Sunday, January 31. 2010
Thanks for inventing the internet. You thought of everything. It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff you managed to put on there.
I just found out that I can buy opera tickets for the Arena di Verona (a vast Roman arena) for August online, now. Looks like a fun outing, but the arena seems to big for opera.
Good site for high quality farm toys: Carter and Gruenewald. What a great business to be in.
Saturday, January 30. 2010
 At NY Rev of Books. One quote:
The number of legal chess positions is 1040, the number of different possible games, 10120. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. In his book Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman points out that a player looking eight moves ahead is already presented with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy. Another staple, a variation of which is also used by Rasskin-Gutman, is to say there are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe. All of these comparisons impress upon the casual observer why brute-force computer calculation can't solve this ancient board game.
Friday, January 29. 2010
We would never, even for personal use, advise violating the incomprehensible American ban on Cuban tobacco by using Top Cubans.com. However, we do find their latest rankings interesting, if mundane:
 Dress shoes need to be shined regularly if you do not wish to look bedraggled, don't they?
A spit shine requires a little water (or spit). Here's the USMA method.
And from The Art of Manliness, here's How to Shine Shoes like a Soldier.
It takes a toothbrush to do it right and to get into the seams. People say 30-40 minutes per shoe for a definitive shine, less for a touch-up shine. Obsessionals like to top off a shine with a coat of clear polish.
I read that you are supposed to edge the sole too. News to me, but makes sense.
Photo is a good J. Press Oxford shoe - off the rack and not too fancy, but good enuf for government or academic work. Maybe when I win the lottery I'll have foot molds taken in London and Rome and have them make me custom shoes and loafers like my prosperous friends do.
Howard Zinn. America the Awful---Howard Zinn's History.
Old Stalinists never die, they just fade away.
How could anybody not love a guy who can write like this:
"The brambles and the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets. Farther along and stronger, bonged the gongs of a throng of frogs, green and vivid on their lily pads. From the sky came the crying of flies, and the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets." From James Thurber, The 13 Clocks (New York, 1957)
Now for some Thurber dogs -
Thursday, January 28. 2010
Wednesday, January 27. 2010
After all I’ve counseled, my 9-year old son insists on doing it his way in tomorrow’s 4th grade elections to the student council.
His speech is about how he will tell the students what the council decides, rather than tell the council what the students want. Liberal.
And, he’s carrying in a bag of candy for the students, to get the students to elect him. Corrupt.
If he wins the election, will he bring home congrats letters from Pelosi and Obama?
Grrr!
I'll post the election results in the comments.
Meanwhile, this approach might have been better:
OK, OK, I've failed as a husband, too!
From Bowman at New Criterion's Ain't Gonna Study War No More:
In the media’s view, everything must be over-determined by circumstance — or the mistakes of the Bush administration — so that acts of terror become like acts of God, both in their causes and in the limited and ad hoc way they demand to be dealt with. Insofar as questions of war and peace arise, it is only by way of demonstrating that war must be thought of as a struggle to understand the other side — the unspoken assumption being that there is always a way to get the enemy to stop fighting by understanding and sympathizing with him and without having to defeat him in battle — as the old, unmentionable honor culture would once have insisted. Got that?
PC makes some hatreds privileged and deserving of "understanding," and others not so.
Tuesday, January 26. 2010
Snaps from my field trip to Costo Sunday. I'm sure it looks just like your Costco or Sam's, but American abundance - and its cheapness - must be a wonder to those from Cuba or Venezuela.
What I was thinking, though, was that I'd like to transport the whole store to Port au Prince today.
Readers know that we are great fans of Dubliner Cheese from Ireland:
More random Costo pics below the fold -
Continue reading "Abundance"
Monday, January 25. 2010
 Unlike grand luxe cruising, freighter cruising isn't for everybody. Still, I know people who would not voyage any other way. Photo is from a 'round the world 124-day trip from the site below, which offers many long and short trips.
Freighter Cuises.
Sunday, January 24. 2010
Photo of the new Metro-North Yankees-E. 153rd St. station from this site.
There has always been good subway service out to Yankee Stadium, but now there is a new railroad service and a new Yankees-E. 153rd St. train station to make things easier for the suburbanites (how often does one hear about a new train service and a new train station?):
From the Northern Suburbs:
Take Metro-North Railroad to its new Yankees-East 153rd Street Station; there's direct weekend-game service from the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines, as well as weekday service, and shuttle trains from Grand Central. Click here for details.
It's a great amenity for folks in Westchester and CT, because the traffic and the parking have often been discouraging for them.
How well does the baseball transportation work in Boston?
I recently heard a friend use the term "NOCD." It was a blast from the pre-PC past - from my parents' generation.
If you do not know what it means, it is a parental admonition regarding friends and dates: "Not our class, dear."
Saturday, January 23. 2010
 We're highlighting Agassi's autobiography Open, 2009. Read the WaPo review at that Amazon site.
Pro tennis players have strange lives.
Friday, January 22. 2010
 If you live in a Royal Barry Wills (1895-1962) house in New England, you are lucky.
Wills was a Boston architect who specialized in accurate reproductions of Capes, Saltboxes, and Colonial houses - the sorts of homes which might be bungalows, ranches, split-levels or God-knows-what elsewhere in the country.
This site discusses his architecture.
I was interested to learn that the firm Royal Barry Wills Associates is still in business.
Thursday, January 21. 2010
A few midtown NYC snaps from last week, with brief comments.
First snap - the #1 reason to get a degree from Yale: it gives you a clean civilized place to pee in midtown with CNBC running in all the bathrooms if you join the Yale Club. Also, a very nice place to stay in the city for cheap, a cozy hang-out, pretty good dining, and top-notch meeting and reading rooms. The giant hall on the second floor is a good place to hold your memorial service when you croak.
More below the fold -
Continue reading "Midtown snapshots"
 It's Paul Mole on Lexington, in operation since 1912. There are still guys who get a straight razor shave there every morning on their way to work - hot towels etc. I am told many guys get a weekly trim. Not me.
And yes, they have a shoeshine guy there too.
She wonders what her kids should study in college, and considers what women used to learn in school. The daily Military Drill sounds good - like the IDF:
Wednesday, January 20. 2010
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