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.
Perhaps nothing reflects the descent of the yeomanry than the fading role of the ten million small businesses with under 20 employees, which currently employ upwards of forty million Americans. Long a key source of new jobs, small business start-ups have declined as a portion of all business growth from 50 percent in the early 1980s to 35% in 2010. Indeed, a 2014 Brookings report, revealed that small business “dynamism”, measured by the growth of new firms compared with the closing of older ones, has declined significantly over the past decade, with more firms closing than starting for the first time in a quarter century.
Instead of stemming from the grassroots, the recovery after the latest crash was led, unlike in previous expansions, by larger firms while small company hiring remained relatively paltry. Self-employment rose, but increasingly this took the form of sole proprietorships as opposed to expanding smaller companies with employees. By 2013, smaller firms with under one hundred employees added far fewer jobs than in the prior decade. Unlike prior post-war recoveries, since 2007, grassroots companies did not lead the way out of recession and continued to lose ground compared with larger companies that either could afford the costs or avoid the taxes imposed by, the Clerical regime.
Well, happy Monday to you. That's Bird Dog at the beach. He's older than that now, and the trucks are rustier. He left me in charge, and I ran out of his bourbon yesterday, and he won't be back for a week. He asked me to look after his Australian Goldfish, too, and that's not going so well, either. I assume they're Australian, because they're floating upside down right now, and they're so somnolent, I think they think it's nighttime. Ah, well, here's the links:
When deciding whether Google should spend millions or even billions of dollars in acquiring a new company, its chief executive, Larry Page, asks whether the acquisition passes the toothbrush test: Is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?
The New York Times assumes Google is full of geniuses. I don't. They're just sitting on a pile of cash. They have little idea how they got it, and it should have been distributed to investors and paid as taxes. Instead they hoard it and squander it. Nothing but their hijacking of the old fashioned Yellow Pages has ever made a nickel.
Well, why not go out there and change your view of humanity today. Drive to a Starbucks in a unionized cab, and try not to run over the homeless people playing soccer in the parking lot. But whatever you do, don't like anyone on Facebook.
No visit to NYC is complete without a little side trip to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The old Little Italy in downtown Manhattan has mostly been invaded by new Chinese immigrants who have been expanding Chinatown, and the Italians have moved through the tunnel to Jersey. Don't ask me why.
Today, New York's Little Italy is Arthur Avenue in the Fordham area of the Bronx. It's near the lovely Fordham campus, The Bronx Zoo, and the famous and magnificent New York Botanical Garden.
Is it a "safe" neighborhood? Hardly need to ask that about a heavily Italian neighborhood in New York, for several reasons. You do not need to lock your car. Many in the metropolitan area come by just to shop for Italian delicacies.
The restaurants do not take reservations, so you have to plan it out, be early, or wait in line a bit. Lots of folks I know like Roberto. I need to get there soon.
We've been posting about fly fishing. Is it an effete hobby for the elite?
God knows, it's a harmless and pleasant hobby, requiring art, skills, knowledge, and only minimal intelligence. As we say, it's no way to make sure you have supper because bait on a hook is the best way to do that whether in pond, stream, lake, or ocean. You can catch a trout with a worm in ten seconds.
Bamboo fly rods can cost anywhere from near a thousand to a few thousand, and fancy fly reels can be expensive too even though they are hardly needed. Purists scoff at fiberglass or graphite fly rods, partly because they are non-traditional and partly because they are a little easier to use. Many trout streams are limited to fly fishing.
For me, fishing, hunting, and hiking a trail are just excuses to spend time outdoors enjoying God's creation and taking not of every critter, tree and plant, and the geology. It's good fun to shoot a bird, catch a trout or a Striped Bass on a fly, etc., but that is a different sort of day than going to the store to get them.
Sport is sport and shopping is shopping.
The skills and lore of fly fishing are endless and great time-wasters for fellows and for a few special gals. Lots of guys spend hours tying their own flies, inventing their own flies, practicing the various sorts of casts, trying for salmon, salt-water game fish, etc.
We have had a decade or two of some experts preaching that fat and salt will kill you. Many of us docs have been debunking those old claims, to little avail.
The premise behind campus activism is always the same. The college campus is a microcosm of the larger world. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens at Oberlin or Sweet Briar is imagined to rock the foundations of the old order. Patriarchy trembles. The Zionist Entity is called to account. The coal-breathing capitalist Earth warmers feel the chill of a generation walking on their graves.
I have never met a stupid adult person. I have met plenty of ignorant people and people lacking in the curse of curiosity, but that's different. Mostly, we meet people with limited areas of stupidity: lack of self-awareness, lack of information or understanding, islands of emotionalism or impulsivity, unexamined biases, self-affirming rationalizations, etc.
Well, Bird Dog must be halfway to Canobie Lake Park by now, wearing black socks and flip-flops and an "I'm With Stupid" T Shirt his wife gave him for Christmas back in Reagan's first term. It's faded a bit with washing, and the arrow on the belly under the text that used to point to his companion has been worn away entirely by the rusty chrome arm of the mower every Saturday, so it's kind of a Zen thing now. Have fun, Bird Dog.
"The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do."
At any given time, there are always a few people that see things as they are, not as they wish them to be. If you put a gun to my head, I'd have trouble naming them right now.
A Google employee forgot to remove Post-it notes and it’s fueling a lawsuit Google, Facebook, Apple et al. are run by the worst kinds of greedy grasping turds ever seen in commerce. They would have had a back desk with no responsibilities in any Gilded Age business that produced anything worthwhile.
They've awarded this year's Fields Medals. It worries me that I completely understood one of the descriptions, because I'm a dolt. I thought they only gave out phony Nobels.
The Lobster Roll is right up there with Clambake as classic New England summer cuisine. Clambakes have to be made by you, on the beach in a hole in the sand just like the Indians used to, but every New England seafood joint has its own recipe for the simple Lobster Roll.
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.
Why is the CDC based in Atlanta? Because Georgia was the center of malaria in the US, and elimination of malaria from the US was the CDC's first job. It's hard to imagine, but through the 1940's malaria was endemic in the southern US, and prior to that in the northeast too. Every doc in New England used to treat malaria routinely.
DDT was a major factor in the elimination of malaria in the US, but it remains a common disease in the Third World, in the southern hemisphere. And, sadly, DDT harms lots of other things, too, besides mosquitoes but probably isn't as evil as Rachel Carson claimed.
The long history of malaria would make a fascinating book. I'll just share a few facts: the germ which causes malaise, fever, and anemia is a plasmodium, a wierd one-celled bug. There are 4 varieties. The vector (meaning the thing that distributes the bug) is of course an anopheles mosquito, which squirts the germ into the human bloodstream with its anticoagulating saliva. The plasmodium reproduces in your red cells, then goes loose in your blood, where it is presumably sucked up by an innocent mosquito who spreads it further. Humans are the host of this bug (meaning their reproductive home). Like any parasite, the goal is to keep the host alive, while reproducing itself. If you kill your host, you sort of defeat your purpose (like over-taxing productive people), so malaria is more likely to cause chronic illness than death, except in the otherwise vulnerable. Fascinatingly, the sickle-cell trait of Africa confers resistance to malaria. Nature is amazing, which makes being an MD an astonishing privilege.
Prevention is simpler than treatment. Treatments include derivatives of sweet wormwood, as discovered in China in 300, and derivatives of cinchona bark (quinine), as discovered by the Spanish in the 1600s. The quinine treatment/preventative of course gave rise to the finest drink of the British Empire - the Gin and Tonic, which exemplifies the idea of making a virtue of necessity. A Brit will drink nothing without either gin or wine in it. Add a lime and the Limey can prevent scurvy too, as was attributed to Captain Cook. Thus truly a superior medicine for both body and soul.
Does the brand of gin matter? For martinis, yes. For gin and tonics, not to me anyway.
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can. But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws, They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws. 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away; But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale - The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations - worm and savage otherwise, - Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. Mirth obscene diverts his anger - Doubt and Pity oft perplex Him in dealing with an issue - to the scandal of The Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same, And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
Well, Bird Dog has abandoned the farm for, er, greener pastures, and left me in charge again. You reap what you sow, big feller. I’m going to link to sites without tone. I’m going to link to sites without sand. I’m going to link to sites without panache. I’m going to link to sites without cachet. I’m going to link to sites without je ne sais quoi. I’m going to link to sites that don’t know which fork to use. I’m going link to sites about sausages. You heard me: sausage links!
Still the greatest website on these here Interwebs: Zombo.com
The truck in front of us turns off, revealing an ancient, angry man standing in the road ahead. He has a vast white beard and looks like one of the grumpier Old Testament prophets. In his hand he holds a long wooden staff. Threading his way between cars, the man singles out a stopped truck and starts beating on it as hard as he can with the staff, yelling the whole time.
Don't say that he's hypocritical. Say rather that he's apolitical."Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down; that's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
Calm down, civil liberties traditionalists. Policemen have been looking at your face as you walk by since Robert Peel invented them. Besides, if you fill out a 1040 form, you have no rights. The rest is conversation.
For thirty-eight days, with the greatest unconcern, he joined in all their games and exercises, just as if he was their leader instead of their prisoner. He also wrote poems and speeches that he read aloud to them, and if they failed to admire his work, he would call them to their faces illiterate savages, and would often laughingly threaten to have them all hanged.
Writing everyone a check for $12,000 is cheaper than all federal and state poverty programs combined. But then who would write $12,000 checks to re-election campaigns for politicians? Won’t someone think of the poor politicians?
General William Tecumseh Sherman burned the city of Atlanta in 1864. He warned: “I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told you of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them.” Add a zero to calibrate the problem in the Levant today. War in the Middle East is less a strategic than a demographic phenomenon, whose resolution will come with the exhaustion of the pool of potential fighters.
I’ve never seen Spengler be wrong about anything. And he’s right in advance, the only kind of right that matters.
I've been given an education this week on classic, old-timey flower styles via Mrs. BD. I always like to learn new things and I like purty flowers. Who doesn't? Flower design is just ephemeral sculpture and I like seeing and smelling them around the olde HQ. Any old cabin like ours is enlivened by floral productions.
No visit to NYC is complete without a little side trip to 
We've been posting about fly fishing. Is it an effete hobby for the elite?
The Lobster Roll is right up there with Clambake as classic New England summer cuisine. Clambakes have to be made by you, on the beach in a hole in the sand just like the Indians used to, but every New England seafood joint has its own recipe for the simple Lobster Roll.
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.
Why is the CDC based in Atlanta? Because Georgia was the center of malaria in the US, and elimination of malaria from the US was the CDC's first job. It's hard to imagine, but through the 1940's 
spreads it further. Humans are the host of this bug (meaning their reproductive home). Like any parasite, the goal is to keep the host alive, while reproducing itself. If you kill your host, you sort of defeat your purpose (like over-taxing productive people), so malaria is more likely to cause chronic illness than death, except in the otherwise vulnerable. Fascinatingly, the sickle-cell trait of Africa confers 
When the Himalayan peasant meets the
