Thursday, September 2. 2010
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Guy seems to know everything, and has a pleasant demeanor. Good for the jet-lagged and for insomniacs. Doug McIntyre's Red Eye Radio. 1 AM to 6 AM Eastern, on 770 in the NYC area.
Looks like hurricane Earl is just going to brush past the Northeast, but might hit Cape Cod. I like hurricanes. All you have to do with them is to be sensible and a bit humble.
Confessions of a Psychopharmacologist
Bedbug update
Prager: When Good People Do Bad Things
Driscoll: The Couric-Rich Model of the Five Stages of MSM Grief
Van Morrison turned 65 this week
Redecorating the Oval Office
No, Mr. Matthews, we do not dislike Obama: We disagree with his views. Ace puts it this way: Boy Howdy, I Can't Tell You How Wonderful It Is to See A Black Man With a Wife and a Steady Paycheck!
CATO: Reforming Indigent Defense - How Free Market Principles Can Help to Fix a Broken System. I have a better idea: let's nationalize the broken, wasteful, unfair and ridiculously expensive American legal system.
Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare
Paul Ryan: Obamanomics Has Failed
Wednesday, September 1. 2010
Who knew? Our readers knew. For $39.95, I recovered my erased pics from that camera in about ten minutes - including some old pics but what the heck.
Never again will I check that "erase after downloading" box. Therefore, I will have more travel pics this weekend.
 A devilish conspiracy between my computer and my Panasonic Lumix travel zoom camera - a nice pocket camera with a Leica lens - conspired to not only refuse to download my pics on that camera (good shots of Regensburg, Nuremberg, etc. - the last third of our voyage) but also took the opportunity to delete them all from the camera after rejecting them for "title too long." What does that mean? And I had my download thing set for "Erase images after downloading."
I travel with three cameras, an old 35 mm digital and two pocket cameras - and no laptop. I do not own a laptop, and don't really need one. Or so I thought...
My best pics were on that camera, about 150 I think. Dang. So much for my travel pics. I am quite certain that my computer's photo handling is screwed up, and it is probably my fault. Well, got the memories tho, but between ADD and a touch of Alzheimer's, the pics would have helped.
Does a camera come between us and direct experience? I sometimes wonder.
Well, I do have a few more snaps to share. Here's a WW 1 river ship, now a museum, in Regensburg, with the Old Stone Bridge (c. 1146) in the distance. Fine biergarten over the bridge, but my pics of that got erased by diabolical computer:
More below the fold -
Continue reading "An evil conspiracy got me"
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
Charles Krauthammer. Worth repeating. We are reminded of this via Driscoll
Tuesday, August 31. 2010
Neo: Skilled workers wanted
VDH: The Sources of American Anger - Barack Obama, the great healer, is proving to be the most divisive president since Richard Nixon.
Sowell: ObamaCare’s Deadly Consequences
Headline: Glenn Beck is a poo-poo head
GOP Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic Ballot. But Volokh wonders: Repub win good for Obama's career?
Althouse thinks about our Kesler piece, and the meaning of life. And AVI thinks about regrets in life. The longer you live, the more regrets you accumulate.
George Will: Major Gaps in Education Achievement Between Whites, Blacks
Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s. This means "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination."
Hmmm. As I recall, anti-discrimination is not the only thing that was happening then.
Barack Obama's plan to nationalize the fishing industry
Isn't it sexist (and racist) to say that cutting the size of government is sexist and racist? I mean, isn't it biased and demeaning to people of gender and color to assume that they must be dependent on others?
“It Was Certainly a Dry Run”: Two Muslims Arrested in Amsterdam After Flight from Chicago
Don Juan's Dad was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Austria. His Mom was Barbara Blomberg, a local singer who entertained Charles with music and fun while he passed through Regensburg in 1546.
