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.
Fox News: Texas GOP Rejects Voting Challenge NBC News: 'Talking' cars bring comfort and sci-fi safety ABC News: Husband Charged in Poisoned Docs' Death CBS News: Father of American killed: Spain train crash "pathetic" USA Today: Report: Arrest of Egypt's Morsi ordered Washington Times: Crisis in Kabul: Security at U.S. Embassy in disarray, diplomats at risk Washington Post: Halliburton to admit destroying evidence in spill New York Times: Roberts’s Picks Are Reshaping Surveillance Court’s Makeup
And then we have CNN:
The thought of having the event fade into the distant past must have been just galling to the editorial staff. "Whatever can we do?", they asked.
— My special thanks to D.M. for the nice contribution he made this morning to my Help Keep Doc From Gnawing Off His Right Foot fund. While the hospital has been real easygoing about the debt, the independent lab that did the in-depth blood work is already talking 'collection agency' for my being a whole month behind. On that note, it does seem in recent years that companies have become a lot more short-fused than in the past. My electric company gives you a whole 20 days before they cut your power, and without any further warning.
— I won't be posting much over the next week as I'll be saving up the goodies for when Bird Dog goes on vacation on the 1st. Who leaves for vacation on a Thursday is anybody's guess, but I figure he and the missus are headed for the Two-Seed-In-The-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist All Revival Revue & Clam Bake in Wopaskisquipsiecola, Mass, which starts on the 2nd.
As for the following, I turned yet another person on to this great drink the other day, so figured it deserved a repost.
Personally, I think coffee is one of the most putrid things I've ever tasted. I simply can't understand how it ever became popular in the first place. You'd think someone would have taken the first sip and gone, "Yuck! Ptooie!", and that would have been that.
On the other hand, I adore its effects.
If you feel the same way, try mixing it with chocolate milk. And I don't mean just adding a dab of chocolate, I mean making it half-and-half. It's called a 'mocha' ("mo'-kah") in the bar world and, while I wouldn't call it "great" tasting, it sure beats the hell out of straight coffee.
I boil half a cup of water in the microwave, then drop in a heaping teaspoon of Taster's Choice, some sugar cubes, then fill up the second half with chocolate milk. I have no idea if chocolate milk mixes tastefully with other brands of coffee or not as I've drunk Taster's Choice from the beginning. So, if you try this and it tastes terrible with your own brand of coffee, at least pick up a tiny jar of Taster's Choice and give it a try.
The chocolate milk should be the type you prefer, but you should test all available brands. Like there are different types of chocolate in the world of candy (Hershey bars vs Mars bars, e.g.), there are also different flavors of chocolate milk.
Remember, we're not looking for a big "Mmm, delicious!" moment when you take your first sip. Simply not gagging and retching is a good start. What you're basically shooting for is whichever milk makes the putrid coffee taste the most palatable.
On the subject, one of my favorite things in the world is my coffee mug warmer. Your local hardware store or K-Mart/Wal-Mart might carry them. What's fun is that the chocolate milk in the mocha settles slightly over time, so if you baby the mug along for an hour or two, it slowly goes from being a coffee-with-chocolate drink to a hot-chocolate-with-coffee drink, getting slightly sweeter all the while. In that way, the mocha is kind of unique, as it's actually a 'dynamic' drink in that the taste changes slowly over time.
As a small side note, I noticed while digging up the accompanying pic that there appears to be a number of USB-powered warmers on the market, although I'd have serious doubts they're very effective. A USB line carries an extremely low voltage and I'd guess that it'd take forever to warm up (by which time your coffee has gotten stone cold) and it wouldn't get very warm when it finally did. The regular wall-current models keep it piping hot.
And, ironically, the one place where you might use a portable, USB-powered coffee mug warmer would be, say, on vacation using your laptop — and the last thing you'd want to do at that point is purposefully drain the laptop's battery!
I missed one, darn the luck. I thought a bald eagle sounded just like they're always pictured, then it turns out they sound exactly like a cross between a squeaky toy and a seagull. Who knew? The only one I hadn't heard of was that biz about there not being a Nobel prize for mathematics because of his wife's affair. And it's pure coincidence that Barrie's post below on 'Correlation vs. Causation' ties in with the last point.
And it's an important point, and one we see abused every day. Flatbush, Arkansas, just experienced its rainiest June in history? Climate change. Hortence Abernathy's garden in Deepfrost, Maine, produced beautiful geraniums for the first time ever? Climate change. A barbecue at a company picnic in Drycrik, Arizona, caught some nearby weeds on fire and they didn't get it put out until half the field had burned down? Climate change. The entire globe stops warming for 20 years? Climate change.
After all, stopping is a form of change, right? Proof positive that climate change exists.
Ah, there you are, the master dog trainer. Not only have you taught Sparky to sit up, stay and fetch, but now he's learned 'speak'! "Arf-arf!", he responds with pride. What a smart little feller!
Of course, it's possible the two of you still have a ways to go.
The long jumps are especially impressive. With their poor eyesight and lack of stereoscopic vision, when a dog hears "Jump!" from some blurry object fifteen feet away, he's basically wildly leaping into space on nothing but trust.
And then there's the art of shadow dancing.
Without further preamble...
What's particularly striking about this art form are scenes like the jet fighter, where you expect to see them lower a bunch of cardboard props at the next change, yet nothing like that ever appears to happen.
They have a handful of vids on YouTube, and I have a solo artist performing here. When I originally posted it in my art gallery years ago, I hadn't seen anything else like it and called it a "wonderful, if dying, art form." It's nice to see artists like the Attraction Theater Group bringing this beautiful genre back to the fore.
Bird Dog posted a link to an interesting article about Amazon.com yesterday, and while it was a fun story, I thought the first paragraph deserved a response. So I'm reposting this puppy.
The article begins:
What do you usually expect to pay for a book on Amazon? Perhaps $7-$10, if you're scouting for a paperback? Around $20 or so if you're looking to score a hardcover?
Well, not exactly.
Like I suppose many people, I thought Amazon.com only sold new things. Not so!
