Maggie's FarmWe 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. |
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Saturday, September 2. 2017The magic of 'Everclear'Sure, it's fun listening to a half-century old Dylan tune. Sure, it's a kick to hear about how a bunch of snowflakes were scared by a banana peel. Sure, it's interesting reading about how a 1926 tractor was rebuilt. But let's talk about an important issue, shall we? Booze. For those of you who like your booze mixed with a soda, allow me to introduce a truly wonderful product to you called Everclear. Because here's the fun part: It doesn't have any taste. Almost be definition, alone, all liquors (yes, even vodka) have a taste. The question then becomes, how does it affect the taste of your favorite soda? Usually in the negative would be my guess. In my case, I'm a confirmed gingeraleaholic. I've been buying Canada Dry Ginger Ale since it was located in the wine aisle of the grocery store, right next to the Tom Collins mix, simply because it was originally designated a mixer, not a soda pop. It wasn't until years later when the Dr. Pepper people bought Canada Dry and turned it into an everyday soda that it came into its own. Since I don't like drinking straight booze, I started experimenting, mixing different liquors with my Ginger Ale. I tried a number of different whiskies, scotch, bourbon, brandy, vodka, a number of rums, and they all failed the taste test. Basically, nothing goes with Ginger Ale. Then I raised my plaintive plight while sitting around the community table at one of the marinas I stayed at while living on my boat in the Florida Keys, and someone suggested Everclear. Et voila! Oh, and the reason it doesn't have any taste? It's pure grain alcohol. On top of that, it's 190 proof, so just a splash in your soda of choice does the trick, so one could argue that it's one of the most economical liquors out there. As a small side note, in case your local liquor store doesn't carry it, there's a similar product called Golden Grain, made by the same company. Thank goodness we finally got around to discussing an important issue!
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Thursday, August 31. 2017Floods and storms are natural; Flood and storm disasters are man-made
For examples, when a river overflows its banks it delivers fresh silt and soil to the flood plain, rejuvenating it (eg the Nile, eg the Mississippi Delta). When a strong storm blows through a forest and knocks down miles of trees, it restarts the forest cycle providing fresh habitat for all sorts of species who live in forest openings. For the Indians, that was an excellent thing. The disaster part is man-defined, not nature-defined. When people build on flood plains (eg Houston) or on sea-level marshes (New Orleans), big trouble is predictable. And when man covers those flood zones with asphalt and buildings, or alters rivers with canals and levees, it makes it all worse. Excellent essay by Grunwald at Politico: How Washington Made Harvey Worse - A federal insurance program made Harvey far more costly—and Congress could have known it was coming. Of course governments and benevolent souls have to step in when these "natural disasters" threaten lives, but a good way to think about it would be, in future at least, market pricing for flood and storm insurance. Let the actuaries figure out the real risk and cost of what people do and put a price on that. Wednesday, August 30. 2017"Age 70 is the new 50"
It's worth reading Cicero's essay On Growing Old before growing old. Appropriately enough, that edition is in large print. Meanwhile, I endorse efforts to remain physically and mentally as vigorous as possible for as long as possible. It makes life more productive and fulfilling but, with luck and if we want to, we might end up old. Movie Review: Five old-timey war flicks (oceanic version)
With one exception, all of the movies I've reviewed over the past few months have been fairly recent releases. Today, we step back in time. Here are five wonderful war flicks from the early days: — Sink The Bismarck (1960) — The Enemy Below (1957) — Destination Tokyo (1943) — Run Silent Run Deep (1958) — Operation Petticoat (1959) And there are certain features that distinguish these films from the modern war flick. There's no gorgeous starlet awaiting our hero when he returns home. There's no trick computer gimmicks or the latest, hot special effects. There's no frantic, hurried-up pace; in fact, some of the events actually take place in (gasp!) real-time. There's no thunderous music score when the bad guy is finally bested. And, just as interesting, there's no long list in the credits of stunt men. If there's any list at all. In other words, these films are genuine. Continue reading "Movie Review: Five old-timey war flicks (oceanic version)"
