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.
Like many other animals, humans are napping creatures. Our Western society doesn't really take that into account, nor should it because we demand a lot from people.
In my workday, I schedule in a 20-minute catnap after a chicken-salad lunch. It does me a lot of good, since I do my daily workouts at 6 am. After my catnap I am good for another 6 hours of work or a drive to NH.
Mediterranean-based societies have siestas - especially Spanish and Italian. Naptime, or sex + nap. In many cultures, lunch is their dinner and I do not know how they handle work after a large meal. I don't know about Asians or Africans.
I do believe that some of what we term "sleep disorders," and diagnose at great expense and often treat with amphetamines, are simply due to a need for a power nap. People vary.
Ocean liners, aka Cruise Ships, still dock on Manhattan's remaining Hudson River piers. The Normandie was one of the great liners but not the last one as the article wrongly suggests (eg The France, QE ll, the Nieu Amsterdam, the Queen Mary, the United States, etc)
Well, it's a nothing sort of Monday. Tuesday's a holiday, and everyone had Friday off, too. By the time the 4th rolls around, everybody's going to be too sunburned and hung over to blow their fingers off with off-brand fireworks properly. We're working in shifts here at Maggie's Farm, though. Bird Dog is still having his blood swapped out at the Peter Thiel/Keith Richards clinic, but the rest of us soldier on. We're not as interesting as Bird Dog, but we always tell the truth as we see it. We all wear really thick intellectual glasses, however. It makes us see things funny.
For instance, I'm not even sure that Donald Trump is Hitler. I know, the science is settled on that one, and I try and I try, but I can't see it. I squint and hold him at arm's length, and lift my lids real high, then rub my eyes, but I just can't picture it. He doesn't even look like Ernst Roehm to me. There's not even a hint of Admiral Raeder about him. I can't even gin up a resemblance to Roderick Spode, the amateur dictator. As far as I can tell, the body politic got tired of having Billy Ray Valentine as president, so we elected Thornton Melon. Meh. On to the links!
The family welcomed John to their home on April 30, 2015 and were even more surprised when they found they would be expecting their third biological child. Seven months later, the DHS contacted the family and asked them if they wanted to foster John's sister Paizley who was born while in jail. He said: 'We literally picked her up in the hospital the next day when she was a day old and brought her straight home.'
The White House usually picks a photo of the day. On June 28, the image they chose showed two girls from Nigeria who were abducted in 2014 by Boko Haram but managed to escape: Joy Bishara and Lydia Pogu. They're flanked by President Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka Trump. The photo had been taken the day before. (via The Instapundit)
It is actually rare for a marine mammal to "drown," as they won't inhale underwater; but they do suffocate from a lack of air. Being born underwater can cause problems for newborn whale and dolphin calves. It is the touch of air on the skin which triggers that first, crucial breath. And necropsies sometimes show that an animal never gets to the surface to take its first breath of air.
There has been one arrest following April's disastrous Fyre Festival event, as the Southern District of New York US Attorney's office announced the arrest of Fyre Media founder William McFarland. He's charged with wire fraud for allegedly lying to investors about how much money the company was making from artist bookings. According to Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr., "McFarland truly put on a show, misrepresenting the financial status of his businesses in order to rake in lucrative investment deals."
Slowly but surely, it's bound to start dawning on Millennials that the internet is not a magical place where regular old laws don't apply.
Everything about the painting — from the subject matter (a Caucasian man between the age of 30 and 40) to his clothes (black, wide-brimmed hat, black shirt and white collar), facial hair (small mustache and goatee) and even the way his face is positioned (facing right) — was distilled from Rembrandt's body of work.
If Rembrandt was a clapboard, this is vinyl siding.
Her appointment was a victory for the women on the Hill. Though women were integral to the success of the Manhattan Project—scientists like Leona Woods and Mary Lucy Miller played central roles in the creation of the bomb—none occupied leadership positions. In this respect, Serber stood alone. As the head of the scientific library, she became the Manhattan Project’s de facto keeper of secrets, a position that soon saw her targeted for an FBI probe—and almost ended in her being fired from the project.
The quest to portray secretaries as more important than their bosses rolls on. Because girlz.
The new controlled folder feature is designed to protect against viruses and ransomware from locking machines out of certain folders. Ransomware has hit the headlines recently as WannaCry and Petya wreak havoc on older Windows machines worldwide. Microsoft is also including exploit protection into its Windows Defender software in Windows 10, which should help prevent viruses and malware from exploiting vulnerabilities in the first place.
As is usual, the article is refreshingly information-free. It sounds similar to always running Windows as a user, and reserving the administrator role for nothing but recovering an earlier image of your computer if things go south on you.