I became a big fan of Robert B. Parker and his 'Spencer' detective novels. I had about ten of them out of the thirty or so that are out there. Having a few bucks on hand, I decided to blow the wad and complete my collection. I headed over to Amazon.com, dug up the first book I wanted, then noticed an odd "used" link down near the bottom of the ad. I clicked on it and discovered a whole different side to Amazon.com.
Want to guess how much these used books were going for? Five bucks? Two bucks? One?
"A quarter?"
Nope. Not even close. Gee, you're not very good at this 'guessing' stuff, are you?
How about a penny?
The deal is, these are all third-party used book merchants, and they charge $3.95 per book for shipping, so apparently they'd rather make a buck off the shipping — plus one penny — rather than just let the thing sit there rotting on the shelf. The ol' better-something-than-nothing approach.
It's to note that only the fairly old books go for a penny. Slightly newer ones actually cost a whole quarter or more, so be prepared to spend some big, big money.
I ordered 20 books. Granted, I paid $79 in shipping, but compare that to spending two days traveling to every used book store in the tri-county area and paying three to five bucks apiece for them. Nor, most likely, would I have been able to nail down all 20 books missing from my collection.
For what it's worth, one book didn't show up. I emailed the vendor, nothing back. Emailed again, nothing back. I emailed Amazon, gave them the invoice number, told them what I'd done, and my credit card account was reimbursed within the day. Ordered the book from a different vendor and out it came.
It's to note that there are also 'used' links for things like DVD movies, audio CDs, and a bunch of other things. I'm not so sure I'd go for a used rectal thermometer, but most used items are probably fine, and the 3rd-party items fall into little sub-categories such as "Like New", "Very Good", "Acceptable", "Seriously Trashed", etc, along with a brief description, so you'll have a clue as to what you're getting.
First off, since this is science we're talking about, let's make sure we're all on the same page.
Pic: scientific proof that CO² exists in the atmosphere
As we discussed last time, the most wonderful aspect of the climate debate at this moment in time, and a point simply no one could contend, is how many choices we now have:
— If you believe the science, then it's obvious that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is the villain.
— On the other hand, if you believe the science, then there's no question that Natural Global Cooling (NGC) is the true menace.
— However, if you believe the science, then it's quite apparent that Anthropogenic Chlorofluorocarbonic Warming (ACW) is the real threat.
— And, for those who believe the science, it's crystal-clear that Natural Global Warming (NGW) is what's really goin' on.
Again, it's all about the science, folks, and the wonderful options it provides. And that's not to mention the unity it brings to the community as we can all now agree that science is ultimately the answer to this imposing problem.
Unfortunately, as in any contest where there are multiple participants, scores are being kept and tallies are being tabbed. Since I'm on the NGW team, it's my duty to mock, scorn and degrade the other three contestants at every opportunity. They constantly do the same to my team, so no hard feelings. As they say, all's fair in love and global thermonuclear war.
First off, to those few brave souls who donated a few shekels to my Help Keep Doc Alive & Online fund a while back, much-much thanks. It all helps. At the moment, I'm almost two thousand clams in debt to the hospital and my local GP and thus am still considering dumping my expensive $120/mo online service and just using the local library a few times a week, but we'll see. I'd still make the occasional post, but nothing like those monster video essays I'm famous notorious for. In case you missed them, recent essays include one on the great TV show NCIS, one on the Asiana airliner crash, the disinterment of Flight 800, the amazing answer to the crash of Flight 447, and a shorter one on golf movies.
The good news is that whatever ill effects I've been feeling since around last Xmas appear to be nothing more than ultra-high blood pressure (something like 195 over 155, aka Stroke City) and something about an "elevated red blood cell count", but I never pay any attention to the details. It's just "gimme the pills" and I'm outta there.
I did, however, make one real glaring error in my last post on the subject when, puzzling over the recent diagnosis of ultra-high blood pressure, I noted that I hadn't recently changed anything in my dietary routine.
That is, if you call your lunches and dinners going from 5% frozen TV dinners to 95% frozen TV dinners over the course of a year "not changing anything".
I honestly (because I had ultra-high blood pressure at the time is my best excuse) wasn't thinking clearly and had only dashed back a year in my mind as I typed the words. In truth, until a year ago, I've never been into TV dinners much, usually eating either sandwiches (homemade, deli, Subway) or canned goods for lunch and dinner. It was only after the operation, when moving around became such a chore, than I fell into the warm bosom of easy pop-in, pop-out, meals.
Worse, I then discovered how delicious some of them are. The Marie Callender's Salisbury Steak is totally scrumptious. That set me down the whole dark path of going through every Marie Callender's and Stofer's on the shelf, plus the lesser brands, only to end up one day at a notable moment in my life. I had turned down the canned goods aisle by habit, glanced over the beef stew and chili and spaghetti and... and then just kept walking. It was the first time in my life I'd ever done that. All I had eyes for was the frozen section.
Such are the depths of the addicted.
Well, these days, all tuned into the Daily Value (DV) figure on the back of the package, I have heart palpitations just reading the labels of the things I used to gobble down by the bucketful. With admonishments of "DON'T EAT ANYTHING WITH A DV OVER 20%!!!" blaring in my head, most of the TV dinners and canned meats out there are somewhere around the (cough!) 50% mark. And that's what I'd been piling down for both lunch and dinner for almost a year.
And that's before grabbing the salt shaker and giving everything a good blast. In my whole adult life, I've salted very few things (eggs, potatoes), but once you're in the tropics, aka Sweat City, you just naturally start adding salt to your diet to make up for what you drip onto the ground while walking out to the car.
As a couple of commenters noted in the thread, some people are much more susceptible to sodium kicking up blood pressure than others, and it appears I'm of that group. I can only say "appears", though, as I've been on blood pressure medicine since that day so I can't really measure how the sudden lack of salt in my diet affects it.
I'd also note that both Bird Dog and Dr. Bliss have recently linked to the latest findings by the CDC that salt isn't as harmful as has previously been the notion, although I have reservations about the overall "IT'S OKAY, EVERYBODY, EAT ALL THE SALT YOU WANT! YIPPEE!" tone of the articles. Since human beings are involved, we always have to be on the lookout for that classic human foible of jumping from one extreme to the other, and just because something isn't as bad as previously thought doesn't mean it suddenly goes into the Eat All You Want! column.
