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.
A new t-shirt easily found up in Yankeeland. I told my wife this is what I want for my birthday, so we got me one. It's all I want for my birthday. I'll wear it in Italy, with my straw Stetson, red shorts, and white sneakers, and nobody will dare bother me. Not even the Somali scum.
$12.95. She got off easy, except for the cost of the Italy trip.
While the Anthropogenic Global Warming and Natural Global Warming camps have been filling the airwaves with their usual bickering lately, and certainly the Anthropogenic Chlorofluorocarbonic Warming contingent is trying to stay in the news, the Natural Global Cooling people have been left out — if you'll pardon the expression — in the cold.
In case you're new to the global climate debate and haven't heard of the dangers of NGC, you'd better sit your butt right down and get caught up to date.
And what those scoffing 'deniers' out there are missing is that we're already fighting the battle on the northern front as the ice sheet moves slowly and inexorably southward. This was in Flagville, North Dakota, just last week:
"It sounds like a train!"
What she's hearing is the low-frequency crackling vibrations as the top 6" of soil turns to permafrost for the next 10,000 years.
This was also fairly telling at the 5:16 mark:
"It's piling up, because the house is stopping it from moving."
(10 seconds later)
"Oh, my God, their door's in! It just busted through a door over here, all the way through — the door's caving! Look at that, it's going right through their goddamned house!"
Such is the raw, destructive power of Natural Global Cooling.
Well, as if we needed any further proof after that video, here's the latest on the NGC front:
Normally the high Arctic has about 90 days above freezing. This year there was less than half that.
The numbers don't lie, folks. Disregard the facts at your peril.
This also might be why I'm living in the Florida Keys; Florida being projected to be the last state to have unfrozen summers by 2160. It has something to do with the geography but southern California and southern Texas are scheduled to go decades before that. The water barrier between the Keys and the mainland is also supposed to slow it down, so we've got a number of factors going for us down here.
I am certain that this sign was not there when Thoreau hiked the beautiful beach from Chatham to P'town. BTW, the alcohol rule is ignored and unenforced. There is plenty of brew in those beach coolers.
Some time ago, I was working at a job that required 'diversity' in hiring practices. It was about 15 or so years, before this became a standard in most corporate hiring practices. I'm still trying to figure out what it means, particularly because I was always taught to hire the best person for the job. I'm not saying diversity is bad. In fact, I'm all for it. But there is no standard gauge for diversity and as a goal it's a moving target. Would 50% female and 20% black be sufficiently diverse? Do we need to have the same percentages of each group as exist in the US population? Or would some close approximation suffice? At what number of employees does diversity become an imperative? I'm not sure we can realistically set numbers for these kinds of things.
At my company, VP level and above employees actually had bonuses based on 'improving the diversity of their departments.' There was no specific guideline provided, the VPs were left to figure it out for themselves. Many got significantly reduced bonuses, which led to the suspicion that it was a corporate method of reducing payouts. I happen to think that was the case.
But the corporation took this all very seriously and each year we were given a 'diversity update,' during which we were showed charts and graphs of women and minorities as a percentage of the company's staff and the executive suite.
I didn't care much for it. I am not opposed to diversity, but as I said, I always hired the best person for the job. I never think in terms of women, Asian, Black, Indian, etc. Suddenly I was being told what the company required in this regard when I was doing my interviews. I will never forget the laugh of one VP, when I recommended a young man for a position, as he said "Unless he's a black woman, the interview will not be worth his time." Fair enough, but I sent him in for the interview anyway and he was not hired, despite having stellar credentials and strengths in all the key areas the company was seeking to improve.
A couple of people asked in my recent barrage of 'NCIS' posts how to port the videos to their TV, and since Google has just broken new ground in the area, I thought I'd slap together an overview.
There are a number of factors in play; price, difficulty/ease of setup, difficulty/ease of use, software features, extra goodies like a remote, and location of the computer & TV.
Probably the main factor is the location of the two units. The flat-out easiest routine is to just run video and audio cables directly to the TV or controller box, with the only inconvenience being that you'd have to dash back to the computer to start, end or pause a clip. But if you're just playing one long movie, no big deal.
Despite the way you're sitting there on the edge of your seat in vibrant anticipation of what's coming next, it's probably best we dip below the fold for the remainder. There are some technical terms coming up and we wouldn't want to unsettle the children.
Eugenics, I suspect, was in reality a symptom of a growing impatience of intellectuals with the intractability of the human condition, with the fact that that Man was irredeemably imperfect. And this impatience grew because of a decline in the religious understanding of life (it was no coincidence that Chesterton, who saw so easily through the pretensions of eugenics, should have been firmly Christian, while none of his opponents was). In the 1920s sterilization of the unfit would do for humanity what psychopharmacology is now supposed to do: render it happy because perfect. No one with an understanding of Original Sin could believe such a thing – even if Original Sin is not based upon an actual historical truth.
Whatever you decide you want your relationship with sex to be about, there are opportunities out there. Whether you want to have sex or you don’t, you’re looking for love or a one-night stand, you’re gay or straight or somewhere in between, it’s all possible. And whatever happens remember to be safe, get consent, and watch out for your friends.
Well, OK. What seems odd to me is the college administration selling this. Is selling sexual experimentation part of their job?
Regarding consent, I'd suggest recording it on video on your iPhone, ladies. Make sure the fellow gives you sober consent for you to enjoy his body.
Sitting down? Already eaten a little something today? I want to make sure you've got the stomach to witness what you might later describe as the most horrific display of racism you've ever seen:
Like you, I was shocked into silence. I opened my mouth to respond to the horror I'd just witnessed, yet no words sprang forth.
Likewise, I'm sure you sat there, jaw agape, thinking, Huh? WTF? I don' get it!!"
A CNBC reporter is under fire for using the phrase "chink in the armor" during a Tuesday discussion of Wendi Deng's pending divorce from News Corp and 21st Century Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch.
The comments by CNBC's Robert Frank drew a critical response from the Asian American Journalists Association, which condemned the statements as "offensive" and "inappropriate."
You'll notice they used the clumsy word 'inappropriate' instead of the time-honored 'insensitive', but they're new to this. They'll learn quickly enough.
As we noted a few days ago in Team Asia Drops The Ball, these are exciting times for Asians worldwide as they soar to new heights breaking new ground in uncharted waters.
As both the Asiatic Anti-Defamation League and the National Association for the Advancement of Yellow-Colored People swing into full gear, there'll be nothing but lucrative lawsuit settlements and the admiration of their peers — that is, the other victim groups — in the future for these groundbreaking pioneers using this previously untapped resource.
And, as 200 years of suppressed, rabid anti-Asianism comes boiling to the surface, you'd certainly expect to see the occasional "racist song!" headline, like we do now when some songwriter inadvertently uses the term "niggardly" or "Jew's harp".
But the most racist song in history? That's how far these up-and-comers have already advanced.
The crap-tastic, Sugar Ray–esque L.A. band really performs a song, "Asian Girlz," with the following lyrics: Korean barbecue / Bitch I love you / I love your creamy yellow thighs / Ooh your slanted eyes.
We still think it's some kind of a joke. A very sick and tasteless joke.
This is, of course, what's so wrong with today's Political Correctness. Evenmentioning the attributes of a people puts the stamp of Racist across one's forehead.
Having learned this valuable lesson, I dashed back to the first site and wrote:
So, let me see if I've got this straight.
If I write a song about an English girl and refer to her "creamy white thighs" and "beautiful blue eyes", it's quite possibly the most racist song ever written.
If I write a song about a black girl and refer to her "creamy dark thighs" and "deep brown eyes", it's quite possibly the most racist song ever written.
Likewise, if I write a song about an Asian girl and refer to her "creamy yellow thighs" and "exotic slanted eyes", then that, too, is quite possibly the most racist song ever written.
So we welcome our Asian brothers and sisters to the exciting, lucrative world of grievance and victimization, and wish them eminent success as they brave the waters of this new and bountiful course as they seize control of their shared destiny with other worldwide victims in bringing to light the New World Order where no one will ever feel offended again.
Well, it looks like Bird Dog's having a good time taking a few days off to finally catch the riveting last and final season of 'All My Children'.
I couldn't believe Melissa turned out to be Harry's long-lost sister from his mother's fifth marriage to her second cousin on her father's side! This whole thing is just tearing my emotions apart!
Finally! After all the money we've thrown into the Defense Department, it's nice to see them actually doing a little defense for once, rather than all that 'offensive defense' they're always doing overseas. As this 'comfort blanket' eventually covers and protects the entire nation against attacks from British, French and North Korean missile attacks, we can all sleep more soundly knowing that our 'big brother' is watching over us.
In international news, those clever Israelis pulled another fast one as they snuck a spy (or 'bird' in Mideast lingo) into Turkey and then got him back out on a legal technicality when he obviously should have been put up against a wall and shot for the spy he is.
You'd think Turkish officials would have at least worked out a prisoner exchange.
In late night television news, there's an interesting article on Jay Leno's impending retirement here. As you might have seen, he's come out with a number of Obama zingers in the past few months — quite a change from the past — so maybe the author's onto something when he says:
I will not be surprised if he pops up in some way in late-night television — possibly on Fox.
While there have certainly been the occasional big band orchestras that played together into their dotage, none of them ever pranced madly about the stage to the adulation of millions of screaming fans around the world while actually in said dotage.
In yet more good news, the movement to turn northern Colorado into the 51st state is making headway:
More than four dozen people showed up Thursday at the first public meeting to discuss a proposal to form a 51st state. Nearly all of them said they support secession.
More than four dozen! When you see this kind of groundswell support, you know you're getting in touch with the people's true wants and needs.
And those kooky kids in Hollywood are at it again. First Hitler, then Chavéz, then...
Every time Hollywood lets costs get completely out of hand, something comes along to save it. In the early 1980s it was videotapes, in the 1990s it was the DVD market. Now it’s China, but unlike the home-video market, China makes specific political demands on films. If “WWZ” is any indication, simply removing negative implications about China isn’t enough: The studios have to go out of their way to paint China in a flattering light.
Well, at least this means we won't be hearing any more of those tired "Jews are running Hollywood" stories.
In Dire Global Warming (DGW) news, I'm sure you've seen this terrible truth spread across the news sites recently:
I tracked down a handful of sites that had the article and left this in the comments:
Boy, I'll say! Every time I see one of those fake global warming articles, it makes my blood boil!
So I'm living proof the article is spot on in its analysis.
Lastly, I'm going to end on some really horrific news, figuring that the rest of your day will be much rosier after reading it since emotionally there won't be anywhere to go but back up.
Given what a splendid job California-bashing sites like Maggie's Farm have done in indoctrinating its readers into believing everyone in CA is a drooling, frothing-at-the-mouth liberal and that you pray nightly for the Big One to come along and drop the whole thing into the ocean, it will come as a severe shock to learn that California might actually have some value after all:
If California were to disappear, what would the American diet be like?
Expensive and grainy. California produces a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, and nuts: 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots (and the list goes on and on).
As cruel and horrific as this news is, I figured you'd rather hear it from me than see it splashed across some left-wing site as further proof of the right wing propaganda machine failing once again in its daunting task. Last week they lost the Bible, food stamps and Planned Parenthood — and now this.
But Bird Dog will be back tomorrow and I'm sure these horror stories will end.
While helping my brother clean out my parents' garage, going through shelves of tools, boxes of drill bits, old hinges, misc loose nails and screws, washers, screw-drivers, hand-drills, boxes of what-nots, etc, along with more garden tools than you can imagine even existed, I came across this old cedar cigar box full of mixed nails.
I know where that box of nails came from. That came from my grandfather's garage. My Mom's Dad. He kept all categories of little things in cigar boxes. He smoked in his office in town of course, but outdoors too, even while scything hay or on horseback, but stuck with cigarettes indoors so as not to offend the womenfolk. Pall Malls. Still delicious cigarettes.
So what about L. Osterweis? Well, he made cigars in New Haven, CT, with "South American" (Cuban probably) filler and Connecticut wrappers. Cigar people know that Connecticut still grows the best wrapper tobacco in the world.
The Osterweis company sold off their assets in 1954. From this Yale snippet, it seems that the Osterweis family did pretty well in the tobacco biz for a couple of generations. Even sent a kid or two to Yale.
Photo of Semipalmated Sandpipers from Being a sandpiper - Animals have thoughts, feelings and personality. Why have we taken so long to catch up with animal consciousness?
It's the time of year when my family's food interests turn to mollusks and crustaceans. It seems to be in their blood.
Oysters preferably on the half-shell, and cherrystones only on the half-shell. About that red seafood sauce with horseradish, for shrimp and clams and oysters etc - it is vulgar, overpowering stuff, but we love it anyway. It is the American wasabi.
Crabs: up north, we prefer them in their moulting soft-shell form, lightly sauteed in olive oil, butter, parsley, a touch of garlic, and white wine: three per person - it's the frugal way to eat the magnificent east coast Blue Crab because you eat the whole darn thing, shell, feathers and all - a perfect combination of crunch and succulence. I know how you pick at them on the Chesapeake - and that is damn good, but too much work.
Lobsters: We eat them as a gala treat but not too often as it is easy to grow tired of them. Always buy the big ones - one 6 lb. lobster has double the meat of six one-lb. lobsters (which are mostly shell). If they have the big ones, get the biggest and let them steam 'em for you. The story that the big ones are tougher than the babies is pure myth and an evil lie - the only tough lobster is a live one without the rubber bands. Plus the big guys are as dramatic on the table as a Thanksgiving turkey or a crown roast of lamb. Oh, did I mention that you never boil a lobster - you steam them. Boiling them washes half of their favor out of them. Toss the shells in the freezer, afterwards, and use them in your next fish stock.
Clam chowder - you have to have your own family recipe, but red clam chowder is disgusting.
Steamers? The best. Just use a few cups of water, and keep the clams above the water. Don't overcook 'em, or they will get too chewy. And do not dip them in butter - it overpowers their salt-marshy goodness. Best part? That broth. When you drink that hot broth out of a heavy mug you feel like you are reuniting with Mother Ocean - and you are. Left-over broth? To the freezer, for fish stock, along with steamer clam shells, fish heads and bones, lobster shells, etc. Wow.
And a simple oyster stew with heavy cream and paprika is nirvana - you must use large oysters, and never overcook them - just until they warm up and the edges begin to curl. The Oyster Bar (since 1913) makes the best oyster stew in the world in their custom-made, 100 year-old oyster stew steaming machines. Worth a trip to NYC and Grand Central Station just to sample their world-wide oysters - and that simple, heavenly stew. Poor-Boys and fried oysters? They aren't a bad thing at all, but only with those southern, less subtle oysters which come shelled in a container. The kind we use for oyster stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey.
And what is the finest oyster in the world? That's right, the ethereal Wellfleet Oyster, bathed in the fresh water from the Herring River. But don't try to cook him - it's a crime to do so, or should be. But we have done it - shame on us. Oysters Rockefeller from Wellfleet oysters.
Wines for these splendid delicacies from the sea? Champaigne is my first choice, and a Viognier is my second choice. Third choice - a French Chablis. Chardonnay with shellfish? No, no, no: try it and find out - they do not mix. Red wine with seafood? Certainly, if you feel like it. Who cares? Red surely is good with fish. I, for one, will not eat salt-water fish with white wine, but shellfish - for certain. Champagne with steamers? Very cool; very refined. Many prefer beer, though. (Steamers are the East Coast Buffalo Chicken Wings - only better.)
Image: a favorite Cape Cod salt marsh in Wellfleet, MA, full of steamer clams. You can fill a wire basket in 20 minutes, and come home hcovered with the black gooey happy marsh mud, looking something like this:
1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
1:12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem,
1:13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.
1:14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
2:18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me
2:19 --and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.
2:20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun,
2:21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.
2:22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?
2:23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.
It seems to make me feel better to post and write about death and house clean-out, so I will. I guess it's a slice of life up here in Yankeeland.
Here's a small stack of the number of books I retrieved from Dad's bookshelves. This might keep me busy until Thanksgiving or Christmas. I read Landscape and Memory once, when it first came out, but it wouldn't hurt me to read it again.
I have always wanted to read Wilson's Prelude, but it never fell into my hands. His classic. Dad loved Edmund Wilson. I'm not sure yet how much I need to know about Turner.
Does the name 'John McCain' mean anything to you guys? It rings a bell but I just can't place it. Wasn't he Sarah Palin's long-lost step-dad? Anyway, he's one of those Congresscritters and he's decided it would be best if we stopped using dollar bills and started using dollar coins, instead.
And it appears he's got his thumb on the pulse of the nation:
If this all sounds vaguely familiar, this the third time in recent years that some Congresscritter has gotten this particular hair up his ass. It'll hopefully end in the same resounding defeat the first two measures did. As far as I know, they actually did start printing the first time, but the indoctrination program support never materialized.
Below is my original article during the first go-'round.
I might also note that I solved the problem.
The Valued Maggie's Readership™ would expect no less.
Because of the media, we tend to focus on Congress as the people spending all of our hard-earned tax doubloons, and we tend to forget that there are scads of government agencies out there wasting money by the crateful.
Literally, in this case.
This is the new U.S. dollar coin:
If you would be so kind, our government would like you to use these new dollar coins instead of dollar bills.
Yes, you read that right.
And would you like to know just why you're going to do this?
To save the planet.
To continue sinking into the deep abyss of eternal madness, please...
One of the most refreshing summer drinks ever invented.
Take a highball glass or large water glass filled with ice cubes, then fill halfway with lemonade, then sweetened iced tea to fill so it looks a bit layered. Slice of lemon. Straw. That's it.
Add some gin or vodka and it's a Dirty Arnold Palmer, but it really isn't necessary.
I'll open with a statement which is derived from the post I recently made regarding Libertarian thought. I believe if athletes want to use drugs or steroids, the choice is theirs to decide if using them will help them improve.
I know this is a controversial position, but if someone wants to use a product which may well cause cancer, shrink genitalia, or otherwise harm them, why should we stop them?
However, I don't support breaking rules. Rules in sports help focus players on developing talent rather than using technology to short-circuit the system. Golf is well known for its use of guidelines to introduce new products, and recently made a rule change limiting putters. I have used products in golf that can help me reduce my slice, and hit balls which fly further than those allowed on the tour. But the USGA limits what technology can be used by professionals because technology can trump talent.
I don't know how to play the violin, so the technology which makes a Stradivarius a great violin won't make me a better violinist. But if Stradivarius provided a tool which moved my fingers to their proper positions and moved my bow across the strings in proper fashion, I could suddenly compete with Itzhak Perlman and barely take a class!
In my post honoring Gwyneth Paltrow, World's Most Beautiful Woman, I included pictures of some other famous women for comparison.
A commenter called the following a "hag":
He also called this a "hag":
Well, in the latest exciting news from the Hag Front, I'm pleased to announce we have a new entry in this most select of fields:
What's beyond scrumptious?
Her name is Camilla Belle. Or, as I prefer to call her, "The future Mrs. Dr. Mercury". She's appeared in about twenty films, although the only one I recognized on the list was Steven Seagal's 'The Patriot'.
That's about as adorable as it gets without actually being illegal. Even back then,she had that elusive it.
Her Wikipedia page is here, her IMDb page is here. I'd never heard of her until she popped up in some slideshow I was watching.
If you're trying to reduce the incidence of rape of military women, importing a bunch of gays sounds like just the ticket! And that, friends, isculture change.
In the 'Scratching Head' department, we have this:
So, just to get this straight, the winner gets death?
By the way, speaking of your probably-eminent death, in case you've been worried about that MERS virus that's sweeping the globe and is about a week away from stopping by your neighborhood, these two articles should clear things right up:
And Glenn Reynolds of PJ Media has shed a little light on the subject of armed domestic drones and how we should view them.
“The FBI does not use (unmanned aerial vehicles) to conduct ‘bulk’ surveillance or to conduct general surveillance not related to an investigation or assessment,” Kelly wrote.
Hmm.
I think we can safely infer that "Hmm" to mean he doesn't really trust their word.
Uh, buddy, if those scientists had the slightest idea of the names we usually call them, they'd fall to their knees in gratitude for only being called boffins.
Finally, turning to the horrific side of life, a drawbridge wouldn't open the other day, stranding drivers for, as the article states, "almost 45 minutes." When this kind of horror strikes an innocent populace, you can just bet that heads will roll.
And look how they zero right in on the exact problem:
Engineers now know why it happened. The weather affected the electronics.
"Circuit breaker, relay switches, wires are all effected by the elements,
moisture, heat, vibration, barometric pressure," says Virginia Department of
Transportation bridge engineer Nick Roper.
And you think, gosh, if only there was some kind of modern science, like maybe the kind of advanced technology we'll have when we finally put a man on the moon some day, that could be used to prevent such tragedies in the future.
I hear that new-fangled "insulated wire" looks promising. And that new "silicone sealant" isn't being called "the wonder glue of the 70's" for no reason.
Well, let's start off on an upbeat note:
Speaking of history, we have this little phenomenon occurring for the first time in 10,000 years of human endeavor:
It's the time of year when my family's food interests turn to mollusks and crustaceans. It seems to be in their blood. 
One of the most refreshing summer drinks ever invented.
Now here's a real jaw-dropper: 
By the way, speaking of your probably-eminent death, in case you've been worried about that MERS virus that's sweeping the globe and is about a week away from stopping by your neighborhood, these two articles should clear things right up: