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.
The hate is terrible. Why can't people with different views tolerate each other? I can, no problem. Just change the subject when they get rabid. NEVER argue. It's not worth it because views arrived at by emotion or fashion can not be changed with logic.
Early this year, to deliver on my New Year's resolution, I started working out. I found this brilliant exercise for people who have a hard time getting into the habit of working out.
Here's how it goes - begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.
With a 5-lb potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax. Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.
After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato sacks. Then try 50-lb potato sacks and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I'm at this level.)
After you feel confident at that level, put one potato in each of the sacks...
We've seen flocks like this in Manitoba. When a thousand come down into your field decoys at dawn it can be quite a slaughter Unlike Canada Geese, Snows go down, as they say, like a prom dress.
It’s a shame that in this brief Grace-granted glimpse of the Immense Light between a sleep and a sleep that so many shut their eyes to the unfolding Miracle of each Moment, and think, poor little monkeys, that since none of it is about them none of it needs to be seen as it is — glorious, compassionate, incomprehensible, and indifferent. They actually think … no they actually “believe”... that the Creator should not be beyond their good and evil; that the moral life of Creation should reflect our dim and limited mind.
Had Hillary Clinton been elected president, Republican partisans would be doing and saying about President Clinton what Democrat partisans are now saying about President Trump.
Just home and perused Roger's Saturday links. He is so good at this. Too bad I can't afford to pay him more than he makes painting barns in Maine with red primer. Roger, I have done my share of red barn painting and entirely agree with the idea that nothing but lead is effective for endurance. Nowadays, we can easily add lead to lead-free paint.
Amongst other kayaking adventures this past ten days, Mrs. BD and I went to sea and almost made it to Jeremy Point when my back cramped up so we only had a 4-hr trip. This was a remarkably calm day in Cape Cod, but the tidal currents which you can not see are what wear you out. Do not wish to be carried too far out to sea. That's Mrs. BD in front of me, off the shores of Great Island, Wellfleet.
Fitness nuts that we are, all of our daily outdoor exertions are after our morning 50-minute prescribed calisthenics. Yes, we may be crazy but we are physically, if not mentally, tough.
Why are kayaks such krazy kolors? So you are visible to other watercraft - or to the Coast Guard if you are flushed beyond paddle distance by currents (which did happen to one of my bothers in law one time, years ago. He only sails now).
We seek secluded beaches for skinny dipping. Why not? Nobody is out there. Just Ospreys. Is it true that, when a couple quits wanting to skinny-dip, the romance is over? Beaches are all about wholesome exhibitionism and sex. Good things. Get brown, trim, fit, and happy. It is spiritual.
I strongly suggest taking math, engineering, or a hard science as far as a kid can go in high school and/or college. If they only use it to read newspapers and magazines, it will train the mind and make a good impression on future employers. If a kid is a "no math creative," then I don't know what to say other than "I'm sorry to hear it."
10:5 Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that "the person who does these things will live by them."
10:6 But the righteousness that comes from faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down)
10:7 "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).
10:8 But what does it say? "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
10:9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10:10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.
10:11 The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame."
10:12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.
10:13 For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
10:14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?
10:15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
The simple answer to why barns are painted red is because red paint is cheap. The cheapest paint there is, in fact. But the reason it’s so cheap? Well, that’s the interesting part. Red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red.
Nope. Dairy barns were painted white -- with lead paint --to indicate purity. Barns are painted all colors, but most red ones were covered with red lead primer. Lead oxide, linseed oil, turpentine and Japan drier. Most outbuildings didn't merit paint, and red lead primer was the cheapest stuff you could buy. Cary Grant learned not to mix white lead primer with red lead primer in Operation Petticoat.
Lego abruptly removed its chief executive Bali Padda after just eight months on Thursday, replacing the 61-year-old Briton with a younger Danish industrialist in a battle to become the world's biggest toymaker.The Danish company said it had appointed Niels B. Christiansen, 51, who joins Lego after nine years as CEO of Danfoss where by focusing on digitalization he increased sales and turned the firm into a global leader in energy efficiency.
Consider your passion: The place of passion in doing whatever you want to do cannot be overemphasized. When you have a passion for whatever it is you are doing, it will push you when the going gets tough. There is no need sugar coating it and making it look like it would all go smoothly. There is nothing worth having that doesn’t face challenges. But when one is faced with challenges, the motivation is usually the passion they have. So you might want to consider something you have a passion for.
I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector.
Look at the picture. It's like these dweebs share one, big closet to go with their one, big opinion.
Nearly 50 years after the culmination of the first major race to the moon, in which the United States and the Soviet Union spent fantastic amounts of public money in a bid to land the first humans on the lunar surface, an intriguing new race to our nearest neighbor in space is unfolding—this one largely involving private capital and dramatically lower costs.
Listen, poindexters. We stopped going to the moon because there's nothing to do there. It was a stunt, to outdo the Soviet Union.
One Swedish journalist aboard the submarine who was reportedly put ashore before the boat ran into trouble has not yet been accounted for, according to Danish newspaper Berlingske. Bloomberg News reported that Madsen told a local TV station about the sinking, revealing that a problem with a ballast tank caused the crowdfunded vessel to sink.
"Crowdfunded vessel." Heh. Have you tried my Indiegogo vaccines? They're free-range.
Asked if Benchmark’s own investors might have the stomach to sue Benchmark, this person jokes that “every VC today could probably be sued by [their own institutional investors]” for their overly relaxed approached in dealing with startups. Either way, he believes that Benchmark’s lawsuit — which he calls a “misstep” — is “a completely obvious outcome of all this excess and absurdity of the recent years. It’s like when you’re a parent and you spoil your kid and he turns out not to be what you hoped. Are you going to love him or cut him off?”
This accurate description of recent investor/business relationships tells you all you need to know about the last 10 years.
That's what some Twitter users, including actor and former Barack Obama aide Kal Penn, are demanding, after President Trump tweeted Friday morning that U.S. “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.”
His motorcade doesn't obey the speed limit. They should revoke his driver's license, too.
Of course you still need a benchmark for floating-rate loans -- and for trillions of dollars of derivatives -- and it's not exactly clear what competing "transaction-based benchmarks" will win out. Nor is it clear how complicated it will be to transition all of those trillions of dollars of derivatives to the new benchmark. It would be easier if they'd just rebrand the new benchmark "Libor," and report it in the same places as the old Libor: Then contracts that refer to "Libor" could keep referring to "Libor." It would just be a different Libor.
The series, which begins on Sunday, takes as its jumping-off point the same book that was the basis for the 1995 movie starring John Travolta and Gene Hackman. But be advised that a title card here reads, “Based in part on the novel by Elmore Leonard,” and “in part” really ought to be highlighted somehow. This is a different story with different and reimagined characters; a point-by-point comparison of film and TV show, or TV show and novel, is even more irrelevant for “Get Shorty” than it usually is for such adaptations.
Get Shorty was a perfect movie. Get Shorty was a passable book. Get Shorty will be a terrible TV show.
Today’s fake-industry leader is Tesla, the electric car developed by subsidy entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also heads SolarCity and SpaceX, other government darlings. Musk’s genius is primarily in the subsidy-seeking realm — by 2015, U.S. governments alone had given his companies US$5 billion through direct grants, tax breaks, cut-rate loans, cashable environmental credits, tax credits and rebates to buyers of his products. Counting subsidies from Canada and Europe, the government bankroll could be double that.
This becomes a problem when the government changes hands, apparently.
Have a great Saturday, everyone! Maybe paint your barn red, and then paint the town red.
Everybody may have a devil inside them, but the people we term "psychopathic" or "sociopathic" are outliers on the bell curve of human behavior. Sociopaths have habits of exploitation, deceit, cheating, impulsiveness, manipulation, rationalization, and often of cruelty. Clever sociopaths are masters of disguise and of acting. There is a genetic component.
Clever sociopaths can put on a "mask of sanity" and, if careful enough, make successful lives in some careers.
Hi everybody. It's Friday. Light the smoking lamp early. Run the cocktail flag up the mizzen before you're under sail. It's noontime somewhere. Bust out the tonsil polish while the sun rides high. Bunk off. Take a mental health day. Slack. Don't kill the job. Make up your mind to procrastinate. Indole.
The right calls the kind of people who went after Damore by the derogative term “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs). SJWs hold progressive views on diversity and identify politics and, supposedly, find virtue in harming those with heretical beliefs. Many on the right fear SJWs.
If you've always wondered what a conservative is, and you work in hi-tech, the nice man will tell you in fourth-grade syntax about this rare but terrifying animal.
Education: Of the 90 interventions evaluated in RCTs commissioned by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) since 2002, approximately 90% were found to have weak or no positive effects.
All of them work just fine, thank you -- if you're running them. Duh.
[Beethoven’s] talent amazed me. However, unfortunately, he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether in the wrong if he finds the world detestable, but he thereby does not make it more enjoyable either for himself or others.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all retooling their businesses around the belief that AI and machine learning are the future of the tech industry. IBM is in a more vulnerable position than all those companies. Even though IBM was an AI pioneer it has let its lead slip and damaged its reputation with overhyped marketing. There’s a rising sentiment in from tech and finance experts that, for all the idealism, Watson just can’t deliver on its promises.
IBM should get with the times and appoint a female CEO to straighten out this mess. Oh.
Two airlines have dipped their wings into the waters of two-way texting. Hawaiian Holdings Inc.’s Hawaiian Airlines is adding the feature while JetBlue Airways Corp. took a stake in a software startup that will allow its call center staff to start texting customers in the coming months.
Listen, iPhone drones. There's only one way to tell your airline you hate it. It has a steering wheel.
Bestiary texts offer animal-lore as a source of allegorical lessons for moral spiritual guidance. The earliest bestiary manuscripts date to the beginning of the 12th century. They were made throughout North-Western Europe, but the genre flourished most in England, eventually declining in popularity in the late 13th and 14th centuries.
I and Pangur Ban my cat, 'tis a like task we are at; hunting mice is his delight, hunting words I sit all night...
Much of the software that processes the transactions is decades old, and the more modern bits are written by banks, credit card companies, and financial middlemen, none of whom are exactly winning hackathons for elegant coding. In 2010, Patrick and John Collison, brothers from rural Ireland, began to debug this process. Their company, Stripe Inc., built software that businesses could plug into websites and apps to instantly connect with credit card and banking systems and receive payments.
An Irishman, late for an appointment, prays, "Lord, if you give me a parking space, I'll give up Guinness and go to Mass every Sunday." A parking space immediately opens up. The Irishman sticks his head out the window, looks up, and says, "Never mind, I found one."
Of nearly 230 North American chemical, metals and mining, paper, forest products and packaging companies, nearly a quarter are within two notches of the investment-grade/speculative-grade border as of mid-year, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to panic. Donovan writes that the sector should remains strong at least through 2018m, and he doesn’t expect any “crossings’ before 2019.
Debts backed by physical assets are so 20th Century.
In May, the expectation was that between 40 to 60 restaurants would be shuttered in fiscal 2017. No list of the affected locations has been released. Applebee’s says the expected closures will be based on several criteria, including franchisee profitability, operational results and meeting brand quality standards.
As long as Flinger's and Chotchkie's stay open, I don't care. You want to come over and watch Kung Fu?
The declaration could help unlock more support and resources to address the drug overdose epidemic, such as additional funding and expanded access to various forms of treatment, and it gives the government more flexibility in waiving rules and restrictions to expedite action.
Perhaps we should declare war on it. You know, a war on drugs.
The man - who has not been identified - was found dead around 11am when police finally stormed the home. His death ended an hours long standoff that started late Wednesday, when he showed up drunk at the 9,000-square-foot home where his estranged girlfriend lives and the two got into a fight.
It's unclear to me where Kevin Bacon fits into this.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen told lawmakers last month that "some special factors" were partly responsible for the low inflation readings. Inflation, which has remained below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target for five years, is being watched for clues on the timing of the next interest rate increase.
Janet Yellen can't even cause inflation right. Where's Arthur F. Burns when you need him?
Most people have at least some degree of this potentially life-damaging fear. Oftentimes, the fear is justified because it is likely that many people will not find us interesting, appealing, or worthy of relationship (boo-hoo), but sometimes our fear is indiscriminate.
Faking confidence isn't a bad starting approach, but the real trick is to improve one's rejection tolerance and that can only be achieved by enduring rejection.
Toon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article.
Is academic language in the humanities and social sciences designed to obfuscate, is it just packaged cant from people with nothing to say, or is it smoke-signaling?
One prof claims "As a professor ... one seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”
The use of words without fixed or clear meanings is a major part of what makes academic writing so terrible. People often complain that academic writing is “obscure” or overly convoluted and complex. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with either complexity or obscurity in themselves; research papers in the sciences have to be complex and technical, and introducing people to obscure and unfamiliar words or concepts can be a key part of developing human knowledge. The problem largely comes when words are vague and unclear, admitting of many possible interpretations. Infamous academic terms like “phenomenological,” “intersubjectivity,” “embeddedness,” “hermeneutical,” and “discursive” are not bad because they describe complicated concepts, but because it’s often not clear just what an author means by them...
I forget the exact quote. I forgot who said it, too. I forget what it has to do with Thursday morning links, as well. Anyway, here goes: Good manners may require me to politely listen to you, but I am under no obligation to actually believe that your child is smart and your wife is good looking.
All the guy at Google did was mention that in a private moment, he has entertained the thought that Google's wife has bingo wings and halitosis, and Google's kid eats library paste. Some how or another, it merits a sacking, followed by the kind of attention that Leo Tolstoy used to get in Russia. I don't get it.
I hereby propose that Google's original, stupid, gilt-edged lie of a motto, Don't Be Evil, be changed to a more up-to-date, honest version: Don't Be Male. Works for me. So does Start Page.
Sundar Pichai, said portions of Damore’s 10-page memo “violate our code of conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes” despite saying in the same memo that Google employees shouldn't be afraid of speaking their minds.
For a man of systematic intelligence, Schmidt’s politics—such as I could hear from our discussion—were surprisingly conventional, even banal. He grasped structural relationships quickly, but struggled to verbalize many of them, often shoehorning geopolitical subtleties into Silicon Valley marketese or the ossified State Department microlanguage of his companions.9 He was at his best when he was speaking (perhaps without realizing it) as an engineer, breaking down complexities into their orthogonal components.
That's a lot of words to call a guy a conniving jerk.
The numbers are big. Uber has titles to nearly 40,000 vehicles through Xchange Leasing. It now has to get the cars back from its drivers and sell them in the wholesale market. It wants to do most of this by year-end. If Uber loses $9,000 per car on average on these 40,000 cars, it will add another $360 million in losses on top of the losses it has already booked.
The last eight years of "recovery" consisted entirely of lending money to dorks who can't count, but understand a little javascript. A hard rain's gonna fall eventually.
Europe is the continent with the fewest people willing to fight a war for their country. Globally, an average of 61% of respondents in 64 countries said they would. Morocco (94%), Fiji (94%), Pakistan (89%), Vietnam (89%) and Bangladesh (86%) had the highest percentage willing to fight.
I remember some inter-war poll of Oxford students who claimed they wouldn't fight for their country, either, egged on by Bloomsbury pansies. They all climbed into Spitfires when the time came. Talk is cheap, coming and going.
At first, you begin to wonder why no one in Russia ever sees danger coming. To a casual American observer, the majority of these crashes seem to happen in slow motion. You can see the cars languidly drifting into the wrong lane from a half-a-mile away. Yet somehow, no one in Russia ever notices anything.
If you've never experienced the wonder of Russian dashcam video, you're in for a treat.
On The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour -- which began as a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Show and featured Steve Martin and Rob Reiner as writers and “Gentle on My Mind” as its theme song -- the clean-cut Campbell engaged in comedy skits when he wasn’t performing and featured many of his friends as musical guests, including The Monkees, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
I remember that show. That was a good show. Good show all around, Glen, and RIP
Even before the race is done, organizers are reflecting on a separate challenge: how to get more women to take part in the event next year, and how to keep them in the race longer. This year was the first time that women entered as solo competitors, and neither of the two female riders, both accomplished endurance athletes, got through half of the 14 stages.
Joe Stalin knew how to get women to undertake a grueling trek halfway across Russia to Siberia, whether they wanted to or not. I guess the NYT still misses the guy.
The company is hoping to offer a wide range of videos through Watch, including live shows that feature hosts responding in real-time to users' questions and live events like Major League Baseball games. Facebook is also hoping to attract more traditional shows, like those you might see on cable or broadcast TV.
Net neutrality my keister. I wonder what the FCC fine for ten billion wardrobe malfunctions would be if cable and internet really got the same treatment.
Marijuana users had a higher risk of dying from hypertension. Compared to non-users, marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use. There was no association between marijuana use and death from heart disease or cerebrovascular disease.
Fighting over the last Funyun is bound to send your diastolic through the roof.
After announcing intentions a year ago to produce a heavy-duty electric truck, Musk tweeted in April that the semi-truck would be revealed in September, and repeated that commitment at the company's annual shareholder meeting in June, but he has never mentioned any autonomous-driving capabilities.Tesla has been a leader in developing self-driving technology for its luxury cars, including the lower-priced Model 3, which it is beginning to manufacture.
Someone should mention to little sooper genius boy that we already have self-driving trucks. They're called rail cars.
When plaintiff Cheryl Fillekes joined the case in 2015, she claimed that because of her age, Mountain View-based Google did not hire her for an engineering position for which she was qualified, which she alleges violates the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how old she was.
That’s what the Auralnauts discovered earlier this summer when they received word that Warner/Chappell—the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group—had filed a monetization claim on their “Star Wars Minus Williams” video through YouTube's Content ID System. That’s right: The copyright holder was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t there.
In complex matters like these, it's much simpler to assume everyone involved, including the author of the article, is a jerk, and deserves no sympathy. Saves time and aggravation.
Well, there's the links. Have a great Thursday. And don't worry, Maggie's Farm waitstaff would never flirt with you to get a better tip. We might rifle through your belongings if you don't keep an eye on them, though.
Viking Fashion: 
Toon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article. 