“Although it hasn’t been tested in a kangaroo-specific environment, there was an instance where black swans were interfering, and so they had to build into the car the ability to recognise animals,” Amy Kaa said. Volvo plans to release its first autonomous cars by 2020 and has pledged zero fatalities or serious injuries from all its cars by that time.
I'm confused by the term "kangaroo-specific environment." What about vaguely kangaroo-ish environments, like bars at closing time?
For the entire video, the camera captures him slowly pedaling by numerous tents under the Hairball, as people congregate near their belongings in the narrow bike path. Shopping carts, recycling bins and more sit in the path. The number of people living in tents is near constant through the video. Waddling described it as “impressively depressing,” when he sent it to the San Francisco Examiner.
As usual, the answer is, "Something must be done." Since this is San Francisco, that means something must be done by someone else, at great expense, to assuage your guilt as you pedal past the poors. The policeman in Oklahoma in the first link shows you what "something" really means, virtue signallers. Get busy.
”Since our work is theoretical and computational it must be still verified experimentally, before it can become a standard model of light in a transparent medium. Measuring the total momentum of a light pulse is not enough but one also has to measure the transferred atomic mass. This should be feasible using present interferometric and microscopic techniques and common photonic materials”, researcher Mikko Partanen says.
I'm not exactly sure, but wouldn't that mean that Tired Light is in, and the Red Shift is out? So Einstein was confused, and the universe probably isn't expanding? Other than that, this isn't big news. I wouldn't worry about it. The scientist is obviously a loon. Look at that quote:
"Since our work is theoretical and computational it must be still
verified experimentally, before it can become a standard model of light
in a transparent medium."
Theoretical, computational work needs to be verified experimentally? Hold on there, Poindexter. That kind of approach doesn't fly in climate science, so I don't think we should pay attention to it in physics, either. Hey, Mikko, just say that because of Republican obstruction, light will keep getting slower and slower until you can catch it with fielder's glove. You'll get a big grant, and the science will be settled.
IQ is easy to measure, as an example, but many things which effect our reaching our goals are more difficult to measure.
I know that,when organizations consider people for hire or for promotion, they always consider the person's "intangibles." That includes things like amiability, appearance, dress, comportment, manners, sophistication, cultural knowledge, reliability, tone of voice, and so forth. Their "vibe." A good vibe is a sort of personal capital.
Another intangible which matters in life is social capital, something Charles Murray often speaks about. People obviously vary a great deal in the extent of their social connections and (cliche again) one can easily be lonely in a crowd. Many prefer to be isolated but I think there is a basic human need to be "in community," to have human connections of all sorts outside of family. We are tribal creatures. I feel sad for those who lack tribes with whom to touch base and reconnect during the holiday season. That makes it depressing indeed because it's supposed to be about fun fun fun and party party party, right?
There are many ingredients to constructing a satisfying life, but what a satisfying life means is different for everybody. However, I believe that to be in community, or really a part of multiple communities, is a key component. Some care about it more than others, for certain. With a little luck, the construction begins with an anchor solidly lodged in immediate or extended family, and extends, in separate but often-overlapping circles, out from there depending on what one does or decides to build.
And I do mean "build." Like career, community is never handed to you on a silver platter. I like to connect with interesting, intelligent, positive, and amusing people with interesting and adventurous lives. Who doesn't? On Saturday night, I met a gent, a retired banker, who covered the erection of the Berlin Wall for the New York Times when he was 21 years old. He had taken his grandkids to the Checkpoint Charlie museum in Berlin this summer. I want to include him, and his wife, in one of my circles.
Finding people with whom we have affinity and comfort is not easy especially for the shy, and seeking at least a few which go beyond the superficial is a wholesome and worthwhile life challenge. For example, I do not need any more friends who love to discuss handbags because my handbag interest is two minutes deep. Possibly three minutes.
I discussed the topic somewhat in my post Class, Social Capital, and Character Traits. Sometimes I ask patients to create a Venn diagram of the human communities in which they live and form relationships, beginning with family and extended family as the necessary and solid core - regardless of how one may feel about them at a given moment. It can be illuminating.
The categories (Venn circle diagrams) that I suggest include things like:
Family and the people who are "like family" Closest confidants, closest personal and family friends Old friends Spouse's buddies and closest pals Warm and friendly acquaintances, friendly neighbors, and friendly shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, and other life helpers Group connections (eg church, clubs, sports friends, favored activities companions, etc) Colleagues and work-related groups or organizations Local community-based organizations and volunteer organization associates and pals
and so on.
