Friday, November 19. 2010
If you are around NYC in the next couple of months, you might get a kick out of the Train Show at the NY Botanical Garden. I've seen it. Magical. The whole thing, other than the trains, is organic...or, should I say, "sustainable."
Gwynnie iPhoned me a pic from the preview of the show this afternoon. That is Gracie Mansion - the old farmhouse overlooking the East River which is the official residence of the Mayor of New York. (Bloomberg doesn't live in it, though. He can afford fancier digs.)
Show opens to the public tomorrow:
Thursday, November 18. 2010
When Sipp and I exchanged emails about the charming house on the blog this morning, he decided to find out a bit about Moodus (where that house is). Here's the Moodus Wiki. (Moodus is a village in East Haddam, with a pop c. 1200 - depending on who is in jail or court-required rehab at a given moment).
What he discovered that was interesting to me was that Moodus was the smallest town in the US to receive federal urban renewal money in the 1960s. The old town center (pic below) was demolished.
The quaint village center, dubbed "Downtown Moodus", formerly located at the intersection of routes CT 151 and CT 149, was a popular destination for guests. However most of the village was razed after the citizens of East Haddam controversially voted in 1967 to accept Urban Renewal funding to rebuild Moodus commercial district a quarter mile east along CT 149.
The citizens immediately regretted their decision, but it was too late for the Dem-controlled Feds with their bulldozers and their developer allies.
The genius central planners had something more modern in mind (ie up-to-date strip malls), to be built 1/4 mile up the road. The soul of the village was killed. It's just one example of why we at Maggie's are so distrustful of genius government planners of anything. This ex-farming village, ex-middle-class resort village, is now a frequent hangout of ex-cons and cons-in-training, young gals without cars with too many tatts walking down the road to the minmart for chips, cigs, and beer, scruffy immigrants whose language one cannot identify, people on various dubious disabilities (as in nearby Middletown, CT), and abandoned or tumbling-down once-gracious homes with rooms for rent. Nobody goes to Moodus anymore, except to fill their gas tank.
Well, those "modern" renewal government-subsidized strips malls are now emptying, shabby, and falling down. Like, as I imagine it, "Pearly Nails" - boarded up. "Uncle Tsao's Quickee Chinee Takeout" - boarded up. "PIZZA POUR VOIS" - boarded up. (I'm sure there must be something good about Moodus still, but it's just a place on a map now, and not my sort of Yankee village anymore).
Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam, for modernizing Moodus. And thanks to you expert geniuses in DC who think you know better than us. See Detroit. And shame on the Connecticut Yankees who bought into such government baloney. The Feds rarely get anything right except through their military - thankfully, their main responsibility.
This site has some good posts on the topic of Moodus' destruction, including:
Pt 1. Legacy of "Progress" Gone Sour
Pt 2. Urban Renewal Flops in Moodus
Pt 3. Could Moodus Have Been Saved?
A quote:
Once the town opted for urban renewal funds, fixing up the town was no longer a viable solution. "With the influx of federal dollars, you had to play their game," explains Jim Gibbons, an urban planner with the UConn Extension Service in Haddam. "In order to accomplish smaller goals, you had to follow federal regulations and guidelines and at the time of the Moodus project urban renewal was oriented to demolition. To many critics of the program at the time, the correct title was ‘urban disruption.’ As an outsider, I think this was part of the problem with the Moodus project: It disrupted the neighborhood."
Here's a pic I took last weekend of an abandoned and boarded up church in (once) central Moodus.
This place had a For Sale sign and a No Trespassing sign in a sad old farming town in rural Connecticut. It has a couple of barns, sits on around 8 acres. Probably needs a little work.
Wednesday, November 17. 2010
 Those LED crank flashlights got me thinking about regular LED lightbulbs. They're expensive, but last almost forever - and they don't burn out, just slowly fade in intensity.
Here's the scoop on them.
Seems like a good choice for sockets that are impossible to reach. Has anybody tried them?
 Had an outage for 8 hrs this morning. All it seems to take around here is a stiff breeze.