I have a few more notes below the fold, but that's the gist. Again, my deepest thanks to those who have tossed a little something into my Help Keep Doc From Gnawing Off His Right Foot fund. Any help with these nasty medical bills would be very much appreciated.
NCIS fans, be sure to tune in tomorrow for an intriguing update!
First off, for those who enjoyed my post on the recent Asiana airliner crash, we have an update. Thankfully, local station KTVU finally nailed down the names of the four pilots involved. There's been some confusion up until now due to translation problems.
Next, I'm sure you'll sympathize with me concerning the rude event that occurred last weekend. There I was, innocently tooling along in my Hoverflight XB-3000 personal spy drone (the 1-seat model) when suddenly the rudest thing happened!
The nerve of that pilot, startling me like that!
Finally, I'm sure you've been secretly pondering the same question I have:
So what kind of pet would Rube Goldberg have owned?
Bulldog and I were yakking away in email the other day. Such terms as "loads of sugar", "M&Ms" and "Hershey Kisses" were bandied about, an indication of the somber tone the fabled bloggers of Maggie's Farm take on when discussing life's most serious issues in private.
We got to talking about the recent Korean-owned Asiana Air crash at SFO and whether cultural conditioning played any role. I mentioned I was thinking of doing a short post on it. As I said:
1. If Asians are involved, and 2. it seems inaction was the sole cause of the crash
then it's a pretty good guess where, deep down, the problem lies.
This was just after the crash where, with everything else seeming to be functioning normally, simple inaction was the only thing left on the table.
Bulldog (known as 'Big Drool' to his bar buddies) mentioned author Malcolm Gladwell, who had tied together two Korean Air crashes due to "cockpit culture", along with an Avianca crash; a company based in Colombia where the same 'militaristic hierarchy' existed in the airline industry.
So, thanks to Droolie, I then had to track down this Gladwell character and I came across this:
Gladwell did not return a request for comment, but in summarizing his ideas for Fortune magazine in November 2008, he said Korean Air's problem at the time was not old planes or poor crew training. "What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical," he said.
"You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S." he added. That's dangerous when it comes to modern airplanes, said Gladwell, because such sophisticated machines are designed to be piloted by a crew that works together as a team of equals, remaining unafraid to point out mistakes or disagree with a captain.
Both Gladdy and the writer are one-third right.
Yes, it's cultural, but not in the way they indicate, and not in the conclusion they reach. But we'll get to that.
Of course, then I had to watch the 'Mayday' episodes of the three big crashes the article backs up Gladdy's claim with, and that's when this post took yet another leap as I realized how wrong both The Gladman and his adoring acolytes were.
Then, wiping my fevered brow, I realized the horrid truth that since I was the one with all of the aforementioned 'Mayday' episodes at hand, it was up to me to grab my video editor and put it all together. In other words, one quick flurry of emails with Droolie and this went from a 1-clip, 250-word 'behind the scenes' peek at the Asiana crash to a 5-clip, 3,120-word video essay.
The more options we have, the better off we are. It's as simple as that.
So, imagine how thrilling it was to discover that bad ol' carbon dioxide was no longer suspected in the race to see which substance (carbon dioxide, ozone, second-hand smoke, liberal thought) would destroy the planet first.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week.
CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
The verdict is in, the debate is over.
"Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO2 levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850. What's striking is that since 2002, global temperatures have actually declined - matching a decline in CFCs in the atmosphere," Professor Lu said. "My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline."
So, while granting that it'll take another half-century for things to return to normal, at least we're headed in the right direction. Thank goodness we can put that little problem to rest!
If you, yourself, happen to blunder upon one of those old, outdated "global warming" articles, please inform everybody there that the latest scientific evidence is in and that they no longer have to worry. It's all getting better. I'm sure this will come as a big relief to everyone.
If, however, you, yourself, remain one of those 'skeptics' we read about in Time Magazine and you're convinced that, despite the latest science, Anthropogenic Chlorofluorocarbonic Warming is not the bad guy here, well, remember what I said about 'options'?
The most wonderful aspect of the climate debate at this moment in time, and a point simply no one could contend, is how many choices we now have:
— If you believe the science, then it's clear that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is the villain.
— If, however, you believe the science, then there's no question that Natural Global Colding (NGC) is the true menace.
— On the other hand, if you believe the science, then it's obvious that Anthropogenic Chlorofluorocarbonic Warming (ACW) is the real threat.
— And, for those who believe the science, it's crystal-clear that Natural Global Warming (NGW) is what's really goin' on.
It's all about the science, folks, and the wonderful options it provides.
As I noted in yesterday's morning links, we've recently seen a reprehensible display of cheap sensationalism from muckrakers claiming that the 1996 crash of Flight 800 has all been a massive conspiracy.
Speaking of hoaxes and conspiracies, you might have heard that some glory-seeking and/or mentally-deficient morons are claiming the explosion aboard Flight 800 back in '96 was — and I hope you're sitting down — a government cover-up! That's right, it was a missile, either accidentally fired from a U.S. warship during exercises or a deliberate act of terrorism; your choice. And the government is keeping it all a secret because of, er, um, because it would be really-really embarrassing for everybody on the international stage. That part — along with who fired the deadly missile — remains a little hazy on the details.
Regardless, this delightful little theory has the same problem the 9/11 'Truthers' had. By the time you figure in all of the people involved in the investigation over three years, plus all of the outside people like those operating nearby airport radar units that tracked the crash, you are counting upon hundreds of people to keep silent for the rest of time eternal. In an age when everyone's 15 minutes of fame is just a YouTube video away, isn't it interesting that not one person has ever come forward, protected by shadowy face and encrypted voice, and said "I was working for the NSA/FBI/CIA when Flight 800 was shot down, and here's what really happened that fateful day." Not one.
The problem is that conspiracy nuts are exactly like global warming alarmists. You can show them graphs and videos all day long but it won't do the slightest bit of good. But, like AGW, it's still fun to try.
To wit:
— Not brought down by enemy fire, check!
