Thursday, August 26. 2010
"You have to act like an MD before you can become an MD."
Anon. ("MD" being Managing Director, but you could also insert "Partner" in the same sentence.)
 Home ownership vs. renting. Coyote.
Deep thinking:
Global warming is real, it’s caused by human activity that goes straight back to the capitalist energy markets they worship, and it is really bad. None of these things are up for debate with sensible, reality-based people.
A Physics major, no doubt.
Do Cougars exist?
Via SDA:
"Tourism chiefs in Serbia are hoping their annual testicle cooking competition will do for the region what whisky did for Scotland."
Serbian cuisine, the envy of the world. Chow down, Feminazis.
Ace: Obama Administration To UN- Sorry That America Is So Awful. In Fairness, We Inherited This Lousy Country But Are Working On Remaking It
When is a speech code not a speech code? When it’s a “code of ethics.”
Obamacare: Dems’ Fatal Conceit?
Mankiw on Nantucket house prices. Did this study make his summer vacation tax-deductible?
Ebay, Adobe, EA Games Leaving California For Utah Over Confiscatory Tax Rate
Only in New York: Taxing a Cut … of your morning bagel. Just put the shmear on top of my uncut bagel.
Why Nerds Like Games. Games are stories.
New Republic: Moderate Muslims Are Not the Answer
ACORN flies under the radar
This is dumb: E-Cigarettes Spark New Smoking War. This is the safest smoke that exists. What's the big deal? Nicotine is harmless.
Fake tea party candidates
Taxes: The Left and its delusions
The Professional Left vs. the Amateur Right
Via Insty:
REASON TV: Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful.
Author of Obamacare did not read it. If it's too long and complicated to read, then...
Michelle: Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
Wednesday, August 25. 2010
You go to the home of Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, and so you naturally want to hear some of their music there. That was good.
However, what was most mind-boggling for me (and my son) was the Breughel collection at the Kunst Historische Museum:
It was a long, jet-lagged and befuddled but scenic trek to get there on our first day after a sleepless plane ride, but our Breughel mission was worth it to get close to those pictures. They have a third of the existing Breughels. They are quite large paintings with many small details, and no reproductions can do them justice. Some are oil on board, and some are tempera. You have to go and see with your own eyes. They have comfy leather sofas to sit on, too.
Pictures tell stories. If they don't, they are just "design." That's my opinion, anyway. People sure do love stories, especially when well-designed. I do not mean to disparage design: Picasso was a master of design. Matisse too, and the genius cave painters of Lascaux.
Hunters in the Snow (1565), his haunting hunting masterpiece:
Peasant Wedding, another masterpiece:
A good summary of Breughel's career here. It's interesting to me that the wealthy churchmen and princes of Austria found this Flemish painter's work so collectible. I guess they just had good taste in art.
Instead, some more thoughts collected from our trip. A Part 2 of my Guten Morgen post.
- Next time I travel with a group of family or friends, I will bring my 5-mile walkie-talkies that I use for hunting trips. A great way to call in and say "Want to meet for lunch?', since each subgroup seems to go off in their own direction.
- I forgot to mention how immaculate the bathrooms are. And, unlike NYC, you can just walk into any cafe and use theirs. They don't mind.
- I was amazed by how many people are crippled, hobbling around on crutches or in wheelchairs. Young and old. It made it clear to me how socialized medicine saves money on orthopedic procedures. In Regensburg I saw a pregnant young lady with, I think, moderate scoliosis, wobbling around town on two crutches, carrying a bag of groceries. That would never happen in America, even if poor. HSS would fix her up overnight - and thank her for the privilege.
- The vast majority of Austrians, and Bavarians too, are Roman Catholic. They go to church. Some Lutherans in Bavaria, and some Evangelical Lutherans too. Their old churches are still alive - not museums.
- If Freud had not been a Jew, he would never have come up with Psychoanalytic theory. Despite being a prominent young Neurologist and researcher/scholar, a Jew could not be appointed Professor in Vienna. The Gentile docs just referred him the wacky patients they did not want to bother with, so he decided to try to listen to them and to try to make sense of what ailed them. Had he not been a Jew, he would have been a wealthy Herr Professor of Neurology. Necessity is the mother of invention.
