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.
The simple answer to why barns are painted red is because red paint is cheap. The cheapest paint there is, in fact. But the reason it’s so cheap? Well, that’s the interesting part. Red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red.
Nope. Dairy barns were painted white -- with lead paint --to indicate purity. Barns are painted all colors, but most red ones were covered with red lead primer. Lead oxide, linseed oil, turpentine and Japan drier. Most outbuildings didn't merit paint, and red lead primer was the cheapest stuff you could buy. Cary Grant learned not to mix white lead primer with red lead primer in Operation Petticoat.
Lego abruptly removed its chief executive Bali Padda after just eight months on Thursday, replacing the 61-year-old Briton with a younger Danish industrialist in a battle to become the world's biggest toymaker.The Danish company said it had appointed Niels B. Christiansen, 51, who joins Lego after nine years as CEO of Danfoss where by focusing on digitalization he increased sales and turned the firm into a global leader in energy efficiency.
Consider your passion: The place of passion in doing whatever you want to do cannot be overemphasized. When you have a passion for whatever it is you are doing, it will push you when the going gets tough. There is no need sugar coating it and making it look like it would all go smoothly. There is nothing worth having that doesn’t face challenges. But when one is faced with challenges, the motivation is usually the passion they have. So you might want to consider something you have a passion for.
I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector.
Look at the picture. It's like these dweebs share one, big closet to go with their one, big opinion.
Nearly 50 years after the culmination of the first major race to the moon, in which the United States and the Soviet Union spent fantastic amounts of public money in a bid to land the first humans on the lunar surface, an intriguing new race to our nearest neighbor in space is unfolding—this one largely involving private capital and dramatically lower costs.
Listen, poindexters. We stopped going to the moon because there's nothing to do there. It was a stunt, to outdo the Soviet Union.
One Swedish journalist aboard the submarine who was reportedly put ashore before the boat ran into trouble has not yet been accounted for, according to Danish newspaper Berlingske. Bloomberg News reported that Madsen told a local TV station about the sinking, revealing that a problem with a ballast tank caused the crowdfunded vessel to sink.
"Crowdfunded vessel." Heh. Have you tried my Indiegogo vaccines? They're free-range.
Asked if Benchmark’s own investors might have the stomach to sue Benchmark, this person jokes that “every VC today could probably be sued by [their own institutional investors]” for their overly relaxed approached in dealing with startups. Either way, he believes that Benchmark’s lawsuit — which he calls a “misstep” — is “a completely obvious outcome of all this excess and absurdity of the recent years. It’s like when you’re a parent and you spoil your kid and he turns out not to be what you hoped. Are you going to love him or cut him off?”
This accurate description of recent investor/business relationships tells you all you need to know about the last 10 years.
That's what some Twitter users, including actor and former Barack Obama aide Kal Penn, are demanding, after President Trump tweeted Friday morning that U.S. “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.”
His motorcade doesn't obey the speed limit. They should revoke his driver's license, too.
Of course you still need a benchmark for floating-rate loans -- and for trillions of dollars of derivatives -- and it's not exactly clear what competing "transaction-based benchmarks" will win out. Nor is it clear how complicated it will be to transition all of those trillions of dollars of derivatives to the new benchmark. It would be easier if they'd just rebrand the new benchmark "Libor," and report it in the same places as the old Libor: Then contracts that refer to "Libor" could keep referring to "Libor." It would just be a different Libor.
The series, which begins on Sunday, takes as its jumping-off point the same book that was the basis for the 1995 movie starring John Travolta and Gene Hackman. But be advised that a title card here reads, “Based in part on the novel by Elmore Leonard,” and “in part” really ought to be highlighted somehow. This is a different story with different and reimagined characters; a point-by-point comparison of film and TV show, or TV show and novel, is even more irrelevant for “Get Shorty” than it usually is for such adaptations.
Get Shorty was a perfect movie. Get Shorty was a passable book. Get Shorty will be a terrible TV show.
Today’s fake-industry leader is Tesla, the electric car developed by subsidy entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also heads SolarCity and SpaceX, other government darlings. Musk’s genius is primarily in the subsidy-seeking realm — by 2015, U.S. governments alone had given his companies US$5 billion through direct grants, tax breaks, cut-rate loans, cashable environmental credits, tax credits and rebates to buyers of his products. Counting subsidies from Canada and Europe, the government bankroll could be double that.
