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.
There are many ways to live a life. During my (brief) life thus far, I have seen a lot of lives up close. There is no right way to do it, and the safe bourgeois way is not any ideal.
We hired Ricardo with his new Toyota minivan as a day guide out of Lisbon on the recommendation of our perfect boutique hotel, Palacete Chafariz d'el Rei in the Alfama. (Indeed, Portugal, like Spain, is full of Muslim cultural remnants.) He took us out around the countryside and the ocean shores because we handled the city on our own on foot and on the trolleys.
Ricardo seemed about 35 years old, married to a psychologist from the Azores but no kids yet - "Not until I fulfill my need for adventure." He is tall and devilishly dashing, macho. Makes spare cash on the side as a fashion model and thinks it is hilarious that he can do that. Speaks Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and is teaching himself Arabic for fun. Grew up in rural northern Portugal, family had no money for his college so joined the army which trained him as a sniper and gave him language school, and eventually assigned him to UN duties in Somalia, Bosnia, and Africa. Then the army paid him to go to the University of Lisbon, from which he spent a year at the University of London. Then he taught high school history for a few years but quit in disgust because the kids did not seem to be excited to learn anything.
Thus he began his career as a personal guide/historian. When we hired him, he had just returned from running a 5-day camping trek in Iceland. Showed me his iPhone glacier pics and their tent camps by the hot springs. He loves New England in the autumn, especially Vermont, is planning a trip with his father in law to drive from NYC to LA in a camper. They want to hike the Grand Canyon and the Rockies, and to drive on Route 66. He says that the Portuguese do not aspire to money because life is beautiful, but aspire to live with spirit, joy, friendship, and love. That is our culture, he said. He is an exemplar.
He says the Portuguese must learn languages because nobody speaks theirs.
We quickly tired of the routine tourist places he took us to, so we asked him to take us to his favorite countryside place for a typical lunch. He got on his iPhone, called the simple place in the middle of nowhere to ask them to stay open late for his Americans, and the result with their own farm wines was dazzling. One of maybe two or three high points of the whole trip. We insisted that he dine with us on the octopus, lamb, fish, and that fluffy Portuguese cheesecake with the fruit preserves on top. A feast. We skipped dinner on the boat that night.
How he seems to be pals with every cheery cop in Lisbon is beyond me. They come up to his car and slap hands. The police in my town are grouchy to everybody even though we pay their salaries. Or maybe because we do.
(Portuguese cooking tip from that place: We all hate rubbery octopus and squid. For tender octopus and/or squid, freeze first for 12 hours, then boil - and then sautee or grill. Sweet, succulent, and tender.)
Princeton Students Fight Back- A group
of sensible Princeton students is standing up to the mob, and demanding
that Princeton’s president Eisgruber do the same.
This conviction that “bourgeois democracy” is a mere façade for the ruling capitalist class to exploit the masses has its origins, of course, in the theories of Karl Marx. German philosopher Herbert Marcuse later devised the term “repressive tolerance” to characterize Western democracy as a massive confidence trick: Its vaunted “tolerance” for classical liberal rights like freedom of speech, voting, and the rule of law is actually “repressive” as it “impedes possible improvement of the human condition” by blinding people to the inherently unfair and oppressive system under which they live. What Marcuse proposed, by contrast, was “liberating tolerance”, a deviously oxymoronic concept meaning “intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”
In Las Palmas on Gran Canaria (5th largest city of Spain despite being on Canary Islands) we hired a cab for the day to take us to all the places Mrs. BD had mapped out. We agreed to a price of $80 (I call Euros "dollars" for the fun of it) for as long as we wanted him - all day. After driving us around for about 6 hours or so, at 3 pm, we managed to indicate to him that we wanted to stroll around the old city and find some "authentico" late lunch (guy spoke Spanish only - not a single word of English). We agreed he would pick us up at 5, 2 hours later, in front of the old basilica. That was five fingers.
Then he drove off without asking for a penny. We explored the old city, checked out Columbus' house there, grabbed some delicious grilled fish and vegetables and a beer and waited for him to return to the large ancient square where they were blasting ridiculous Spanish versions of American Oldies - like They're Coming to Take You Away, HaHa and Camptown Races. Doo-dah, doo-dah.Hilarious.
At 5 on the dot, he pulled up to drive us back to the seaport. I gave him an excessive $20 tip to reward his trusting nature.
The Gray Lady, to her credit, realizes that something terrible has happened, and she is doing what she does best: sounding the alarm. But she is still doing her utmost to pretend that there is no real cause for this terrible, multi-trillion dollar hole in the pension system. She sees no systemic flaw in the way that the modern progressive city and state are both designed, no structural defect that produces these terrible consequences in cities as different as Houston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and in states ranging from tiny Rhode Island to giant California, New York, and Illinois.
For the past two weeks, Maggie's readers have been treated to the morning links and morning reflections of Roger de Hauteville. Roger was pinch hitting for me while I was sailing the ocean blue.
I am grateful to him for doing that, and for approaching the job with daily dedication and with his gifts on full display. If I owned the Wall St. Journal, I would hire him to replace Taranto. Taranto has fine wit but more cleverness than wisdom, I feel, in his observations of the passing scene. Plus Taranto needs staff. Sheesh.
I'll tell you a little bit about Roger. Roger ll was of course the first King of Sicily - the Viking who conquered Sicily from the Moslems but who wisely kept most of the Moslem viziers and bureaucrats in place because of their skills and education. Roger ll did another fine thing: he grandfathered Frederick ll, King of Sicily, later Holy Roman Emperor, a remarkable man who is often considered the first "true European".
So thanks again, Roger. And, as always, feel free to contribute at will because you are a master of this medium and I will never be one. I am a plodder.
Photo is of the big schooner (5 masts, 5 Marconi rigs and 1 jib) that we've been traveling on in the eastern Atlantic. Can make 12.5 knots under those huge sails. When I get organized, I'll do my usual travel posts with pics, food, etc., but what I will get around to first will be a few posts about some of the people we met. Corny as it sounds, if you travel enough it's the experiences and the people that make an impression. New foods are somewhat fun, but sights are just pictures, old churches and buildings are a dime a dozen and can be seen on the internets and in books, and history can be read in books at home by the fire. I can say, now, that hanging out in the souk and in the medina in Marrakesh for a few hours is something worth experiencing once. Just once is enough, for me, tho. I am all souked out and there is nothing I wish to buy anyway.
Northern Italy has long been a major manufacturer of silk fabric. Marco Polo, the Silk Road, the crusades, etc. Later, Italians migrated to operate the great silk mills in towns like Paterson, NJ.
In Florence, the Antico Setificio Fiorentino since 1786. Their warp technology invented by Leonardo. Two cool videos.
18:33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"
18:34 Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
18:35 Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"
18:36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
18:37 Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
The Stranger within my gate, He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk— I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth, But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock, They may do ill or well, But they tell the lies I am wonted to, They are used to the lies I tell; And we do not need interpreters When we go to buy or sell.
The Stranger within my gates, He may be evil or good, But I cannot tell what powers control— What reasons sway his mood; Nor when the Gods of his far-off land Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock, Bitter bad they may be, But, at least, they hear the things I hear, And see the things I see; And whatever I think of them and their likes They think of the likes of me.
This was my father's belief And this is also mine: Let the corn be all one sheaf— And the grapes be all one vine, Ere our children's teeth are set on edge By bitter bread and wine.
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
Yes, birds are still seen as essentially dinosaurs. Lots of new interesting evolutionary details though. The Cretaceous Extinction had a major impact on birds (and everything else) with which we are still living.
All humans are thought to be descendants of one woman, Mitochondrial Eve, who lived around 140,000 years ago - 4600 generations ago - in West Africa. Our cellular mitochondria follow the female genetic line.
In the linked piece, our Berkshire friend also notes, interestingly, in a quote:
Do the math as you count generations into the past. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on through the centuries. Soon you reach a point where the number of ancestors in a given generation is larger than the population of the Earth at the time. (This is possible because as you move back, a single individual may occupy a large number of slots on your family tree, which is known as pedigree collapse.)
Pic is by Masolino, c 1426, in the Brancacci Chapel, Florence
I have a few friends who have taken trips to France or Italy to attend 5-day to one week hands-on cooking schools. Generally, husband and wife participate although one is usually more interested than the other. Some also offer classes for youth.
Many of the schools run from around noon or 1 through suppertime, when the students eat their creations together. The meal planning and local shopping are part of most courses except for the ones sited on farms.
People have told me that these have been the most fun they have ever had while traveling because it gets you into the culture and away from the "sights."
Just for fun, you can google "tourist cooking schools near Paris," or "in Provence", or "in Italy," etc. As you know, each region of Italy has its own cuisine and its own different produce.
13:1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!"
13:2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
13:3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately,
13:4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?"
13:5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray.
13:6 Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray.
13:7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.
13:8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.
Mastering 
Agriculture 
Dear Readers, 
Earliest Beginnings Of Bird Evolution Brought Into Focus With New DNA Analysis
I almost tripped over a big fat Striped Skunk in my gym's parking lot before dawn last week. I was lucky not to alarm him, and he just scurried away.
A repost -
Pepper, especially.