Re power outages, I just bought a few of these for stocking stuffers. Got one for Gwynnie's car, too. Sorry I got them right before the 2 for 1 deal began.
Is this an antique Colonial or a reproduction? Defend your judgement with details.
Tuesday, November 16. 2010
An academic mercenary tells his story. A quote:
You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.
I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I've worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.
In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company's staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.
Monday, November 15. 2010
32 degrees F at 5:30 AM. Perfect and balmy for morning coffee and cigar while strolling around outside and waking up. My snap did not capture the Vs of the Wood Ducks cruising in the small lake. Lots of Wood Ducks thereabouts.
Sunday, November 14. 2010
 I plead happily and mindlessly guilty to a habit of watching stupid action and sci-fi movies on my zone-out Saturday Night Stupid Movie cavalcade.
Last night I broke with tradition and watched a critically acclaimed film, one of the best who-done-its I’ve seen in ages, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
A notable theme: the beautiful, brilliant and troubled heroine refuses to be a victim or accept victimology-type excuses, holding others responsible for their actions and taking vengeance on those who commit heinous acts upon herself or others. The film is not for the squeamish.
There are two more films in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. I really look forward to another two Not Saturday Night Stupid Movies.
The films are from Sweden, and if you go to Set-Up on the DVD you can get it dubbed well in English instead of distracting subtitles. You don’t want to miss a second.
The plans for the new National Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall in Philadelphia looked good to me. And, my friend, historian Judith Klinghoffer volunteered to be one of its first docents.
But, the newly opened reality, as Judith Klinghoffer describes, is empty of most of the American Jewish experience. As she puts it, “The architects were instructed to make sure that 'there was to be nothing religious in the Museum' and they have done just that.”
The contents of the exhibits:
Jews are indubitably free in America, but just how free do they feel? Or, to put it more precisely, how free do the museum creators feel? Do they feel free enough to assert their deep commitment to their age old religion? Do they feel free enough to acknowledge their ties to the global Jewish family? Do they feel free enough to take pride in their outsized contribution to America?
No. Instead, Judith wrote to the museum's leadership, "the museum almost seems to me an all out celebration of American Jewish radicalism."
Bummer.
Judith Klinghoffer has the credible background to criticize:
I have studied Jewish History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem with such eminent historians as Shmuel Ettinger and Saul Friedlander, have a PH.D. in American history, wrote numerous books and articles about a myriad of topics including on American Jewish history, my teaching experience ranges from Hebrew Day school to Graduate school and I currently write an acclaimed historical blog such eminent open minded rabbis such as Richard L. Rubinstein and Arthur Waskow deem worth reading and becoming my efriends.
Saturday, November 13. 2010
Our post this week about Grizzlies reminded me of Kephart's 1906 classic, Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness.
It's very much in the Teddy Roosevelt vein, and I have no doubt that he read it.
One quote from the interview:
One miserable November day I was down there on the sideline, wet, cold. And I looked up to the top of the stadium, and there was the press box. Shelter! I knew they had heaters in there with them, and these people were sitting there in complete comfort while we’re miserable down here on the field. They’re writing, they’re typing, and they’re warm. Then and there I decided to become a writer.
Friday, November 12. 2010
President Obama, are you listening? Or, would you rather raise taxes and regulatory costs on smaller businesses?
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports a study by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young that, not only do entrepreneurs create more jobs, entrepreneurs give more to charity than large, established companies.
Entrepreneurs give twice as much of their profits to charity as more-established companies, according to new research released today by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Ernst & Young.
Entrepreneurs, the study found, allocate a median of 3 percent of their corporate profits to charity. That is more than double the median 1.2 percent of profits found in The Chronicle’s latest corporate-giving survey of the nation’s largest companies.
Not only that, but "Nearly 70 percent said they started supporting charities while building their business, before it was successful."
Wednesday, November 10. 2010
From Dan Gardner's So is the world predictable or not? The environmentalists' contradiction:
I recently wrote a book called Future Babble (to be released Oct. 12), which is about expert predictions, why they fail, and why we believe them anyway. The experience of sifting through heaps and heaps of failed predictions has made me quite sympathetic to Suzuki's first theme of humility. We truly are awful at foreseeing what is to come. And there's little reason to think we'll get much better. Indeed, key properties of complex systems make prediction inherently impractical or even impossible. We really should be humble. And cautious.