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Sunday, August 27. 2017Recommended toyA pal invited me to do some 5 AM salt water kayaking yesterday, the plan being to do some sunrise drone photography over the water and to get a couple of hours of exercise. He built a landing platform on the bow of one of his kayaks. Admit it - that's a cool thing to do. Paddling out in the dark, startling the night herons - wonderful of course. The beauty of kayaking is no noise, no sails to mess with, no concern about the water depth, and you get good exercise. In the dark, it feels magical. Unlike duck hunting (also an early start around here), it's not frigid and sleeting when you set out on the water. Anyway, this darn drone (the Solo) has about 20-25 minutes of power and it is damn fast. We put it up to around 3000 feet and sent it off about 2500 feet (around 1/2 mile) across the water when it lost contact. However, since it tracks GPS satellites, it automatically returns to its launch area when it loses contact so you easily regain control when it comes back into range. The thing has a gimbel and GoPro camera connected to your iPhone. Video or still shots. It only takes a minute to see why the military loves these toys. There are various regulations about how these toys can be used, many of them sensible. There's never a problem over water, if you keep the altitude below aircraft. Sunrise, yesterday morning, around 200 feet above Long Island Sound:
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Thursday, August 24. 2017Marginal Utility and happinessI did not win yesterday's Powerball, darn it. I guess I can't have every material thing I can think of. I don't need a new car, but I am constantly tempted by new car ideas. Fact is, there are other things I choose to spend my money on. Some are necessary expenses (eg dental), some are optional, recreational, and some are charitable. A simple explanation of Marginal Utility.
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New England Real Estate: Redding CT
Redding has a few nasty mcmansions but it's still far enough from things to have a rural character while having high-functioning residents. If this place in Redding had another ten or 20 acres, it would appeal more to me. Frontage on the large pond, a large greenhouse, and, interestingly, it used to be Edward Steichen's studio. It's for sale. I'd let lots of that lawn turn to once/year mowed meadow. Mowed in early August, after the meadow birds and bunnies have bred.
Posted by Bird Dog
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Wednesday, August 23. 2017Animal pleasures, satisfactions, and delightsAs summer begins to reach an end here in the northern hemisphere, I found myself recently alone on a remote beach in Maine soaking up beneficial solar rays with no clothing and no sunscreen. I pulled a small kayak up on the little island's rocky beach, and exulted in Mr. Sun's reaching sweetly into every crack and pore of my imperfect and slightly-aging multi-gravida but decently-athletic body. Mr. Sun doesn't discriminate. I reflected on the pure animal pleasures as only the human kind of animal can reflect. The delight of touch, like the delight of a warm breeze. A gently rocking boat. The heat of the sun on skin, a breeze through your naked pubes. A hug from a friend or kid. A dog licking your hand. Sexual delights, of course. Powerful. The taboo relief pleasures of peeing and pooing. A hot shower that you hate to leave. The thrill of a violent thunderstorm. The tingle of a spoonful of delicious champagne sorbet or fresh raspberry sorbet. The joy of smacking a tennis overhead onto the sneakers of an opponent on a sunny morning. A hot tomato off the vine. The smell of hot trees and flowers. The pleasure of giving in to gravity onto a cozy bed at the end of a day. The fun of walking into cool air conditioning from a sizzling street, and the fun of walking from a car onto a sizzling beach. A chilly glass or two of chardonnay on the lawn at 5 pm. Mindless, happy-animal, universal pleasures. Controlled hedonisms with no vomitoria or alcohol- and cocaine-fueled orgies. Each season offers its own set of innocent delights, but summertime offers the most. Carpe diem, because you and I might not be alive next year. Anything can happen. I believe in working hard and long, but not always being a drudge. What's for supper? Grab a beer and make yourselves a turkey sandwich, family. I ain't cooking. What's your view? Tuesday, August 22. 2017Applause for entrepreneurs: Nora Gardner.comIt is remarkable and noteworthy to me when anybody successfully opens an independent business in this country's anti-business climate, whether it's local plumbing, money management, or a clothing line. It's good for people whenever somebody has the cojones to do such things. Many people get jobs from it. Why does government make it so hard to do? One high-energy young gal we have been following is Nora Gardner, whose online shop for conservative upscale professional women's wear ("Day-to-Night" clothing, made of Italian wool right in New York City's garment district) has added a flagship shop on 58th between Madison and Park. Mostly online, though. Lots of people try being employees, and conclude that they ain't gonna work for Maggie's Farm no more. That's good, that's the American spirit. I tried to be an employee for a while. Hated it, never looked back despite the "security." Problem is, it's a bitch to be your own boss, because boss is too hard on you. Gotta be tough, bold, and brave, and take a ton of self-criticism. You Go, Girl.
