Saturday, March 23. 2013
Photo is a typical American city
Trust me, you folks around the world who want to sneak into the USA. We are an evil, Capitalist, heartless, war-mongering, carbon-spewing, gun-shooting, drug-abusing, poverty-ridden, sex-obsessed, Big Gulp-drinking, obese, poorly-educated, sexist, racist and zenophobic country that nobody would want to be a part of. There are no jobs here, and the place is crawling with Jesus Freaks, drunk cowboys with guns, communists, weird transgender people and weird mass-murderers armed with AK-47s and bombs. Don't believe the marketing hype about freedom and opportunity, because they are disappearing fast.
Just ask any American college professor how bad we are, and how unfair and harsh life is here. They will tell you the truth. Most Americans, I am sure, would leave if they could only find a way to get away to a better, kinder, and more peace-loving country. You would hate it here. Try China or India instead, or Mexico, Scotland, Russia, Iceland, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Italy, or maybe Australia.
Gallup: 138 million foreign adults want to immigrate to USA
Lone Dog
I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone;
I’m a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own;
I’m a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep;
I love to sit and bay the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.
I’ll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet,
A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat,
Not for me the fireside, the well-filled plate,
But shut door, and sharp stone, and cuff and kick, and hate.
Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,
Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.
O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,
Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!
Friday, March 22. 2013
 Made another Ribollita for Dad tonight (photo). Will deliver tomorrow - these things are always much tastier a day later. My ol' Yankee Dad loves Italian peasant comfort food.
I used a different recipe this time for the Ribollita. These greens are half Kale and half chopped cabbage, plus the whites of two leeks. I pureed about 1/3 of the Canellini beans, and had to use plenty of chicken stock to keep it from being too thick. Water would be purist but I like flavor, and I throw all chicken bones in the freezer for whenever I need to make chicken stock. Or I make it and freeze it.
There's over 1/2 cup of olive oil in there, and pretty much all the rest of the (frozen) Thyme I could find in the icy garden. Plenty of garlic, onion, celery, carrot, of course. Large can of crushed tomatoes - maybe a little too much.
Cheap and delicious, and fun to make. It is difficult to over-use thyme in soups and stews. That's where the "savoury" comes from.
Serve on top of small 1"-cube chunks of preferably-stale Italian or French bread in a soup bowl. A glass of Chianti Classico Riserva. Then take a nap.
Over the transom, with info from the Mayo Clinic cardiologists -
How many folks do you know who say they don't want to drink anything before going to bed because they'll have to get up during the night!!
Heart Attack and Water
Something else I didn't know ... I asked my Doctor why do people need to urinate so much at night time. Answer from my Cardiac Doctor - Gravity holds water in the lower part of your body when you are
upright (legs swell). When you lie down and the lower body (legs and etc) seeks level with the kidneys, it is then that the kidneys remove the water because it is easier. This then ties in with the last statement!
I knew you need your minimum water to help flush the toxins out of your body, but this was news to me.
Correct time to drink water... Very Important. From A Cardiac Specialist!
Drinking water at a certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body: 2 glasses of water after waking up - helps activate internal organs.
1 glass of water 30 minutes before a meal - helps digestion
1 glass of water before taking a bath - helps lower blood pressure
1 glass of water before going to bed - avoids stroke or heart attack
I can also add to this... My Physician told me that water at bed time will also help prevent night time leg cramps. Your leg muscles are seeking hydration when they cramp and wake you up with a Charlie
Horse.
Subject: Mayo clinic aspirin
Dr. Virend Somers, is a Cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic, who is lead author of the report in the July 29, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Most heart attacks occur in the day, generally between 6 A.M. and noon. Having one during the night, when the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual happened. Somers and his colleagues have been working for a decade to show that sleep apnea is to blame .
1. If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour "half-life"; therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be strongest in your system.
2. FYI, Aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar).
Something that we can do to help ourselves - nice to know. Bayer is making crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the tongue. They work much faster than the tablets.
Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It's about Heart Attacks -
There are other symptoms of a heart attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One must also be aware of an intense pain on the chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating; however, these symptoms may also
occur less frequently.
Note: There may be NO pain in the chest during a heart attack.
The majority of people (about 60%) who had a heart attack during their sleep did not wake up. However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake you up from your deep sleep.
If that happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water.
Afterwards:
- Call 911.
- Phone a neighbor or a family member who lives very close by.
- Say "heart attack!" - Say that you have taken 2 Aspirins.
- Take a seat on a chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for their arrival and ...DO NOT LIE DOWN!
Do forward this message. It may save lives!
 How they disarmed our British cousins. It's the pitiful story of how Brits lost the right to self-defense.
Here in the USA, we hold with the Castle Doctrine even though we have never had castles. We have stories like this one in the news daily: Texas Sheriff: Homeowner’s Gun Key to Saving His and Wife’s Lives from Home Invaders.
Bad guys ignore gun laws. An unarmed home is just a target. And dead men don't talk...
Pic is a Taurus. That's the gun Marianne kept handy.
I have no idea. I prefer Bach to Beyonce. In fact, never listened to the latter despite being a hip youngish New Yorker. Here's the argument: Can Republicans Close the Pop Culture Gap?
Just curious, but how does Obama have so much time to watch TV and to listen to tunes? I find no time for TV. Not that that bothers me very much but I spose it would matter if I were running for office.
More details on how well the Polar Bears are doing these days
You can learn some interesting natural history from the article and the comments
Intelligence and genetics
Fox hunting is an extreme sport
Tried it a few times with my Mom as a lad. Scary and exhilarating. We had a local hunt club. We had a member die on a hunt (overhead branch). Broken bones galore, of course. It sucks to fall off a galloping horse.
Think Ethanol is Environmentally Friendly? Think Again.
Soda Wars: CBS News Declares a Statistical Zero 'Staggering'
Pew Study Proves Fox News' Critics Horribly, Terribly, Completely Wrong
Elizabeth Warren already planning to cash in
She's already made $7 million in teaching and public service. Does she need more? Or is it just the Indian Way?
Proof that cold weather causes murder
Government Is The Liberals' Religion
People in Newtown want guns
‘Illegal immigration is to immigration what shoplifting is to shopping’ (video)
Great quote.
Are white people allowed to discuss racial issues?
Legal Education: Are Two Years Enough?
Why loans are a bad idea for certificate education
Tennessee State Senator Whips-Up Opposition to University’s Sex Week
Insty likes to claim that every week was sex week when he was in college
US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email
Thanks a lot, George Bush, for creating that psychotic agency
We Have Met the RINO and He Is Us
Faceless is here.
Thursday, March 21. 2013
Ed Glaeser begins:
When I hear free-spending national leaders call for more infrastructure investment, I think of Detroit’s absurd People Mover monorail gliding above empty streets. That’s unfair, I know. Yet the city’s epic tragedy, which entered a new stage last week when Mayor Dave Bing lost financial control, provides broader perspective on the potential consequences of mixing economic distress with bad policy making.
The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of Unwed Mothers: An Economic Mystery. The real question here isn't "Why so many babies?" It's "Why so few marriages?" And we have an answer.
As we say here, building a complex life with social pleasures, financial stability, family structure with continuity, traditions, and reliability, and the general comforts of life, is difficult without marriage and family.
 To understand the now-antique Liberal/Progressive mind set in America, we must go back at least to the turn of the last century. Around 1910, Walter Weyl was all the rage - the new, new Coke.
At the time, the Western world was excited by utopian ideas about everything being run by brilliant, virtuous, and omniscient overseers who aspired to unburden us common folk of freedom, risk, and excessive responsibilities.
With a h/t to Doug Ross, here is some of it: Walter Weyl (1873-1919): The state has a “primordial, intrinsic, underlying right to all property”.
A quote:
“We are beginning to see that we can moralize, we can socialize the trusts, and can build more widely upon the economic tendencies of the age…the end of it all must be production on the largest scale compatible with efficiency, but a production so regulated as to ownership, stock issues, dividends, prices, wages, and profits as to safeguard the whole community. Unless we are to take the saltum mortale [dangerous undertaking] of a complete and immediate governmental ownership and operation of all large industries, we must work out a more perfect system of corporation control in the interest of society.”
As most Maggie's readers know, individual freedom is not about "the greater good," nor is it about the State. It's about individual sovereignty.
 Sorry, greenies. Polar Bears are thriving.
I was dumped after sex: was I wrong to do it?'
The lady advice columnist suggests she might need therapy for wanting to wait for sex a few weeks with a new date. I'm sure the fellows would heartily agree...
A First: Conservative Studies Professor at a Public University
The Cult of Microaggressions
I am deeply offended by the new cult of microaggression.
A Nation of Nannies & Julias
Child Services, Police Descend on Home After 10-Year Old Poses with Hunting Rifle
Why Do Economists Urge College, But Not Marriage?
How does a local eye doctor make this kind of dough?
In Cyprus, Europe Sets a New Standard for Stupidity
Media Losing Their Freedom Without A Fight In Britain
Attracting sports teams does a city no good
As Calif. Drowns in Debt, Group Advocates For Free Healthcare for Illegals
Illegal Immigrants Make Commercial Demanding Free Healthcare
Republicans Must Show Support for Hispanic Dreams
Wednesday, March 20. 2013
 It's the time of year for trip planning. A bit early to think about fall hunting, but spring and summer plans are on the menu.
For no reason that I can comprehend, Mrs. BD likes to go places with just me. I enjoy including the kids and giving them special life treats as did my parents for me, and their companionship and getting to know them better as they unfold is a joy.
She has gotten a little carried away, and now has things in the pipeline for 2014 too, God willing.
She has scheduled Little St. Simon's Island in April to catch migration season (to please me), a kid's graduation mini-trip, and the annual family reunion week in Wellfleet in August (for the first time, sadly without Mom but, I hope, with all of the immediate and extended family).
For fall, I dunno.
Before I get old, my short-term (3-yr) bucket list includes:
- a good-sized villa (5-8 bedrooms) in Tuscany for 2 weeks with enough room for the entire family and dearest friends, with a cook and housekeeper (they all come with that anyway) and rental cars for all. I am saving up for that, but it's not really too expensive. As much as I love Umbria and enjoy Sicily, the family all deserve more time in Tuscany. Well, my kids are lucky. They've been everywhere.
- More Sicily. Rent a sports car, drink a little Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Rosso, then drive all over with my cowboy hat and a history text and ignore the speed laws like everybody else. Try to frighten the Mrs. with speed, but that is difficult to do. She likes speed too.
- a barge trip through southern France with the inlaws and family. Dad's a bit too feeble for this now, but he already took plenty of these with my Mom.
- I need to get back to Pine Butte in Montana soon, maybe next Spring for wildflower bloom and Grizzly Bears,
- and to Big Sky in the winter before my joints begin to creak. I need new skis.
- Bermuda again, for a romantic 5 days (we like Cambridge Beaches - they call it luxurious but it is only luxurious by British standards)
- Another Holland-America Line cross-Atlantic trip, as we used to do when I was young. I love the North Atlantic stormy days on a ship.
- Another Holland-America Line history cruise
What's on the top of Mrs. BD's bucket list? A week down the coast of Turkey on a gulet. I would love to get back to Turkey again.
Carpe diem, friends, because memories are all we have of lasting value, and memories rarely include our daily routines and chores. Even if they should, so much of it just blends together.
What do y'all have in the works?
Michael Walsh: Fight On!
Nice conservative people have no idea of what an institutionalized, ruthless, partially-corrupt apparatus they are up against. It's the big leagues. Voters do not study the Constitution before they go to the polls.
School choice is not a Democrat-Conservative split. Nobody likes the government monopoly and everybody wants school choices, the same school choices that the Obama kids have. Inner city families long for school choices for their kids. The only problems the Dems have are to deal with are their wealthy allies in the teachers unions.
Here's a story: This Is What It's Like to Take on School Unions As a Democratic Leader in California
It's really amazing what computer software can pull off these days. Yesterday, I posted a video that had some superb manipulation, indistinguishable from the real thing.
Today's program lets you enhance a photograph in a number of ways. You might have seen software on shows like 'NCIS' that can age a person, but this stuff takes it to the next level. Apart from making them younger or older, you can also enhance the image to show the effects of a different lifestyle, like "Weathered Sea Captain" or "Grizzled Veteran Soldier".
Wishing to give it a spin, I jumped on the web and grabbed the first facial pic I saw, one of President Barack Obama. I checked both the "Mad Max From Thunderdome" and "Aging Battle-Hardened Warrior" boxes, and this is what it produced:
You have to admit, Obama looks friggin' awesome. If I'm going to pit someone against the likes of bin Laden, that's the guy I want.
Yes, these new computer programs are just amazing, and I-
Oops, hold on a sec.
Sorry, wrong photograph. The above is Satan in the new History Channel series, 'The Bible'. Sorry for any confusion.
The left, of course, is up in arms because of the resemblance. It seems to me that they're asking the wrong question, though. They're asking why Satan looks like President Obama.
My question is, why does President Obama look like Satan?
"We're created to love people and use things. In our decadent society, we love things and use people."
A commenter at Schneiderman
 Cow manure is not good fertilizer
Chart of the day: As a share of household spending, the US has the most affordable food in world
Summer Boot Camp for Freedom Fighting Law Students
Is it possible for the legal profession to reform itself?
This Is the Scariest Statistic About the Newspaper Business Today
The Texas Growth Machine - The data show that the Lone Star State’s prosperity is no mirage.
Scott Walker: Obama measures success by government dependency
Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate Promises Free College
'Government-Established Regulatory Body' To Oversee UK Media
Many Americans are wondering how their country, a supposed
"center-right" nation, reached the point of electing and reelecting the
most radical leftist administration in its history.
A Major Take-Down of Howard Zinn by David Greenberg in TNR. Don’t Miss it!
Ben Carson's Problematic Views on Health Care
Explaining The Minimum Wage To Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren - My Arguments In Favor of a $50/Hr Minimum Wage (/sarcasm)
Back in the day, a real New Yorker would look that tiny troll in the mayor’s office in his beady little eyes and laugh, “Hey Mikey, I got
your Big Gulp right here.”:
Obedience to arbitrary authority is counter to everything that America stands for. We didn’t reluctantly cede a tiny bit of our personal sovereignty to the government so a bunch of know-it-all twerps could tell us what to eat, what to smoke, what to do and how to live. We did it to allow them the ability to keep order, which they have manifestly failed to do, and to perform a few basic governmental functions, which they have likewise failed to do.
So, a government that has failed to adequately perform the few discrete tasks which it should be performing now wishes to do a bunch of other things which it has no business doing in the first place, and which it will inevitably do badly and thereby cause even more problems than existed in the first place.
It’s time to say “No.”
A reader sends us a pic of an immature Herring Gull in New England, with a big barnacle-covered Blue Mussel. He'll fly up with it 20 or 30 feet and drop it on rocks or asphalt until it cracks open.
Tuesday, March 19. 2013
The Heretic - Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him?
Thomas Nagel may be the most famous philosopher in the United States—a bit like being the best power forward in the Lullaby League, but still. His paper “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” was recognized as a classic when it was published in 1974. Today it is a staple of undergraduate philosophy classes. His books range with a light touch over ethics and politics and the philosophy of mind. His papers are admired not only for their philosophical provocations but also for their rare (among modern philosophers) simplicity and stylistic clarity, bordering sometimes on literary grace. ..
another quote from the piece:
Materialism, then, is fine as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go as far as materialists want it to. It is a premise of science, not a finding. Scientists do their work by assuming that every phenomenon can be reduced to a material, mechanistic cause and by excluding any possibility of nonmaterial explanations. And the materialist assumption works really, really well—in detecting and quantifying things that have a material or mechanistic explanation. Materialism has allowed us to predict and control what happens in nature with astonishing success. The jaw-dropping edifice of modern science, from space probes to nanosurgery, is the result.
But the success has gone to the materialists’ heads. From a fruitful method, materialism becomes an axiom: If science can’t quantify something, it doesn’t exist, and so the subjective, unquantifiable, immaterial “manifest image” of our mental life is proved to be an illusion.
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