— Not brought down by friendly fire, check!
— Not an external explosion at all, check!
— Gas tank blew up from an electrical short circuit allowing high voltage to enter a low-voltage line, check!
— Flaming fuselage, still under power, streaked upwards after the nose cone broke off as witnessed by hundreds on the ground, check!
— Sensationalistic muckrakers opening old wounds for nothing but greed dragged out to the street and publicly flogged, unchecked!
One thing to note is that while it mentions that a handful of gas tanks have blown up over the years (lightning, sabotage, engine falling off), electrical short wasn't on the list. The implication is that this was a pretty rare event and that the equally-sensationalistic documentary continually screaming about how this could happen at any moment to any airplane in the sky (!!!) was quite a bit overblown.
And the same might be said of Boeing's reaction. While it's certainly caring of them to put in an 'inerting' system, all that'll do is add another quarter-ton of weight to the plane; weight that'll have to be compensated for somewhere else, possibly impairing the integrity of the aircraft. Merely replacing the wiring would have accomplished the same end. When they talk about the 'chain of events' that lead up to an airline disaster, about nineteen factors had to line up perfectly in order for the high-voltage line to arc into the low-voltage gas tank line in the first place, plus the perfect abrasion on the gas tank sending unit allowing the spark to occur at all.
On the other hand, this raises a key point. While the FAA has been criticized over the years for only taking action after a horrific accident has occurred, this is obviously a highly unjust complaint because it's simply impossible to predict everything that could go wrong on such a complex craft and the tremendous pressures it faces at altitude.
But when something does go wrong, the FAA is to be credited with making damn sure it won't happen again. Glancing over the Mayday airline disaster documentaries indicates that, with one glaring exception, not one accident whose mechanical cause was even suspected ever repeated itself. In many cases it was equivalent to the now-mandatory inerting system; that is, probably a serious overreaction, but the bottom — and only — line is that the tragedy hasn't happened again.
The one exception was the rear door popping off a DC-10, way back in '72. The FAA took the manufacturer's word for it that it'd be fixed, but two years later it happened again, this time with the explosive decompression taking out the plane's hydraulics and a loss of 346 lives.
That's when the FAA learned a valuable little lesson in 'trust' and started officially covering the bases, with the resultant sterling record of no repeats. There will always be the occasional piece of fuselage ripping off because of some metal rot that no one spotted; the occasional bird strike as well as the hopefully-rare control tower mix-up resulting in either an in-air or on-ground collision, but the crafts, themselves, seem as solid as they'll ever be.
The last stat I read:
You have a greater chance of being stung to death by bees than you do of dying in an airplane. So, just stay from any bee hives and, statistically, you should be good to go!
Bird Dog's a little busy this weekend so I'll be doing today's morning links. I believe he and the missus took off for the annual Two-Seed-In-The-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist All-Gospel Revival & Review that's currently playing in downtown Connecticut. Those New Englanders really know how to shake a tambourine, don't they?
By the way, did I ever mention I own one of these?
It's a Guild F-212, a somewhat rare animal. I bought mine in 1968. What makes it special is that it's a 12-string but it doesn't have that usual monstrous 12-string body. It also has a standard 6-string neck, so while it's twice as hard to learn how to play, once one does, one can just fly because the fingers don't have to move twice as far as on a regular wide 12-string neck. It's a real honey.
But even as smartphone users in Asia are beginning to suffer exploding bills and emptied bank accounts at the hands of hackers, U.S. users largely remain safe and blissfully unaware of the gathering threat.
Not for long.
As famed author Thomas Wolfe once said, you're either on the bus or you're off the bus. Staying a step ahead of the smartphone hackers sounds like a good bus to be on.
The Fawning MSM (part MMMDLXVII)
It's just disgusting the way the press protects the White House when a Dem is the current occupant. Remember all that talk about WMD and the Iraq War back in the Bush days?
Well, fifty thousand lives were recently lost due to a horrific WMD attack, but do you see any mention of it in the press? Of course not. Apparently, if it doesn't happen in Obama's own back yard, it's just not worth bothering with. But tell that to the fifty thousand innocents who were gassed to death!
Roughly one third of common and widespread animal species and over half of plant species will disappear from a large percentage of their current ranges if society does not take action on climate change, the research team predicted.
It's a good thing they're not stooping to wild hyperbole, isn't it? The point is, this was approximately the twentieth article I've read with the term 'climate change' in it since John's post came out three weeks ago. All you have to do is click on every link that has anything to do with the natural world and there's an 80% chance it'll be there. I was warning about such complacency three years ago. The juggernaut continues its remorseless pace and these twilight articles do more damage than good.
As far as the decimation of species goes, I'm with the Darwinists on this one:
The amusing side of the "Global warming will cause mass extinctions" claim is that we have absolutely no idea how many species there are to begin with. So, if you don't have a starting number, how do you know when there are "less"? Estimates range anywhere from 100 million species to 300 million, depending upon how far down the microscopic scale you go. When it comes to actual critters, by far the majority of species are insects, traditionally the hardiest of all creatures.
And, of course, why a temperature rise of a few degrees would reduce the number of species is never quite explained. Even if we assumed they couldn't adapt (and any believer in Darwinism would agree that's a pretty big if), for every species that finds it just a wee bit too warm and dies off, another heretofore lesser species will find the warmer temp a blessing and thrive.
Nature's real big on that 'balance' stuff.
Indeed.
Never A Dull Moment Dept
Speaking of hoaxes and conspiracies, you might have heard that some glory-seeking and/or mentally-deficient morons are claiming the explosion aboard Flight 800 back in '96 was — and I hope you're sitting down — a government cover-up! That's right, it was a missile, either accidentally fired from a U.S. warship during exercises or a deliberate act of terrorism; your choice. And the government is keeping it all a secret because of, er, um, because it would be really-really embarrassing for everybody on the international stage. That part — along with who fired the deadly missile — remains a little hazy on the details.