This becomes a problem when the government changes hands, apparently.
Have a great Saturday, everyone! Maybe paint your barn red, and then paint the town red.
Hi everybody. It's Friday. Light the smoking lamp early. Run the cocktail flag up the mizzen before you're under sail. It's noontime somewhere. Bust out the tonsil polish while the sun rides high. Bunk off. Take a mental health day. Slack. Don't kill the job. Make up your mind to procrastinate. Indole.
The right calls the kind of people who went after Damore by the derogative term “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs). SJWs hold progressive views on diversity and identify politics and, supposedly, find virtue in harming those with heretical beliefs. Many on the right fear SJWs.
If you've always wondered what a conservative is, and you work in hi-tech, the nice man will tell you in fourth-grade syntax about this rare but terrifying animal.
Education: Of the 90 interventions evaluated in RCTs commissioned by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) since 2002, approximately 90% were found to have weak or no positive effects.
All of them work just fine, thank you -- if you're running them. Duh.
[Beethoven’s] talent amazed me. However, unfortunately, he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether in the wrong if he finds the world detestable, but he thereby does not make it more enjoyable either for himself or others.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all retooling their businesses around the belief that AI and machine learning are the future of the tech industry. IBM is in a more vulnerable position than all those companies. Even though IBM was an AI pioneer it has let its lead slip and damaged its reputation with overhyped marketing. There’s a rising sentiment in from tech and finance experts that, for all the idealism, Watson just can’t deliver on its promises.
IBM should get with the times and appoint a female CEO to straighten out this mess. Oh.
Two airlines have dipped their wings into the waters of two-way texting. Hawaiian Holdings Inc.’s Hawaiian Airlines is adding the feature while JetBlue Airways Corp. took a stake in a software startup that will allow its call center staff to start texting customers in the coming months.
Listen, iPhone drones. There's only one way to tell your airline you hate it. It has a steering wheel.
Bestiary texts offer animal-lore as a source of allegorical lessons for moral spiritual guidance. The earliest bestiary manuscripts date to the beginning of the 12th century. They were made throughout North-Western Europe, but the genre flourished most in England, eventually declining in popularity in the late 13th and 14th centuries.
I and Pangur Ban my cat, 'tis a like task we are at; hunting mice is his delight, hunting words I sit all night...
Much of the software that processes the transactions is decades old, and the more modern bits are written by banks, credit card companies, and financial middlemen, none of whom are exactly winning hackathons for elegant coding. In 2010, Patrick and John Collison, brothers from rural Ireland, began to debug this process. Their company, Stripe Inc., built software that businesses could plug into websites and apps to instantly connect with credit card and banking systems and receive payments.
An Irishman, late for an appointment, prays, "Lord, if you give me a parking space, I'll give up Guinness and go to Mass every Sunday." A parking space immediately opens up. The Irishman sticks his head out the window, looks up, and says, "Never mind, I found one."
Of nearly 230 North American chemical, metals and mining, paper, forest products and packaging companies, nearly a quarter are within two notches of the investment-grade/speculative-grade border as of mid-year, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to panic. Donovan writes that the sector should remains strong at least through 2018m, and he doesn’t expect any “crossings’ before 2019.
Debts backed by physical assets are so 20th Century.
In May, the expectation was that between 40 to 60 restaurants would be shuttered in fiscal 2017. No list of the affected locations has been released. Applebee’s says the expected closures will be based on several criteria, including franchisee profitability, operational results and meeting brand quality standards.
As long as Flinger's and Chotchkie's stay open, I don't care. You want to come over and watch Kung Fu?
The declaration could help unlock more support and resources to address the drug overdose epidemic, such as additional funding and expanded access to various forms of treatment, and it gives the government more flexibility in waiving rules and restrictions to expedite action.
Perhaps we should declare war on it. You know, a war on drugs.
The man - who has not been identified - was found dead around 11am when police finally stormed the home. His death ended an hours long standoff that started late Wednesday, when he showed up drunk at the 9,000-square-foot home where his estranged girlfriend lives and the two got into a fight.
It's unclear to me where Kevin Bacon fits into this.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen told lawmakers last month that "some special factors" were partly responsible for the low inflation readings. Inflation, which has remained below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target for five years, is being watched for clues on the timing of the next interest rate increase.
