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.
I had never heard of it, but it's an international sport with a large following. One of our fellow hikers was on the Aussie national team until she had kids. Here's what it looks like:
13:1 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.
13:2 Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.
13:3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow.
13:4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.
13:5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.
13:6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.
13:7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
13:8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
13:9 Let anyone with ears listen!"
13:18 "Hear then the parable of the sower.
13:19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path.
13:20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;
13:21 yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.
13:22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.
13:23 But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."
Pic: I like Kippers. That's the morning I ordered kippers with fried eggs. Best kippers I ever had but, sheesh, it's just too much. I never ordered haggis or blood pudding (pudding in the UK can mean sausage), but Mrs. BD is fond of the latter. Funny thing I saw: A food truck on a scenic overlook in Skye serving sliced haggis on a burger bun with ketchup. Very popular. Seemed revolting to me.
Scottish breakfast menus are a variant of English breakfasts with a Scottish accent. Typical items on the menus we were presented with in Inverness and the Hebrides below, whatever combinations or numbers of items you wish, of course - it comes with the room:
Tea or coffee (Scots, Aussies, and Brits take the tea)
Porridge (aka Oatmeal) Scrambled eggs with lots of of smoked salmon (yum) Haggis Kippered Herring Toast Bacon (not the crunchy goodness of American bacon - more like fried pancetta) Eggs however you want 'em Smoked haddock poached in milk with poached eggs (yum) and, always, "Full Scottish Breakfast": Blood Pudding (aka Black Pudding), Haggis, roast tomato, roast mushroom, baked beans, potato scone, and choice of eggs from (obviously) free range Scottish chickens. Very rich yolks.
While I haven't posted a lot of articles on my site since I went on hiatus, I have posted a few choice goodies, so I thought I'd list them out.
Note: If the videos don't play using Firefox, read my comment to Mark. Firefox is decidedly Flash-unfriendly these days and often deactivates
the plugin if it's outdated.
Fans of NCIS
While I obviously didn't watch any TV while I was in Colorado, the first thing I did when I got back to civilization was catch up on 'NCIS' and 'NCIS: New Orleans'. The last NCIS post I made here was when we found out that everybody's favorite ex-Mossad assassin was leaving the show.
And then the delightful Ellie Bishop arrived. Quickly becoming an ardent Bishoprophile, I made a number of posts highlighting her. The last NCIS post I made here was titled 'Tonight's The Night'. The next one on the list continues the saga. The story of everyone's favorite blonde ex-NSA analyst begins with 'An Insidious Plot Revealed', which is about as me a post as there can be.
Web Vids
All in all, I think I have a pretty decent collection of short videos grabbed from the web over the past 20 years. I've posted a number of them here. Continuing the collection are 'Web Vids IV' and 'The Music Is The Message 2', both available here.
More fun and games below the fold. (dudes, wait'll you see the 'For Guys Only' section, heh)
Had to buy an emergency Gore-tex rain jacket in Inverness. The old one I brought with me had lost its Gore-tex effect (that happens over time), and it only took an hour of cool drizzle to realize it.
Crazy mixed-up Europeans put jacket zipper-pulls on the left side. I am not well-coordinated enough to manage that easily. It feels awkward and unnatural to put the thing in the slot with my right hand, taking too long fumbling with a darn jacket zipper when I could be falling off a cliff or sliding into mud instead. My Barbour is the same way. I know, First World Problems but guys learn their zipper routines very early in life and they become automatic.
The archaic story of the naked man and woman, the talking snake, and the magical trees was something of an embarrassment. It was Augustine who rescued it from the decorous oblivion to which it seemed to be heading. He bears principal responsibility for its prominence, including the fact that four in ten Americans today profess to believe in its literal truth. During the more than forty years that succeeded his momentous conversion—years of endless controversy and the wielding of power and feverish writing—he persuaded himself that it was no mere fable or myth. It was the key to everything...
Scotland is a nifty, rugged place to visit if you don't need luxury hotels, if you like cool rainy weather, and if fine dining is not important to you (generally-speaking, always order the fish). People like to visit the Highlands, though, and it is inexpensive travel.
It's July in Scotland, and people wear fleece, down jackets, Barbour-type jackets, wool hats, etc. just to walk around town.
We flew into Inverness via Amsterdam, and had a day or so, on both ends of our Hebrides trip, in Inverness. It's the commercial center of the Highlands with a population around 50,000. It is slightly touristy - really more of a take-off point for the hinterlands - and pleasant, but there really isn't much there for a tourist.
The River Ness runs through it, from Loch Ness to the North Sea. Salmon and Sea Trout in that river.
Stanley Fish is a very smart guy and like most such people, he occasionally says silly things.