Regardless, this delightful little theory has the same problem the 9/11 'Truthers' had. By the time you figure in all of the people involved in the investigation over three years, plus all of the outside people like those operating nearby airport radar units that tracked the crash, you are counting upon hundreds of people to keep silent for the rest of time eternal. In an age when everyone's 15 minutes of fame is just a YouTube video away, isn't it interesting that not one person has ever come forward, protected by shadowy face and encrypted voice, and said "I was working for the NSA/FBI/CIA when Flight 800 was shot down, and here's what really happened that fateful day." Not one.
Speaking of mysterious airline disasters, for those of you who enjoyed my article on Flight 447, the most recent 'greatest airline disaster mystery', there's a seriously in-depth article here on the loss of the USS Scorpion in 1968, the 'greatest sea disaster mystery' of its time.
On a semi-related note, right after Benghazi I read some comment about how it reminded the guy of the USS Pueblo, the first U.S. Navy ship to surrender in 150 years and a story quickly swept under the rug by an ever-obliging MSM with Democrat Lyndon Johnson as prez, and I thought the guy made a good point. I eventually blundered across an article on the parallel here.
Political News
Remember that guy landing a Cessna in Red Square a number of years ago? Well, some activist named Harry Atwood landed a biplane (of all things) on the White House lawn in order to prove how poor our security was, and he certainly succeeded. There's no question that if he'd been a terrorist carrying a small nuclear device, our government would have been paralyzed for years, so it's only right that serious steps be taken.
"I've already implemented a federal mandate entrusted to me by the powers of the Patriot Act whereupon DNA sampling and implanted GPS tracking for all citizens will immediately be implemented," said President Obama to a nation stunned by the near tragedy. "We need to do this for the children."
ACLU president David Shear admitted that he had to side with the president on this issue. "Not only did the Patriot Act grant the power of presidential fiat during such perilous times as this, but the American people are strong and resilient and they're aware small sacrifices must be made in order to have a more secure nation. I'm getting my own implant this afternoon."
The pilot, identified as Harry Atwood of Dayton, OH, was unavailable for comment.
At a paltry 6,900 yards, probably the shortest U.S. Open since the last time they played at Merion in 1981, the pundits were all raving about how it wouldn't stand up to the modern beefed-up player and his technological bag of tricks in the form of 12th-generation Big Bertha drivers and multi-faceted computer-generated putters. They were predicting scores of 8 or 9 under par, easy.
The current tied two leaders after two days of play?
1 under.
There are three playing at even par and the entire rest of the field is in the plus column.
Like I said, a spanking.
Of the four masters, the Open is usually considered the 'nastiest' of the lot. While the others might rely upon ultra-long holes, ultra-slick greens and ultra-tough pin placements, the Open is usually defined by a zillion sand traps and rough that goes halfway up your calf.
And there's even more to it than that, such as the toughness of the grass. Merion uses a particularly tough grass around the greens, a lesson Tiger Woods handily learned just yesterday. The ball was a few feet off the green, embedded in some short, gnarly rough. He took the proper swack at it and the ball plopped about 10 inches. He took another swack and it flopped onto the green a few feet and stopped nine feet from the pin. Welcome to Merion Golf Club, Mr. Woods, still catering to that old, pre-modern tough-love style.
They also don't have pin flags at Merion; they use straw baskets which were originally used to store the players' lunches so they'd stay safely out of reach of deer, caddies, and other course varmints. What this means is that the players are forced to use such ancient, archaic means of determining wind direction as "blowing tree branches" and "clouds". This 'getting back to the basics' approach is enough to throw the strongest player off his game.
Broadcast time is noon (ET), NBC. Original info and slideshow here, updates here. Live streaming is here, fairly decent full-screen quality.
What's going to add to a spanking good time is that Merion was drenched with rain in the week up through Thursday, so it's actually been playing slow these last two days. As things dry out, the fairways will become even faster (giving the ball an even greater chance of rolling off into the rough, something that happened over and over again on a couple of particular holes yesterday, even to the greats like Mickelson and Woods) and, of course, the greens will make a big jump on the Stimpmeter. They were already in the 'scary' category yesterday (it was raining Thursday to the point where they were basically putting around small lakes, so yesterday was the first day in which the course could actually be judged), so today should take a fairly dramatic jump in green speeds.
There's something somewhat interesting about the game of golf:
It's not a game.
It's not a sport.
It's not a contest.
It's not a competition.
It's not really much at all.
It's just you, a field, a ball and some clubs, and the only fellow competitor within sight is a man who might have died twenty years before.
It can be made into a sport, of course, but golf, in its essence, involves no one but you and the course designer, perhaps long passed on these many years.
Even when others are on the field, you're not playing against these players. There's none of the sez you mentality you see in normal sports. It's just you, the course, and the fewest number of swings you can make to see it through to the end.
Except for the pros, where they really do have the option of cutting the corner by knocking it over the trees on a par-5 dogleg, for everyone else there's really just one shot in the bag, and you really want nothing more than for it to be your best shot — and the score and fellow competitors be damned.
In that moment you step up to the ball, it is nothing but essence.
This clip from The Legend of Bagger Vance demonstrates this fairly well.
A fair while back I did a post on starting a private 'family blog', where only family members (and maybe close friends) can make posts and comment. It can really bind a family together, especially when they're strung out across the continent. And WordPress makes it so easy that anyone can make a post with pics and vids of the grandkids playing in the back yard — those little dickens.
Pic: Exhibit A
I've received a handful of complimentary comments and emails since then, but this one kind of stood out. It's cutely done in something of an over-the-top manner, which I like. It also reminds me of a friend of mine who claims to have the most dysfunctional family in the country. Or did until this arrived.
Dude! You done saved my family's ass. There are four clans, located in Washington, Colorado, Kansas and Maine. Involved are seven uncles, eight aunts and seventeen cousins.
In short, cousins Gary and Susan dislike each other, Aunt Meredith dislikes Aunt Jinny, Aunt Jinny dislikes Uncle Bob, Uncle Bob dislikes his brother Charles, Uncle Charles can't stand any of the Kansas gang, and the Kansas gang doesn't particularly like the Washington clan. I should also mention that Aunt Sue and Aunt Margaret are always snipping at each other, Uncle Bob and Aunt Hilda are talking about a divorce, and Uncle Bob and Cousin Dave almost got into a fistfight at the last family reunion over who was in charge of the BBQ.