Not much more is heard in history about Barbara, but we are grateful to her for bearing John of Austria, who led the allied navies against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
It is believed that John was conceived during a one-night-stand in this old hotel in Regensburg (yellow one on the right, a week or so ago). An historic little hook-up indeed:
Monday, August 30. 2010
Bird Dog -
While certainly not as "dramatic" as your trip across the pond, we spent a week in the Maine woods, canoeing and fishing for Brook Trout and Smallmouth. We stayed at a traditional Maine "camp" http://www.bowlincamps.com/ Food was great (camp cooking and plenty of it). Other than rain for 1/2 the day on Monday, the weather was superb - temps in the upper 70's during the day and 50-55 at night. Camp is located 8 miles down a logging road (no cell phone or Blackberry - hooray!) and about an hour west of Patten, Maine. They have had little rain this year, so the river and stream levels were down, impacting the fishing. We caught some Brookies and one decent Smallmouth in five days of fishing. The fish were there, we just had to work for them. We canoed and fished the East Branch of the Penobscot River which is pretty daggone wild. We saw no other canoes or campers on the river. Saw a nice bear and wife almost got ran over by a moose while she was hiking. Had a flat tire on the Suburban so had to go to Houlton for repair (living where I do, I forget how nice the folks outside of the urban areas are to strangers. Guy at the tire shop just happened to have the exact size and make tire that matched the other three. It was used, but had better tread than the ones on the Sub. $50 on the vehicle. In and out in 45 minutes.)
Bowlin Camps is just a stone's throw from the Appalachian Trail. Guy came through for lunch - he was hiking from Gaspe Bay to Key West. Left Gaspe Bay in mid-June. No map, one pair of boots and I think, not a lot of money. Gave him our breakfast bars and some trail mix, for which he was sincerely grateful. Seemed like a nice guy, but maybe a bit too idealistic - hoped to make it to Key West by next summer.
Anyway, the camp was great, Pops, wife and the two dogs enjoyed themselves in the woods. We had hot showers, generator between 0630 and 2100 hours and gas lamps otherwise. Camp was getting ready for bear hunting season, which begins on August 30th. We saw several trail cam pics of bears that were 5-6 feet tall, which is a great black bear for Maine.
Couple of pics attached.
Your humble scribe - J
They have brief summers there. Like Maine, I think. Pretty much everybody has a small polyurethane greenhouse or two in the yard, near their house.
Flying East from SF Bay area over Rawlins Wyoming. Weekend was the annual hunt on the 35,000-acre San Felipe Ranch SE of San Jose. The furthest part of the ranch is a beautiful, tranquil valley surrounded by steep, high hills, and the air there was filled with dozens and dozens of whirling Red Tail hawks, Harlan's hawks (from Alberta or Montana) and Kestrels plus a golden eagle. It was the annual migration, and the Fish & Game biologist with me was whooping with delight and talking about putting the event "on the hot line!
Awaiting your pics, Gwynnie.
It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a man whose writings I have never been able to really understand. Even tried to read his bio. No dice. He was big on the lecture circuit once upon a time. Perhaps I am not smart enough.
Two doofuses:
Cannibalism is for nutrition. But what about flavor?
Friends Disagree Lots
Cubbing in Virginia
On Fermat's Last Theorem:
..there is Andrew Wiles, the frail knight who for seven lonely years pursues the proof that has ensorcelled him since childhood. He announces the proof to the world, is featured on the front page of the New York Times and in People Magazine, he has the respect and admiration of his colleagues and then he discovers the proof is wrong. He works another year trying to fix it but every time he patches one area another fault line opens up. Even speaking of it now you can see and hear his utter despair. It is not too much to imagine that he was on the verge of a breakdown.