- Riverboat cruising has become a big deal over the past ten years. It's really a new form of vacation travel. I like it. I love ships and boats in general. No moving from hotel to train to hotel to car, and you always have guides right there when you want them. Our boat cruised back and forth between Budapest and Amsterdam, but most people just did legs of the trip (as we did). The boat had plenty of bikes to use, too. Just sign up for them.
- Wiener Schnitzel: I still don't get what is supposed to be so good about this cardboard-like food. Why do people eat it?
- Kesler reminded me of a thought I had had, regarding our deep Germanic cultural roots. (By "our" I mean especially Brit, Swiss, American, Aussie, Canadian, Dutch, etc.) Even our language is Germanic, not to mention our meat-and-potato diet. German is the easiest language for English-speakers to learn, and these folks live, act, and work like Americans. Quite a cultural contrast with Italians, French, and Spanish.
- One of the things that makes German and Austrian beers so good, over there in the biergartens, is that they are fresh, usually unpasteurized, and often unfiltered. Makes a big difference. Our big brand American beers really are not very tasty - but you knew that. Is Coors Lite or Bud Lite the best-selling "beer" in the US?
- Did we shop and buy stuff? Darn little. Mrs. BD bought a bracelet in Regensburg for 14 Euros. My daughter bought a cheese serving plate. I bought two sets of beer glasses from pubs, and a couple of beer mugs from a biergarten, all for 2-3 Euros each. Oh, also bought an umbrella at Schonbrunn when it started raining, but we left it behind somewhere after two days. Photos and experiences are what I like to bring home.
- Random factoid: The remarkable Marcus Aurelius died in Vindobona (now Wien - Vienna) while touring the edges of the empire. He was always at war with the Germans, but Roman civilization never extended much north of the barrier of the Danube.
Photo: Passau again, from the Oberhaus. I especially enjoyed Passau and Regensburg. Note the rotting mess of a 1960s-era, now-abandoned cafe up there on the left, while the c. 900 castle and fortifications stand strong and proud. Note also, from a high vantage point, how clear the demarcation is between town and country. No sprawl. That's their land use laws at work.
Our pal Nathan emails this cell phone pic from the Hagiwara Tea Garden, San Francisco. He gets around.
Tuesday, August 24. 2010
A friend returned this week from 14 days in Umbria and then Florence. This family is a high-energy biking group, and the first thing they do when they go anywhere is to rent bikes. They go everywhere on their bikes regardless of terrain or traffic. 20 miles of hills is a warm-up for them.
They told me about biking to Civita di Bagnoregio. Biked over the bridge, of course. I had not heard of this interesting, deteriorating wreck of a place. An image which sticks in the brain, because all of mankind's works come to this except some things that are put into words or math or musical notes.
Surber:
In issue after issue — from drilling for oil to the Bush tax cuts to the stimulus and the bailouts — Washington is out of step with the American public.
Ain't that the truth?
More disorganized snaps from our trip. This is steaming through the green Wachau Valley in early morning fog and drizzle.
More pics below the fold -
Continue reading "A second, bigger photo dump of Austria and Bavaria, including Freud's potty"
Monday, August 23. 2010
My photo uploading system is testing my patience today. Thus some totally random and disorganized trip pics, beginning with this Bavarian farm scene near the hamlet of Baernzell, not far from Deggendorf on the Danube, with the great Bavarian Forest in the background (which is now part of a giant Czech-German wilderness park system). From hilltops here you can see the Czech Rep. (which I still call Czechoslovakia).
More pics below the fold. I'll try to get better organized soon.
Continue reading "A few totally random trip pics"
"The world is a book and those who do not travel only read the first page."
Attributed to many, including St. Augustine, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt. This, however, is pure Teddy:
"Life is a great adventure…accept it in such a spirit."
I am back in ye olde saddle early this AM from Austria and Bavaria, and the Danube and Main-Danube Canal. I will provide some photo travelogues if and when I can get my pics organized - and also when I can persuade our website to upload my photos properly.
Special kudos to my in-laws who arranged and hosted this family trip as a celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary. A wonderful, elegant treat indeed, especially with the entire BD gang of adventurous, high-energy, and curious travellers. For us, vacation travel is a physical sport. We specialize in "run for your life" vacations. Relaxation is for home. On further thought, not for home either. I guess we believe that relaxation is for after you die...Carpe diem, etc. Plenty of time to relax when dead.
