Thursday, August 9. 2012
Parked at the beach:
Mrs. BD and I listen to Teaching Company cds in the car. Well, it's called "Great Courses" now.
Best college course I ever sat in on is Bob Greenberg's How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. It's on sale now. I cannot express how absorbing and wonderful he is to listen to. It's life-changing, even for somebody musically-disabled like me.
Handel wrote Messiah - 50 gem-like and unforgettable tunes - in 24 days.
School education isn't everything in life. There are many important things to know that cannot be learned in school. As parents, we all try to ensure that our kids acquire basic life skills to help them enjoy life and to participate fully in life.
What makes life interesting is that all parents have different ideas about this.
Here's my first stab at making a list of the things we have expected our kids to know how to do - or at least to give it a good try - before turning 18 (guys and gals):
- Handle firearms safely
- Ride and groom a horse
- Play a musical instrument and sight-read
- Achieve some level of competence with at least one sport which can be played throughout life
- Learn CPR, and basic lifesaving, water safety, and mastery of basic swimming strokes
- Handle a sailboat and a powerboat with at least basic safety and effectiveness
- Display appealing and engaging table and cocktail party manners
- Strong familiarity with our religion - whether they believe or not
- Manage their own money safely, and learn how to save it
- Internalize our (sub-) cultural codes of conduct, from dress codes to effective job interviewing
- How to prune trees, hedges, and shrubs
- How to cook a good number of basic foods
- How to cut, split, and stack firewood - and for boys, chain saw expertise
- How to start a fire
- How to (try to) catch fish and shoot a duck or pheasant. And clean them, too.
- How to handle a tractor safely on New England hills
- Row a boat, paddle a canoe
- How to identify at least basic plants, wildlife, habitat types, and rock formations
- How to travel in foreign countries
- Vegetable gardening
- Drive a standard transmission vehicle, change the oil, check the anti-freeze, inflate tires
- At least basic understanding of household basics like painting, power tools, hammers and screw-drivers, making cement, etc.
- Know the basic laws, and how not to break them
- Know how not to get lost in the woods, and use of a compass
- How to select friends
- How to be an informed citizen and to participate in one's community
That's a start. I know that some of it is somewhat culture-specific to our lives, but it seems to me that all of these would come in handy for anybody.
What would our readers add or subtract from that?
The redneck's last words:
"Hey, y'all - watch this!"
A reader offers this variation on the theme: "Hey, y'all. Hold my beer and watch this!"
 Review of the new Nikon D800
Buddy is a fan of Ann Barnhardt's website
Bruce Thornton on Roger Kimball
Has success become proof of bad character?
"Let's find this guy, kill him, and steal his woman."
Curtis Martin Did Not Like Football
Defensive Medicine Kills - Not just snake oil wasting our money, but an actual snake quietly poisoning us.
Knish on the tribalism and cargo cult of the Middle East:
A primitive society confronted with an advanced civilization does not become civilized, it adopts some of the habits and facades of civilization in cargo cult fashion, it uses some of its tools, and hybridizes some of its ideas, but all this is done in pursuit of its existing goals. Everything that the Muslim Middle East has taken in from the civilized world has been used to pursue the same goals that it was pursuing a thousand years ago.
“Fed study says Bush and the banks didn’t cause the Great Recession. The Fed did,”
The Obama Administration Pays Illegal Aliens to Come Here
Why Team Obama Ran with the Dishonest ‘Mitt Killed My Wife!’ Ad
Morning, view across the marsh to Wellfleet Harbor. Tiny boardwalk leads to the beach.
Wednesday, August 8. 2012
My older son turns 18 this year and heads off to Miami of Ohio. Sadly, he will not be home on his birthday, as classes begin that week. While discussing what he'd like for his birthday, we heard "I want to eat in a real Manhattan steak house". No argument from me.
There are plenty to choose from. Keen's, Smith & Wollensky, The Palm, Peter Luger (technically Brooklyn, but one of the originals), The Strip House, Sparks (I worked across the street from Sparks in 1985 and heard the shots that killed Paul Castellano - we all thought it was a car backfiring), Del Frisco's and The Old Homestead are all top notch. After some discussion, the choice was The Old Homestead as this is a classic, original New York steak house.
Continue reading "Birthday in Manhattan"
I enjoyed our post yesterday, How stories confer value upon material things.
It seems to me that stories confer value, or at least meaning, generally. Not just to objects. The brain is a creative machine, as Eric Kandel says. We indeed live in stories: stories about ourselves, our families, books, movies, songs, legends.
My work is all about stories. I rarely worry about objective truth during my workday unless I am concerned about being lied to. My concern is with psychic themes and subtexts.
In my non-work life, I care a lot about truth and rebel against self-serving "narratives" presented to me in advertising, by politicians, or anywhere else. As a shrink, I have a pretty good BS Detector.
In my field of study, work, and interest, the wonderful Roy Schafer made a major contribution to the field by highlighting the analytic attitude towards the patient's story. He noticed that the life story, and the day's story, changes as maturity and insight develop. Donald Spence's Narrative Truth And Historical Truth condenses many of these themes.
Politicians, activists, and the like have learned the power of narrative from the Psychoanalysts and the authors, and bent its power to the dark side. Propaganda no longer has simple big lies. Now it has whole stories which appeal to emotion for self-serving purposes, usually money, and/or power over others.
Propaganda, whether commercial or political, now appears as manufactured story-lines. "Truthiness," and all of that. Mark Twain: "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
The solipsistic fallacy is that there is no truth, just psychological truth. While that is often the Psychoanalytic approach to the soul and mind of a patient, when applied to the real world it becomes insane, and possibly dangerous.
The Laser race. Listen until the end. (h/t, reader)
 One reason we need to dine at Pearl on each visit to Cape Cod is because of Mrs. BD's addiction to their grilled Bluefin Tuna with wasabi bean crust. The Tuna are local.
I like Pearl for its raw bar (which every restaurant up there has), its marsh views, and to watch the bar scene. Plenty of other joints up there that we also enjoy. Who wants to spend time in the kitchen when away from home - unless you have a pile of little brats from whom the public should be protected?
When grilling or sauteeing (on high heat) Bluefin Tuna, I have a terrible tendency to overcook it. I think it's because it keeps cooking after you take it off the heat. Tuna should look as in the photo, like rare steak. Maybe a minute or so per side on high heat or red coals.
Here's the recipe. Sharp knife, thin slices. A little soy or teriyaki sauce on the side, lime on top.
(I think Wasabi Peas and Wasabi Beans (soybeans) are one of the best snack foods.)
Is that legal?
Left, duped by Onion parody, condemns Michele Bachmann for reaction to shooting
Nyquist: What Keeps the Free Market Free?
At 89, Indian hero Jack Jacob rests and recites—poetry
Syria's Explosive Crumbs
Marco Rubio: Obama ‘Has Gone from Hope and Change to Divide and Conquer’
Jay Cost:
By Election Day, there will be two stories about Mitt Romney. The one, which we have already heard from Team Obama, portrays Romney as a heartless capitalist. The other is a case still to be made, from Team Romney, that he is a pragmatic problem solver who understands the private economy and can fix it.
If a majority of voters think that Romney’s story is closer to the truth than Obama’s, then Mitt Romney will be elected the 45th President of the United States.
A surgeon in Somalia
And the coffee is ready and waiting.
Tuesday, August 7. 2012
I had a chat with the owner of this Sakonnet 23, moored on the tidal flats in Wellfleet Harbor. In fact, I swam out to the mooring to see her up close and to chat with him one day last week when he was getting ready to go out for a sail. I was attracted to the classic, double-ender lines, and figured her to be a repro of an antique. Nope.
Not an old design. The Sakonnet 23 is a Joel White design, first built in 1997. Here's one for sale for around $30,000.
Here she is at low tide. That's a 1000 lb. half-keel. I think it's cool the way she stands on the keel when the tide goes out, holding the rudder out of danger.
Below the fold, pics of two of the most common Cape Cod boats -
Continue reading "Boat du Jour: Sakonnet 23"
She begins her post with this: "'The universe is made of stories, not atoms', poet Muriel Rukeyser famously remarked."
It's true enough to be a truism. We live by stories, in stories, telling stories.
Furthermore, atoms are stories too.
 A simple ring supposedly owned by Jane Austen recently sold at auction for $236,000. Its value without the story? Probably a couple of hundred bucks. It's just as easy to think of stories which detract from value, eg the value of Jeffrey Dahmer's house.
Is it possible to quantify the story value, the sentimental value, of things? Sometimes, yes: Significant Objects: How Stories Confer Value Upon the Vacant
One example: "Don't make the world worse." At Inside Higher Ed.
Much of what he says sounds sanctimonious to me, but it's not all bad.
 Consider the noble slug.
Here they are, homeless, without a shell to squat under, yet they hold their heads high.
Can your species say the same, when the going gets tough?
Persecuted? And how. Pop a shell on it and suddenly it's escargot at $69 a plate. Remove the shell and it's the garden version of vermin. Please execute every one you see on sight.
Many slug species play an important ecosystem role by eating dead leaves, fungus, and decaying vegetable material. - Wikipedia
Yeah, good idea, kill all the slugs, let the decaying matter build up. Smart move, humanity.
I fought them for years while living in the middle of a Redwood forest. Once a month, I'd grab a big bag of rock salt and lay a perimeter around the building. But I never had anything against them personally. They were just gettin' by.
So, hail to thee, noble slug. Long may thy sliminess reign. Hold your head high in the face of bias, prejudice and blatant slugophobia, and remember, you are not alone. Look at the ugly, squint-eyed opossum. .22-rifle bait for any kid within a mile. Put some fluffy fur on a rat's tail and suddenly it's a cute widdle squirrel. This blatant prejudice runs rampant throughout the animal kingdom, and you must bear your share, noble slug, guilty of nothing more than being homeless.
On the other hand, no matter what the lofty price, being eaten for dinner doesn't sound like much of a fate, so maybe you're better off without the shell.
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.
Naturally, attempted to eat my fill of Wellfleet Oysters, but I never will. Life is too short to complete that pleasure.
A number of Obama bumper stickers out there on the Cape (but MANY fewer than 4 years ago). Most of the Priuses there this year had no political stickers. Mrs. BD kept track of that. We used to think that Obama stickers were part of the Prius brand and paint job. The enthusiasm is gone. We tried to keep track of the Scott Brown bumper stickers. "Take America Back". They were easy to find, but I still think he has only a fighting chance. People ignore the details. Warren is a hard Lefty, and that's usually good enough for wealthy Massachusetts.
Will provide more fun pics later. This is at Pearl's (the old Capt'n Higgin's, upscaled with a hopping bar scene) on the dock. My apologies if you drool on your keyboard. Sweetest oysters in the world, thanks to the Herring River. Mrs. BD is addicted to the seared raw Bluefin with the chopped wasabi-bean crust. Dynamite food. I love that, but my soul needs the raw shellfish every summer. All I can find, plus some steamers too. And some mussels.
(Some readers wonder how your editor Bird Dog posts when on sabbatical from Maggie's. I pre-post and pre-date some items when away. I cheat. Got to keep the rhythm section - the basso continuo - rolling along. That's my well-paid job here. Happy that everybody pitches in and keeps the posts coming when they can. We're a hippy hippie commune.)
Monday, August 6. 2012
It's been a bit over a week since the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, and I haven't seen much on Maggie's about them. I really enjoy the Olympics. The Opening Ceremony is always great entertainment, and the events capture my attention. I've found myself watching handball, water polo, and even men's field hockey. I enjoy sports, and there's something about the Olympic Spirit that captures me. But there's always a portion which bothers me.
It used to be the overcommercialization which bugged me. I've grown used to this. I knew the 'amateur' status we used to try and pretend existed wouldn't last. It was clear that money would eventually be the driving force. In some ways, this has made the competition better. The athletes still play for pride, but now they can also get a payday. Nothing wrong with that.
On the other hand, the politicization, which was bad in Cold War years, has taken a subtle turn. There is still a semblance of competing ideologies. But there is also the use of spectacle to make some kind of statement, using the commercial aspect to push a separate agenda.
Continue reading "Olympic Fanfare"
That's the 2008 book by Charles Murray.
I pretty much agree with everything in it. From the blurb:
Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn academic material. Doing our best for every child requires, above all else, that we embrace that simplest of truths. America’s educational system does its best to ignore it.
Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Real Education reviews what we know about the limits of what schools can do and the results of four decades of policies that require schools to divert huge resources to unattainable goals.
Too many people are going to college. Almost everyone should get training beyond high school, but the number of students who want, need, or can profit from four years of residential education at the college level is a fraction of the number of young people who are struggling to get a degree. We have set up a standard known as the BA, stripped it of its traditional content, and made it an artificial job qualification. Then we stigmatize everyone who doesn’t get one. For most of America’s young people, today’s college system is a punishing anachronism.
(With Bird Dog on vacation, I'm going to try to fill his mighty shoes by doing a few nature posts.)
 Our twig of the week, or vimine hebdomadis, is a remarkable creature, inhabiting many of the woodland areas of our wondrous globe. Not just a mere leaf or branch, vimine hebdomadis is a hybrid, displaying the very best of both worlds.
As such, many consider it to be the origin of Zen, where every twig, no matter how similar, still has an intrinsic value unto itself and the universe, and how we are much more than the mere sum of our parts; so much so that we become a whole new word in the process of evolving.
Made globally popular by supermodel Twiggy, the once-lowly twig has gained an admiration in humanity's eye that can only be envied by mere leaves and branches. You might see the occasional anti-twig screed on some radical blog site, but this twigophobia is the result of the powerful Leaf & Branch Union and is a story too sordid to be told here.
In short, be proud of the lowly twig, and be happy for the small but valuable niche in life it holds. It cries every night as it holds your heart in its precious little hands, wishing for you to have the most wonderful life possible, and its only hope is that you return a tiny bit of the sentiment.
Nice little twig.
Good little twig.
Sleep tight.
So, how am I doing so far?
What I want is six legal laborers (easily to be gotten around here at 7 am on a Saturday) for 8 hours, armed with my chain saws, my mighty brush-wacker, wood-chipper, a soil tiller, trimmers, garden tools, root poisons, grass seed, and a truckload of mulch.
In one hard day, with me and the lad working hard and happily alongside, I think we could restore the immediate surrounds of the Maggie's HQ to pristine elegance. I do all I can on my own, but some jobs are more than I can handle in the time I have. Lots of rocks and evil vines.
It's a bitch of a job, but many hands make light work and labor is satisfying especially with many hands on board.
Will provide excellent and abundant take-out Mexican lunch for all. Beer with limes after the job is done. Payment in cash, of course, as is customary. The rate here is $100/day, and these guys work hard.
In the fall, I will also have some heavy-duty transplanting to be done but it's not the size of job that this one is.
|
Pic of a storm cell in southern Connecticut, on Sunday, taken by our webmeister. 