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that Cousin Nancy will never, ever, forgive Cousin Jason for accidentally killing her pet bunny rabbit 20 years ago, Cousin Dave will never, ever, forgive Cousin Gary for wrecking his prize motorcycle 11 years ago, and Cousin Ron (me) had decided that I would never, ever, forgive Cousin Becky for voting for Obama -- twice, no less.
That's how things stood eight months ago.
My, how times do change. About 2,000 family blog posts later, with a few exceptions I'm not sure if any of the above is still true. Uncle Bob and Aunt Hilda went ahead with the divorce, which was probably best for everybody, and no clear resolution of the murdered bunny rabbit has been reached, but for the most part the remainder of the grudges and pet peeves have been resolved and we had a family reunion two weeks ago in Steamboat Springs, CO, that was the best one anybody can remember.
In most cases it was just a matter of talking things out, like the piled-up motorcycle. In the blog, Cousin Gary pointed out that he was only 17 when he wrecked it and it was because it had rained earlier and the roads were slippery and he just wasn't used to such conditions. Amazingly, Cousin Dave admitted that as a wise old 19-year-old at the time, he had to shoulder some of the blame for letting a beginner take it out in dangerous conditions, and that basically settled the whole score. The next thing ya know, they're pairing up as a doubles tennis team at the reunion and cleaning everybody's clock with superb game play and excellent teamwork.
Aunt Sue and Aunt Margaret, the two "snippers," formed the social committee for the week-long event and it was when they gave each other a great big warm hug when saying goodbye that I realized I owed you an email saying thanks. I had forwarded the original link to Cousin Becky who set up the site, and according to her everything went "smooth as silk," so thanks also for the great set-up guide. I even partially forgave her for voting for Obama -- twice, no less.
Best regards, Cousin Ron
And you're mighty welcome, big guy.
And he's right about the value of communication amongst family members. My middle brother and I went through about a decade of estrangement ages ago, but then we took a canoe out at a family reunion about ten years ago, spent the whole day talking and got it all hashed out. I thought of that a few weeks ago when we had a great chat on the phone. There's just something about getting family problems out in the open that's wonderfully cathartic.
My how-to site is here. If you're going to give it a spin, it's important to do the five steps in order. The link to the web hosting service I use pops up when you get to that part of the setup routine. There's a specific page on setting up a family blog and a Quick Reference Guide for the newbies.
When it comes to getting a blog or web site going, nothing beats WordPress, although how much you get out of it depends on how involved with the settings, plugins and widgets you get, hence the value of an in-depth how-to site. At 50,000 words spread over 81 pages, this monster is probably the biggest how-to WordPress site on the 'Net. It takes twice as long to get through the setup routine as the next site, but you'll learn four times as much.
The most puzzling airline disaster in history has the most befuddling answer in the history of airline disaster solutions.
In brief: In 2009, in one of the most modern airliners ever built, Air France 447 took off from Rio in Brazil and was safely on its way to Paris, last contacting land while partway over the Atlantic.
And then it disappeared.
A few months later, the PBS show 'Nova' put together a team of experts to figure out what most likely happened. They had some serious heavyweights on board, like a guy who took part in the investigation of the tragic, final flight of the SST, and a guy who worked on what was considered the 'most puzzling crash in history' of its day, Flight 800 out of New York, which inexplicably blew up just off the coast, later traced to faulty wiring in a fuel tank.
But at least the Flight 800 team had little clues to work, like "where it went down".
As referred to, say, if it went down.
Because of the curvature of the earth, cross-Atlantic flights always go off radar at some point, and it was only hours later when it didn't show up on African radar that the alarm was even sounded. If a small electronic monitor box hadn't automatically sent a quick 'update' to headquarters via satellite link somewhere between 1 and 15 minutes before the crash, they would have been totally clueless where it ended up, and even then they just had its last known location and were forced to consider where the wreckage could be spread over hundreds of square miles of open ocean. And in 15,000 feet of water.
Gather 'round, friends, and let me tell you of the most wonderful, relaxing three months I've ever spent in my life.
It was at beautiful Camp Elmwood.
It doesn't take much to set the scene (see accompanying photo). A few acres way on the outside of the S.F. Bay Area with a rolling terrain of paths and camp buildings with lush green lawn everywhere you looked, all safely fenced off to keep the vagabonds and ruffians at bay. The weather was splendid (I was there in the Spring) with crisp mornings and warm afternoons. The atmosphere of the camp was invigorating. It was fresh. It was alive.
And just why am I telling you about beautiful Camp Elmwood?
After getting poked and prodded for six hours at the hospital a few weeks ago, they came up with squat. For you new readers, I had an intestinal operation last summer to remove a growth before it became cancerous, then was healing quite nicely until around last November when I just kind of stalled out at around 80% better. I was still in debt to the hospital, though, so it took a few months to get that cleared up enough that I could start a new 'tab' with them. I had (what felt like) about a gallon of blood drained from me (I made a comment about 'bloodletting' and how "I feel better already!'), an EKG, some skin samples for the lab, and a "nonintrusive ultrasound test" where they tested the blood flow throughout my body.
Then it turned out my blood pressure is through the roof. I've never paid much attention to it, and the previous time I was at the hospital for an operation follow-up, about three months ago, nobody said anything so I guess it was fine.
It was 165 over something when I was there the other day. I think the nurse actually gasped when she read the meter. Normal is 120 or below. Since nothing else has changed in my life (diet, living quarters, lack of exercise, etc), I gather most of it is just stress, worrying about rent and food, and exacerbated by the fact that I never know how much work I'm going to get from the one main company I webmaster for. So, the wonderful discovery that I could stroke out any minute added another two hours to my visit.
I've had better days.
And, as noted, they came up with zip in the blood test. Now I have to decide when or even IF I'll be able to afford to take the next round of tests and whether or not I should dump my (cough!) $120/mo Internet service. After rent, that's my biggest expense. If you didn't catch the story, I moved behind the local cellphone tower about a year ago which, as it turns out, are very directional and neither my Verizon Wireless nor a Sprint unit would work. I finally found a company that specializes in rural hook-ups and sitting on top of my tower is a 4" x 6" box with a 3' antenna sitting on top of it. It works fine, but it's nasty expensive.