Just one link this morning: How Winston Churchill Stopped the Nazis.
 However, I will share a few of my general cultural observations from our trip:
- These folks seem to live a cafe culture, but it's more about beer than coffee. The Romans brought vineyards up to their northern frontier, but the climate changes after the Medieval Warm Period limited wine grapes only to specific microclimate areas, so they turned to beer brewing. Wine grape-growing in northern Euroland remains limited to those specific areas today, but we are all hoping climate change will correct that problem someday soon...
- There is no litter. Everything is clean and neat. There is almost no graffiti and what little there is, under bridges for example, is, as my daughter observed, "lame." When a bus driver is waiting for a group pick up, he uses his time to clean the windows, the tires and the hubcaps.
- We saw very few obvious Moslems, and they were all in Vienna. Yes, finally inside the gates of Vienna and on the subways. Vienna has a great subway system, and so simple you can figure out how to use it to go anywhere in about two minutes.
- Everybody still smokes cigarettes.
- All taxis are Mercedes-Benzes
- They are prompt, like the Swiss. You are expected to be prompt. One of our tour buses in Nuremburg waited 7 minutes for 3 or 4 missing American riders, then just left without them. "Seven minutes. OK, we go now."
- Their farms are impeccable.
- Austria and Germany feel quite prosperous. Nice big new cars unlike France, Italy, and Spain. No old cars. People well-dressed, and clearly in possession of beer money.
- Bikes are more for transportation than for recreation.
- Fresh, unfiltered beer is good. All of the local beer is terrific, and each has a unique flavor. I developed a taste for the fresh Weissbrau (and possibly enjoyed to very slight excess maybe once due to being overserved by zealous bier-frauleins). They do not sell old beer. Many of the beer joints and biergardens we tried make their beer on Tuesdays, begin selling it on Friday, then toss out any left-over and begin selling the next batch.
- "Burg" or ...-burg means castle or fortified city, not town
- No cops. You never see any police. People seem quite well-self-regulated. I did see one cop car in Vienna. My father-in-law counted three officers on the entire trip.
- They all seem proud of their sausages. Towns seem to compete. We tried lots of them. They are all OK, but not great cuisine. I began to call them all "hot dogs," but they call them wieners (after Vienna: "Wien") or "wursts." That weisswurst they make looks like an unappetizing giant beetle larva. Excellent sauerkraut and mustards, though. Americans are the ones who came up with putting sausages in a bun so you could eat them with your hands. The Euros never do that.
-Un-American as it may sound, I came away with a respect for European land-use laws (same as I did with trips to the UK). Perhaps we can debate this on a post sometime.
- Plenty of Medieval, but Baroque is growing on us. Mrs. BD even ventured to indicate some appreciation for rococo. Just like Bauhaus, it had a point and a purpose for its time. Things go to excess, then snap back.
- Germans and Austrians are a lot like native (I mean native, not Indians) Americans, but more blond, thinner, more quiet, and better-dressed.
- You make friends on boats. It is quite a remarkable thing the way it happens. We were mostly Aussies, Kiwis, Brits, and Americans.
- The Chef on board was excellent. A Croatian, Paris-trained. Our river boat was perfect. A Dutch Captain: aren't ship Captains always Dutchmen? Some sort of affirmative action, no doubt, for Dutchmen in the merchant marine.
- Small World story: Mrs. BD and a BD daughter decided to check out the Vienna Opera House. For amusement while waiting for the next guide through the place, they let people try on opera costumes and take photos. Mrs. BD sees a face poking through an elaborate opera costume and thinks "Holy mackeral - that's John." Yes, a dear friend and neighbor (and hunting buddy) in Vienna with wife and all four of their daughters. She snuck up behind him and said "Hey, John. You look great in that outfit." Seeing people you know, out of context, is always momentarily bewildering.
More thoughts and observations later...and pics too.
Sunday, August 22. 2010
 The Berkshire Hills, once snow-capped mountains and, in recent millennia, glacier-covered and glacier-scoured, run from northwestern CT up through western MA. They are contiguous with the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Today, tourism, skiing, and second homes form the economic foundation of this chronically economically-depressed but charming rural region which was once dynamic with farming, lumbering, paper mills, woolen mills, and quarries. It has become the sort of area now where locals cannot afford to dine in the upscale restaurants filled with Bostonians and New Yorkers.