Janet Yellen can't even cause inflation right. Where's Arthur F. Burns when you need him?
I forget the exact quote. I forgot who said it, too. I forget what it has to do with Thursday morning links, as well. Anyway, here goes: Good manners may require me to politely listen to you, but I am under no obligation to actually believe that your child is smart and your wife is good looking.
All the guy at Google did was mention that in a private moment, he has entertained the thought that Google's wife has bingo wings and halitosis, and Google's kid eats library paste. Some how or another, it merits a sacking, followed by the kind of attention that Leo Tolstoy used to get in Russia. I don't get it.
I hereby propose that Google's original, stupid, gilt-edged lie of a motto, Don't Be Evil, be changed to a more up-to-date, honest version: Don't Be Male. Works for me. So does Start Page.
Sundar Pichai, said portions of Damore’s 10-page memo “violate our code of conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes” despite saying in the same memo that Google employees shouldn't be afraid of speaking their minds.
For a man of systematic intelligence, Schmidt’s politics—such as I could hear from our discussion—were surprisingly conventional, even banal. He grasped structural relationships quickly, but struggled to verbalize many of them, often shoehorning geopolitical subtleties into Silicon Valley marketese or the ossified State Department microlanguage of his companions.9 He was at his best when he was speaking (perhaps without realizing it) as an engineer, breaking down complexities into their orthogonal components.
That's a lot of words to call a guy a conniving jerk.
The numbers are big. Uber has titles to nearly 40,000 vehicles through Xchange Leasing. It now has to get the cars back from its drivers and sell them in the wholesale market. It wants to do most of this by year-end. If Uber loses $9,000 per car on average on these 40,000 cars, it will add another $360 million in losses on top of the losses it has already booked.
The last eight years of "recovery" consisted entirely of lending money to dorks who can't count, but understand a little javascript. A hard rain's gonna fall eventually.
Europe is the continent with the fewest people willing to fight a war for their country. Globally, an average of 61% of respondents in 64 countries said they would. Morocco (94%), Fiji (94%), Pakistan (89%), Vietnam (89%) and Bangladesh (86%) had the highest percentage willing to fight.
I remember some inter-war poll of Oxford students who claimed they wouldn't fight for their country, either, egged on by Bloomsbury pansies. They all climbed into Spitfires when the time came. Talk is cheap, coming and going.
At first, you begin to wonder why no one in Russia ever sees danger coming. To a casual American observer, the majority of these crashes seem to happen in slow motion. You can see the cars languidly drifting into the wrong lane from a half-a-mile away. Yet somehow, no one in Russia ever notices anything.
If you've never experienced the wonder of Russian dashcam video, you're in for a treat.
On The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour -- which began as a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Show and featured Steve Martin and Rob Reiner as writers and “Gentle on My Mind” as its theme song -- the clean-cut Campbell engaged in comedy skits when he wasn’t performing and featured many of his friends as musical guests, including The Monkees, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
I remember that show. That was a good show. Good show all around, Glen, and RIP
Even before the race is done, organizers are reflecting on a separate challenge: how to get more women to take part in the event next year, and how to keep them in the race longer. This year was the first time that women entered as solo competitors, and neither of the two female riders, both accomplished endurance athletes, got through half of the 14 stages.
Joe Stalin knew how to get women to undertake a grueling trek halfway across Russia to Siberia, whether they wanted to or not. I guess the NYT still misses the guy.
The company is hoping to offer a wide range of videos through Watch, including live shows that feature hosts responding in real-time to users' questions and live events like Major League Baseball games. Facebook is also hoping to attract more traditional shows, like those you might see on cable or broadcast TV.
Net neutrality my keister. I wonder what the FCC fine for ten billion wardrobe malfunctions would be if cable and internet really got the same treatment.
Marijuana users had a higher risk of dying from hypertension. Compared to non-users, marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use. There was no association between marijuana use and death from heart disease or cerebrovascular disease.
Fighting over the last Funyun is bound to send your diastolic through the roof.
After announcing intentions a year ago to produce a heavy-duty electric truck, Musk tweeted in April that the semi-truck would be revealed in September, and repeated that commitment at the company's annual shareholder meeting in June, but he has never mentioned any autonomous-driving capabilities.Tesla has been a leader in developing self-driving technology for its luxury cars, including the lower-priced Model 3, which it is beginning to manufacture.