Anyway, that's where things currently stand. Or sit, in my case. If you'd like to help with my get-well fund, it would be sorely appreciated.
Also, I mentioned this a few months ago, but if anyone has any viable (note key word) ideas on how to make money online, I'm all ears. I've read a number of "5 Ways To Make Money On The Internet" articles and haven't seen anything viable yet. I'd grab a regular 9-to-5 job in a minute if I could find one, but these are all tourist-geared villages down here and if you don't have any experience in the restaurant, motel or scuba diving biz, you needn't bother to apply.
One thing a couple of people mentioned last time was putting Amazon links in the posts, like Glenn does over at Istapundit. The hitch here — besides being tacky — is that these things only work with big reader numbers. You're basically waiting for that 1-in-3,000 person who's currently in the market for a new set of steak knives or band saw or the boxed set of all three 'Men In Black' movies. And Maggie's just doesn't have those kinds of numbers.
My thought was to only link to Rolls Royce dealerships, realtors for large estates and high-quality diamond necklace merchants. If it only makes one sale a year, I'll be set!
Anyways, just thought I'd toss out a quick update. Got some interesting posts coming up this week, starting with...
Many people will boycott a movie with a certain actor or actress in it who's spouted off on some goofy liberal cause, one that really touched a nerve.
I'm not one of those.
Similarly, I could give a hoot about a company's politics, as long as it has the program or web page or info I'm looking for.
Google is a perfect example of this. Politically, it's firmly in the liberal camp, but some of its programs are so good there's not even a second place.
Update: One of Google's main liberal offenses, not displaying a custom 'doodle' on their page on Memorial Day, has finally been resolved (see 'This day in history' post, below) and when a company displays such a magnificent tribute to our fallen soldiers as they did yesterday, well, I'd say all is forgiven.
Given that there are currently something like 18.7 billion web sites out there, there are a handful of tricks you can employ to narrow down the search:
— Putting the searched-for item in quotes tells Google to only display pages with that exact phrase.
— Putting a plus sign directly in front of a word (no space between) tells Google that the word has to actually be on the web page, not just part of some 10,000-word keyword file.
— Putting a minus sign directly in front of a keyword will not display any page with that word on it. This is a particularly effective trick as you 'minus out' all of the web sites popping up with a different theme or subject than the one you're interested in.
— If you know which site the item you're looking for is on, use this format:
I imagine you've seen some pretty splashy 'doodles' in place of the 'Google' name when there's an important event to honor, like the birthday of some Italian painter from the 17th century. Lesser events, like the Junior League's Summer Cotillion or the Annual Cornhuskers County Fair, don't get any doodle at all.
Or Memorial Day.
After all, to the sensitive leftists who run Google, that would be glorifying war.
And we can't have any of that.
Now, I could be wrong and maybe they did this last year and I just didn't notice, but I went to Google just now and my jaw nearly hit the floor.
Let's talk about how smart women are for a minute. There have been many very smart women throughout history. First there was Joan of Arc, who was burned alive at the stake, then there was Madame Curie, who irradiated herself to death, then there was Amelia Earhart, who died in a plane crash, then there was, um..., oh, Susan B. Anthony, who was so famous they named a $1 coin after her.
Smart women, all!
Pic: Artist's concept of what smart women think about
Well, under the same heading, I just love what this lady did. It goes to the very core of pragmatism.
To wit:
You're a cigarette smoker. You're seriously hooked. You've tried everything to stop, but you just keep failing.
Last Tuesday, 5-foot 1-inch Lopez went up to Sacramento County sheriff’s Deputy Matt Campoy outside the main jail and slapped him in the face, apparently for no reason. He grabbed the woman and took her inside the jail, where she again slapped his arm as soon as he turned her loose. Confused, Campos handcuffed her again, and that’s when the woman told him she had picked him because he was in uniform and she knew getting arrested was the only way for her to quit smoking, as tobacco is forbidden in prison.
When it comes to your health, you just gotta do what you just gotta do.
I was actually surprised how many commenters took the "Moron!" approach. I thought it was brilliant and daring. And the blotch on her 'permanent record' really won't make any big dif in the future, and any lawyer could get it expunged. But that week or two she spends in the hoosegow might make a very big difference when her grandchildren have a grandmother around to love and grow up with.
Well, now that we've got that 'smart' stuff out of the way, let's get down to the intrinsic, elemental, key role women play in the interwoven society of modern day life and what they bring to the table:
Boobies.
No, wait...
Other stuff and boobies. Right, that's it. I mean, I wouldn't want to shortchange the other body parts. That just wouldn't be manly.
And, speaking of boobies, what does a man really, really hunger for in life?
Good food.
Good food surrounded by pleasant women who, as we've already proven, can be quite smart. You combine your smarts with hers, your wallet with her good looks (to make up for the lack of yours), and we're talkin' an equal deal here with no 'objectification' in sight.
Admittedly, some words become meaningless over time.
Buggy whip industry.
Herewith, I am going to spell out my own little list, dismantling each word in turn. While I'm aware some harsh critic could come along at any minute and point out how this is nothing more than an academic exercise in sophistry, solipsism and semantics, I'd like to go on record as stating that that's exactly what it is.
In a generally ascending order of interest and/or importance:
You might have heard of that social anarchist who runs Coyote Blog. I wrote a scathing exposé on this scurrilous scofflaw here.
As for coyotes, he seems to think they're a cute, cuddly bunch, but a Google search proves otherwise:
Well, this menace to society is back in the news, again preaching his particular brand of anarchy, this time against the very foundation of our language, and thus society, itself:
By the way, if anyone read the fabulous book "Barbarians and the Gate," they** will remember RJR Nabisco's construction of a...
[...]
** I know this is grammatically incorrect, but I am exhausted with English's lack of a third person singular gender-neutral pronoun and hate saying "he or she." English is a language built bottom up from actual usage, so lacking any better idea, I support "they" as the solution.
I've been using "they" in this regard for over 20 years.
