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.
“When you look closely at the climate change issue it is remarkable that
the only actual evidence ever cited for a relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming is climate models.”
The average contemporary human does not consider the sublime much. Life
is not seen as linear --with an end -- or even circular, with an eastern
repetition. In many people's mind they were never a baby and will never
be old. It's a botoxed cougar world, facing off against forty year old
men still dressing up like Star Wars characters.
I don't want to be sixty years old at a Coldplay concert with a
girlfriend on my shoulders, thanks. I don't think it will be fun to
eventually look at eternity and only have fifteen minutes of real adult
behavior in your CV. And I don't want to act as if children are just
short adults. I'm six-foot-two, there's plenty of short adults around
already. It's common for people to remark that they don't want to see
children out in public, and old people should find an ice floe before we
have to find one for you.
"Real adult behavior"? "Ice floe"? Ice floe in my glass of Scotch, thanks very much. Well, I happen to be into the sublime, wherever I can find it. Sipp links these charming short vids from one of the civilized youths of today.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
But he made that decision to go without telling Pakistan and that took
some real courage, as much courage as our Navy SEALs did in pulling off a
near flawless operation.
My kids are going to see these wonderful guys, and Maggie's favorites, in a week or two. Country-folk-rock with a sweet disposition. Who could resist them?
Why Pastors Should Get Their Heads Examined - Young
pastors dive into ministry with a plan to fix the church and save the
world -- only to discover that they too need fixing and saving.
...there is no greater example of the power of duplicitous negotiation
than Hitler’s brilliant manipulation of Chamberlain in their three
meetings. More than seventy years later it is still painful to read
Chamberlain’s naïve reports of his "influence" over Hitler, who in fact
considered the Prime Minister a "little worm."
Baby animals always steal the scene. We envy their traffic. It's time for a live-streamed eaglet reminder.
They are growing fast on their diet of fish, rabbit, squirrel, muskrat and crow sashimi. I notice that they are sleeping less. Note how they open their beaks to cool off on a warm day. More animal thermoregulation.
The chicks are such stumblebums, it's remarkable to me that none of them fall out of the crib - and that they all manage to squirt their poop off the sides of it. Clean nest. Too bad one of them hit the lens with a slight splash.
It is a full-time job for two to keep those babies fed and protected - and to keep yourself fed. It takes two.
We are faced here with a profusion of double standards. These days, honorary
degrees are unfortunately mainly exercises in appealing to the vanity of
celebrities. Denying one to a celebrity who already has more than a dozen may
wound his vanity—but it is surely just a scratch, no matter how much Mr. Kushner
wails. On the other hand, colleges and universities award honorary degrees when
they are not just looking for crowd-pleasers, to people whose lives and actions
are exemplary and who warrant emulation. In that sense, boards of trustees
would do well to follow Mr. Wiesenfeld’s lead. They should be asking more
questions about the people routinely sent up for their approval. They would
find that Mr. Kushner is far from the only one picked more as a totem of
political correctness than for his actual accomplishments.
...in the present depression, the out of work and poor are as numerous, but both unhappier and yet far better off than prior generations. This is not the rant of some right-wing laudator temporis acti, or the death throes of an aging old white guy, but rather empirically based and shared by most of my friends in the ascendant Mexican-American middle and upper-middle classes, many of whom are becoming quite conservative.
The cars of our poorer brethren in our major discount stores are late model and often expensive. People get into them with full carts of food and clothing. Housing here is cheap and good. How to square this circle between official poverty and misery and the veneer of a well-off general public?
and
I did an experiment the other day. I priced “wicker” furniture at Kmart and Wal-Mart and then drove up to an upscale North Fresno design outdoor living boutique. In short, the local version from China was about $300 for an ensemble, the high-end version was priced at $1700. To the naked eye, they were again almost identical and explain what I mean by the “veneer” of affluence. Ditto everything from jogging clothes to watches, and one can be outfitted in Selma for 10% of the cost of the brands of those popular in Palo Alto.
One wonders: if killing bin Laden was a courageous, gutsy decision by Barack Obama, where were the liberals when President Bush approved the killing of Zarqawi? Do you remember any of them praising that decision as courageous and "game changing?" No, neither do I.
Did you hear that ripping sound? Two liberal icons known by their silly stage names — Mahatma Gandhi and Malcolm X — have just been torn down from their sanctified perches thanks to a pair of massively researched but finally damning new biographies.
Both men, it turns out, were at pains to take on phony identities. Each hid his homosexuality, each was racist, each took pains to manufacture favorable coverage, each was driven by petty hatreds instead of shining ideals — each of these supposedly principled figures was an out-and-out phony.
The Photopic Sky Survey is an interactive 5000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,000+ photos. A beautiful example of data aggregation, annotation, and exploration.
After fishing yesterday, Gwynnie and I took a drive through Lyme, CT, as charming and homey an antique town as I have ever seen in the US. It runs along the east bank of the lower Connecticut River, has wonderful riverside marshes for bird watching, fishing, and hunting, and has a fine cove with a marina - Hamburg Cove. "Quaint and charming" can be real things in our Yankeeland.
I even began looking at the For Sale signs (which was my first symptom of Lyme Disease), but there is no work for my profession there, I'm afraid. For jukebox maintenance and repair, one must go where there are jukeboxes...
Where I live, there are many highly-accomplished, scary-smart and mega-educated people, but "quaint and charming" does not jump to mind. ("Wonderful friends" does jump to mind.)
I took a few snaps, but Gwynnie declined to stop for my architectural photography. I don't blame him - if you stopped every time I wanted a pic, one would never arrive at one's destination. I can be a pest, that way. Also, in other ways (pedantic, insensitive, critical, intolerant, etc.).
1:17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.
1:18 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold,
1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.
1:20 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.
1:21 Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
1:22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.
1:23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
Lovely day of fishing with "Gwynnie" today on his beautiful stream. Is there a name for the color of the earliest spring leaves in New England, that easy-on-the-eyes translucent yellow and green?
A darn shame Capt. Tom couldn't join us to offer me some fishin' tips and some photo tips.
Pool on the stream. There's a Red Tail nest down a little ways. We saw a Bald Eagle en route. Woods were full of singing flycatchers, warblers, and thrushes mostly headed further north. Atlantic Flyway.
Brought home a good-sized Brookie who obviously thrashed in the leaves for a minute. I considered a new recipe - oak-leaf-encrusted trout. Will cook him up for dinner tonight for Mrs. BD as an early Mother's Day treat. Orange flesh, like Salmon.
(No wonder Dunkin Donuts pays Maggie's $5 million/year for publicity...it's a good deal for them. Next, we'll work on a similiar deal with HARPOON BREWERY, makers of delicious brews. Consider it, fellas - Maggie's is an elite market!)
I have a friend who was a dog handler in Vietnam. He would take the dogs into the jungle, find the caves, then go into the caves. Scary as hell, even with the dogs. Last I recall, he and his wife have two little Shih Tzus.
Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Here's the trailer.
Here's the WaPo review. I agree with the reviewer about art: It does not "advance" or "improve." In my view, it's just fashions in art and design that change.
Cut the damned funding off and figure out how to have a society where half the people are uneducated. The Great Society programs have ruined the nation financially and socially.
“But the disdain for American joy about bin Laden’s death goes deeper than mere snobbery or concerns about local Muslims. It’s not just that Western European intellectuals don’t like the United States—they never have—but their unwillingness to countenance aggressive Western self-defense against Islamist terror is a function of their loss of belief in Western civilization itself. Many on the continent seem to have lost any sense that their countries and way of life as well as their faith is something worth defending. When it comes down to it that, and not the faux sophistication of Euro elites, is the difference between America and Europe these days.
To my fans and followers.
Toilet paper: 
Moore's Law 
From the royal wedding to this: 