But how can a humble and cautious man say we are "past the 59th minute"?
In a review of Gardner's new book, Steven Pinker says:
“It’s rare for a book on public affairs to say something genuinely new, but Future Babble is genuinely arresting, and should be required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and anyone who listens to them. Mark my words: if Future Babble is widely read, then within 3.7 years the number of overconfident predictions by self-anointed experts talking through their hats will decline by 46.2%, and the world will become no less than 32.1% wiser.”
– Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought
I forget which rural burg in Ohio had this sign up. Near Rte. 62, obviously. I'd worry that the soup might have some salt in it. Salt is bad for you, right?
 With protection, the Griz populations of Yellowstone and parts of the Front Range have slowly grown, naturally leading to more encounters with humans.
Nobody in the 1800s would go out playing in Griz Country without a firearm.
Grizzlies are not predatory carnivores, but they are mainly opportunistic carnivores, meaning that, if they find a dead, injured, weak or newborn mammal, they will be happy to eat it. Their main foods are grasses, sedges, roots, berries, fish, ants and bugs, etc. They aren't hunters.
Generally, Grizzlies try to stay away from people - unless the people are camping with bacon on the griddle or have other tasty food - bear bait - around the camp.
In Yellowstone, there have been recent incidents of Griz maulings of people. Perhaps many visitors to Yellowstone have a romantic and edenic vision of nature. I have been in Griz Country, and I would never camp in it. I figure that, to a Griz, a human is not much different from a helpless newborn Moose or Elk.
Furthermore, I'd be more comfortable either on a horse or well-armed - preferably both.
Unlike this commenter, I do not think we should kill all the bears. I think we should simply teach people who want to explore wilderness to be prepared for it and to understand the risks. Woodcraft. Same thing with rattlesnake country. Same thing as mountain-climbing. People die.
It's not Disneyland out there.
Tuesday, November 9. 2010
My cheerful, voluble friend at our local Cumbie/24-hr gas station has been working the night shift for 8 months. He's about 25, a recent single Jamaican (legal) immigrant who lives with his Mom. He is not a Rastaman. His Mom is a hospital aide who also moonlights as a home helper. She sings in the church choir.
This morning at 6 AM he announced to me "Hey, Boss, good news. They finally agreed to up my hours. Now I'll be able to work a minimum of 55 hrs/wk instead of 45."
"Do they pay you time and a half for OT?" I ask.
"Of course they do, man. Every hour over 40. The good thing is, now I can begin to put some money aside. You watch me man, I'm gonna need an investment advisor soon."
I asked "How about 60 hours minimum? I did that when I was young."
"That's my goal." he replied. "If I keep doing a good job at 55 hours and don't make mistakes, they will let me have 60. I already worked 60 last week with my extra OT."
"Beats selling beads to tourists at the beach?"
"Oh man, I thank God every day that my Mom made me come to America with her. She forced me, man. I had no choice. She is fat and mean. I was a ganja beach bum. Next week, I'll be an investor. I'm thinking of buying some some Apple Computer."
"What's your goal?"
"I'm gonna have my own Cumbie franchise. Be my own boss. Work 100 hours if I want. Hey, do you think I should buy gold or Apple Computer?"
"I think you should buy your own computer first."
"Hey, I already have that. I am online, man. I taught myself. I read everything there. I read Bloomberg news. These old guys come in early, they say 'Are the papers in yet?' Behind the times, man."
A spirited young lad with Jamaican high school and no college, enthusiastically inventing and building a life in America from scratch, with unlimited opportunity in front of him. Ya gotta love it. I want this kid here.
Monday, November 8. 2010
New study says sex is complicated. (h/t, Hot Air). Seems to me that it is, and it isn't. Eating is complicated too, if you want to think of it as complicated.
Sunday, November 7. 2010
Memo to file: Do not drive to Manhattan on the day of the New York Marathon. You can't get there from north and, if you do get there, you cannot get out. Here's the Marathon map.