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Monday, August 21. 2017Catboat du Jour: Marshall 22
Catboats of any size tend to be beamy, stable, and comfortable. With no jib, they can not point worth a darn. Not a bad idea to have a motor for when wanted. Picking a horsepower for a sailboat is a bit complicated. Salt Water New England posted the pic below of a Marshall 22 quite close to the (not under power, I assume, or just holding in place) Queen Mary 2 somewhere in New England. Marshalls come with a diesel engine. If you ever have the chance to take a Cunard liner across the Atlantic, do it. She is a true ocean liner, not a cruise ship. Today, the Queen Mary is at dock in NYC, due to leave for Hamburg soon. A sail on a catboat on a breezy day is is good too. Marshalls for sale here.
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Sunday, August 20. 2017Fun football quotes"I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game." Bear Bryant / Alabama "It isn't necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it!” - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame "At Georgia Southern, we don't cheat. That costs money, and we don't have any." Erik Russell / Georgia Southern "The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it." - Lou Holtz / Arkansas - Notre Dame "When you win, nothing hurts." - Joe Namath / Alabama "A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall." - Frank Leahy / Notre Dame "There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." - Woody Hayes / Ohio State "I don't expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation." - Bob Devaney / Nebraska "In Alabama , an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in Bear Bryant." - Wally Butts / Georgia "I never graduated from Iowa. But I was only there for two terms - Truman's and Eisenhower's." Alex Karras / Iowa "My advice to defensive players is to take the shortest route to the ball, and arrive in a bad humor. - Bowden Wyatt / Tennessee "I could have been a Rhodes Scholar except for my grades." - Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State "Always remember Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David." - Shug Jordan / Auburn "I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn't recruit me ." He said,"Well, Walt, we took a look at you, and you weren't any good." - Walt Garrison / Oklahoma State "Son, you've got a good engine, but your hands aren't on the steering wheel." - Bobby Bowden / Florida State Lots more below the fold - Continue reading "Fun football quotes"
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Friday, August 18. 2017House Music, with a question for our genius readers
My house radio music has always been WQXR (live streamed or sometimes regular radio), but on the Cape I discovered Chatham's Cape Classical 107.5. They are at least as enjoyable as WQXR and they also live stream. OK, I do CDs also, but only radio introduces me to music I haven't heard before. My perennial question to my readers is this: How do I get live-streamed music to go through my fancy speakers? Or is streamed music of such lousy quality that it doesn't matter? What about a Bluetooth audio receiver? I don't know how those work. I eagerly await suggestions.
