Saturday, January 15. 2011
I am continuing to clean up my image closet. Feel free to use 'em or steal them. It's another good stash. Can't recall where they all came from, but any of them that were used here were properly attributed.
Don't let them go to waste. Recycling makes Gaia smile.
More random and informative images, toons, and charts below the fold -
Continue reading "Another random image dump: Fun pics and valuable and interesting charts and graphs"
When it comes to movies, I have to confess that I've been seriously disappointed with most of the Westerns I've watched in recent years. To pick on a few:
Unforgiven — Wow, a Clint Eastwood western. That means it's got to be good, right? Yeah, except there was one gun fight in the whole dang thing, and probably the most unrealistic gun fight in cinematic history, at that. Yawn.
Appaloosa — Just can't go wrong with Ed Harris, Renée Zellweger and Viggo Mortensen, right? Yeah, except the writers spent 90% of the movie dealing with the intricate, puzzling, lurid, soap-opera relationship between Ed Harris, Renée Zellweger and Viggo Mortensen! As an additional plus, Hollywood was so afraid that someone in the audience might be shocked by actual gun play on the screen that they toned down the gun sounds to just below that of cap gun level.
3:10 To Yuma — Hey, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, just can't go wrong with that duo, right? Okay, picture the following:
The movie opens with twenty bad guys chasing a stage, greed in their eyes. The guy on the stage riding shotgun (hence the term) is firing back with a big shotgun, picking them off here and there. This goes on for endless minutes. Then the camera is a quarter mile ahead of the stage as Russell Crowe drives a herd of cattle across the road, blocking it. The stage comes wheeling to a stop. All in all, a very effective, efficient way to stop a stage — EXCEPT THAT TEN OF YOUR BUDDIES ARE LYING DEAD ON THE ROAD BACK THERE!!
The rest of the movie was just some big 'war of wills' between Crowe and Bale — which was really the point of the movie in the first place; to display the writers' brilliant virtuosity — and the fact that it took place in western times was more or less irrelevant.
The Assassination of Jesse James — Hey, Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, just can't go wrong with that combo, right? Actually, I have no idea. I was too busy heaving my guts into the toilet because of Affleck's acting performance — or lack thereof. Let me know how it turned out. Did Jesse live?
Silverado, Open Range, Wyatt Earp — For the love of God, won't someone PLEASE tell Kevin Costner to stop playing cowboys? I'm sorry — I honestly love the guy and think he's brilliant as a sports hero (Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Tin Cup, For Love of the Game) — but with those boyish cheekbones, weak chin and soft voice, he simply doesn't look or sound the part of the tough Westerner. By means of comparison, check out Kurt Russell's performance as Earp in the link below. That's what a Westerner looks and sounds like.
Tombstone — I'd give this thing an 'A' if it hadn't spent endless, interminable minutes bogged down in his wife's endless, interminable opium problem.
Wild Wild West — Both the critics and every decent movie lover in the world hated this thing, so naturally I loved it. The superb 'anti-chemistry' between Will Smith and Kevin Kline hasn't been seen since the unlikely pairing of Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro in Showtime. While not an outright 'Western' by genre (it would more properly fit in the category of 'Western Sci-Fi'), at least there were loud guns and galloping horses.
The Quick and the Dead — I actually thought this was a pretty good flick, but it wasn't a Western, as such, in the sense that it all took place in the middle of a street and, as a dueling event, could have taken place in Al Capone's Chicago or even today. Gene Hackman is such a badass that I made him #2 on my cinematic Tough Guys page.
So, all in all, I've been quite disappointed with Westerns in recent years.
Then up rode Jonah Hex:
"Cut muhself shavin'. What happened to yours?"
That pretty much says it all. Without giving anything away, it's a straight-up Western with one additional element of... (gropes for proper word)... spirituality that really makes it something special. Josh Brolin stars, John Malkovich is the merciless bad guy, and Megan Fox turns in a spectacular role as dragon bait.
Below the fold we'll take a peek at the new BBC presentation of the (ongoing) Sherlock Holmes story.