There is this: Stanley Fish Says Free Speech is Not an Academic Value. That is correct in a very narrow sense, in the sense of his imagining a monkish medieval university, relatively insulated from society and politics, seeking knowledge, wisdom, and truth. Modern American higher ed is mostly anything but that.
Really, free speech and crazy debate is a fine tool in higher ed, in scientific research, and everywhere else. The highest value in academia? No. In society in general, surely its good outweighs the bad.
The Toscanini Wars - No maestro was more revered—or more reviled. On the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth, it’s time to give him a fair hearing.
How can a Swedish woman raped by an illegal Muslim immigrant be so bursting with racial guilt that she hesitates to report the crime to the police for fear that her report might lead to her rapist's punishment or deportation? Or, more generally, because news of the offense might result in an increase in “Islamophobia?"
Sorry, not sorry. A neologism which I hear young people use frequently, and now people my age are adopting. It's a great phrase. People want you to be sorry for something you did, you feel you're in the right. Sorry, not sorry.
Urban Dictionary has its first reference to this in 2012. It became a Twitter hashtag at about that same time, maybe 2011. This was predated by an alt-punk song from an obscure band, Amen, titled Sorry Not Sorry, but it seems to have come into common usage around 2011/2012. Today it's used primarily as a sarcastic comeback or response, usually for humorous purposes.
There is another aspect to this, though. It revolves around empathy. At least, that's where I see it coming from. Mainly because I tend to have so little empathy (and I'm told that's a problem). Sorry, not sorry for lacking that empathy.
Point is, I don't know why we have to be sorry for so many things. President Obama was on an "I'm Sorry" tour for 8 years and what did it get us? Not much. If the US did it, he was sorry about it. Why? Saying "sorry" doesn't change the past. It doesn't even change the future. Stuff happened, and I wasn't involved, so don't judge me on that.
Many things he was sorry for occurred long ago. I'm sorry Hiroshima happened, it was terrible. I'm sorry for all the death and damage and horrific after-effects, but it was war, so I'm not going to quibble whether Hiroshima or Nagasaki were worse than Tokyo or Dresden. Death happens in warfare. We don't have to be sorry for killing people in warfare.
This is the only political piece I put on my site during the election. The reason I'm porting it over here is twofold:
- While pretty much every pundit in the Central Galaxy figured Trump didn't have a snowball's chance in hell, there actually was one small group who thought otherwise. I was lucky enough to be a part of it.
- For Trump supporters, the first video below is outstanding. It's masterfully done and deserves to be shared.
The reason I'm putting this in the Political Humor section is because, quite simply, Trump made a joke out of every talking head on the planet. Every pundit, every pollster, every 'expert', every left-wing writer, almost every right-wing writer, every commenter on every left-wing site, every newscaster, every op-ed writer, every opinion-maker, every every.
Well, almost every every.
There actually was one small, hard-core group who had a pretty good idea of what was going down:
Fans of Ann Coulter.
Myself, I blushingly admit I've followed her every word for over a decade. I even have a few articles on this site where she's highlighted. That's her in the preview pic below, over on the right. Watch her expression when she makes her prediction and the liberal audience breaks out in amused and derisive laughter.
She just smiles knowingly.
She maintained for a year that as long as Trump stayed true to himself and stayed on message, he could very well pull it off. Like Ann, I never bought that the average American would turn from Trump to Clinton over some ancient misdeed on Trump's part that the media blew all out of proportion. Like Ann, I figured Americans had become a lot more politically savvy in the past decade and saw through the spin the liberal media was producing. Or, perhaps more to the point, they simply ignored it.
So, without further ado, allow me to present what I'm casually labeling The Video Of The Year.
As for the many, many (many) reasons Mrs. Clinton lost, well, the list is almost endless. First, it was racism, because all white Americans are secretly white supremacists and were just getting back at Obama by way of Trump. Then it turned out all American males are secretly devout misogynists and just couldn't stand the thought of a female president.
Then it was Clinton aide Huma Abedin's fault. Then it was FBI director James Comey's fault. Then Russian President Vladimir Putin's fault. Then-
Did I mention the list is almost endless?
But now everyone agrees that it was 'fake news' that did her in. One or two "Hillary Clinton Found Running Secret Child Pornography Ring In Basement" story and that was enough to sway America.
Ancient Peat Bog Sheds New Light On 
Wine dating from the American Revolution era discovered at historic New Jersey house
While I haven't posted a lot of articles on my site since I went on hiatus, I have posted a few choice goodies, so I thought I'd list them out.
People tell me
McDonald´s fries: 
Conservatives don’t oppose a government-dominated health system because we are heartless; 
Sorry, not sorry. A neologism which I hear young people use frequently, and now people my age are adopting. It's a great phrase. People want you to be sorry for something you did, you feel you're in the right. Sorry, not sorry.