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Thursday, August 17. 2017Seals and sharksThe movie "Jaws" ruined beach fun for millions of people. Like "Psycho" with showers and "Snakes on the Plane" with airplanes, the idea was to make money by creating disturbing mental images for people who live lives blessedly free of elemental terrors. Shark attacks on humans are extremely rare, and probably mostly accidental. Still, the thought of it is disturbing and resonates with our deepest "monster under the bed" terrors. I never saw Jaws. Didn't want to. I do know the famous lines from it, though. Great Whites are cold-water eating machines. They congregate where the food is. They will live on fish, but seem to prefer delicious mammalian flesh so they go where they can find it. Does the Bird Dog family swim with the seals? Yes, and the gals often with wet suits that make them look like cute seals. You can't have a life if fear dominates every aspect of it. I do not frequent golf courses in thunderstorms, but I do not frequent golf courses anyway. Short video: A shark expert says this US coastline could be the next danger zone for great white shark attacks
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Retirement
My observations are that people (mostly men) tend to feel useless if not emasculated by retirement, and end up finding new challenges. Forced retirement, due to health or being let go for whatever reason, is particularly crushing to the male self-image. A vacation is one thing, but a permanent vacation is not so special for most people. You can only play so much golf, and a wife usually does not want a guy hanging around a house all day. Income is also a factor. A top financial adviser says the notion of retirement is gone — here's what he thinks people will do instead What's your view? Is retirement a life goal or an ending of some sort? I clearly feel that it is a lousy life goal, because life is only today regardless of age.
Posted by The Barrister
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Monuments, Identity and RaceI don't want to write a commentary on the violence in Charlottesville. What happened is terrible, wrong, and any discussion of violence begins and ends with the violent acts themselves, not the activity commentators choose to associate it with. I rarely take part in group protests or political gatherings because the likelihood of one outlier who wants to impart damage is very high and I neither want to be associated with, nor a victim of, poor individual choices. I do want to write a commentary on the removal of icons and monuments. In Tuesday's morning news, Bird Dog posted an article about Confederate statues in the Capitol building. Before I dig in, I want to point out that if a statue triggers your emotions, I suggest you think long and hard about why you're having an emotional response to an inanimate object. I'd further point out that if these emotions regarding the statue are related to taking offense, or increasing your anger or hatred, you may want to see a therapist. I'm not a psychologist or psychotherapist, and maybe one of our other writers who are in that field can elaborate (or even tell me I'm wrong) about this point. Consider one fact. Since Monday, monuments around the US have been removed, sometimes forcibly, in an angry response to Charlottesville. Taking this further, New York's governor, and NYC's mayor, have decided to review and remove 'symbols of hate'. One NYC councilman said "if not hate, at least symbols of hurt." I'll have to send him my list of statues that 'hurt' me. I think politicians, and people, get bent out of shape over strange things. When I see virtually any protest forming, I begin to think "Don't those people have better things to do?" It's been a long time since I marched or protested or did anything political in a group setting. I generally don't like aligning with large groups that claim to speak for me. But a bigger personal issue is the current mindset is the assumption that if you don't agree with removal, you must somehow be sympathetic to the white supremacists. Thought Police abound in today's society, driven by emotions of hurt and hate. Moral equivalency is employed with alarming regularity, often unnecessarily and ignorantly. I'll relate one experience I had in which I'd have to admit I was emotionally 'triggered'. It was a great learning lesson. I was in college. I was working on a TV show about hunger for the college station. A speaker arrived and handed out leaflets. One person pasted several of them on the set. It was an elephant with "GOP" written across his chest, preparing to drop a nuclear bomb. This was 1984, I was 22 years old and Reagan was being protested regularly on campus. I stood up, stated my opposition to the leaflet on the set, saying it neither had anything to do with hunger, and had everything to do with politics which we weren't discussing. I was told to be quiet and do my job. I protested again, saying it "offended my sensibilities" and that I couldn't work on a project like this. The professor who managed the station walked over, put his arm around me and said "you will be asked to do difficult and uncomfortable things throughout your life, and on your job. If you allow your emotions to get the better of you, it will cost you your job. Today, if you walk off the set, you will fail the day's project." I walked off the set, took my "F" for the day and still got an "A" for the class. But I learned a lesson. Don't let your emotions overwhelm you. I could have done the work and still been effective at my job. Today, I guess I could've sued for a "hostile workplace." Continue reading "Monuments, Identity and Race" Wednesday, August 16. 2017Movie Review: 3½ more great movies Cloud Atlas — Marvelous, just marvelous. One of Tom Hanks' best. The Martian — One of Matt Damon's increasingly good roles. The Great Wall — Superb special effects, great monsters, seriously hot Chinese chick. What more do you want? Rogue One — This is the '½' flick. It is, by no means, a 'great' movie, but there's an important point to be made. As always, you're encouraged to click on the icon on the lower-right of the player's tool bar to open them up to full-screen size. Hit ESC to get back to windows mode when through. Goodies are below the fold. Continue reading "Movie Review: 3½ more great movies"
Posted by Dr. Mercury
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Today's Tap
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Saturday, August 12. 2017What Physics does these days. The power of the gods, reposted in case you missed it
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Thursday, August 10. 2017Academic LanguageToon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article. Is academic language in the humanities and social sciences designed to obfuscate, is it just packaged cant from people with nothing to say, or is it smoke-signaling? One prof claims "As a professor ... one seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.” From ACADEMIC LANGUAGE AND THE PROBLEM OF MEANINGLESSNESS
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Tuesday, August 8. 2017NYC bars in the 1800s
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Monday, August 7. 2017Second oldest trickThe cup trick. He explains it, sort of.
Posted by The News Junkie
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These boots are made for walkingMy Meindl "Light Hikers" have over 100 miles on them by now, and are as comfortable as sneakers. Although they are lighter than the Meindl hikers, they are not exactly light (3 lbs). My old Adidas hikers are lighter, but not as tough on rocks so I will keep them for ordinary hikes without steeps, scree, or boulders. What those Meindls have, besides excellent stability when tied properly, is a velcro-like grip on steep and wet rock, gravel, and mud. I tried many times to see at what point they would slip, and they just would not. That is very cool. For serious Alpine stuff, I'd go for their regular "Perfekt Hiker", but I have no plans for that. A couple of points: - I use liner socks with these boots. Probably don't need to, but why not? - Since my feet are not used to long hikes day after day, I go prepared for dealing with hot spots and blisters. Didn't have a single problem with that. - Nothing is waterproof with heavy rain and wind. "Waterproof" boots do nothing for rain pouring in from the top, or from having to cross water that is over boot-level. Fortunately, human skin is waterproof. - Word to the wise: In Europe, "walking" adventures typically means off-trail steep hill and non-technical mountain hiking with cliffs and boulders. It's not what I call "walking."
Posted by Bird Dog
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Pining for a gritty NYC
Perhaps the author has not read about what Manhattan was like in the David Dinkins era. You can keep that kind of gritty if you want it with the muggings and the morning dead in the parks from gunshot and ODs. What is most obnoxious about the false-sentimentality of it is that the author seems to see Manhattan as NYC. The author needs to get off the magic island and hike around like the Forgotten New York guy does. There are a lot of neighborhoods in New York, most not Dinkins-era gritty anymore but many fairly rugged and ungentrified. Regular people live there. Millions of them.
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Sunday, August 6. 2017A book: Wittgenstein's NephewThomas Bernhard. I'll get it (in English). I often take Cowen's recommendations, and he has Stefan Zweig on his list, and Zweig's novels are revelatory. It has been too many years since I could read a novel in German but there was a time when I could.
Posted by The Barrister
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16:36
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Outdoor fireplace/pizza ovenThe guys began work on one like the one in the photo but with fieldstone not cut stone. It will be on the edge of our bluestone patio. Have to keep up with the Joneses. Actually, I like any reason to be outside, day or night. On these global cooling summer evenings, a fire, a cigar, and a little whisky make for the perfect contemplative moments. And the smoke keeps the bugs away. I might decide to learn to make home-made pizza too. How difficult can it be?
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