Continue reading "Movie review: 'Jonah Hex', 'Sherlock'"
Friday, January 14. 2011
This pic from Retriever:
These from Gwynnie, an autumn ago:
An Englishwoman talks, anonymously, about her recent years in Birmingham. It's about "societal suicide," and it seems to be a disease of Western Civilization. A quote from her report:
To a London reader, born and bred with multiculturalism, I know that my stories may come across as outlandish and exaggerated, and that I must surely be a BNP voter — I have observed people's expressions as they have listened to my tales of life in Brum. When I recently told a friend how a large Taliban flag fluttered gaily on a house near St Andrew's football stadium for some months, her cry of "Can't you tell the police?" made me reflect how far many of our inner cities have been abandoned by our key workers: our doctors and nurses drive in from afar, the police, as mentioned before, have shut down their stations and never venture in unless in extremis — they and ambulance crews have been known to be attacked — even the local Imam lives in a leafier area.
Thursday, January 13. 2011
Re Grand Central Station: "It's bloody gorgeous." As I was walking around late this afternoon, making my rounds, a Brit couple, rightly perceiving me to be a friendly, approachable, and respectable bloke, asked where where they might find a cab. We were near Grand Central, so I suggested they try the main exit from the station. Usually some cabs there. "Seen the inside of the station?" I asked. Well, this nice, refined older couple followed me in through the side door and down the escalator to check it out. I hope they found a cab or, as Brits are wont to do, found a cozy nook for a drinky. I did recommend the Campbell Apartment for a good cocktail, which many people do not know about.
As a country boy who lived in the city for around 6 years in younger days, I still get a rush of energy and inspiration just by visiting for a day or two. And that is despite the fact that, most places I go, you cannot smoke a ceegar indoors thanks to the sanctimonious jerk Nanny Bloomberg.
More pics from today, below the fold -
Continue reading "Pics: Hanging out around midtown"
HDV video for sports. Mount it on your helmet, your hat, or whatever. The GoPro.
Watch the sample ski helmet-mounted vid on their site. Great stuff.
Tuesday, January 11. 2011
 A Bird Dog pup (pupette, actually) has asked me to help her fill out her college education by listing some things she ought to know and read, but cannot fit into her college schedule as she has mapped it out.
Music to a Dad's ears, of course. Father knows best.
Well, I will just focus on one piece of her request here and now (because it went well beyond entertainment - this is just the fun part). She is a theater rat and reads plays daily for fun. She knows most of Shakespeare pretty well, and loves Pinter too (!). But she says her knowledge of films prior to her era is very limited. "What films should I know?," she asks. (I call them movies because I am a knuckle-dragging clinger.)
Ain't it great when the youths acknowledge their ignorance?
I told her I had once, for fun, made a list of my 100 essential movies (and I am not much of a movie fan), but it went away when my ancient Mac died ten years ago. Naturally, my list had some John Wayne, Gone With The Wind, Bridge Over The River Kwai, Swept Away, Streetcar, Waterfront, Mr. Blandings, Wonderful Life, the hideously painful Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, some James Bond and some WC Fields, Citizen Kane, Days of Wine and Roses, some Jack Lemmon like 7 Year Itch, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Harvey, Billy Budd, the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol ( which she has seen countless times), and, as one item, all of Charlie Chaplin. I don't want to try to make my list again, and, for a person who is more of a reader than a movie person, I got well over 100 with my list of basic flicks.
If you google "100 essential movies of all time," you can get all sorts of obscure lists by critics. She did take the time from her Christmas-break reading and ski trips to New Hampshire and constant NYC trips to watch Amarcord today, which definitely is on my list.
Man, that movie is rich in memorable imagery, and as Italian as anchovies in olive oil.
So help me out. What's on your essential movies-to-see-to-be-culturally-literate list? (please do not feel that you need to list 100!).
 I wonder what our readers use for high-quality computer speakers. I am using my machine more and more to listen to music while doing paperwork, even though I have a fine real sound system in my office for radio and CDs. I won't use headphones, and I do not waste time with computer games: engaging in real life offers more than enough games for me - and the result counts.
A friend told me the Bose stuff is good, but I have no clue.
