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.
It's the most beautiful day of the year here in NYC, abnormally so. Put that in the record books too. Being so lovely, it can only get worse. If every storm (and every storm and every Hot-cold-wet-dry day) is proof of global warmening, then what does every beautiful day prove?
Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin … In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low …
What Americans do. That's not government. It's not entirely selfless: it feels good to be useful, and when you are known to help others, others help you. American Citizenship 101.
Photo is from my pal on vacation in the Dominican Republic. I guess they mostly missed damage from the big breeze, because it looks intact this morning.
"Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another."
Realized I had two hurricane-related pals. This morning I emailed our good pals who recently moved to Florida (Miami), knowing they were not there now. Got an email back saying that the weather in Egypt was perfect and pleasantly hot, and that they had got their help to put up the hurricane shutters at their place in Miami, so they had no worries. I rarely get an email from Aswan.
Another buddy is on a two-week vacation in the Dominican Republic. Sampling cigars and drinking Pina Coladas in the sun seems to be the main activity. If you can call that activity. Says they are all excited about the big breeze and had no interest in leaving. Good attitude.
I am happy that the rich get money. Bill Gates, Derek Jeter, Roger Federer, Yo-Yo Ma, Bob Dylan, have enriched my life. I happily gave them all some of my money.
"... it would be easier to take if our elite showed a similar concern for hurting American citizens and there are many of those. Like the one in four of working age who don’t have jobs right now, or the 14 million on disability, the one in six on antidepressants, the more than 50,000 who died of drug ODs just in the last year. That’s almost as many as were killed during the entire decade of the Vietnam war. You hear about those people occasionally here in Washington. You hear about those poor DACA kids a lot more and that tells you everything.”
Wealthy Danish (and Swedish) families often escape to the US - but it's difficult for Europeans to obtain US citizenship and Europeans do not want to be illegal
Jared Kushner’s Mideast Peace Push Is Going Nowhere. That’s Why Israelis Love It. -‘Past administrations jumped into the peace process pool,’ says an Israeli official, praising Team Trump’s go-slow approach. ‘There’s no water in this pool, no reason to jump in.’
I think you want to rely on the power of conservative ideas and sort of hope they spontaneously erupt into a conservative paradise via a right wing Big Bang without you actually having to fight for them. After all, fighting is messy and unseemly, and you also have to ally yourselves with … those kind of people, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. It’s so embarrassing having to explain them to your liberal peers. Many of these misbegotten normals are baffled by fancy sandwiches and stuff.
Because of the eminent importance of Diversity, we at WMBriggs.com, like at Google and every other major entity, will be hiring a Diversity Enforcer. So that when anybody claims to be troubled by what is written here, we can point to our black female lesbian Jewish Enforcer (who will be paid very, very well) to show how devoted we truly are to Diversity. And then you’ll leave us alone.
First off, if you're having problems with the Flash videos, read this.
The other day I noticed a link to an article titled Why Pluto is No Longer a Planet. The article was quite interesting, then I watched the accompanying video, then went over to YouTube, searched for 'space' and watched a number of space videos. While some were way over the top ("Why Black Holes Could Delete The Universe" e.g.), some of them were quite interesting, so I collected the best of the bunch for your viewing pleasure. Given Bird Dog's post of the Voyager link this morning, the timing couldn't be better.
Pluto
Like many, I was outraged when I heard that a room full of dusty old codgers in Prague, Czech Republic, had suddenly decided to rewrite history. But, as the following video explains, there was a pretty good reason for the decision. Nor, I admit, was it left up to just a few dusty old codgers.