Someone should mention to little sooper genius boy that we already have self-driving trucks. They're called rail cars.
When plaintiff Cheryl Fillekes joined the case in 2015, she claimed that because of her age, Mountain View-based Google did not hire her for an engineering position for which she was qualified, which she alleges violates the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how old she was.
That’s what the Auralnauts discovered earlier this summer when they received word that Warner/Chappell—the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group—had filed a monetization claim on their “Star Wars Minus Williams” video through YouTube's Content ID System. That’s right: The copyright holder was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t there.
In complex matters like these, it's much simpler to assume everyone involved, including the author of the article, is a jerk, and deserves no sympathy. Saves time and aggravation.
Well, there's the links. Have a great Thursday. And don't worry, Maggie's Farm waitstaff would never flirt with you to get a better tip. We might rifle through your belongings if you don't keep an eye on them, though.
I'm busy moving into my new digs today, so no time for a fresh post. Here's an oldie but goodie.
Spanning the spectrum of mankind's achievements, there are certain key moments that stand out in each field. I'm going to cover a few here, and if you have any additions that you think I might be interested in doing a future post on, leave a synopsis and maybe a link or two in the comments.
When it comes to the heading of 'Inventions', I think the sublime moment is this:
The main character in the marvelous book 'River God' is the head slave of the imperial palace. He's one of those do-all kind of guys; physician, astronomer, architect, inventor, etc. But, as exciting as his long life is, there is one moment that surpasses all others.
The enemy has invaded and their war chariots, with long razor-sharp blades coming out of the hubs, are slicing the Egyptian legions to ribbons. The horses and riders are both covered with armor and are almost impervious to the Egyptians' weak spears and arrows. This devastating new weapon panics the remaining Egyptian solders and the battle, and finally the kingdom, is lost.
On a hill high above the battle the slave takes all of this in, but what has him reeling with shock and despair isn't the fearsome war machines before him.
It's the wheels the chariots are mounted on.
I admit, it must have been stupefying to the first Egyptians who saw them. After veritably a lifetime of rational, scientific endeavor like the hero in the book; to suddenly see something so obvious must have come as the most mind-altering, ego-shattering blow humanly imaginable.
Not to mention civilization-changing.
As I note in the piece, what's particularly baffling about it all is that we have natural axle-ready 'wheels' around us in nature, i.e., an eroded pebble in a stream bed or a sawed-off piece of tree trunk with a knot in the middle which pops out. So you'd think it would have evolved naturally, like fire, without any historical point of reference you could point to. But nope.
So, if you had to boil it down to one single moment, the great architects of the Egyptian empire seeing the wheel for the first time gets my vote.
A friend sent along this video from a recital for a music store in Los Angeles. Holy cow she's only ten years old. Double-plus good: That's her mother accompanying her on the piano. Cool choice of music, too. "Sicilienne" by Maria Teresia von Paradis. She was a blind musician and composer who had Salieri for a teacher and Mozart for a friend.
I don't know about you, but when I was ten years old, I was still eating earthworms I found in the playground, and my mother only played the radio. There's some hope for the human race yet.
USA Today said in a phone call on Sunday, Mr Trump and Moon Jae-in, his South Korean counterpart, “affirmed that North Korea poses a grave and growing direct threat to the United States, South Korea and Japan, as well as to most countries around the world”."
Little Kimmie better not work outside in the yard too often. Shame if something fell on him.
Scientists have adapted the ice cream by injecting it with polyphenol liquid extracted from strawberries. Polyphenol liquid has properties to make it difficult for water and oil to separate,” Tomihisa Ota, a professor at Kanazawa University, was quoted as saying.
Mmm. Polyphenols. If I recall my chemistry correctly (I bet I don't), Polyphenols are called "anti-nutrients." I don't go out of my way to eat anti-nutrients.
Across southern Europe, from the choked boulevards of Gaudi's Barcelona to the swarms of cruise liners disgorging passengers into Croatia's mediaeval Dubrovnik, residents are complaining that a sharp rise in tourism is making life intolerable. The backlash has sparked concerns for one of the region's biggest economic drivers and prompted authorities to act.
It appears that everyone in Europe is a French waiter now.
As wrangles over the peace treaty to officially end the war were reaching a climax in Paris, the German commander, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, believed that his ships were about to be seized as spoils of war and divided up between the victorious Allies. He felt duty-bound not to let that happen. Von Reuter's flagship, Emden, sent out the seemingly innocuous message - "Paragraph Eleven; confirm". It was a code ordering his men to scuttle their own ships.