Advice requested. Price, within reason, is no object.
Monday, January 10. 2011
(I hope this is my most inane post of 2011)
I don't get to malls very often, I am happy to say. Basically never, but I did join the Mrs. to check out Teavana on Sunday afternoon. We had run out of good tea. They had one of the Help Wanted signs. The place was busy. Help Wanted signs all over the place.
Well, it was a bit of an adventure for me. "Bird Dog Goes To The Mall." Your editor goes to lots of places, and loves to bang around NYC, but not malls or shops unless Home Depot counts. Nice clean mall with natural light and Palm trees all over. Packed with people, but I tried to avoid taking their photos. The main thing I noticed was the small-d democratic nature of the populace there. All types, all colors, every apparent level of evident prosperity or lack thereof, all languages, all ages, strolling, laughing, window-shopping, and joking around. A day off work. In the tea place, I heard German, Japanese, Chinese, French, and something I could not identify.
An agora. People having fun, spending money, looking at stuff. Too bad they couldn't have built a similar phenomenon on the town's streets, but perhaps people like the feeling of enclosure and predictability.
More Mall Adventure pics below -
Continue reading "Help Wanted: A Mall Adventure for Bird Dog"
Heather MacDonald: Restoring the Social Order - Twenty momentous years of conservative policy success in cities. She begins:
Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency since the early 1990s. You’d never know it from members of the opinion elite, however, who have rarely recognized these successes, much less their provenance. So let’s recapitulate an epic battle about the foundations of social order, a battle that had not just a clear winner but also a clear loser: the liberal policy prescriptions for cities that many opinion makers and politicians still embrace. New York has been at the center of this battle because so many of the bad ideas that wreaked havoc on cities hatched there. Fortunately, so did many of the antidotes.
Manhattan, early morning, from the Whitestone Bridge
 God, nature, and chance must be against me, because I failed to win that $300 million Powerball. Oh well, maybe next time. And when I do, I'll buy a nice ski place near Killington.
The one pictured is for sale. I think it's ugly, but it would work OK as a party house.
Sunday, January 9. 2011
A reference to Nagel's classic What is it like to be a bat?: What is it Like to be a Man? A quote from the essay:
If science offers a complete account of nature, then it must be able to offer a complete account of human conscious experience, since human conscious experience is a feature of nature. It must be able to say something about what it is like to be a man. Accordingly, for several decades, a relentless effort has been undertaken by those in the disciplines of cognitive science and philosophy of mind to conceptualize such an account – an explanation of the mental in terms of the purely physical. The results of this endeavor are unambiguous – it has been a complete disaster. One would be hard pressed to identify, in all of intellectual history, a philosophical detour more obstinately barren, more improgressive, more tangled up in empty verbiage, more devoid of genuine insight, more irrelevant to life as it is actually lived, than is to be discovered in contemporary philosophy of mind. John Searle described the futile history of this materialist project as follows:
One sees this pattern over and over. A materialist thesis is advanced. But the thesis encounters difficulties; the difficulties take different forms, but they are always manifestations of an underlying deeper difficulty, namely, the thesis in question denies obvious facts that we all know about our own minds. And this leads to ever more frenzied efforts to stick with the materialist thesis and try to defeat the arguments put forward by those who insist on preserving the facts. After some years of desperate maneuvers to account for the difficulties, some new development is put forward that allegedly solves the difficulties, but then we find that it encounters new difficulties, only the new difficulties are not so new – they are really the same old difficulties.
Saturday, January 8. 2011
I have been sorting through my file of images, and found some that are worth posting before discarding. I suppose some have been used in past years. I don't recall where most of them came from.
I may need to do this for a few Saturdays, to clean out the files...
Steal them at will.
More below the fold -
Continue reading "My first fun and useful image dump"
 I discovered something pretty neat at Office Depot a while back. .3 millimeter doesn't sound like much, maybe the width of a hair, but, in my case, it actually made a real, tangible difference when it comes to the ease of shopping trips.
First off, if you aren't hip to gel pens yet, you are just squaresville, baby. The main reason 'razor point' pens came into popularity years ago is because, unlike cheap ballpoints, the ink starts flowing immediately. Gel pens do likewise, but they don't have that scratchy feel that razor points have.
To note is that almost every pen out there, regardless of type, lays down a line .7 millimeters wide. Somebody once decided that's the standard and there she be. Then the other day I was looking over gel pens at Office Depot and way over to one side I noticed a package that said "1.0" for the line width. A star was born.
What's interesting is that the line doesn't necessarily look 'fatter' as much as 'darker'. I'm speaking of black ink in this case, and that .3 millimeter made all the difference as to whether or not I had to haul out my stoopit reading glasses every time I wanted to glance at my shopping list. That .3 millimeter crossed some delicate boundary in my eyes' field of focus.
The pen I grabbed is here. Most of the larger pen companies have a 1.0 gel stashed somewhere.
Coincidentally, the next day I was giving some info to my mom over the phone and got the old "Darn, hold on a sec — this pen doesn't work." Naturally, I immediately made a beeline for the Office Depot site and sent her a box of 12 just in time for Christmas.
I'd like to report that it was her favorite present, but that would be the elephant Chia Pet I gave her. The pens came in second. She was, however, so thrilled at having discovered (1) gel pens to begin with, and (2) 1.0 gels pens at that, that she promptly doubled the amount of the Xmas check she sent me.
A victory for .3 millimeters, everywhere.
Friday, January 7. 2011
Via Steven Taylor's post, When Heroin was Legal.
If you don't mainline it, and when it's legal and cheaply available, it doesn't seem so terrible from a societal standpoint. Why should I care if you want to live on a cloud? No skin off my back.
Doctors and druggists especially seemed to enjoy it in the old days. It reminds me of how much Freud enjoyed his recreational cocaine (as did Sherlock Holmes), Dr. Leary his LSD, and Coleridge his opium.
All prohibition does is to raise the prices and to raise the societal cost. My view is to let every person struggle with his own soul and destiny.
Thursday, January 6. 2011
 Women like their men to be brave in the face of what life presents. Women appreciate men who will take it on, and not hide, retreat, or run from the things in life. Furthermore, they appreciate men who will get out there and take things on, new things, challenges, and mix it up with life. Not in a sociopathic way, but boldly.
However, many or most men are full of secret fears and timid in some ways about the risks in life. In many ways, more so than the average female (but that is another post). Fears of being hurt, killed, lost, confused, vulnerable, humiliated, ego-damaged, etc. Especially ego-damaged.
An important part of being and feeling manly is confronting fear, uneasiness, and discomfort, and overcoming the fear. Vitality entails risk. I suppose those are cliches, but true. Males are supposed to put on a game face when they are nervous or afraid. Life isn't meant to be easy, and males are meant to exit the comfort zone and to enter the jungle. The women of America are sick of pussified, metrosexual males who are afraid of splinters, rock-climbing, snowstorms, rough water, and strong women.
Two things brought this ancient topic to mind:
Banning Bravery: From Yale to the NFL
Are Americans Wusses or Just Fond of Trash Talk?
Wednesday, January 5. 2011
Whoever forgot his wife or girlfriend at my place after the party is asked to please come and get her ASAP.
Beth insists she's got to go!
(Sorta but not quite SFW)
Continue reading "Beth insists she's got to go!"
 *for a whole two hours!
I think I'll be a sociologist in my next lifetime. I've always been intrigued by cultural conditioning and changing perspectives. Even more so when I'm the subject of the aforementioned changing perspectives.
Following are two posts on the subject. The first was made a few years ago, when I bought my 40' liveaboard boat. And, as if that wasn't enough of a perspective change, what happened the other day actually put me in the greenie class.
The topic is wind power. Like you, I've mocked, scorned and belittled it for years. What a fraud! Without fat government subsidies, it'd be as dead as geothermal energy and ocean wave power. Just another greenie notion without a lick of sense.
Until.
Continue reading "Doc goes green*"
Tuesday, January 4. 2011
This January, the BD family is devoting itself to enjoyable DVD series from Santa. That Ken Burns Jazz series is one (the old photos, film footage, and the music are well-worth it).
And, as part of our planned summer trip, we are alternating the Jazz with Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor and the History of Ancient Egypt.
The Teaching Company has some good sales on right now. You can really pick any random course and find it interesting and life-expanding. Plus, unlike college, you get the best teachers, collected from all over the world. Home schoolers should use these courses. Lots of libraries have them now. Each one comes with a study guide.
We love these courses. Some are fine on audio, but some require the DVDs.
The trip (cruise, that is) for which we are preparing is below (we are only doing the Rome to Athens leg of the voyage, due to time and $ constraints). I have been eager to get back to Turkey.
Do I need a better camera?
Monday, January 3. 2011
 Had a chance this weekend to watch the first CD in this nice Christmas gift. It's an absorbing Ken Burns series (2001), although it can be criticized on several levels.
I like it. I learned that Jazz was first called "Jass music," maybe after the Jasmine perfume the whores wore in the whorehouses in with this music was typically played.
Sunday, January 2. 2011
Malanga at City Journal: Pessimism-Proof
A redneck was stopped by a game warden in Central Mississippi recently with two ice chests full of fish. He was leaving a cove well-known for its bass.
The game warden asked the man, 'Do you have a license to catch those fish?'
'Naw, sir', replied the redneck. 'I ain't got none of them there licenses. You must understand, these here are my pet fish.'
'Pet fish?'
'Yeah. Every night, I take these here fish down to the lake and let 'em swim 'round for awhile. Then, when I whistle, they jump right back into these here ice chests and I take 'em home.'
'That's a bunch of hooey! Fish can't do that.'
The redneck looked at the warden for a moment and then said, 'It's the truth Mr. Government Man. I'll show ya. It really works.'
'O. K.', said the warden. 'I've got to see this!'
The redneck poured the fish into the lake and stood and waited. After several minutes, the warden says, 'Well?'
'Well, what?' says the redneck.
The warden says, 'When are you going to call them back?'
'Call who back?'
'The FISH,' replied the warden!
'What fish?' replied the redneck.
Saturday, January 1. 2011
I meant to re-post this in December. Is it too late?
 Red-neck Yankees wear lined overshirts (like the one in the photo, from Moose Creek) much of the year. Few things are more comfortable, and you don't care what happens to them. They keep you cozy at 50 degrees and at 20 degrees - and lower if you are working hard and moving around.
These things are made for outdoor work. You often need to buy them one size up for layering underneath, depending on your personal size range. They look better and feel softer with some dirt and grease on them, and a small tear or two.
If you want to go a bit upscale from that sort of thing, these are always acceptable (even though they are from LL Bean). They are also made with quilted linings like this for colder weather.
Variants on the theme of overshirts and "shirt-jacs" is this Woolrich wool classic:
Filson's Wool Cape Coat:
A zippered, Windstopper-lined LL Bean Maine Guide wool jacket:
Carhartt's basic canvas, flannel-lined work shirt:
Lined flannel from Woolrich:
Lastly, Caribou Creek quilt-lined, at Cabelas:
Disclosure: Four dump trucks of wool and cotton overshirts were dumped in our Maggie's Farm driveway, blocking all tractor traffic and causing all sorts of problems with the hogs, in exchange for the above post. Please, everybody - Stop giving us free stuff and money! We don't want it! We have enough money and stuff, and it costs money, time, and effort to get rid of excess stuff. Ever try to take a Filson wool cape shirt off a dirty ole 800 lb. hawg who wants to put on airs? Dang.
Lots of folks I know spend their spare time sitting in Deer stands, with bow or shotgun at hand. Here's the conversation from earlier this season:
How did it go this morning?
Nothing. No buck. A waste of time.
See anything at all?
Saw the sun come up.
Anything else?
A small doe, didn't want to take her.
See anything else?
A Sharp Shinned Hawk buzzed past my head.
Anything else?
Flock of Wild Turkeys walked by.
Anything else?
A Bobcat. No, two Bobcats.
Anything else?
A Box Turtle walking through the leaves.
What are we waiting for? I don't think I need to explain my parable...
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