Image is the Hoosac Tunnel, about which Walking the Berkshires has written, and which first connected western and eastern MA by rail.
Just east of Berkshire County are the Hidden Hills.
Saturday, August 21. 2010
One of the great songs of all time, but this time with Cab Calloway as Keko the Clown:
A re-post from our archives -
I was amused to see Megan McArdle having problems positioning her stereo speakers because I once spent a frustrating year fiddling with that issue in our parlor with my ridiculously high quality but handsome 5 1/2', 175 lb. Legacy Focus speakers, which would be better suited for an auditorium, a barn - or outdoors. You cannot crank them up or it could remove my house from its foundation.
Good stereo speakers need to be at least 3' from the wall, away from direct sunlight, and 6-10' apart, depending on room size. Even so, there will only be one relatively small area in the room where the sound will converge properly. What if you want to sit somewhere else? You cannot sit in front of one speaker. (And don't even talk to me about that stupid "surround sound" fad of the 1980s.)
I finally gave up on doing it right, because it wouldn't work in the room, given the windows, fireplace, piano, and other necessary furniture. I even called Legacy and sent them a floor plan, and they were kind and helpful, but it just didn't work for the space. That marked the end of my pursuit of maximum recorded sound. It's a fool's errand unless you have a dedicated "listening room" like fanatic audiophiles do. Now, I'd just rather spend my money on hearing live music, and I mostly listen to music via my crummy old computer speakers.
My big Focus speakers ended up 24' apart, in corners, about 18" from the wall. Totally wrong, unless you are listening from the adjacent room. Makes me want to return to good old monaural and to heck with this stereo nonsense. I remember when my Dad bought our first mono cabinet "record player." Man, did that sound good. I even remember my kid sister playing "Meet the Beatles" on the thing, when the record came out. (I thought it was dumb music...at first.)
Here's a good how-to on speaker placement.
Photo is a Legacy Focus speaker with the cover off to show the components. Mine are with the gleaming Rosewood.
Transit
A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
Just at that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.
What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?
Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issues in the street,
Leaving the stations of her body there
Like whips that map the countries of the air.
A re-post from last summer -
The old town of Lucca, still circled by the medieval defensive walls, is like a Disney Medieval Italy. Like San Gimignano but with many fewer tourists (they all go to Pisa instead, to see that dumb church tower, or to Siena or Firenze for the 10th time). Plenty of towers - if not as many as San G. but who cares? A tower is a tower.
The modern city surrounds the old town which is now preserved in amber (heavily regulated re historical preservation - and rightly so, I think).
This lovely Italian gal ducked, as if I had not wanted her in my photo. She was wrong. Her gladiator sandals are perfect for the location: this is an entry to the Roman arena in Lucca. Its walls are integrated with the walls of medieval houses built into and against the Roman ruins. (Lucca is full of charming northern Italian women. All of them know how to dress, and many of them are blondes.)
More doors and entries below -
Continue reading "My last summer vacation: Doors and entryways of old Lucca"
Abrash is a good thing in a hand-knotted rug.
Friday, August 20. 2010
From Terry Pratchett's Making Money:
"How did you find out they were down there?"
"The usual way. One of our golems heard one singing. Imagine that. It's been underground for sixty thousand years..."
In the night under the world, in the pressure of the depth, in the crushing of the dark...a golem sang. There were no words. The song was older than words; it was older than tongues. It was the call of the common clay, and it carried for miles. It traveled along fault lines, made crystals sing in harmony in dark, unmeasured caverns, followed rivers that never saw the sun...
...and out of the ground and up the legs of a golem from the Golem Trust, who was pulling a wagon loaded with coal along the region's one road. When he arrived in Ankh-Morpork, he told the Trust. That was what the Trust did: it found golems.
Rock climbers and boulderers refer to those rocky hills/cliffs/mountains as "the Gunks." Famous challenges for climbers, but, since we are on the topic of family places with the de Medicis and the von Trapp family, we should not omit the Mohonk Mountain House. I have a good photo somewhere of my Grandpa fly-fishing on the lake.
It was a favorite of my grandfather, and remains a family favorite. Nowadays, they even serve alcohol which the Quaker Smiley family never used to permit (you had to sneak in your own, and secretly imbibe in the privacy of your room before dinner).
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