Theo: Completely honest first date
WSJ Editorial on the Democrats’ Attack on For-Profit Colleges
Death by Power Point
It was an old-fashioned tent revival meeting
Hewitt: Where The GOP Goes Next: The Need for Speed
Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
Via Protein:
Touring American campuses in the mid-1970s, Norman Macrae of The Economist was shocked “to hear so many supposedly left-wing young Americans who still thought they were expressing an entirely new and progressive philosophy as they mouthed the same prejudices as Trollope’s 19th century Tory squires: attacking any further expansion of industry and commerce as impossibly vulgar, because ecologically unfair to their pheasants and wild ducks.”
Neither the failure of the environmental apocalypse to arrive nor the steady improvement in environmental conditions over the last 40 years has dampened the ardor of those eager to make hair shirts for others to wear.
WSJ: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated
WSJ: Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes
Prepare for war between taxpayers and public employee unions
Blair: The latest green $ scam
Vanderleun: Tolerance Does Not Require Approval
Frank Rich’s Tea Party Lies
Commentary: He Really Doesn’t Want to Be Commander In Chief
Image on top, h/t Moonbattery. We juxtaposed before Drudge, but after Moonbattery.
Sunday, August 29. 2010
 One place we did not get to on our trip was Salzburg. Wish we had had time to visit that medieval city which, as its name implies, got rich selling and transporting salt down the river.
Our guide pointed out to us how important salt was at the time - not as a condiment, but as a food-preservative. "White gold."
I wonder what salt mines were like in 1400.
 Hooters and fat waitresses. But lots of guys like Rubenesque figures, don't they? (Venus at a Mirror, c. 1614)
Did anybody see this movie? Enemy at the Gates.
Are Standardized Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?
AVI ponders confessing the sins of others
Surber on Beck's rally.
Related: Make Believe Media: WaPo Claims Al Sharpton Brings Thousands to DC
Chris Matthews: Who Stole America? What???
Was Benjamin Whorf partly right? Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Has Gov Schwartzenegger found his inner Christie? Too late. The guy was all hat, no cattle and no cojones.
Blair home number nine. What's that all about? Ans: Lefties love money.
At NRO:
In addition to a big stimulus program, Obama ran on the idea of heaping new taxes on upper-income taxpayers, including those small businesses that he says (correctly) are critical to the recovery. Congress did nothing. And so as 2011 creeps over the horizon, so too does a massive tax hike on middle-class families, upper-income workers, small businesses, savers, family farms, and on and on. Having done nothing about this tax cut for the last nearly two years, all these prospective tax-hike victims can only assume that Congress intends to hit them with the full tax hike from allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax relief to expire.
The tax hike itself is bad enough, falling as it will on a stuttering economy. But the bigger issue is still confidence.
USA Today trying to figure out how to survive
Rick Moran: The O is American enough
Shut down the federal Dept of Education. It's not a federal responsibility, duty, or power - whatever the Bushes thought.
American Muslim leaders are not instilling confidence
Has the MSM lost confrol of the Leftist narrative?
Tax fuel to be green. Then raise taxes to help the fuel-poor so they can use more fuel. It all makes perfect sense.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
14:1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
14:7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.
14:8 "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host;
14:9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.
14:10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.
14:11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
14:12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.
14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
14:14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
Saturday, August 28. 2010
We became somewhat expert in locks. When we got to the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, we took locks uphill over the continental divide, then down the other side. An engineering marvel. It's all gravity-driven and, as I have said, you can travel from the North Sea and Amsterdam to the Black Sea, by water, today. That trip would be a fine 30-day vacation.
The width of ships and barges is limited by the width of the locks, and the height is limited by bridges. In some locks, we only had about 6" space between the walls. I asked the Captain how he managed to get into those tight ones without scraping the sides. He laughed, said "You just go straight." (Our ship had a joystick like a Hinckley Picnic Boat, not a wheel. Bow thrusters, but no stern thrusters because the driver could turn the props to 90 degrees.)
I hear you asking what music our Dutch Captain liked to listen to when he had the con. Seemed like he was partial to Mark Knopfler and Van Morrison. Chugging up the Danube, listening to "We gotta move these refrigerators..." was memorable. I thought some Creedence might have been good, but maybe trite.
