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.
You can’t make this stuff up, folks. That’s right: The people of Michigan, according to this court, violated the Equal Protection Clause when they demanded that their state treat all citizens equally—without regard to race, ethnicity, or sex—in government contracting, employment, and education, including university admissions. Unbelievable.
On this day in 1683 King Jan Sobieski of Poland arrived at Vienna to break the siege of the Turks and rescue the Christian West from the Hosts of Mohammed. The rout of the Ottoman troops before the gates of Vienna by the Polish hussars gave us a little breathing room, a coffee-and-croissants break that lasted for the next three hundred and eighteen years.
The Battle of Vienna in which King Sobieski defeated the 100,000-man army of "Islamic hordes" under Kara Mustafa Pasha was one day after the arrival of the Polish army with their winged hussars - Sept. 12. The western expansion of the Caliphate ended there, but the push back took many years.
If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.
We don't post much about interior decorating here, but we do post about things we learn about.
Since the lad and his bride are moving into a new place, I thought I'd re-post these useful tips as I attempt to supply them with oriental rugs from my stash.
I did the research. For a plain wall or over a table, etc, your main picture should be hung so the center of the picture is 57" from the floor. In other words, eyeball height for a slightly short person. 57" is known as "gallery height." It feels right and it looks right, but it can be lower in a seating area.
People tend to hang 'em too high, and it feels awkwardly unbalanced and looks a little silly.
Obviously there are all sorts of special situations - mantles, staircases, massed images, castle walls, giganto modern oils, etc. Years ago, when we needed a decorator's help with some rooms, he taught us that it's good to hang some pictures low, at seated-eyeball height in seating areas.
I recently re-hung some pics like this on the right, in the Farm HQ, and it feels right to me. The David Maass woodcock print is centered at about 57", and the two smaller hunting prints are obviously lower, at seated-eyeball height.
“Krugman’s comments are an indication of the nature of one of the problems we face; which is, a lot of people in positions to influence our country really don’t like our country. Krugman (by the way, did you know he is a former ‘Enron adviser’?) is among those who earn well, live well and eat well but really wish they could live among a better sort of people.”
"Red meat and gin" was her rallying cry when the food world's puritans dared to promise long life through nervous nutrition; she scorned grilled vegetables as "burnt and undercooked at the same time". When asked to describe her guilty pleasures [...] she was sure to respond with her usual cheerful defiance, "I have no guilt".
At the risk of sounding insensitive, I always thought the idea of an elaborate 9-11 Memorial was wrong. I always thought what it required would be a plaque on the wall of some new buildings: "On this site, on September 11, 2001, 2700 Americans died in an attack by Moslem Jihadists." Perhaps a statue on a square. NYC is all about survival, endurance, optimism.
I feel this way for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, in a sense, it elevates our enemies. I say this while having personal connections with a number people immediately touched by the attack.
The people I know who lost family and friends in the attack have their own personal memories and rituals, and little need for canned public display. Steyn might agree with me, but I'm not sure.
My own memory/memorial is seeing the jumpers live on TV. It is an indelible nightmare memory. A friend of mine saw them there and then. He at first thought it was material falling from the first building.
Bush said it: "Evil is real. Courage is real." We all know that.
They tell us to get over it, they say to move on, and they mean it well: We can't bring an air of tragedy into the future. But I will never get over it. To get over it is to get over the guy who stayed behind on a high floor with his friend who was in a wheelchair. To get over it is to get over the woman by herself with the sign in the darkness: "America You Are Not Alone." To get over it is to get over the guys who ran into the fire and not away from the fire.
And so we commemorate an act of war as a “tragic event,” and we retreat to equivocation, cultural self-loathing, and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day. In the weeks after 9/11, Americans were enjoined to ask “Why do they hate us?” A better question is: “Why do they despise us?” And the quickest way to figure out the answer is to visit the Peace Quilt and the Wish Tree, the Crescent of Embrace and the Hole of Bureaucratic Inertia.
Europeans and their colonial descendants may pen laws of war, but only they are constrained by them. In the real world outside the dinner parties of Washington D.C. and Brussels, there are no laws in war. Islamic law which has regulations for which foot to use when entering a bathroom (the left foot) and which side to sleep on (the right) has very few laws of war that cannot be nullified by necessity or even whim. On the battlefield, Islamic jurisprudence is boiled down to, Do what thou wilt in the cause of Allah, that is the whole of the law.
18:21 Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"
18:22 Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
18:23 "For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.
18:24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him;
18:25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made.
18:26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.'
18:27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.
18:28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, 'Pay what you owe.'
18:29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.'
18:30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt.
18:31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place.
18:32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
18:33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?'
18:34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.
18:35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."
Lean cuts of beef, like top round and flank steak (London Broil), are not worth grilling, and should not be grilled, without marinating them overnight first. Cooks say 10 hours at bare minimum. Otherwise, these dense, wood-like cuts are like chewing gum when grilled rare, and like leather when overcooked.
In other words, something you could easily choke on, requiring an annoying Heimlich Maneuver.
They have to be marinated in enough acid - vinegar or citrus -to loosen up the meat. Some alcohol - wine or beer - helps in addition to the vinegar. Many people seem to like to simply marinate these cuts overnight in pre-mixed Italian dressing. (I use plastic garbage bags for marinating things in.)
Even with a good 20 hours of marinating, London Broil needs to be sliced thin after grilling.
At dinner last night, with my lad, we observed the bartender administer the Heimlich Maneuver, successfully, to a person choking on a bite of steak. Seemed like quite a coincidence with our Heimlich post yesterday.
Turned out that the bartender, Manuel, is a part-time EMS guy and had performed this a number of times. Perhaps everybody thinks they know how to do it, but it doesn't hurt to review it all. Of course, the trick is to determine whether choking is a person's emergency, or whether it is something else.
They call choking a "Cafe Coronary" for good reason. Can look like a bad heart attack. Choking can kill you quicker than a heart attack.
Here's a quick reminder of how to do it. Need to use plenty of upward force with one hand as a fist. Don't worry about hurting them.
Does a restaurant have a duty to choking patrons? No.
What if a chunk of something is so stubbornly stuck that Heimlich doesn't work, and help is not quickly forthcoming? You can perform an emergency tracheotomy. A ball-point pen comes in handy.
President Obama tonight seemed simultaneously angry and nervous as he rushed through a speech that was transparently not worthy of a joint session of Congress. His great idea: Cobble together a mish-mash of old ideas (infrastructure spending, a payroll tax cut) and pay for it later, by asking the debt commission to come up with additional deficit reductions later, preferably by hiking taxes on the rich. The second half of the speech was a heated campaign rally aimed at a cartoon version of his future opponent.
Good questions, in the comments at Watts from Andrew Harding:
The warmists forgot one thing when they tried to persuade the world that AGW is happening and that is common sense. They were unable to provide answers to the following questions: 1) Why should I be paying a fortune for my gas,electricity,petrol and flights and have my countryside disfigured by windmills when industrial giants like China and India do nothing and have booming economies? 2) What % of CO2 in the atmosphere is regarded as “safe”? 3) 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere is man made, how do we deal with the other 97%? 4) Why have we had three cold winters in a row (with a fourth predicted) when we were told that AGW would mean that snow in the UK would be a thing of the past? 5) Likewise with the cool and wet summers? 6) Why are we building more wind turbines when we need power stations running in the background to provide power when the wind doesn’t blow? 7) Why are people who question AGW derided, insulted and described as “mentally ill” by AGW supporters? 8) If the science is “settled” why do we need more money pumped into research? 9) Is AGW as likely to end the world as HIV, bird flu, swine flu, tobacco, alcohol, mad cow disease, the millennium bug, 2012 and whatever date this year that some idiot told us would end mankind? 10) Climategate, hockey sticks, lawyers paid vast sums to prevent data paid for by the public, being seen by the public? 11) The global economic meltdown will be nothing in comparison to what will happen to the worldwide
We've all seen this sort of urban death spiral happen in many places. Unionization, government costs, and living costs drive business away, taxes rise to support government, the middle class leaves the city behind to drugs, welfare, and dysfunction with a disappearing tax base and a nasty reputation. It is entirely predictable. Hartford, CT is a classic case, voted most pleasant medium-sized city to live in, in the USA, around 1955.
Next, forks? When I took my cc handgun licensing course, I met a guy who had used a baseball bat to fracture the skull of a burglar in his house. (Note to our Brit readers: Cops winked at him and said "Good job.")
This speech sounds pretty much exactly like all his other failed speeches. Pretty much every job he talks about, just like in 2009, 2010, and 2011 are government jobs or jobs dependent on government.
Bumper sticker 
This week
We don't post much about interior decorating here, but we do post about things we learn about.
The Edge: 
Photo: The USS New York, built with WTC steel, arrives in NYC on Thursday
Lean cuts of beef, like top round and flank steak (London Broil), are not worth grilling, and should not be grilled, without marinating them overnight first. Cooks say 10 hours at bare minimum. Otherwise, these dense, wood-like cuts are like chewing gum when grilled rare, and like leather when overcooked. 