If you scuttle your ship, do you have to keep up the loan payments? I'm asking for a friend.
The sighting is the first living record in the area since about 1982 and the first confirmed record since 1993, when a skull was found. The pine marten arrived in Britain after the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. They made their home in the woods that covered the country and at one point were the second commonest carnivore, with an estimated population of 147,000.
The digitization project currently focuses on discs that are less likely to be commercially available--or available at all in digital form--particularly focusing on underrepresented artists and genres. Digitization will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artifacts.
Neato. I wonder if they have a copy of Good Old Shoe?
The company has spent more than six years planning and building Apple Park to precise specifications. From a 100,000-square-foot fitness and wellness center, to meticulously designed fire exit signs, the company spared no expense in getting the details right — except, perhaps, when it comes to employee workspaces.
The national preference for cash, then, seems to be the flip side of aversion to debt, which, in turn, can be interpreted as a sign of deep-seated doubt about the future. (German businesspeople are also notorious for their pessimism about the future.) And fear of the future, of course, is rooted in the past.
I would have answered, "Because, unlike Greeks, they have some."
CEO Bob Iger told CNBC's Julia Boorstin Disney had a "good relationship" with Netflix, but decided to exercise an option to move its content off the platform. Movies to be removed include Disney as well as Pixar's titles, according to Iger. Netflix said Disney movies will be available through the end of 2018 on its platform. Marvel TV shows will remain.
I love the term "cord cutters." People who used to pay one cable TV bill and a small internet bill will now pay seventeen streaming service bills and a giant internet bill for bandwidth. You know, to save aggravation and money.
‘There is but one way to defend Samoa,’ he lectured them. ‘Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country … If you do not others will.’
Bannon’s basic argument, as he has outlined it to people who’ve spoken with him, is that Facebook and Google have become effectively a necessity in contemporary life. Indeed, there may be something about an online social network or a search engine that lends itself to becoming a natural monopoly, much like a cable company, a water and sewer system, or a railroad.
I think they misunderstood him. I think he was just referring to hanging them all on telephone poles.
"Resting and vesting" is when an employee, typically an engineer, has an easy workload (if any job responsibilities at all) and hangs out on the company's payroll collecting full pay and stock. Stock is often the bigger chunk of total compensation for a senior engineer than salary. Once the engineer was in rest-and-vest mode, this person spent the days attending tech conferences, working on pet coding projects, networking with friends, and planning the next career move.
Harrumph. Back in my day, sonny, we just married the boss's daughter.
Well, there are the links for today. I hope you're all ready for another grueling day of resting and vesting, or being henpecked, or maybe even working if you can't avoid it.
The project attracted Blanchett and Sorkin two years ago. “Lucy and Desi” will center on Ball’s 20-year marriage to Desi Arnaz. She eloped with the Cuban bandleader in 1940, and the two created the massively successful sitcom “I Love Lucy” in 1951 through their Desilu Productions. She won four Emmys for the role.
Lucille Ball? That Lucille Ball? Cate Blanchett is pretty enough to play Ethel Mertz. Maybe
The fish, a variety of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), is engineered to grow faster than its non-genetically modified counterpart, reaching market size in roughly half the time — about 18 months. AquaBounty sold its first commercial batch at market price: US$5.30 per pound ($11.70 per kilogram), says Ron Stotish, the company’s chief executive. He would not disclose who bought it.
UBS estimates the industry could save $35 billion and pass the savings along to passengers through lower fares if airlines could operate pilotless planes. The technology to do so could be developed by 2025, according to the report.
"And pass the savings along to passengers." Pull the other one. It has bells on
Richard and Tatu argues that differences in national income are correlated with differences in the average national intelligence quotient (IQ). They further argue that differences in average national IQs constitute one important factor, but not the only one, contributing to differences in national wealth and rates of economic growth.
No one brings the potato salad to the Mensa meetings in Equatorial Guinea
So email doesn't necessarily support social patterns, group patterns, although it can. Ditto a weblog. If I'm Glenn Reynolds, and I'm publishing something with Comments Off and reaching a million users a month, that's really broadcast. It's interesting that I can do it as a single individual, but the pattern is closer to MSNBC than it is to a conversation.
Poor Glenn. What did he ever do to this guy to get compared to MSNBC? Shoot his dog?
This video compilation is awesome. The awesome screen capture on this awesome video is awesome, but not nearly as awesome as the awesome video clip it’s so awesomely standing in for.
I remember the good old days when we called it "gnarly" instead of "awesome"
If you’re heading east on the 105 freeway to go from LAX to Pasadena, it’s just a few miles to the Beach Boys Historic Landmark in Hawthorne, California. It’s near the freeway at 3701 W. 119th Street. The monument marks the site of the childhood home of Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, the core members of the Beach Boys.
I remember the good old days when surfing was gnarly
France is world famous for its nudist beaches and its topless sunbathers but there are some rules or customs you need to abide by when it comes to taking your clothes off this summer. Here's what you need to know about dropping your top (or bottoms) on French beaches.
I think I'm supposed to warn you there's some naked people if you follow the hyperlink. The way the internet is going, pretty soon we'll have to warn you when there aren't naked people at the link
Swedish-Turkish writer Hamza Yalcin, 59, was arrested while holidaying in Spain, after Turkey accused him of plotting terror acts against the country, according to reports.
You have to admit, that headline is right up there with Headless Body In Topless Bar.
The ordinances (called visitationszoner in Danish) allow police to stop anyone within a predetermined area and search them for weapons without having probable cause. Copenhagen Police’s zone, set up last month, covered areas of Nørrebro, Husum, Brønshøj and Tingbjerg, where several shootings and stabbings have occurred in recent weeks.
Wow. That kind of fascist policing wouldn't fly in an enlightened country like the USA. And shootings and stabbings in Denmark? Must be fake news
The premise is familiar: Six young strangers live in a house—the first one’s located in Tokyo—and interact as relationships form. That’s where comparisons to American reality TV basically end. Terrace House is different from other reality shows in almost every way.
Who could have predicted that Japanese youngsters would be better behaved than Americans?
The results of the research showed that on average German firms had 26 employees per supervisor. In Switzerland this ratio was 13.6 to one, in the UK it was 10.3 to one, and US firms had 7.1 workers for every superior.
Baylor played for the Orioles, Athletics, Angels, Yankees, Red Sox and Twins over a 19-year career. He was an All-Star and the MVP winner with the Angels in 1979, when he led the majors in RBIs and runs and also set career highs in home runs and hits.
Don Baylor was a blast to watch. He'd stand in one batters box and lean over the other one. RIP, big fella
Bird Dog has gone fishing for the week. His Raja Isteri figured his audience would bridle at seven full days without a little touch of Bird Dog in the night, so she kindly sent me a picture of him up to his old angling tricks. Bird Dog isn't much of a fisherman, truth be told. Just between you and me, he jacklights great whites. He even tried a salt lick once, but it didn't work all that well. I'm not sure why. Anyway, as you can see, Bird Dog is just another square old man who wears his shoes when he goes swimming.
The invention suggests employing a super tall chimney to facilitate heat exchange in the atmosphere as a remedy to Global Warming. Calculations show that if we can construct a chimney 5 kilometers (3 mile) tall and 20 meters in diameter out of flexible fabric material. Such Chimney will be sturdy enough to stand upright and withstand side winds. We will need as many 25,000 of such chimneys to stop global warming.
Little-known fact: The best jokes are unintentional
It had been a hectic news day. In one of the shrillest moments in
America’s infamous anti-communism “red scare,” husband and wife Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg were both found guilty of conspiracy to commit
espionage.
Apparently little-known fact to some people: The USSR is no longer operative. We've read their files. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty, guilty, guilty
The report suggests new types of leadership will emerge. Rather than aiming to become a professional manager (“to take expert bricklayers, so to speak, and make them managers of other bricklayers”), top talent would shift to contribute directly to a company’s service or product and communicate directly with each other rather than through managers (they should be”guilds of bricklayers”).
Little-known fact: You can hire bad writers who shotgun quotation marks and parentheses into everything to pretend to be impartially reporting on a newsworthy trend just to get a link back to the company that hired them, because the FTC isn't paying attention to the internet. Yet
Little-known fact: My parents produced an emotionally intelligent machine using nothing but a bottle of Mateus, a Bobby Darin record, and some private school tuition
There is no such thing as EQ. Let me repeat that: "There is NO SUCH THING AS EQ." The idea was popularized by a journalist, Daniel Goleman, not a psychologist. You can't just invent a trait. You have to define it and measure it and distinguish it from other traits and use it to predict the important ways that people vary.