He had read some Mark Twain, said he liked Life on the Mississippi. Our Captain was a hearty and cheerful bloke who liked his wine and beer when off-duty. It seemed that the crew and staff responded well to his upbeat attitude towards life, making for a happy boat. Good cheer is contagious. Negativity is a plague. He constantly displayed warmth and appreciation towards his crew, but you cannot be a Captain without having a tough and serious core. As Dr. Bliss would say, not everybody is made for that.
Photo inside one of the many locks we went through.
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Lots of pics below the fold -
Continue reading "Locks, and other miscellaneous trip pics"
The Borderline Sociopathic Book for Boys. Example #1:
Ride a bicycle without a helmet. You heard me. And no spandex spangled with lavender and chrome yellow blotches and French words. You'll wear canvas shoes, too. You will not have anything with you that people with helmets refer to as "hydration." Eventually, you can get a blast of rubber-tasting hot water from a garden hose.
More on books: Van der Leun's 330 Word Guide to Writing Book Proposals. I wish I had read that before I wrote my book.
Guarding Your Heart in Marriage
Legal Ins: And These People Want To Run Your Health Care / Update - And Your Kids' Education. With another wonderfully common-sense Christie vid. The guy is a genius.
Steve Forbes on Obama: “He Thinks He Will Change America From a Greedy Nation to a Quiet Socialist Nation That Knows Its Place in the World” (Video)
David Brooks says we should be more like Germany
Am Thinker: President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder
J Post: Back to basics on Israel’s security
Friday, August 27. 2010
Pinetop Perkins, and Honeyboy Williams. It's good to know that some Brits appreciate such wonderful, old-timey American characters.
 It's about time the scientists admitted it: Ogling beautiful women a natural reflex for men.
Fellows just can't help it.
"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."
H.L.Mencken. h/t, Vanderleun
When govt tries to go into business: Burlington Telecom
Statisticians take on warmists
Not tonight dear, we're married
Rove: Honey, I Shrunk My Approval Ratings
To be "intellectual" today requires knowledge of science and technology.
Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal:
Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?
From Belmont:
Although there are still some who believe that President Obama’s Keynesian cures will work, the counter-thesis may be that the supposed “cures” are in fact the cause of the disease. That the attempts to create European-style “rights” enforced by Euro-scaled bureaucracies on a Federal tax revenue base has created a bureaucratic monster in Washington sustained principally by borrowed money.
Is Michelle O pregnant?
Dino:
Fixing the economy is a hard slog, but it’s not rocket science. But if you’ve chosen advisors who know nothing about the business of America, as Obama has……well, it’s just too depressing to think about.
More evidence that Head Start does nothing
"The government is pushing these food poisoning events because they want to over-regulate."
Lowry: How the Democrats lost the middle:
Since 1992, according to Gallup, ideological opinion has been roughly constant: Self-described moderates have been 40 percent or a little lower; conservatives in the high 30s (although they've spiked to 42 lately); liberals in the high-teens to low-20s.
Both sides need the center, but especially liberals. It'd be rank foolishness to try to govern on the strength of only one-in-five people. But such has been the Obama-Pelosi project -- with unsurprising results.
Thursday, August 26. 2010
You get off the plane from NYC, dump your stuff off at the boat, then hop on the subway and get off at Stephansplatz. Suddenly, you are in a new world, like not Kansas anymore. Even for folks like us who have travelled quite a bit, it was awesome to climb up the subway stairs and to be greeted with this. With a dose of jetlag, it feels hallucinatory:
More snaps below the fold -
Continue reading "Some of my random snaps of Vienna"
Via Jungle Trader, a 155-Year-Old Drum Company Marches On.
The snare drum is basically a military instrument, with an interesting history. Ottoman armies used these drums to communicate orders.
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