It can be a bit of a drafting challenge when there are plenty of overlapping circles. but that results when one has built "an established life," a well-rooted and integrated life over years. I drew one such diagram out for myself last year, and it was an interesting little project.
When people move, they risk losing quite a bit. I don't know how some people move or retire to South Carolina or Florida and rebuild a rich life from scratch. We could not do that, but we would not want to anyway.
6:12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
6:13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
6:15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
6:16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
6:17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted,
6:18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
6:19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
6:20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
6:21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.
6:22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.
6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew 10:40-42 10:40 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
10:41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;
10:42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
Jimmy Buffet, multi-multi-millionaire, once mentioned how rewarding it can be to discover a $5 bill in the pocket of some old jeans. Funny how that works. When my Dad would visit me at college, he would slip me a $50 - "walking around money." Small gestures and unexpected small rewards can mean a lot.
Our early Spring Cleaning has resulted in small hills of those black leaf bags filled with old magazines, old books, old clothing, household clutter, obsolete paperwork, lots of shredded old financial records and tax records, etc etc. Some fairly heavy, some not, but far beyond the usual.
We are required, more or less, to separate bags of theoretically-recyclable garbage from other garbage, but I believe it all ends up in a dump in West Virginia. Regardless, when we have large piles I always scotch-tape a $10 or a $20 to the pile.
To the sorts of people who say "He gets paid to do it anyway," I say "Bullshit." The piles of snow and ice do not make the job any easier. My theory is to always tip people who do personal work for you unless they are the owner of the business. When you give a tip, you make life better for a little while and you feel better too. Even if it's only beer money.
For some very occasional household jobs like rug cleaners, window-washers, or annual barn-cleaning crews, I will tip before the job begins. Try it sometime. I make a point to always have some $5s, $10s, and $20s in my pocket to show gratitude and to create small moments of good cheer and more positive helpers.
"Free market capitalism" is just what trustworthy people naturally do to make stuff, get stuff, and do things without violence or threat of violence: "I'll give you two arrowheads for that nice spearhead." The only "system" in free markets are government constraints to preserve orderly markets, to protect people from fraud, and to reward government friends. Those constraints are sometimes helpful, often destructive.
Other things - not "systems" but really just conditions - which make non-violent interactions possible are free speech, voting, a legal structure, honest people, and property ownership.
Lefties have a knee-jerk suspicion of those fine foundations for civil society.
Side note: I still haven't found a place to live. If you didn't catch my about-to-be-homeless post, it's here. I had a couple of promising leads in the comments, but they both flamed out. I have a couple more I'm still pursuing, but if you have something offer, that would be very appreciated.
First off, for those of you using windows 7, I have a fairly comprehensive Win7 site here. The 'Setup' page is really somethin' else. It solves a number of pesky problems, like those annoying thumbnails that pop up when the pointer's over an entry on the Task Bar.
So, let's start with the Start Menu. If you long for the older style of Windows Start Menu, where everything stays in its proper place and the sub-folders can all be organized by type of program, then grab Classic Shell. The setup page for it is here. He's constantly updating the program, so perhaps not everything will line up with the instructions, but it should be close.
More goodies below the fold, plus some Google tips and some tips for Maggie's commenters.
Well, we're in Day Two of: Gee I miss Bird Dog, and who is this feckless replacement serving up links in his absence? I admit I can't hold a candle to Bird Dog's link output. He reads the whole internet every day, just looking for links for you. Interestingly, he prints the entire internet out on a tractor-feed printer before he reads it. He likes his stories to alternate between white and light green, I guess. I don't know how he does it. I can't manage to read the whole internet every day. My lips get real tired.
For all the Maggie's Farm faithful, I offer that snapshot of Bird Dog relaxing at the day spa while he's away on sabbatical. I hope it tides you over until he returns. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about his reading material, however. He assured me that he was just checking the spelling and grammar for a friend. He's wearing his NSA-proof reading faceguard, of course. He doesn't want the boys at Foggy Bottom, the FBI, the NSA, or Mika Brzkini, er, Brzerker, er, Bazouki, or what ever her name is, knowing what he's thinking while he's reading. Speaking of Mika, I hear she has a tight face and a foggy bottom, too. Normally, Bird Dog wears a tin-foil homburg when he reads instead of the faceguard. Unfortunately, he used the tin foil for cooking during the pig roast, and had to go with his backup.
Anyway, here are the links that Bird Dog would have offered, if he was on duty, and slightly deranged:
The protest, dubbed a 3 p.m. “collective coffee break” by the Guild, began with workers exiting the Times’ Renzo Piano-designed headquarters on Eighth Avenue through a door on 40th Street. The protesters then walked to Eighth Avenue, up to 41st Street and finished the walkout by entering through doors on 41st Street.