Little-known fact: You can't mention this at Google, either
Have a great Monday, everyone. If you can manage it, you should go fishin'.
Hello again. Roger here. Bird Dog's off to get wormed, or get his nails clipped, or something, so you're stuck with me. I can't do nearly as good a job as Bird Dog when it comes to assembling links for you fine people. My lips get really tired reading all those stories. However, he's started me off on Saturday. It's a smart strategy. Nothing much happens on the weekends, so I can't get into too much trouble. Of course George III is reported to have written "Nothing of importance happened today," in his diary on July 4th, 1776, so maybe I better scan the papers for you just in case. On to the links!
France is nominally secular, but just like Britain and #ourNHS the French have a state religion - its famously strict labour market. Gallic politicians of left and right are cursed the second they touch the subject of reforms but it looks possible that is about to be confounded. President Macron won his landslide victory earlier this year while advocating far-reaching reforms of labour laws, against the protectionist and dirigiste Mme Le Pen. And on Tuesday the Assemblie Nationale voted through a bill allowing the government to fast-track changes to the labour code.
Dirigiste? My French is rusty. She's not that fat, is she?
Thus the authors’ fatuous pronouncement that: “In recognizing the central role that the medical profession can play in reducing firearm injuries, the court’s ruling highlights the opportunity that physicians have to reduce firearm violence.”
Just plug the holes, doc, and mind yer own business.
The new Doctor Who is a woman. “All the cool humans are thrilled,” cooed Mashable; “Pissboys Are Melting Down,” added Dorkly (when did nerds start talking like bitter drag queens?). The Telegraph was slightly more sober and wrote off the whole thing with “Who cares?” It doesn’t matter to the establishment left because we’ve already established that men are exactly the same as women—especially when it comes to fiction. They see nothing wrong with female superheroes and action stars.
You know, you could turn it off. It sounds crazy, I know, but you could. Smart people never looked at it in the first place.
The Slow-Motion Coup d’Etat picks up steam - Leak of full transcripts of presidential conversations with foreign leaders a milestone in effort to paralyze the Trump administration.
Look, the problem with special prosecutors is you assemble a team of the best of the best in search of a crime. Normally, you have a crime and then the prosecutors go out and try to prove it. With a special prosecutor, you start with Whitewater and you end up with a blue dress. That’s a long journey. Here, the Russia thing obviously is a pretext, and it’s going to be a subject of the investigation. But it appears to be going into the territory that Trump has wanted to protect, namely his business. At some point, we could come to a crisis. And I worry for the country because this is not good that the presidency, the judiciary, and Congress would be at loggerheads when you really don’t have anybody that ultimately would adjudicate. It would be the Supreme Court but we know that can cause real reverberations for decades.
Mueller Plunges Across Trump's Red Line - A Wall Street Journal story claimed the investigation had moved before a grand jury, while CNN reported it was looking into potential financial crimes unrelated to the 2016 election.
Stephen Miller is historically correct. Lady Liberty was designed by the French as an inspirational symbol for the US illuminating the whole world with the idea of individual liberty so the world could enjoy the freedom of Americans - not as a welcome mat.
Emma Lazarus' sentimental poem was a 1903 addition to the site of the statue, for some reason.
What should America's immigration policies be? Let the American people decide. Who else should?
The leaders of the Women’s March, arguably the most prominent feminists in the country, have some chilling ideas and associations. Far from erecting the big tent so many had hoped for, the movement they lead has embraced decidedly illiberal causes and cultivated a radical tenor that seems determined to alienate all but the most woke.
... in contemporary Republican La-La Land, the party in power with control over all three branches of government allows its minority-status opponents to dictate the rules of special investigations and inquiry—a Jeff Sessions recused, a Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) excused from his investigations of unmasking and leaking, a Robert Mueller appointed as special counsel, friend of to-be-investigated James Comey, and employer of partisan attorneys.
Is naiveté the cause of such laxity? Do Republicans unilaterally follow Munich rules because they hope such protocols will create a new “civility” and “bipartisan cooperation” in Washington?
Repubs have balls during elections, none when elected. The Left plays the middle during elections, then goes straight for their goals when elected.
The administrative state is by far the greatest contemporary threat to the liberty of Americans. The appalling Sally Yates urges that the Constitution be left in the dust, and that unelected bureaucrats be elevated above the president whom they ostensibly serve. It is hard to imagine a theory more at odds with our Constitution or our political traditions.
A culture, like a person, is born, lives and then it dies. Like a person, it’s youth is a chaotic becoming, while its maturing is what it became. It’s death is romanticizing what it was and then, it is gone. That’s the American Left now. It is a thing for old people and young romantics, but the death certificate has been filled out with everything but the date. The radical culture that was born in the 60’s and flourished for two generations is about to expire.
The Trump effect is a good thing. He is doing exactly what he said he would do and exactly what people elected him to do. Newsflash to the Beltway establishment: Americans who elected Trump do not worship the current gods of the city. They know you’re responsible for killing the old ones and they wish to return the favor now. We want your gods dead. That is sort of what “drain the swamp” means. And, as Trump points out repeatedly: in America (at least in the middle part) we don’t worship government; we worship God. As in the one true God.
Why do libertarians and Christians intentionally increasingly use the term “government schools” to describe public education? First, because it’s true. Public schools are government schools. Second, because it’s clarifying. Too many Americans are stuck in a time warp, believing that the local school is somehow “their” school. They don’t understand that public education is increasingly centralized — teaching a uniform curriculum, teaching a particular, secular set of values, and following priorities set in Washington, not by their local school board. The phrase is helpful for breaking through idealism and getting parents to analyze and understand the gritty reality of modern public education. The phrase works.
Andy McCarthy: If You Think the Imran Awan Investigation Is About Bank Fraud, You're Wrong. It's About Islamophobia.
"There's a part of America that is sick and tired of being told what to do by this overeducated population that Hillary Clinton perfectly represented. That's why they're sticking with him."
Kinsley: "Yes, it’s true that Hillary Clinton got more votes, but he got the votes of more than 62 million people — and I am pretty sure I don’t know any of them."
... most have never seen such an immediate and no holds-barred battle between the Washington power structure and a new administration, because there has never been one, and want to see which way it moves before getting aboard one battle wagon or the other.
Kevin is amusingly prickly, but misses the point. Trump was not elected for his IQ, breadth of knowledge, refinement, morals, wisdom, or policy savvy. He did not run on those qualities. He was elected because he was an outsider, to disconnect the cables and overturn the tables. He is trying.
A reckless non-careerist is what was wanted. You don't have to like the obnoxious SOB to appreciate some of the things he has done. If you dislike his personalty, then don't invite him to your next dinner party.
As you probably know, a total solar eclipse is due in the U.S. on August 21. For now, I want to mention two things.
1. If possible, you definitely want to catch it. It is — by definition alone — a rare and spectacular event. I saw the one in 1979 and it remains on my "Three most amazing things I've ever seen" list. It'll be worth the driving time, even spending the night in a motel. So start making plans now. This is the last total eclipse we'll see for seven years, and that one will only cross the eastern U.S. After that, it'll be a wait of twenty-one years.
2. If you're going to watch it, you'll definitely need some special eyeglasses. An Amazon link is here. Just make sure you get the "ISO certified" type, not just "ISO tested". I'm mentioning this simply because time is running short and the glasses you order might be backlogged or the company might get swamped with last-minute orders.
The best map I've seen of the path of totality is here. Use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in or the plus and minus keys. Head for the center line, as that's where the full eclipse will last the longest. Click on a specific area for a pop-up box with the peak times. They'll be in UT time, so to convert it to your time zone, click here.
Six months into the Trump presidency, it seems safe to say that America has never had a political experience like the one he has brought to the White House...
They had the chance to do something good. Could have gotten rid of mandate, allowed a wide variety of plans, and allowed cross-state plan sales. For starters.
He’s a once in a century political force who will be judged more on what he destroys than on what he creates. He is the destroyer of worlds, because the world of Washington needs destroying.
Off to the Cape for a few days with family and friends. View from our patio
Remembering Sam Shepard’s 
Gwynnie sent us this email bouquet from his garden and from the woods in the Sierra Nevadas 
Monarch pic from reader 
As you probably know, a total solar eclipse is due in the U.S. on August 21. For now, I want to mention two things.
Reasons Your Creative Type Has Broken Up with You