Maggie's Farm

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.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Wednesday, January 22. 2014

Weds. morning links


Sticker above seen an a car this weekend


A free ad for the Thimble Island Brewing Company


Are Conservatives really afraid of change?


Bleeding heart liberal misses football’s important lessons for our boys


Men and women's brains are 'wired differently'


Duh.


Is a backlash developing against open kitchens?


Unless you have servants and cooks, kitchen ought to be open to family spaces as it always has been


The Feminist Retreat - It is hard to find a legitimate justification for women's studies.


Duh.


Sears And J.C. Penney Are Dying


Defining the Worst Type of Street Design


Sean Hannity to Leave New York After Andrew Cuomo's Anti-Conservative Rant



Why the ambitious are fleeing France


Mass immigration, via No Pasaran:



Hostility towards mass immigration arises not just from fears of economic “progress”, but from instructive experiences of cultural incompatibility, social disadvantage, imported crime and terrorism and an uninvited threat to national identity. To brush aside such considerations as trivial, intolerant, nostalgic, racist, nasty and even Nazi exposes a faulty and counter-productive analysis, itself blinkered by global-growth criteria.

An economy is not a country. Although bankers may not appreciate this, voters understand it all too well.



Supreme Court to Hear Case on Forced Unionization - At question is law requiring home healthcare workers to pay SEIU dues


NYC Cops Allegedly Beat Up Jaywalking Elderly Man, Refused to Tell Son Which Hospital He Was In


Talk About Your City's History, Get Hit With Over $1,000 Fine in Charleston


Federalizing Medical Conversations?


Kentucky’s War On The Little Guy…And Nevada’s…and Missouri’s…


Imagine
All the People Living in Islamist Hegemony: Why Lennon and Dylan Know All About
Islamist Hegemony


Palestinians vs. Pro-Palestinian Israelis


Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:34 | Comments (23) | Trackback (1)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

PingBack
Weblog: www.peekinthewell.net
Tracked: Jan 23, 09:20

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Well, my mower deck's battery went dead a few months ago so I went to Sears where it came from. They didn't have any but sent me back & cross over the store trying to find one. As I was leaving a fella approached me, looked at the battery I was holding, and exclaimed:

"I don't know what's happened to Sears lately but they got sorry- try Lowes...."

Yes, Lowes had small engine batteries. Unlike Sears.
#1 backhoe on 2014-01-22 09:56 (Reply)
there's only one big drawback with open kitchens: fumes.
Kitchen fumes are much better contained in a closed kitchen, and that include fatty residue.
Not usually that much an issue, but everyone has the occasional kitchen accident that leaves the place thick with acrid fatty smoke.
In an open kitchen, your entire living room is now smelling for weeks. In a closed kitchen, running the ventilation on high for a few hours and giving it a good cleaning does the trick.
#2 J.T. Wenting on 2014-01-22 09:58 (Reply)
Fumes have to be pretty severe to overcome a 600 CFM exhaust fan, exhausting to outside.

Most homes I've moved into have had a measly 180 CFM "range hood" that was also very noisy. I've always wondered about that, because if you look at any table of how much exhaust volume is needed, it is easily double that even for cheap electric stoves.

Having the blower in-line in the duct above the ceiling helps keep it quiet.
#2.1 Douglas2 on 2014-01-22 13:08 (Reply)
Sears should have went out of business 35 years ago. Their products are crap, excepting the Craftsman brand. They salvaged a bit by selling name band products.

If it says Sears on the label, run as fast as you are able...away.

And yes, the POS Sears electric typewriter I had to use to write papers in high school and college has a lot to do with it. Sears, like the "American" car companies made low quality products an art form.
#3 JKB on 2014-01-22 10:26 (Reply)
... Their products are crap, excepting the Craftsman brand hand tools.... Use due diligence when considering Craftsman power tools and lawn and garden equipment.

FIFY
#3.1 BillH on 2014-01-22 10:42 (Reply)
US 40 in Aberdeen, MD is a stroad. In fact a lot of it is stroad from there to Baltimore, but the decay is most evident in Aberdeen.

Sears Hardware near us is pretty good. The KMarts I've seen recently (well past 20 years) are really sad.

JCP might want to reconsider their boycott of Rush Limbaugh. He still has good ratings, and w/ his endorsement and good products, they might rally back.
#4 DrTorch on 2014-01-22 11:02 (Reply)
Sears hardware stores AFAIK are generally locally-owned franchise businesses. So they would tend to be high attention to store-appearance and customer service.
#4.1 Douglas2 on 2014-01-22 12:22 (Reply)
Sears had the assets and the ability to transform themselves into a 21st century store. Management is responsible for this failure. Take a lesson from the Japanese and Chinese and at least copy your competitors success. Like Amazon and Walmart.
#5 GoneWithTheWind on 2014-01-22 11:11 (Reply)
Exactly. Sears was the catalog company a hundred years ago. I recall many Sears purchases my parents made from the catalog. It should have no-brainer to segue from being a catalog company to being an online seller. Sears really dropped the ball.
#5.1 Gringo on 2014-01-22 13:27 (Reply)
Open kitchens are noisy...try to watch tv while someone is running the water and trying to do dishes.

Open kitchens expose your mess to the world. Do you really want your dinner guests to have a full view of the dirty pans, spills, etc. that were created to produce the meal you are serving?

Open kitchens make it hard for some of us to enjoy cooking. I like to cook with quiet or music. When you have a big family, a semi closed-off kitchen is a nice respite while making a meal.

If you have a big home, maybe an open kitchen works. But for most people living in under 2000 square feet, an open kitchen gives you very little quiet, closed off space for reading, watching tv, conversation. I have ONE living area in my house where the family gathers. If I had my kitchen completely open to this one gathering space, it would be a nightmare of noise and constant cleaning up so I don't have to look at a dirty dish or a box of cereal left out on the counter.
#6 MissT on 2014-01-22 11:19 (Reply)
In '77, we had our mid-life 3600sf home designed with the kitchen itself having a lot of open space, because our large (six kids), food-focused family had always tended to congregate in the kitchen itself. Still does going on 40 years later - Mom, kids, sons-in law, daughters-in law, grandkids and great-grandkids. They all cook around one another, except for the great-grandkids who are too young.
#6.1 BillH on 2014-01-22 11:37 (Reply)
yet of course open kitchens are most common in smaller homes, where the removal of the wall and door between kitchen and dining room/living room/lobby (which are also all combined into it) reduces the space requirements for the home, letting the developer pack more functionality into a smaller space.
#6.2 J.T. Wenting on 2014-01-22 11:51 (Reply)
This idea, however, is ultimately a nightmare for the small home owner. It looks good when no one is living it in. It gives the impression of more square feet. However, it takes away functionality because it is harder to squish in cabinets and storage space when you just took away a huge wall to open it up to the living room. I'd rather have more storage space and more counters and a pantry than an open first floor with no walls.

Maybe when your kids are tiny you think it makes sense, but they grow very quickly, have friends over, are loud, etc. Then you will regret having the small house with one big open space and no place for retreat.

As for large, chatty families, sure the open kitchen works. But I mentioned in my response that I DON'T like that aspect. I like to work in a quiet space. Too much talking distracts me from what I'm doing. Not for me!
#6.2.1 MissT on 2014-01-22 12:26 (Reply)
Thimble Island: Teh octopus looks soused,

Afraid of Change: Just the ones Progs/libs want, based on results from their earlier changes.

Men and women are different: The obvious is once more noticed (and soon forgotten/repressed by the progs/libs),

STROADS: Tucson has stravenues, which run NE-SW and NW-SE between avenues (E-W) and streets (N-S).

Hostility to Immigrants: See Afraid of Change above.

In Oregon, those who run adult foster care homes are automatically SEIU members.

deBlasio and progs/libs are "for the masses" and against individuals.

Rickshaws: Bureaucracy in action.

Rubin: Left out Alice In Wonderland--able to hold two conflicting thoughts in her head.

Palestine: I've said before that if the Israelis acted the way they have been accused of acting, they'd kill enough Arabs to get the Arabs' attention and know some sense into the survivors.
#7 Sam L. on 2014-01-22 12:35 (Reply)
Every time I've been tempted with skydiving I've been put off by the mental image of me, sitting in a hospital bed, explaining to my mother why I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane...
#8 Douglas2 on 2014-01-22 12:42 (Reply)
Penney's here went out of business 4 or 5 years ago. Sears shut down at the end of 2013.

At the end, Sears was selling pure junk. Their appliances (we had to replace a broken washing machine) were amazingly cheaply constructed, cheap tin things that you knew wouldn't lost. We went to another appliance dealer where we ended up getting our replacement, and he told us that Sears is basically rebranded Kmart merchandise.

The last few months of Sears were especially pathetic in terms of their clothing. You could tell they were buying in bulk any junk they could find and trying to resell it. A lot of stuff made in third world countries you knew would fall apart as soon as you used it.

Here, Macy's is the next to go. They are repeating all the Sears gimmicks. Selling cheap goods with fancy phony names. Other than coffee makers, you now can't find anything in their small appliance section--no irons, vacuum cleaners, toasters, and the like--all gone. Makes sense, a year or so ago I bought an iron from Macy's. It lasted all of two months before the cord broke. I give Macy's another year.

The real problem is American companies are all dying. We had the discussion yesterday in our company about having to lay off people or convert a lot of our employees to part-timers because we are getting killed by Obamacare.
#9 Jim on 2014-01-22 13:14 (Reply)
I proposed a women's heritage month long ago as a joke, the joke being that women actually have the same heritage as men.

Soon afterwards we had women's heritage month.
#10 rhhardin (Link) on 2014-01-22 13:47 (Reply)
I knew Kmart was on the way out when they couldn't stock stuff I regularly bought.

It turned out that their new CEO had instituted a new inventory system, and had other important ideas too.

There's a Kroger there now.

Sears opened a substore next to a Kroger last year. They don't have anything but "we can order it for you."

I guess that means the business plan is having the internet and getting stuff customers say they want when they come in.

That resembles the Post Office's plan to print your letter electronically at the destination post office that worked out so well.
#11 rhhardin (Link) on 2014-01-22 13:51 (Reply)
it's called "just in time stocking" and it's all the rage with companies the world over.
Reduces needed warehouse/shelf space, reduces items having to be returned or destroyed that don't sell or otherwise aren't needed.

Of course in a store it also means that popular items run out before noon unless you have very good marketing predictions, which cost more money than store managers have to spend on market research so they rely on the national or wider figures from corporate headquarters which don't take local trends into account.
Thus customers find empty shelves.

Then there's the stores that understock on purpose. The supermarket my parents shop at is a prime example.
Whatever is announced to be on sale can be relied upon to not be in stock even 5 minutes after the doors open. The store deliberately does not order any of it, driving customers to the store with the sales brochure, then facing them with empty shelves and empty apologies, but most will end up buying more expensive substitutes they know so they get away with it.
#11.1 J.T. Wenting on 2014-01-23 00:56 (Reply)
Re Penney's and Sears

While the giant retailers problems have been ongoing for some time, the fact that the middle class is being crushed surely isn't helping.

With the tax increases and mammoth health insurance premiums coming there is going to be much less disposable income to spend towards all retail business.
#12 feeblemind on 2014-01-22 14:42 (Reply)
Yes, they are seeing it coming. Our city's second to last bookstore, a Barnes & Noble, also shut down at the end of 2013. It's being replaced by a "Ross Dress For Less," or as I refer to it, a "Ross Ghetto Store."

It was in our neighborhood's formerly upscale shopping mall, but tenants are closing their doors yet again. It usually happens at the beginning of the year, as stores that hoped they could survive one more year get less than they hoped during the Christmas season, and then go out of business.

The other place I notice it is the local movie theaters, which are empty. Not surprising when a ticket now costs $11.50 and a small drink and a bag of popcorn set you back $12.25. Yet another good example of the government's assertion that there is "no inflation" in our economy. [/sarc]
#12.1 Jim on 2014-01-22 19:21 (Reply)
Craftsman hand tools were made by Easco. I don't remember who bought Easco.
#13 rhhardin (Link) on 2014-01-22 16:47 (Reply)
related: A 'tsunami' of store closings expected to hit retail

"In addition to J.C. Penney—which announced last week that it will close 33 stores—there are about a dozen retailers that still have too many stores, Sozzi said. Among them: American Eagle, which needs to move some of its aerie lingerie locations into its main stores; Aéropostale, which is on track to close 175 stores over the next few years; and Wal-Mart, which has about 100 stores in the U.S. producing same-store sales declines deeper than 3 percent,"

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101353168

Creative destruction has always been an integral part of the US economy, but how much of this is a result government policies and attitudes?
#14 feeblemind on 2014-01-22 20:26 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.