Sunday, August 12. 2007
Share Maggie's Farm - don't hoard us! Help keep us inspired and chugging along during these dog days of summer by sending us around to your million friends. That is all we will ever ask for. But if our readers insist on continuing to mail cash to our Maggie's account, well, that is just great too. Nothing smaller than wrapped ten-packs of circulated 100s, please, or it isn't worth our trouble. Mail cash to: Mr. Churchie la Femme, c/o CYA Assets Associates, Ltd, George Town, Grand Cayman. 
Photo: A handsome 1925 Doble steamer. I remember my Granny explaining to me why her next-door neighbor had a funny low extension on the back of their garage. The prior owner needed the extension to fit their fancy new Stanley Steamer. That funny lean-to extension remains there today, and is surely useful for today's cars.
From La Nozze de Figaro, Bartoli and Fleming. Dang Spanish words in there are annoying.
Saturday, August 11. 2007
Gen. Philip Sheridan, an avid hunter and ornithologist, played a large role in the early conservation movement, especially at Yellowstone. Painting: Sheridan's famous 20-mile ride from Winchester VA to Cedar Creek, on his war horse Rienzi. The Union victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek helped an unpopular Lincoln gain re-election by a war-weary nation. Every school kid once knew this poem.
Mostly pre-posting this weekend, because your editor (photo below) will be in cow-land and happily without modern conveniences, and thus unable to serve the gate-keeping function. 
Dr. Bliss on Do Americans expect too much from marriage? Fish Chowda' and Fish Fumet Almost Everything about Concrete Does a college degree mean anything nowadays? Motor-sailers
Sonnet XCVll How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time remov'd was summer's time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease: Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
Friday, August 10. 2007
 Since the News Junkie plans to stop by Cuttyhunk this weekend, I thought I'd do a piece on this place which is mainly known to East Coast sailors for its large harbor.
Cuttyhunk is the outermost of the chain of Elizabeth Islands that stretch from Cape Cod southwest into Buzzard's Bay between the MA shore and Martha's Vineyard. Most of the Elizabeths are owned outright, but not Cuttyhunk, which has a year-round population of 52 (many more in July and August). Cuttyhunk is two miles long and about a mile wide. It is mostly wild. The island is not convenient at all, but it ain't a cheap place to buy- example. If you don't have a boat, you get to Cuttyhunk from New Bedford on the M/V Cuttyhunk. Here are some Cuttyhunk photos. Here's a history of the lighthouse. Today's weather report on Cuttyhunk: 54 degrees at noon, with drizzle. Photo is the steeple of the 1881 United Methodist Church. (That is a Striped Bass, if I am not mistaken.)
The wacky markets are losing a lot of money for some of the hedgies, and making a lot of money for others. It isn't the quant funds per se, it's the funds that do a lot of leveraged stat arb that are suffering from the market divergences. Some quant funds are doing great right now. But when a fund is down 15% in five days, people take their money out, and the overall market dips. Watch 2-3 big hedge funds shut their doors. I would be an equity buyer now, if I had some loose pennies, and I would shed no tears for the hedgies on the losing side of all of this: they (properly but unluckily) had a high risk strategery (aka gambling), which is what they are paid to have.
Funny story, by Captain Ed. You can't get away with anything in the internet era. Also busted: NASA. The News Junkie linked the story well, but kudos to Steve McIntyre, a math-computer blogger who identified NASA's climate error. Is there really any global warming now? And how come NASA didn't find their own error?
Thursday, August 9. 2007
Call the authorities to bring the cops to arrest those who promote the Bushitler police state. Dr. Sanity, via the piece at Never Yet Melted. Ya can't make this stuff up.
1958. The guy was a damn good crooner. When I look back on how kids dressed for a night out, or for college, through the early 60s, I realize that they aspired to adulthood. Now, everybody aspires to youth. Youth is wasted on the young.
I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. Glenn Reynolds on global cooling global warming climate change.
The best test of your tolerance is whether you can tolerate my intolerance. Dr. Joy Bliss, who is in Maine this month - a crusty old state where nobody tolerates anybody and where nobody ever says "Have a nice day." In Maine, the correct response to "Have a nice day" is "Don't tell me what kind of day to have."
Michael Yon. Great photos of Americans at work. A quote: As the attack unfolded, about a thousand Iraqis fled their homes, and it was the job of C-52 to screen for al Qaeda. Some al Qaeda—who cross-dressed and tried to slip out as women—were caught when their disguises failed. Some Iraqis reported that homes in their areas had been destroyed, and I recall one saying that people were trapped in the rubble, though civilian deaths from our attacks were so low they were difficult to count. (I had free range and was specifically watching for civilian fatalities, yet did not see any civilians killed by us during the attack.) The deliberate pace of the attack, the systematic and thorough process of clearing the city house by house, street by street, and block by block, were factors in this; but the civilian and military casualties were also kept low by the unexpected and overwhelming cooperation of ordinary Iraqi citizens, who pointed out the enemy and many of the bombs set to ambush troops. There were interesting dynamics unfolding. For instance, our soldiers were much more reluctant to use force when civilians were helping. I saw numerous occasions where soldiers cleared out all the civilians in areas before attacking known targets that civilians had pointed out. For instance, in the more than two dozen houses and buildings rigged as giant bombs, civilians pointed out many of those bombs. Our soldiers and Iraqi soldiers simply stopped, cleared out the people, and then destroyed the buildings, but each time they worked harder to mitigate damage to surrounding houses, and paid people for the unavoidable damages when they occurred.
The quote is from Part 1. Here's Part ll.
This one is 16' with a 4 cylinder engine. 
Wednesday, August 8. 2007
This is from the mid-80s. Domino's "I'm Walking" was the first song Nelson recorded.
 I have always heard about the Series 7 exam, but never bothered to look into exactly what it tested until the pup told me that she has to pass it this month, after two months on the job.
It covers a lot of territory. I believe that she is studying hard for it, in the few hours in the day they don't keep her at work. Wall Street is an exciting place this month: interesting things happening. As Warren Buffet says, when the tide goes out, you find out who is swimming nude.
 We posted this well-known presentation by Michael Crichton a year ago, but I was recently reminded of it by the Assistant Village Idiot who cops to finding complexity to be complicated.
If you haven't read it, please do. It's an excellent discussion of how complicated nature is, and how readily our human good intentions can produce serious unintended consequences. Good graphics, too.
 Yes, their numbers are rising, BUT THAT'S BECAUSE WE CAN COUNT THEM BETTER NOW. How many Atlantic hurricanes that never touched land did we count in 1920?
It's as stupid as saying the number of Lyme Disease cases has gone up 10 gazillion percent since 1975. True - because it was not defined as a disease until 1975. But this isn't stupidity - it's deliberate data-abuse to fool the statistically-ignorant and scientifically-unsophisticated. Or am I still paranoid and giving the Al Gores too much credit? By the way, we love hurricanes. We don't like to see people's lives damaged, and would not be so foolish as to live in a place where such damage could be expected. But we do stand in awe of the power of nature.
It's called a New York Travel Guide, but I think NewYorkology is just as good of a source of local info for residents and for day-trippers, who are known in Manhattan, disparagingly, as "the bridge and tunnel crowd."
A garden at Villa le Balze, Fiesole, a year and a half ago. The morning mist obscures the view of Florence spread out across the Arno valley below. 
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