by a crew that works together as a team of equals, remaining unafraid to point out mistakes or disagree with a captain.
Both Gladdy and the writer are one-third right.
Yes, it's cultural, but not in the way they indicate, and not in the conclusion they reach. But we'll get to that.
Of course, then I had to watch the 'Mayday' episodes of the three big crashes the article backs up Gladdy's claim with, and that's when this post took yet another leap as I realized how wrong both The Gladman and his adoring acolytes were.
Then, wiping my fevered brow, I realized the horrid truth that since I was the one with all of the aforementioned 'Mayday' episodes at hand, it was up to me to grab my video editor and put it all together. In other words, one quick flurry of emails with Droolie and this went from a 1-clip, 250-word 'behind the scenes' peek at the Asiana crash to a 5-clip, 3,120-word video essay.
Like I said, how these things do evolve!
Continue reading "Culture in the cockpit"
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