We had an urge to see the Lod Mosaic and the Miro show at the Met today. Just a quick visit, in and out - but it seemed like every highway entrance and exit was closed, with extensive, traffic-jammed detours all around the periphery of the running route.
45,000 mostly out-of-town runners, with family and supporters on the sidewalks, and all the relevant bridges and roads and cross-streets closed, it's a miracle we got home.
We managed to get to the museum by parking 15 blocks away. I think I could have gotten home faster running than driving. I need a Manhattan pied a terre badly, but the government hasn't given me one, yet.
For all the hassle sometimes, and corny as it sounds, I really do love New York. Vitality, variety - all that. It's stimulating to me, just walking around and looking at stuff. Woods and meadows rarely surprise me, because I seem to know them so well. Humans - their works and antics - always surprise me.
I am not blessed with superior brainpower, but I believe I was blessed with a capacity to be enchanted by the details of life.
The Roman mosaic was good to see in person - the teeth of the fish are cool - and the Miro show was fascinating. Miro is always fascinating to me. I don't think of his stuff as surrealism, but instead as just plain hallucinatory. Completely strange, like an acid trip. His work always goes "Ding," Boing," "Snap," "Whirrrrr," "Wheeee," "Pop!" to me. Auditory, synesthetic.
The small show was about his short series of paintings called Dutch Interiors, based on old Dutch images and paintings which he transformed through what he termed his "tragicomic" method.
The show moved from the Rijksmuseum to New York last month. Here's one of the pictures from the show:
I took some random pics, as usual.
I have been told that Grace's Marketplace on 3rd Ave. is the best place to buy cheese in NYC. They generally offer 220+ varieties. Some folks prefer Citarella's, which has a location a few blocks away from Grace's on Third Ave. Better prices, but I know that fancy chefs get their cheeses at Gracie's.
A few more of my lousy NYC pics from today, below:
Continue reading "Miro vs. the NYC Marathon"
Pic is from my first visit to a WalMart two weeks ago. It was a 24 hr/day Supercenter. Yes, I was impressed. It was stocked to the gills, clean as a whistle, and the old codger Greeter at 7 AM was just great.
Wal-Mart vs. The Morons
1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.
6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.
8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.
11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.
You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature,
It is now official you are ALL corrupt morons:
a. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.
b. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
c. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
d. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor." We still have the poor, and they only demand more. Still waiting for the "Thank you's."
e. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
f. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
g. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.
AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM?
Saturday, November 6. 2010
From an excellent essay at NAS, College Application Essays: Going Beyond "How Would You Contribute to Diversity?":
Would the Yale admissions office look favorably on the student who answered, “I have found ‘diversity’ to be a cudgel by which self-appointed elites attempt to enforce their preferences over others. Diversity to me has been the experience of having my individuality denied, suppressed, and demeaned. It is a word that summarizes a smarmy form of oppression that congratulates itself on its high-mindedness even as it enforces narrow-minded conformity."
No, any student really seeking admission to Yale wouldn’t say such a thing. But chances are very good that a great many students harbor insights very much like that. They know their ethnic or racial categorization, their socio-economic status, and other such characteristics matter far more to admissions offices than their actual thoughts about who they are.
Applicants, of course, are savvy enough to feed the admissions office whatever sort of PC BS they want to hear.
Well, here's my answer to the application diversity question:
"As a middle-class, hard workin', gun-totin', Scripture-readin', horse-ridin', golf hackin', military-respectin', cigar-smokin', freedom-lovin', Scotch-drinkin', heterosexual-and-married-for-life, cranky, preppy, WASP American country club Conservative who likes to make money, I think I would add remarkable diversity to any academic program or workplace. Indeed, I think people would be quite interested in, and would benefit from, my peculiar old-timey Yankee views and my exotic life style. I believe I am an 'underrepresented minority,' and thus deserving of your most serious and special consideration despite my unfortunately-pasty skin tone."
Friday, November 5. 2010
 A reader reminded me that David Horowitz really liked Kenyon College.
If David likes something, I like it.
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