But over the last decade a radically different picture of Viking life in Greenland has started to emerge from the remains of the old settlements, and it has received scant coverage outside of academia. “It’s a good thing they can’t make you give your PhD back once you’ve got it,” McGovern jokes. He and the small community of scholars who study the Norse experience in Greenland no longer believe that the Vikings were ever so numerous, or heedlessly despoiled their new home, or failed to adapt when confronted with challenges that threatened them with annihilation.
Conjecture and evidence of Norsemen in the Americas and the North Atlantic keeps piling up, but there's one constant: Jared Diamond is an idiot.
A Viking sword from the 9th or 10th century was discovered in pagan boat grave at Dysnes in Eyjafjörður, North Iceland. It had metal hilts and some organic material such as leather, which has broken down. Boat grave is a burial in which a boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. This was common among Vikings but didn’t seem to catch on in Iceland, only around 10 graves of this kind have been found here.
Has anyone asked Jared Diamond to be wrong about this discovery yet?
Less than 24 hours after collecting $300 million in its initial public offering, Blue Apron Holdings Inc. faces the reality of needing more cash -- and soon. The unprofitable meal kit-delivery company, which touted its growth prospects to potential investors on its IPO roadshow, has leaned on its marketing strategy to build a customer base. That outreach eats up a fifth of the company’s total spending.
This tells you all you need to know about the moronic state of IPOs in the "Tech Sector." It's laughable to call a grocery delivery business a tech company just because they have a website, but hey, I don't make the rules. Anyway, "In its IPO prospectus, the company warned that it may never be profitable, adding that it anticipates that “operating expenses and capital expenditures will increase substantially in the foreseeable future.” Got that? In print, it tells you they're not even trying to be a real company. It's free beer tomorrow, forever. Mr. Ponzi to the white phone!
He began his career at Paramount Pictures, serving as production manager on five Hitchcock films: “Rear Window” (1954), “To Catch a Thief” (1955), “The Trouble with Harry” (1955), “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956), and “Vertigo” (1958).
An astonishing body of basically anonymous work. There are much worse epitaphs than that in that town. Ask Lupe Velez.
Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It was a weapons test, but one that created a man-made light show that has never been equaled — and hopefully never will.
Good thing that H-Bomb didn't wreck the Earth's Van Allen belt and suspenders.
Despite the embarrassment of rich, beautiful storytelling on TV, many of
us indulge in exactly this sort of time-wasting habit: hate-watching
has reached new heights. Fed by almost endless options for shows to
watch, bolstered by the snark contest that social media has become,
viewers now regularly revel in finding plot holes and analysing
awfulness just as much as they delight in quality programming.
For forty years, I've been listening to people, male and female, highbrow and lowbrow, explaining that they don't really like the soap operas they watch religiously. The author would be happier if she admitted she was shallow and not too bright.
The whole premise of the Internet is the connecting of disparate networks. It started out by only connecting computer networks. But today it connects networks of vastly different sorts: computers, yes, but also financial networks, distribution networks, road networks, water networks, power networks, communication networks, social networks. It truly is “Inter” now. As we rush towards putting more and more things “in the cloud,” as we rush towards an Internet of Things with no governance beyond profit motive and anarchy, what we’re effectively doing is creating a massive single point of failure for every system we put in it.
My experience with computing and the internet is very extensive. I feel as though I have seen enough to form an overall opinion: It was all a big mistake. The entire tech sector should be rolled back to Microsoft Office and land lines. We'd all be happier, and any important stuff would still get done. Of course, a company that occasionally delivers cardboard boxes filled with wilted arugula couldn't IPO for a third of a billion without the internet, but no plan is perfect.
Besides opera tix, the other Christmas present I received (besides stinky cheeses) was an island-hopping rugged hiking trip in the Outer Hebrides. Well, Mrs. BD likes remote rugged places as readers know - as long as there are cozy B&Bs at night.
I checked the weather for our trip: 40s (F) at night, high 50s (F) daytime. Some precipitation 21 out of 30 days/month in summer (more in winter). North Atlantic weather. I've done a few ship crossings in the north Atlantic and know what it's like: cool mist and drizzle, no need for sunscreen.
Gwynnie lent me his waterproof Olympus.
My Mom and Dad were partial to trips to northern climes. Dad wrote the poem below to document the habit (with a photo of the poet at the farm).
Dr. Tim Ball's new book: 
For summer get-togethers or any other festive occasion, along with beer and wine it's fun to have a cocktail theme, like one kind of pitcher cocktail.
American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home 
First off, for those of you using windows 7, I have a fairly comprehensive Win7 site 
