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.
When Bird Dog told me he needed a rest, and was heading out to "take the waters," I pictured him going to one of those fancy hotels with lots of ceramic tile on the walls, within sight of the Danube, where all the women speak with a heavy Bavarian accent and they smear you with the local mud. Silly me. Let's get these links out of the way so I can go post Bird Dog's bail. Apparently, to him, "taking the waters" means shoplifting a couple of bottles of Poland Spring and some beef jerky in a convenience store on Staten Island.
Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro,1 you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver."
They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it's certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you're an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming.
It's an enormous misappropriation of the word to call software designers "engineers." You're stressed because your stuff doesn't work, you're incompetent, and people notice it from time to time.
There you go. Read all that stuff. It won't make you any dumber, I promise. After I bail out Bird Dog, I'm going to ask him to chain me to an oar on the other side of Maggie's Farm's Trireme. My left bicep needs work.
Well, as Mrs. BD pointed out, it can be expensive to get that old-timey vigorous WASPy in-the-woods time these days in remote places. A condo on a beach with WiFi and TV, hotel menus, and Pina Coladas and lounge chairs around the pool would be less than half the price tag, but boring as heck. She believes that my Yankee-types, as a matter of taste, like either grand luxe or rustic roughing-it, and nothing in-between. Probably right. In addition, we do not like to sit on vacations. Go Go Hi Ho.
As she also pointed out, the price at Little Saint Simons is all-inclusive - all meals (no menu choices, of course - family-style), all of the naturalist adventures, all the boats and kayaks and bikes, all the booze and cocktail hours and oyster roasts and shrimp boils at the beach. And the entirely private 7-mile island, just for you. Chef is a grad of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America for those of you in Yorba Linda) but he does home cookin like his grandma.
So who was there (all with spouses)? A self-selecting elite bunch of folks. A recently-retired career Army Ranger from Colorado who discovered an interest in natural history. A retired Memphis cotton broker. A NYC doctor. A high school teacher couple from Salt Lake City. An 8th-grade Science teacher from Michigan. A famous nature artist from Massachusetts. An Ornithology prof from Georgia Southern (not a railroad - a university). A professor of something from Boston. A fund manager from Chicago. A jolly, congenial, and intelligent crew, and a tattoo-free zone for sure. Lots of laughs at mealtimes.
Despite the skeeters, they have a high repeat rate. I would recommend March-April-May or October for a place like this. Too hot and too many bugs in the summertime - for me, anyway.
Our temps last week were daytime highs around 76 and nights high 50s-low 60s. Constant sea breeze. Perfect.
I remarked to Mrs. BD that it must be a rare "resort" vacation spot indeed where, when one of the resident naturalists asks for a show of hands for the next morning's 7 AM birding in the marsh, almost everybody present raises their hands.
"Meet at the trucks at 7 on the dot."
More boring travelogue pics and nature details below the fold -
Music. I like to immerse in it, as fully as my feeble senses are able. I want to appreciate the author's efforts, intents, and talent, and to be enlivened by it.
With serious, ambitious music (as opposed to catchy pop music like Verdi opera, and ZZ Top), I am best with no distractions, lying down with eyes closed. My lack of a musical brain and of musical talent has been a lifelong disappointment to me.
My music education (to become a more discerning and considerate listener) was limited to my Dad, to a college music history and appreciation course, lots of listening, info via Mrs. BD who had the benefit of a wonderful music education - and to the music courses from The Teaching Co, now Great Courses.
Isn't it the same way with everything? Art, music, littacher, woodworking, auto mechanics, tree-felling, masonry, gardening, shooting, and race-car driving? It's all called "eddication," but the best of it is not formal. We pursue it because it adds to being alive, "enriches" life as they say.
When I was growing up, Dad liked to take us all to the opera. The preparation for it included reading the story and the history and context of the opera, listening to it through at least a time or two, and going over the libretto. German, Italian, French - we'd muddle through it with the original and the translations, and after a while we'd sort of get the gist of these languages - the rhythms of them, the sounds, the flow, some of the grammar and lots of the vocab. (With his five kids, he approached opera, Shakespeare and Sophocles the same way. He did not want us to miss out on the glories. Thanks, Dad and Mom, for the cultural heritage and for opening so many doors. You could call it Home Schooling.)
I am slowly getting to the point of this meandering post, which is about Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96. aka "American Quartet." It's probably his most popular quartet piece, and it's a doozy. We heard it performed last month, and, despite my ADD, Restless Leg Syndrome, etc., I do my best to let myself sink into music as if into a pool of water. I did notice that the First Violin gal played the entire thing with her eyes closed, immersing herself physically and emotionally and letting the others follow her lead.
The Vivace is wonderful, but the whole thing is emotional.
My point is that I listened to it again on Youtube when I got home, and twice again in the early morning and a few more times since. Then I started to really get some idea and flow of the piece, and only now I am ready to hear it live again. I think I am now at the point where the serious listeners with good ears begin to hear this entertainment.
For people with shortcomings (now called " musical learning disabilities") like me, live concerts should just do one piece - three times. Then go out for supper. Give this three times if you are as musically-retarded as I am, and see what you think. It's a cool piece:
Bloom’s work is no mere exercise in horripilation. He provides a wonderful and hopeful corrective to the bottomless mendacity of the Left. Bloom explained that Marcuse was mistaken, dreadfully mistaken, because he had not understood another important German thinker, Max Weber. For Weber, like Nietzsche, had identified values to be key to any society. There must be a notion of right and wrong. Weber saw the rise of Capitalism, which filled Marx with such loathing, as the triumph of what he called the ‘protestant ethic.’ A particular group of Christians applying the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude (each of which has a significant emotional component) had changed the face of the earth. Marcuse simply thought Weber was condemning religion, in the same (wrong) way Marxists thought Nietzsche had. But Weber was making a very profound point. Weber was referring to the ascendancy of spirit over matter. Man creates his culture. In every important respect, men and women are free. This is nothing less than a huge, devastating rebuttal of Marxism. More complete than the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which we now see had been merely the fall of bricks and mortar.
Ethics are the key to the de-marxification and de-toxification of our society.
Between the Bundy mess, ACA, and a myriad of other issues currently presented to the American citizen, we may be faced with another situation of government overreach very soon.
Is it any surprise the idea emanates from a Democratic Party Think Tank? No, not really. Force and coercion are their stock in trade.
Compulsory voting is a very bad idea. While there is sometimes more than one choice on any ballot, I have definitely felt the need to abstain from voting simply because I didn't like the choices. Furthermore, not voting is a 'vote'. It is an expression of either complacency (I'll accept whatever everyone else wants) or disgust (I have no use for anyone on the ballot). When I abstain, it's always out of disgust.
The right to vote is akin to a right of free expression. In fact, it is free expression. Compulsory voting, as a result, is a violation of your right to free speech.
Chalk this up to the two parties (because while the Republicans would likely oppose it, if it passed they would support it just like they are beginning to give up on repealing the ACA) wanting to make false claims of 'popular support' where none exists, and further increase their choke hold on the voting public.
Bird Dog needs therapy, so you're stuck with me. I imagine he's
currently trying to convince some girl to rub him the wrong way in order
to relax his tense muscles. He should just read the papers. Everything
in there will rub you the wrong way.
As the
employees examined some of the equipment, the owner stood by and said
nothing. He was remembering how difficult it had once been to afford
those machines, even the basic ones. What the employees regarded as
standard, he saw as an achievement.
Lots of things shock the Times -- except shocking things, generally. CEOs get a piece of the action, and talking about it like it's wages is stupid. Me? I just like saying "Marissa Mayer's remuneration" over and over.
I posted on the important subject of the Chef's Knife a couple of months ago.
Pretty much all anybody really needs is a good paring knife, a good bread knife that won't mutilate bread, a Chef's Knife, and a meat carving knife.
It's time to post about meat-carving/slicing knives. We have a few of them around, old fancy bone-handled ones, newer supposedly-effective ones, etc., but I have never had a knife that could slice beef, steak, ham, turkey, or lamb as well as this one. It's like a butter knife through butter, as thin or thick as you want it to be.
The pros buy much more expensive ones, but this one is excellent. The 10" would have sufficed, but what the heck.
I understand now why chefs keep their knife collections in metal cases. They are fine tools.
Charles Darwin’s last book, published in 1881, was a study of the humble earthworm. His main theme—expressed in the title, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms—was the immense power of worms, in vast numbers and over millions of years, to till the soil and change the face of the earth. But his opening chapters are devoted more simply to the “habits” of worms.
Here’s a shocking idea: liberals should be liberal, especially on college campuses. To be truly liberal, you must endorse the free exchange of ideas. The university doesn’t exist to swaddle students in a protective cocoon, safe from any possible offense, insult, or challenge to their beliefs. It exists, in part, to prepare students for the rough-and-tumble of real life. It cannot do so by coddling students and warding off any possible “triggers” that could upset them. By practicing illiberal liberalism, colleges are failing in yet another way to prepare students adequately for real life.
Very gutsy group of Fifth Graders down in Hurst, TX. Props are due to them for their creativity and the willingness to do this. We showed this to our teens and got shrugs - a typical teen response. I'll hand it to these kids. Beats the hell out of the alternative. Reminded me of the classic SNL Martin Short/Harry Shearer skit. "I'm not...that strong a swimmer."
It was a warmer than usual summer day in Clark, South Dakota when a rather large and ungainly young man, a recent high school graduate, set about finding his way in the world. The salivating Navy recruiter asked the youngster what it would take to have him sign up: “why, I’d like to go to Australia .” It was as good as done. After all, in 1966, if you were lucky enough to ship out on the USS Canberra, more likely than not, during the course of your hitch, there will be a port call to the ship’s namesake— Canberra , Australia...
"Conrad Martens, an official artist on the second voyage, did this drawing of the Beagle laid ashore at the mouth of the river Santa Cruz in Southern Argentina. When repairs to the hull were necessary after the ship had struck a rock, the ship was beached and the work was performed between high tides." Image courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
The story of HMS Beagle (1820-1870) - an ordinary ship. Not about Darwin, about the life of a 19th C. ship.
“She belongs to that much-abused class, the ‘10-gun brigs’ ...
notwithstanding which; she has proved herself, ... in all kinds of
weather, an excellent sea boat.” —John Lort Stokes
In my 23 years as a practicing physician, I've learned that the only thing that matters is the doctor-patient relationship. How we interact and treat our patients is the practice of medicine. I acknowledge that there is a problem with the rising cost of health care, but there is also a problem when the individual physician in the trenches does not have a voice in the debate and is being told what to do and how to do it.
As a group, the nearly 880,000 licensed physicians in the U.S. are, for the most part, well-intentioned. We strive to do our best even while we sometimes contend with unrealistic expectations. The demands are great, and many of our families pay a huge price for our not being around. We do the things we do because it is right and our patients expect us to.
So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?
I posted on the important subject of the 
Our prolific friend has 
For Some, 
Could we