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.
Our friend at the Q&O site is having problems with his semi-expensive watch, so I thought I'd repost this.
We posted a while ago about expensive watches, Vacheron Constantin, Patek Phillippe, and all that. I've had a couple of moderately-expensive ones over the years but over time the repair and maintenance seemed foolish and, sad to say, an Accutron cannot be effectively repaired anymore.
As cheap watches go, I don't like digital watches. I like to see the sweep of time.
When I last went for a dreaded and long-delayed medical check up on the insistence of Mrs. BD, I noticed that my fancy doc wore the same one I did - a Timex Expedition. They are good for about ten years or more, and when you need to replace the leather band it comes with with a nice leather band, the band costs 3X more than the watch.
Any watch I wear gets banged around quite a bit, but I feel naked without one. Are they male jewelry, social signals, or are they tools?
Amazon sells them, real cheap. $31. That is indeed a fashion statement: it declares that you are a sensible person.
Rather than the Somalis becoming British, shards of Britain have become little Mogadishus.
The Somalis are not alone in this regard. Muslim immigration to the UK has brought the norms of Somalia, Afghanistan and Egypt to the streets of London. Individual acts of violence can be overlooked. But there is nothing individual about all these cases. This is a culture of violence.
Forbes Magazine has hailed it as the most lovely campus in the US. Maybe so. That's a tough call. It's a tiny campus on a hill in the middle of a very pleasant and serene rural "nowhere." Feels more like a New England prep school than a college. One thing I can say is that the kids they admit are committed to the life of the mind, and the faculty is committed to each kid in a personal way. A good combination indeed.
Rigorously-demanding, too. While most famous for their literary and theatrical pursuits (The Kenyon Review, plus Paul Newman and Jonathan Winters at the same time), Kenyon has the highest graduate admit rates to medical school in the US.
My pupette's poetry prof, to my delight, knew Elizabeth Hardwick who was one of my poetry profs (along with the brilliant and inspiring...wait for it...Edward Said. He was not doing Palestinian politics then). Cool.
All elitisms run the risk of inbreeding and sterility. The real benefit of a perceived equality among citizens, as driven by the rough and tumble of economic competition, is not only that it expands the wealth pie but also continuously changes the diners at the table. That means that some at the head table may never have the proper politically correct manners, but that is the price of vitality. The problem with socialism and its near cousins is that it places the selection of winners and losers (even if called “industrial policy”) in the hands of the status quo, who quite naturally will put their friends and family first in line.
Here’s the hard thing Republicans have to do if they don’t want this crisis to go to waste: they have to ignore their id, the temptation of the sugar high of partisan point-scoring. They must willfully set aside Obama’s presence in the fray, leaving the short term personalized attacks on the table, and go after the much bigger prize. Obama isn’t running for office again. Liberalism is. Making this about him is a short term boost to the pleasure center of the conservative brain. Making this about the inherent falsehood of the progressive project will help conservatism win.
Commencement Weekend, and those darn Mennonites hog all the best parking spots in front of the pubs. People tell me they are Amish, others say these people are Mennonites. Same idea.
These people believe our ordinary lives are foolish, vain, Godless, and empty. I can't swear that they are wrong, but they are just ordinary people too.
The Obama administration seems to be doing its level best to convince the American people that a large and powerful federal government is a threat to liberty. From IRS zealots blatantly using their powers against political enemies to prosecutors overreaching in attacks on journalists to deranged bureaucrats attacking fundamental standards of fairness on campus, the federal government is daily demonstrating the danger of giving it too many missions.
Seen in a Holiday Inn Express parking lot in Ohio. I chatted with the Californian owner. It's a Ford F450 van, heavily customized. The extra-large gas tank is bomb-proof, and tons of other specials including the suspension. The inside is a camper. His wife likes to camp off road in the Sierras and they drive up mountains, through rivers, and over boulders.
He claims 12-15 mpg. He has driven it cross-country twice, just for fun. He refused to tell me whether he had a firearm somewhere in there. It would be stupid not to.
Got home too late last nite to accumulate the usual stack or to peruse all the links sent to my inbox.Mechanical flight delays. Isn't air travel fun?Try amusing yourself sometime for 8 hours in the Columbus airport while remaining sober in a cigar-free zone with nothing but fat women to look at and no laptop. Like jail. Got frisked, too. The rest of my family drove home quicker than I flew home to Yankeeland.
Lovely flat farmland north of Columbus, this weekend. A little further north, the land becomes pleasantly rolling in a way which is reminiscent of New England. Corn ("maize" to you in Yorba Euroland) is just beginning to sprout. It is no wonder that ambitious New Englanders and upstate New Yorkers fled here in the early 1800s for the good farmland. 90% of Americans were in the agricultural industry at the time and they were not stupid about money. It was not about aesthetics: subsistence farming sucks. People desire profit. Farms are outdoor solar factories.
I'll post some more of my Ohio pics later. I took almost 50, which is a lot for me in 3 days.
They are most abundant here in the later summer and fall, but their numbers nosedive during the winter mostly due to predation by owls, hawks, coyotes, and Red Fox. The cottontails' position on the food chain leads to an annual survival rate of around 20%.
When we see one hop out of its nesting "form" when mowing, we mow around it.
2:1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2:2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 2:3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 2:4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 2:5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 2:6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 2:7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 2:8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 2:9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 2:10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 2:11 Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." 2:12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" 2:13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." 2:14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 2:15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 2:16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 2:19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 2:20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. 2:21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
The forest-dwelling, nondescript and rather common Broad-Wing is rarely seen except during fall migration. They hang out quietly in deep woods and rarely soar except during migration. I saw one the other day, probably on his way north. They breed in woodlands across the Eastern US and Canada, migrate to South America in large flocks.
Prof. B. explained why reds should be chilled a bit before serving, especially in the summer - assuming the bottles are not coming from your underground or temperature-controlled wine cellar. 55-62 degrees F, max. That's not "room temperature."
I think The Prof is absolutely right, but I had never thought it through. No wine tastes good at 76 degrees. Hot grape juice isn't good either. (my Dad calls wine "grape juice" even if it's '81 Petrus).
Same thing applies to old Ports, I think.
Rich folks have wine refrigerators that keep each type of wine at its own preferred temp. If you have one, surely you deserve to be more highly taxed.
It's a topic of great concern and interest to me. We have already seen serious depletion of some fish species (eg Halibut, Atlantic Cod, others). It's a free-for-all, and the scarcer the fish get, the higher the prices they fetch.
I gave an exam last week, and one student showed up 25 minutes late. When the hour ended and I collected the papers, he looked up from his seat, cast a pitiable glance and mumbled, “Please, I got here late -- may I have another 20 minutes?”
Also
Younger workers believe they can multitask and remain productive, the human-resources people told the York researchers. Thirty-eight percent of respondents blamed multitasking for the lack of “focus” among younger workers. The authors of the study explained that the younger generation “believes that it is possible to multi-task effectively” and that using social media, for example, is an efficient way to communicate. In interviews, the applicants check their phones for texts and calls, dress inappropriately and overrate their talents.
“The sad fact is some of these persons probably do not understand what is wrong with this,” the authors note.
As our paleontological readers know, we are currently living in an Ice Age, right now in a minor somewhat warm (but not today) interglacial respite between the last and the next major glacial incursion.
History does matter, boys and girls. The most recent major interglacial (as opposed to the mini warm spells as in the past few thousand years) is known as the Eemian Interglacial. It lasted around 15,000 years, beginning about 130,000 years ago, and ended with our current ice age cycle.
At the peak of the Eemian, the northern hemisphere winters were generally warmer and wetter than now, though some areas were actually slightly cooler than today. The Hippopotamus was distributed as far north as the rivers Rhine and Thames…Trees grew as far north as southern Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago instead of only as far north as Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec, and the prairie-forest boundary in the Great Plains of the United States lay further west — near Lubbock, Texas, instead of near Dallas, Texas, where the boundary now exists. The period closed as temperatures steadily fell to conditions cooler and drier than the present, with 468-year long aridity pulse in central Europe…and by 114,000 years ago, a glacial period had returned.
The Eemian was the time when Homo sapiens began moving north out of Africa and the Middle East.
Sometimes it's a good idea to put things in perspective. Just for fun, here's the past 500 million years of climate change. We're still in an alarming and great 50-million year glacial, cold period, period with ups and downs within it. It's a fact that the earth, right now, is about as cold as it has ever been in the past half-billion years.
That's the big picture. Here's more detail, of just the past 65 million years but even on this scale the Eemian doesn't show:
One of the Bird Dog daughters, and my lad, know that it is easy to please Dad with a selection of stinky, strong, expensive imported cheeses from The Grand Central Market in NY. At Sunday's Mom's Day cookout we had a killer cheese platter. Even a goat brie, which was a first for me.
All present were lovers of rare and strong cheeses. Since I have heard Steve Jenkins interviewed on the radio a few times recently, I began to pontificate about what I had learned from him. (He is the cheese-buyer for Fairway, the world's most prominent cheese pro, and author of the Cheese Primer.)
Jenkins preaches serving cheese with fruit, nuts, or honey - never without. To demonstrate his correctness on the topic, I pulled some hot pepper jelly (like this) and some fig preserves out of our dying fridge. Fresh fruit is good too, but I am partial to the preserves. I think everybody present was converted.
Our error was in offering the cheese board before the steaks, instead of after. The savoury course. Well, nobody's perfect.
Only gummint could be this stupid. Last I heard, Spotted Owl is just a subspecies of Barred Owl. So they are killing the Barred Owls? I like Barred Owls.
We are seeing the greatest wave of economic transition since the mechanization of agriculture reduced the percentage of the labor force engaged in farming from more than half the American labor force in 1890 to less than two percent today.
I am sure that the energetic and ridiculously-productive (blog, books, newspaper opinion pieces - plus a day job teaching) Prof. Glenn Reynolds would enjoy having a law named after him.
A reader reminded us of Reynold's Law. Good comments there, too.
1. Dang compressor died in our icebox. Replacing it would be a few thousand $, half the cost of a new one. OK, get a new one. The KitchenAid lasted 20 years. Nice timing, it died 2 days before our Mother's Day party and cook-out. Ribeyes on the grill for 12. But why, I wonder, does the 55 year-old Frigidaire at the farm still work fine? The very pleasant, amusing, and smart refrigerator repairman (retired NYC cop on 75% salary) explained that it's because the old ones were low-tech. He said KitchenAids are the best, and Sub Zeros are just for show, not worth the $. He said modern refrigerators require surge protectors. Besides the cost, worst thing is that the failure defrosted my year's supply of frozen cranberries.
2. Gwynnie always tells me I need to get out more. Mrs. BD drags me out constantly for social events. Whenever I go, I meet charming ladies and guys who are far smarter and more accomplished than I am. That is life-enriching and humbling. At a cocktail party on Friday nite, besides touching base with old pals, I met a guy who builds nuke plants around the world and a physicist who loves modern dance and speaks intelligently about Thomas Nagel. He kept pressing me on whether I was a materialist (in the metaphysical sense), but his lovely wife said he had had too many gin and tonics. I kept saying "I don't know," which made him think I was smart.
3. Worked on the vegetable garden yesterday, with the lad. Deconstructing parts of it to make it smaller. It just got too big to keep up with. I realized that all I really care about growing are tomatoes, cucumbers, rhubarb, and herbs. Everything else is just as good from the store, and no weeding required. In the afternoon, I split logs from a tree we took down in the winter. I ache all over. The good kind of ache. Some days I feel like I'd like to bring back slavery, but it just wouldn't be right in today's political environment. I don't mean black slavery - any color would be fine.
4. This morning, we had a Mother's Day wren in the bedroom. The house painter had not put the screens back on the windows. I figured it was a good luck thing of some sort. At least it wasn't a rabid bat. It was indeed a House Wren. Kind-of funny, because I saw this morning that a pair of Chickadees are nesting in one of my wren houses. We love to house the homeless here at Maggie's HQ. Still hoping that a pair of owls will use my Screech Owl house. I've heard them around a couple of times in the early morning, but I am not sure that they like my placement of the thing. My experience is that they seem to like their houses in full sun.
97:1 The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! 97:2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 97:3 Fire goes before him, and consumes his adversaries on every side. 97:4 His lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles. 97:5 The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. 97:6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory. 97:7 All worshipers of images are put to shame, those who make their boast in worthless idols; all gods bow down before him. 97:8 Zion hears and is glad, and the towns of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments, O God. 97:9 For you, O LORD, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. 97:10 The LORD loves those who hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from the hand of the wicked. 97:11 Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. 97:12 Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!
In the US, before protection the Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs were market-hunted year-round along with many other migratory shorebirds.
I suspect they tasted very good.
They are on their way north to raise their chicks in the tundra and boreal forests right now, and will begin to trickle back down in August on their way to the Southern US and South America.
Experts can tell a Greater from a Lesser by call or bill length, but I find it difficult unless they are in a mixed flock. Sometimes they are in flocks, sometimes solo.
Nice birds found in the nicest places: marsh edges, mud flats, water edges, etc.
Benghazi occurred seven weeks before election day. The administration's strategy was simple: Downplay the terror attack, change the narrative, and run out the clock. And that's what it did.
But now the dam has burst. Carney's "here at the White House" comment has essentially thrown Clinton under the bus. Republicans, who leaked the edited emails to Karl and Hayes, have succeeded on two fronts: They've got the administration on the defensive over Benghazi, and they've weakened the Democrat's most formidable 2016 candidate.
I think Peggy Noonan has it right: The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi - Did the Obama administration's politically expedient story cost American lives?
What a character he was. He embodied all contradictions and futilities and was possibly the best pub or dinner companion of all time. Boswell's stuff is great fun to read (Boswell was quite a character himself), but nobody has run out of things to write about Dr. Johnson.
What sorts of nervous nellys would worry about a little warmth anyway? Myself, I worry constantly about the coming Ice Age.Visions of an advancing glacier towering over ye olde cabin.It keeps me up at night.The science is definite on this.It's just a matter of time.
The London Terror Attack Was More Than 'Unforgivable' - 
My photo: student detritus in dorm hallway after the kids have decamped in their parents' vehicles.
North America hosts a number of species and subspecies of 
Acts 2:1-21
Prof. B. explained why 
3-D printed dress, 
As our paleontological readers know, we are currently living in an Ice Age, right now in a minor somewhat warm (but not today) interglacial respite between the last and the next major glacial incursion.
One of the Bird Dog daughters, and my lad, know that it is easy to please Dad with a selection of stinky, strong, expensive imported cheeses from The Grand Central Market in NY. At Sunday's Mom's Day cookout we had a killer cheese platter. Even a goat brie, which was a first for me.
Readers know that my Mom died this winter, but we still have lots of Moms in the family.
In the US, before protection the 
The pleasures of Dr Johnson