In fact, you could even say that the subject is a part of blog history. As I note in my bio, I was 'blogging' on a daily basis on my BBS a decade before the word was coined. In one of the first pages I wrote for the board, the 'Welcome' page, I told everyone that they'd see two variations from standard English in my articles; using 'they' for 'he or she' and putting punctuation outside of quote marks. (I'll cover the latter some other time.) So it could be said that one of the first blogs in history mentioned this very subject. Twenty-two years ago.
Here's the famed James Taranto quoting other people in his daily column. James is a stickler for following the rules.
"But there's something disappointing in giving your sparring partner exactly what they [sic] want."
"Of course what Ferraro said is that "nobody is going to say they [sic] don't ..."
"Where a person lives, their [sic] immigration status or who they [sic] love should not ..."
"... if a black person killed a white person they [sic] were more likely ..."
"If a 5-year-old can't sit still, it is unlikely that they [sic] can do well in a kindergarten class ..."
What this is really saying is, Broken is okay. I'm sure James and associated sticklers would like to fix every other broken thing on the planet, but for some reason they happily exclude this one obvious blow-it from their agenda. The question for James is, Are you planning on doing this for the rest of time eternal?
Here's the bottom line:
They does not necessarily equal plural. And I can semi-prove it.
My very first week in the South, I was alone in a diner. The waitress walked up and asked, "How y'all doin' today?" The exact same thing happened at a different diner a few days later.
That's when I realized that y'all doesn't necessarily equal 'plural', and 'they', in this context, is no different. To refine it even further, you could say that 'he or she' is the they, because more than one person is involved.
Coyote got it exactly right. Unlike any other language on the planet, English was built; constructed; formed from a collage of many languages, even varying forms of English, itself, and is thus designed to change with the times as the building process continues. While a total bitch for the outsider to learn, we who are fluent in it are offered an immense, descriptive vocabulary that no other language comes close to. In many, if not most languages, the exact meaning of a spoken word is based upon inflection. In English, we have a whole different word for every single variation, and then we still have inflection for the nuance.
Put another way, using 'they' for a singular person might feel a little awkward, but [sic]'ing every use of it for the rest of time eternal sounds a lot more awkward.
As you've no doubt heard, the threat of Natural Global Colding is already showing signs of occurring, like it snowing in May in the midwest — in the middle of a drought, no less — and now the Oklahoma tornadoes being extra-violent because of the extra-cold wind sheer. The following Newsweek article was written before the current rage of twisters, so the author was, indeed, prescient in what he says about them and how, unlike global warming, global colding actually will cause tornadoes and hurricanes to increase in both number and intensity, as his numbers verify.
Pic: This week's issue of Time also covers the subject in depth
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns may have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now.
The evidence is support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.
...
Trend: To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7 degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. The scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
So that's about as sobering as it gets, folks. Ten years really isn't a very long time.
I originally spotted this alarming article on a very cool AGW site called Real Science.
It must be awful constantly being treated as a second-class citizen in a male-dominated society. We all know about the inequalities in the job market, corporate structure and politics, but it's exceptionally cruel when even something as simple as sports needs an official Act of Congress (Title IX) just so a college can have a girls softball team.
But perhaps the biggest reminder of your lowly status is that even your clothes are regulated. Wear this, don't wear that. Do you see men going through any such restrictions? Of course not. Your being told what to wear based on your gender is the moral equivalent of being told which bathroom you can use based on the color of your skin.
And the great progressive city of New York has decided to address this hideous injustice, once and for all.
No longer will you be castigated and restricted and confined merely because of your gender. No longer will you be forced to wear the shackles that the male-dominated society has placed upon you.
Because of the grand farsightedness of the great city of New York, you no longer have to wear the shackles at all.
Like many, I find hummingbirds absolutely fascinating. I mean, it's one thing if a bird can hover. That's pretty rare. Quite another if it can actually fly backwards, and almost as accurately and as fast as forwards.
One of the things the Intelligent Design people like to pull out is that evolution wasn't smart enough to invent the eye. It was, however, apparently smart enough to design a three-dimensional gyroscope. Like all birds, watch how still their heads are, no matter what gyrations their bodies are going through.
Their tail feathers also perform an interesting role. Notice how it's almost like the birds are hinged on a rod running through their wings and the tail feathers act as a 'tilting' mechanism. One quick flap and they tilt up or down on the axis running through their wings. Truly a marvelous animal.
On the subject, one of my favorite things in the world is my coffee mug warmer. Your local hardware store or K-Mart/Wal-Mart might carry them. What's fun is that the chocolate milk in the mocha settles slightly over time, so if you baby the mug along for an hour or two, it slowly goes from being a coffee-with-chocolate drink to a hot-chocolate-with-coffee drink, getting slightly sweeter all the while. In that way, the mocha is kind of unique, as it's actually a 'dynamic' drink in that the taste changes slowly over time.
Like I suppose many people, I thought Amazon.com only sold new things. Not so!
First off, since this is science we're talking about, let's make sure we're all on the same page.
First off, to those few brave souls who donated a few shekels to my 
Options. That's what it's all about.
The U.S. Open golf tournament is on this weekend.
There's something somewhat interesting about the game of golf:
A fair while back I did a post on starting a private 'family blog', where only family members (and maybe close friends) can make posts and comment. It can really bind a family together, especially when they're strung out across the continent. And WordPress makes it so easy that anyone can make a post with pics and vids of the grandkids playing in the back yard — those little dickens.
I suppose there's an irony here somewhere:
Gather 'round, friends, and let me tell you of the most wonderful, relaxing three months I've ever spent in my life.
Well, rat farts.
Many people will boycott a movie with a certain actor or actress in it who's spouted off on some goofy liberal cause, one that really touched a nerve.
Let's talk about how smart women are for a minute. There have been many very smart women throughout history. First there was Joan of Arc, who was burned alive at the stake, then there was Madame Curie, who irradiated herself to death, then there was Amelia Earhart, who died in a plane crash, then there was, um..., oh, Susan B. Anthony, who was so famous they named a $1 coin after her.
As you've no doubt heard, the threat of 
Dear Maggie's Valued Female Reader™: