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.
In case you haven't heard the exciting news, Gwyneth Paltrow has been named People Magazine'sWorld's Most Beautiful Woman.
In honor of this lofty occasion, it's only fitting that we hear directly from this raving beauty, herself:
"I love the English way, which is not as capitalistic as it is in America. People don't talk about work and money; they talk about interesting things at dinner parties. I like living here because I don't tap into the bad side of American psychology, which is 'I'm not achieving enough, I'm not making enough, I'm not at the top of the pile.'"
"Brits are far more intelligent and civilised than Americans. I love the fact that you can hail a taxi and just pick up your pram and put it in the back of the cab without having to collapse it. I love the parks and places I go for dinner and my friends."
"I just had a baby and thought, 'I don't want to live there.'" International press reports had her deriding "Bush's anti-environment, pro-war policies" as either a "disgrace" or a "disaster."
If we presume the gang at People Mag are just as liberal as the rest of industry — which wouldn't be much of a stretch — it's no wonder they fell in love with this woman. In their minds, speakingtruth to power like the above earns her the honorific of Heroine.
For pics of the runners-up and the ravishing Ms. Paltrow, take your trembling hand and...
21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
21:2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;
21:4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
21:5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."
21:6 Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.
Heard a Screech Owl calling early in the morning last week. I hope he finds the nest box I put up. They didn't find it last year.
The tiny Screech Owl lives across America, as long as there are plenty of trees around. If you want to attract a family of them to live at your place, put up a nest box for them. They do not mind living in suburban areas. I recently learned that they are breeding in New York's Central Park.
Now would be the time to do it. The box pictured is from Best Nest.
It's important to place the box correctly. The natural cavities that screech owls choose are typically 12 to 20 feet above the ground and in deep shade. As the female incubates the eggs, the male is apt to spend the day roosting in dense foliage within about 20 feet of the nest. After you've placed an inch or so of dried leaves in the bottom of the nest, hang it at least 10 feet up on the trunk of a large tree. Try to place it away from sidewalks or doors, since the owls vigorously defend their nests against perceived threats. In fact, when the young are near fledging, some unusually spunky adults may swoop down at people or pets who wander too close, even raking them with their claws. So while placing the box in as secluded a spot as possible is good for the owls, it might be better for us, too.
I greatly enjoy hearing them at night. A Great Horned Owl hooting had done the same to me a few weeks earlier. Good stuff. The mysterious world of the night.
That's right. He's a Connecticut Yankee in King Southern's Court.
So, lucky you, I'll be doing the morning links today and Monday. Although I appear to be the only blogger in the Western Universe who believes it, I don't think Sundays should be filled with the same bad news that the rest of the week is, so I'll skip it.
Interesting News
Well, I suppose we should start with what many are calling 'The Scandal of the Decade'.
Korean media is abuzz over the question after the Microsoft founder was photographed Monday holding his hand in his pocket as he exchanged greetings with Park Geun-hye.
I just love this picture:
I can easily see myself doing the same thing. "Well, howdy, Prez, howzit goin'?" Real geeks really are on a different plane than most people, and royalty, prestige and position simply don't carry the same weight that tight code, a quicker boot-up time and a well-designed web site do.
I hope the Koreans understand.
Under the heading of James Taranto's "Two Papers In One!", we have:
Like to buy stuff on the Internet? If the House approves a first-ever online sales tax, you might soon be paying a premium—and that’s a very good thing, writes Daniel Gross.
...because after I wrote the first post, it became clear to me that most people who are writing about it do not understand why this is onerous for small business.
She's lying, of course, but this is The Daily Beast, so one would expect that sort of thing. In this case, it's a lie by omission, because what she's not telling you in the above sentence is that she's only referring to small-time online retailers, like those guys who try to make a buck reselling stuff on eBay and Amazon. And just what percentage of the industry, Ms. McArdle, is that?
1%? 2%? 0.00031%?
People who are saying this is no big deal aren’t thinking things through.
For further information on why this is no big deal, please read my post here.
The Federal Reserve has mixed in new features to make the bill more difficult to replicate, like a blue security ribbon running down the front. When the bill is tilted, columns filled with the number "100" and tiny bells rotate. Tilt left to right and the columns move up and down; tilt up and down, the columns move left to right. The ribbon is woven onto the paper, not printed, making it tougher to duplicate. It's composed of thousands of lenses that magnify the marks and make them appear to move in different directions--not easy for a counterfeiter to remake in a basement.
This whole things smacks of a 'freedom of speech' violations and I'm sure the ACLU will immediately spring into action.
And, in a recent horrific event, the nation held its breath while we awaited the outcome of the...
Hours before the federal spending sequester began on March 1, when President Barack Obama predicted that "People are going to be hurt," he did not add, Trust me, I'll make sure of it. But he might as well have, as this week's furloughs of air traffic controllers make obvious.
The furloughs reflect panic: Having exaggerated their early predictions that the sequester's small reduction in spending growth would seriously affect Americans, many Democrats are hell-bent to pre-empt those Americans from drawing two logical conclusions: If one level of cuts is this painless, then maybe we should make ... more cuts to expenditures. And while we're at it, maybe we should ignore the politicians who told us that if Washington lowered the spending growth curve ... the Earth will fly into the sun.
If you've been paying any attention to this fraud, you'll have noticed that the MSM jumped right on board, boldly touting the serious repercussions when government spending is actually lowered. If I'm reading this right, the evil Republicans caused little children to cry because their White House tours were cancelled and the odds of your being eaten by a bear at Yellowstone Nat'l Park have increased dramatically.
On the subject of 'Lying To The People', in case you didn't catch the two AGW links in my post the other day, both of them are excellent.
The Associated Press has assured us, though, that this cold spell is not only consistent with a warming globe, it is actually caused by global warming. The proffered explanation is that cold weather in Europe is a result of melting sea ice in the Arctic. If this special pleading strikes you as unusually tendentious, it is all in the best tradition of explaining away ex post facto any weather event that appears to contradict the ruling paradigm.
After two decades of steady and substantial global temperature increase from 1980 to 1998, the pause in warming is causing a crisis for the climate crusade. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The recent temperature record is falling distinctly to the very low end of the range predicted by the climate models and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, something is going on that supposedly “settled” science hasn’t been able to settle. Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding—the oceans—is not cooperating with the story line. Recent data show that ocean warming has noticeably slowed, too.
That damn ocean. You just can't trust anyonething these days!
French news agency AFP reports that Ernesto Mauri, the chief executive of Mondadori France, the publisher of French gossip magazine Closer, Valerie Suau, a photographer at the regional daily La Provence, and La Provence’s general director, Marc Auburtin, are all under formal investigation for “breach of privacy” for allowing the photos of Duchess Kate sunbathing while on vacation to be taken and published.
If the Paparazzi Convention of 2012 gets nuked by some activist, I won't shed a tear. These have to be the scummiest people on earth. Their excuse is "But I gotta make a living!", failing to note that, at last count, there were approximately 7,304,346 different ways to make a living. All they're really saying is, "I gotta make a living... being scum." This strikes me as a serious mental disorder.
Speaking of which, I'm glad Rand Paul finally cleared the air on that drone business.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky), commended by many for his dramatic thirteen hour filibuster against the use of domestic drones, told Fox Business Network on Tuesday he's OK with drone strikes on American citizens who, for instance, rob a liquor store.
"If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash. I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him. But it’s different if they want to fly over your hot tub..."
So, to review, it's perfectly okay if a drone murders someone over a crummy fifty bucks — as long as it doesn't fly over your hot tub.
This guy's coming across just like his dad; brilliant 75% of the time, a total moron the other 25%.
In the video, the Portuguese Water Dog takes to the hunt with ease, tracking down the colorful eggs wherever they are hidden and then dutifully sitting next to his prizes.
So there is good news coming out of Washington these days.
Often titled "The Gladiator," the verses are originally from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Canto IV - Stanza 140.
I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand—his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his droop’d head sinks gradually low— And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder shower; and now The arena swims around him—he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail’d the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not—his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire, Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday— All this rush’d with his blood—Shall he expire, And unavenged?—Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
When I graduated from medical school in 1962, the profession of medicine was for many graduates an opportunity to provide care—as distinguished from, though aligned with, treatment—and to provide it to individuals, not to populations or governmentally specified groups. Young doctors hoped to establish an independent business, enjoy lifelong intellectual excitement as knowledge and therapies expanded, and have an income sufficient to live decently and support a family. There have always been some who entered medicine, as with any vocation, to maximize income. Yet most of us who came into the profession in the early 1960s had modest financial aspirations and substantial social commitment...
...dangerously, schools of education impose “political litmus tests” on those who want to become public teachers. They vet students’ “dispositions,” especially their commitment to the left-wing notion of “social justice.” One of the most prestigious education schools in the country, Columbia University’s Teachers College, tells its students that teaching is a “political act.” Aspiring teachers are expected to be “participants in a larger struggle for social justice” and “to change the system and make schools and societies more equitable.”
Lukianoff points out the problem with such politicized pedagogy: “Vague, subjective, and politicized evaluation standards are dangerous. They invite administrators and faculty members to substitute their own opinions and political beliefs for fair, professional criteria to evaluate students’ demonstrated skills as members of a profession.” Competence, then, takes a backseat to political correctness, a problem rife in K-12 teaching credential programs, where knowledge of subject matter is less important than political ideology.
A friend told me the other night that he was served hot pepper mashed potatoes at the home of a friend in Delhi. I did not know they made mashed potatoes in India. He said it was so hot he was in agony.
Well, I like hot but I respect the sanctity of ordinary mashed taters. Nonetheless, I have to try it.
Here's one recipe (photo from the recipe, but ignore the steak. I think hot pepper taters would go well with anything grilled). Here's another.
Government interventions over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors from my generation are exiting the field. Others are seeing their private practices threatened with bankruptcy, or are giving up their autonomy for the life of a shift-working hospital employee. Governments and hospital administrators hold all the power, while doctors—and worse still, patients—hold none.
When it comes to running programs, it really doesn't matter how many other programs you have on your computer. Normal programs are 'static', just sitting there awaiting the call, and when you fire up a program, those are the only files being read.
It can, however, make a big difference on a few other levels, like running a virus scan, a fix-it program, or making an image file backup of the whole C Drive. More files means more time to scan, fix or copy. And since we're talking about files that might be multiple gigs in size, this is the real deal.
I've covered a couple of these in the past, but only in regards to a related subject. This time we'll look specifically at reducing the size of the C Drive.
There are five main areas of concern:
1. Getting rid of the 2 gigs of unnecessary backup files Windows 7 left after doing its big 'Service Pack' update
2. Getting rid of the 2-gig 'Hibernation' file
3. Getting rid of the 4-gig 'pagefile'
4. Cleaning out the 'Temp' folder
5. Scanning the drive for any large 'temp' files a program might have left
We shall pull out our #10 scalpel below the fold. Or blowtorch, if necessary.
Far too many Americans believe (or have been told to believe) that the Republican Party “doesn’t care about the poor, minorities, women, etc.” This is something I’ve written extensively about in previous articles. Republican candidates in red states and blue states alike need to start reaching out more aggressively to conservative women, Latinos, African-Americans, etc. Romney won a majority of males, whites, independents, middle class voters, and married women. In the past, that was always enough to form a 51% majority. Today, it’s not.
The GOP has maxed out the white conservative vote – Romney won more whites than any Republican candidate since 1988. There are far too many conservative women and minorities who are voting Democrat simply because they haven’t been reached out to. To the Obama campaign’s credit, the Democrats never stopped campaigning after 2008. They kept all their campaign offices open – especially in the swing states – and spent the last four years developing relationships, building trust, and keeping their message out there 24/7 with key demographics in targeted communities.
That’s all it took for the Democrats to win in 2012. It wasn’t a validation of progressive ideology.
I greatly enjoy contemplating urban issues. As someone who grew up frequenting NYC, I suppose my bias is towards the high-density, mixed-use (ie residential and commerce combined), mix of very old and brand-new buildings, and the mixed-use (ie residential and commerce combined) environment that makes downtown New York such a vibrant and constantly interesting place, day and night. The city that never sleeps.
If I could afford a pied a terre there, I would do it. (The only reason NYC real estate is so high is because of government controls.) Take the elevator down, say Hi to the doorman, walk seven blocks to a neighborhood French bistro or your favorite pub past all the people taking their dogs for a walk. Nice way of life. New Yorkers are skinny because they walk everywhere - including to work in the morning. Well, subway if it's over a mile I suppose but it depends on the person.
Here's the article: Houston Rising—Why the Next Great American Cities Aren’t What You Think - While urbanists and developers tout the oldest and priciest American cities, they ignore or deplore the real growth that’s happening in more spread-out urban newbies, writes demographer Joel Kotkin.
Germany, historically the model for the American educational system, has a far more practical system than America does today. We often forget that the traditional model for higher ed was designed for scholars, and teachers, some wealthy elites, and Protestant ministers.
We know that a minority, probably a small minority, of American college students are natural scholars or passionately curious. More want, or need, the credential.
It seems to me that much of the discussion of "mission" has to do with confusing "higher ed" with Liberal Arts education. I do not know how much of Higher Ed today is Liberal Arts and how much is vocationally-oriented (eg Nursing, Agricultural, Hospitality, Education, Law Enforcement, Business, Engineering, Communications, Performance Arts, etc etc, but I know that a lot of it is.)
Cornell for example, a strange hybrid of state university and private university, has 7 undergrad colleges. Only one of their undergrad schools is Liberal Arts, and many large universities are similar. It's been many years since "college" has meant Liberal Arts.
I think most of the angst is only about the "mission" and "purpose" of Liberal Arts higher ed. Nobody is confused about the "mission" or "purpose" of degrees in Nursing or Civil Engineering.
If any reader can find those Higher Ed stats, I'm sure we'd all be interested. Specifically, I'm interested in what % of US undergrads are attending vocationally-oriented colleges and programs compared to those doing Liberal Arts programs.
In 2009-2010, "college" in the US yielded 800,000 Associate degrees and 1.7 million Bachelors degrees.
Of the 1.7 million bachelor's degrees awarded in 2009–10, over half were concentrated in five fields: business, management, marketing, and personal and culinary services (22 percent); social sciences and history (10 percent); health professions and related programs (8 percent); education (6 percent); and psychology (6 percent) (see table A-38-1). The fields of visual and performing arts (6 percent), engineering and engineering technologies (5 percent), biological and biomedical sciences (5 percent), and communication and communications technologies (5 percent) represented an additional 21 percent of all bachelor's degrees awarded in 2009–10.
"College" doesn't mean what it used to mean. It used to mean Liberal Arts but now it can mean Hotel Management. The change has already happened.
Europe has three big problems: The return of the Reich (or the Holy Roman Empire, if you prefer), the return of the Ottomans, and the persistence of state socialism. Learned nothing at all from their long, crazy history.
It was a tiring, three-plane, 24-hour flight, getting in late the night before, April 7. We stayed at a delightfully friendly inn near the Prime Minister's residence, about a 15-minute stroll to the Old City. We slept and had a hearty breakfast from the inn's large, delicious buffet. After 2-minutes of sirens all over Israel during which all stop to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jason's Bar Mitzvah took place at 10:02AM on April 8 at the Haas Promenade overlooking all of Jerusalem, the Old City at the center of view. Here we're carrying the Torah to the Promenade, then part of the view over Jerusalem (hazy due to a sand storm in Saudi Arabia blowing sand far into Jerusalem's skies).
Instead of a long post with deeper observations, maybe to come later, instead this post will simply present some of the joy on Jason and younger brother (8) Gavin's faces at their experiences. (Jason was totally jazzed, and performed his prayers and Torah portion with enthusiasm and ease. Gavin was a bit jet-lagged in the morning of the 8th but recovered his boisterous energy and spirits by noon.) A few photos with me may sneak in. But. for me, these of Jason and Gavin are the most important. Look back at your albums. The photos of sites are nice momentos but the photos of your children at the sites are the heart that beats and stirs.
Both boys rose to be champion travelers, terrifically behaved and engaged, and their reflections on what they saw and experienced have been all that a father could hope for from this exposure to the land, history, and traditions of our Jewish religion and peoples. Jason acts and takes seriously that he is now a young man, with such responsibilities following this core rite of passage. Gavin says he will be nicer after experiencing and discussing the centrality in our faith of replacing bad with good in ourselves and the world, bolstered by meeting so many pleasant Israelis and visitors from all over the globe.
(Many more photos below the fold; There is a 10-hour difference between California and Israel, so the dates on the photos reflect San Diego time, not Israel's)
Update: I'm up in Homestead at the moment taking care of a computer meltdown at a business ($$), then, as long as I'm this far north, I'm planning on heading up to Miami Beach for a few days to visit a friend, so I'll postpone those two big pieces I've mentioned until next week.
In the meantime...
First, when I'm wrong about something, I admit it. That's how we grow.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the new Internet Exploder version 10. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
They did make an improvement.
Now, in my defense, I should note that they haven't made an actual, visible improvement in over a decade, so I admit I wasn't specifically looking for one, slacker that I am.
It now has a spell-checker. A real, live spell-checker, utilizing the latest modern software innovations, direct from the late 80's when the first spell-checker hit the scene. The fact that IE now utilizes this valuable late-80's technology speaks highly of the programming team.
Quickly going the other direction is Firefox. They've changed how the download box works and it's now a minor pain. Normally, it's an independent box, so you can do whatever you want with the browser, including closing it, and the downloads keep to themselves. This is also how IE does it.
It's now part of the actual browser, and if you click elsewhere, it disappears. And it's even more confusing with multiple windows and downloads going, so the whole thing comes across as kinda dumb.
The trick is to hit Ctrl-J, which will open the old independent downloads box. ('J' for 'Just the box') You can also open it from the Tools menu or the 'Download' button, 'Show all downloads'. They've eliminated the 'Pause' button for no known reason, but you can still pause the download by right-clicking on it. And, best, it means we don't have to worry about keeping browser windows open or not.
Dear Firefox:
It only took four of us, but we finally figured out how to use your new update correctly. Yippee for us!
" Bloomberg is an authoritarian. He's not an authoritarian in the way Josef Stalin or Pol Pot was authoritarian, but every instinct tells you he's a man who would use any power given to him to govern every aspect of public and private life whenever necessary -- or, more precisely, whenever he finds it necessary, which is frequently. All said, he's exactly the type of person who makes the Constitution a necessity.
Anyone who believes your caloric intake is government's prime concern should be watched carefully..."
Often titled "The Gladiator," the verses are originally from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Canto IV - Stanza 140. 
A friend told me the other night that he was served hot pepper mashed potatoes at the home of a friend in Delhi. I did not know they made mashed potatoes in India. He said it was so hot he was in agony.
When it comes to running programs, it really doesn't matter how many other programs you have on your computer. Normal programs are 'static', just sitting there awaiting the call, and when you fire up a program, those are the only files being read.
