Sunday, October 16. 2005
 A Manitoba country church, up Rte. 6 quite a piece from Winnipeg (SUV in motion - or hand in motion, maybe).
Saturday, October 15. 2005
Michael Yon We, like most of the blogosphere, are impressed by Michael Yon. His latest post is about how one becomes an "embed" in Iraq, and what his life in Iraq is like, as an independent reporter who is willing to approach danger. Here.
Friday, October 14. 2005
Stock Tip Many are giving the same advice: Buy Walmart. It will not be this cheap in five years. Went into my first Walmart last week, in Winnipeg, of all places. Jammed with people. Shelves full of cheap but useful crap from China. Tons of cheerful employees. Not my cup of tea, but the concept obviously works. Yes, I am adding to my ownership of Walmart, based on the lengths of the check-out lines. Gas and oil will peak and settle - not to worry. Markets do work, in time.
How many times? How many times have I done our readers a great favor and saved them tons of hard-earned money by letting them know about Sierra Trading Post, a wonderful deep-discount source for high-quality outdoor, outdoor sports, and hunting gear, plus clothing, winter underwear, gloves, boots, and shoes, and everything else? When the bug for gear and for stuff hits you, this is where to go for a healthy release which will not break the budget. Heck, what is more American than shopping for good cheap stuff when that mean old spiritual emptiness comes to call? Go ahead, give in to the impulse, and keep the economy running strong. (This is not an advt., and I am not an investor.)
George Carlin on New Orleans:
"Been sitting here with my ass in a wad, wanting to speak out about the
bullshit going on in New Orleans. For the people of New Orleans... First
we would like to say, Sorry for your loss. With that said, Let' s go
through a few hurricane rules: (Unlike an earthquake, we know it's coming)
#1. A mandatory evacuation means just that...Get the hell out. Don't blame
the Government after they tell you to go. If they hadn't said anything, I
can see the argument. But they said get out... so if you didn't, it's your
fault, not theirs. (We don't want to hear it, even if you don't have a car,
you can get out.)
#2. If there is an impending emergency, stock up on water and
non-perishables. If you didn't do this, it's not the Government's fault
you're unprepared and starving.
#2a. If you run out of food and water, find a store that has some.
(Remember, shoes, TV's, DVD's and CD's are not edible. Leave them alone.)
#2b. If the local store has been looted of food and water, leave your
neighbor's TV and stereo alone. (See #2a) They worked hard to get their
stuff. Just because they were smart enough to leave during a mandatory
evacuation doesn't give you the right to take their stuff...it's theirs, not
yours.
#3. If someone comes in to help you, don't shoot at them and then complain
no one is helping you. I'm not getting shot to help save some dumbass that
didn't leave when told to do so.
#4. If you are in your house that is completely under water, your belongings
are probably too far gone for anyone to want. If someone does want them,
let them have them and hopefully they'll die in the filth. Just leave!
It's New Orleans, for crying out loud - so find a voodoo warrior and put a
curse on them.)
#5. My tax money should not pay to rebuild a 2 million dollar house, a
sports stadium or a floating casino. Also, my tax money shouldn't go to
rebuild a city that was built below sea level. You wouldn't build your
house on quicksand would you? If you want to live below sea-level, do your
country some good and join the Navy's submarine force.
#6. Regardless of what the Poverty Pimps Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton want
you to believe, The US Government didn't create the Hurricane as a way to
eradicate the black people of New Orleans; (Neither did Russia as a way to
destroy America). The US Government didn't cause the global warming that
allegedly caused the hurricane (We've been coming out of an ice age for over
a million years).
#7. The government isn't responsible for giving you anything. This is the
land of the free and the home of the brave, but you gotta work for what you
want. McDonalds and Wal-Mart are always hiring, so get a damn job and stop
spooning off the people who are actually working for a living. President
Kennedy said it best..."Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country."
 E. H. Gombrich
The great Austrian art historian-theoretician who died in 2001 also wrote, in six weeks, a Little History of the World for children which has just been translated into English. I have read The Story of Art and Meditations on a Hobby Horse, but never knew he wrote a history. No surprise though - he knew everything. Reminiscences of Gombrich and thoughts about the new book, here. His books on art here.
The "Trolley Problems," and other Moral Dilemmas The field of Cognitive Psychology has shown a recent interest in the psychology of morality. Can psychology tell us what is moral? Definitely not. Can psychology help us understand how we approach moral issues in our lives? Maybe. Is there a common "moral instinct" which most humans share? Quite possibly. Can looking at difficult moral dilemmas illuminate what keeps people on the right track most of the time? Doubt it. Still interesting, though. Rebecca Saxe sums up current thinking in the psychology of morality: "Do the Right Thing."
Thursday, October 13. 2005
Is the Army broken? A sad tale. Piece here.
 How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?
One of those eternally fascinating questions. Heberle reviews "Will in the World", which, by coincidence, happens to be on my bedside mountain of things I am reading right now: "A young man from a small provincial town—a man without independent wealth, without powerful family connections, and without a university education—moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time…. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?"
Read entire extremely interesting review, and you will want to read the book.
 Robo-Duck
Duck hunters love robo-ducks, and even the most traditional are becoming converts. Robo-ducks draw ducks to your decoy spread, presumably by imitating the appearance of a landing duck. Are they sporting? That's a fair question. Do they work? Definitely. Lucky Duck is said to be the best. They also make a wind-powered version.
Wednesday, October 12. 2005
Thanksgiving Planning A tradition in the south - the Turducken. Aren't you bored with turkey? And they will do a shrimp and crawfish stuffing for you.
Tuesday, October 11. 2005
Robert Samuelson considers the Wealth Effect Another must-read by the Newsweek columnist: Ours is a wealth-driven era, when huge increases in home values and (before that) stock prices make people feel richer and cause them to buy more. They spend more of their regular incomes, borrow more or sell something, most likely stocks. You can imagine this "wealth effect" as a powerful afterburner that's boosted the economy for roughly 20 years.
Read entire.
"Beyond Parody at the Times" "The truth is, deterioration at the Times is a rich subject, full of cautionary tales about how a great liberal institution can go rancid by making a caricature of its principles and adulterating its work. When a great newspaper’s front page is indistinguishable from its editorial page, and its editorial page is indistinguishable from a transcript of a Democratic Party rally, journalistic decay is a certainty. But if what’s happened to the Times’s news reporting and opinion pages is an outrage—think only of the repulsive way in which the paper attempted to generate anti-Bush capital from the Katrina disaster—its coverage of culture is somehow more depressing than infuriating. Here, too, one finds the triumph of ideology over principle and an unseemly race to the lowest common denominator. Yet in matters of culture and the arts, the Times adds another dimension of depredation—we mean the element, half preposterous, half nauseating—of unthinking modishness."
Read entire at New Criterion
Cold Weather The human body was not made for cold and wet. Winter fishing and duck hunting are dangerous hobbies. A scary piece on the subject of Off-Season Boating. Now for a tip on gloves: A fellow hunter was using Maine lobsterman insulated PVC gloves for his decoy work, and they seem like a good idea for any cold wet work. They sell them at New England Marine. Also here. The neoprene uninsulated gloves sold in outfitter catalogues are useless and extremely cold. I am throwing mine away.
Monday, October 10. 2005
Harold Pinter is 75 Piece here.
 Cooking a Wild Duck
Or any duck, even from the supermarket... here are the two basic approaches for the breast or for the entire bird: 1. Cut off the breasts carefully, retaining all of the meat and keeping the skin on. Marinate in wine and various herbs for a few hours. Or in milk. 2. Then take the carcass, boil in water with plenty of good wine and/or port and herbs, onions, carrots, celery and garlic, a little sugar, etc. for a few hours, until thick. Simmer the heck out of it for a good sauce. Then strain it and cook until thick on the stove. 3. Saute the breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper, in olive oil and butter on high heat very briefly, a couple of minutes to rare, both sides. DO NOT OVERCOOK. 4. Take the reduction from #2 above, and pour over breasts sliced on the bias. OR: 1. Take the entire bird, season with salt and pepper and put in oven on a rack, put a sliced onion and a sliced apple inside, and cover with a couple of strips of bacon. Wild birds are short on fat, but store-bought duck is full of fat. Bake at 550 for 25 minutes - rare. Duck needs to be rare for the full wild, livery flavor to be fully appreciated. 2. Slice the breast, cut off the legs and serve them too, and pour a thickened reduction of wine/port/herbs (see above) over the slices. (Hopefully you have a spare duck carcass to put into that reduction). ------ You can garnish both of the above with orange slices, but do not cook an orange near a good duck. Too strong. Serve either approach with wild rice and sauteed root veggies - carrots, parsnips, celery root, etc. A few sauteed figs are nice, or sauteed pears. Whatever you do, save or use the reduction from the duck carcass - it is a base for a fine sauce for anything, like chicken. It can be frozen if you don't use it all. The diving ducks (red-heads, canvasbacks, blue-bills, etc.) are, in my opinion, the most delicious with their liver/anchovy flavor, but some prefer the mallards and other puddle-ducks with their milder flavor. Chacun a son gout. But try to appreciate the wild ones - they concentrate the call of the wild in their flesh. Yes, you can serve with cranberry sauce - anything with feathers is enhanced by cranberries.
Thursday, October 6. 2005
In the psychological-medical fields, we find IQ to be a useful measure, along with many others. IQ has only very broad predictive power for adjustment to life or for achievement in life, but a person's reasoning ability, curiosity, analytic talents, and their sensitivity of pattern-recognition, all say something important about a person and the tools they have to deal with life, should they chose to use them. But a very high IQ doesn't equate with "success", whatever that is, though it certainly correlates with the richness of the life one is able to live; a lower IQ, on the other hand, cannot interfere with happiness or with achievement in less intellectually rigorous areas of life. In the variety of folks we encounter in medicine, it is common to see folks of high IQ doing relatively menial jobs, but who must find outlets for their abilities in all sorts of surprising interests, intellectual hobbies and obsessions. I recall one truck driver whose hobby of Latin translation was almost obsessive, and wonderful. And a refrigerator repair guy who could have taught the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a thing or two...not everyone spends their spare time stupified, watching sports on TV or the other crap. And neither is it rare to find folks of very limited talents and potential, but of slippery, conniving character, shoving themselves forward in the world, beyond what substance they really bring to the table - especially in sales, finance, and politics - the realms of BS, the schmooze, and the con job, and, in some cases, genuine integrity. IQ shows a bell-curve distribution across a given population, with the peak around 100. Along with social class and background and emotional maturity, IQ tends to be an important part of social affinities and friendships - people of similar IQs are "on the same page." There seem to be optimal IQ ranges for different areas of life. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies tend to be in the 120-130 range - very smart but not so smart that they get tangled up. Attorneys today, unlike the past, inhabit a wide range, from 90 to the max. - there are lots of law schools looking for paying customers. As people enter the high end, over 140, they often seem a bit eccentric or awkward, because they are experiencing the world a little differently and their range of interests can be wide and unusual. Quick IQ tests, and further comments, on continuation page below: The vast numbers of people are in the 90-110 range, which does not provide the horsepower for certain tasks but is fine for most things - it wouldn't have gotten you through college 40 years ago but it will today, somewhere, in the non-rigorous educational environment we live in (it won't carry you through medical school, but it could get you through a third-rate law or business school nowadays, but forget a doctorate in math, computer science, or the sciences). And yes, IQ is inherited, like height and like many personality traits. Go ahead, blame Mom or Dad. At this point in my career, I can judge someone's IQ within 6-10 points after a 5-minute conversation, just as any internist can name your weight without weighing you or your age without asking. The capacity to perceive layers of irony is one part of my assessment, as compared with concreteness of thought. The online IQ tests aren't bad - they probably correlate within +/- 6 points of the extensive tests. Can your vanity handle it? One here: Click here: Blogthings - A Quick and Dirty IQ Test and one here: Click here: Tickle: Tests, Matchmaking and Social Networking Don't cheat - it becomes invalid if you take time. Anyone can complete a Times crossword in a year. And you can't take the same IQ test twice - invalid. In the end, "Character is destiny," as Freud said, not meaning worldly success, but meaning that what shapes one's life is one's personality profile (which includes one's willingness to push the limits of our natural tendencies - it isn't a deterministic view). Indeed, personality traits have more to do with satisfaction in life than does IQ. On the other hand, IQ puts sharp limits on what we might be able to handle or appreciate, especially in the area of abstract thinking and the enjoyment of playing with ideas, the arts, words, and numbers.
The trout get interested in food again, in the fall. Gwynnie is the big fisherman, not me, but I will be up there in the Adirondacks towards the end of October for a Cast and Blast (trout and grouse) long weekend. And we will of course stop by to see Fran Betters, inventor of the AuSable Wulff, rod-maker, and generally eccentric fellow, who is the proprietor of the Adirondack Sport Shop in Whiteface, pictured here.
Wednesday, October 5. 2005
A little debate over a dinner led to a little easy research. Can dogs smell when they are on the run? And when they are exhaling? All dog owners know how much dogs rely on scent and hearing over vision. Both their range of color vision, and their acuity, are poor, compared to humans. The link demonstrates examples of dog vision. The sense of smell - the olfactory sense - is a genetically ancient chemoreceptive modality, and the only one which is not modulated by the midbrain - its sensory nerves go direct from the olfactory bulb to the cortex. Smell is a minor function of the nose (see nose physiology), but we couldn't taste much without it - smell is the major component of taste (as you may recall, the mouth, really only the tongue can only detect salt, sour, bitter, sweet - and umami, the last which I do not recall learning about). The dog's nerve "wiring" from the olfactory bulb to the brain is far heavier than that of humans - here: http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/Smell/nasal.html - click on link from dog to human to compare the olfactory nerves. Plus the dog has 25 times more chemoreceptors. Thus the dog can not only smell things that we cannot, his olfactory acuity is far higher than ours - ie, he can detect and discriminate multiple odors, when we tend to only detect a dominant odor, or a blend. It is said that the dog can sense odors one miion times more sensitively than humans (but of course breeds vary, and older dogs seem to lose sensitivity, just as humans do). Thus when a dog goes outdoors and raises his nose and sniffs the air, he is taking in a great deal of information. When a dog sniffs, he is filling his olfactory area with chemical-laden air, for maximum smelling power. But even when he is not deliberately sniffing, his olfactory powers are strong. But, back to the beginning. Yes, he can smell while running, and even when exhaling. The Bernoullie effect - the same pressure gradient that helps provide lift to airplanes - draws air up in the dog's olfactory region (Click here: Entrez PubMed) to wash over his olfactory receptors, so he doesn't have to stop and take a deep sniff. Makes good sense for running hunters. So, with his powers, why does he have to stick his nose into turds and dead animals and other dogs' butts? Who knows. Shouldn't be necessary. It must be a deep sensual pleasure. (FYI, the RCA-Victor dog "Nipper" was a bull terrier-fox terrier mix, from Bristol, England.)
Posted on June 21, 2005 Junior Wells The Godfather of the Modern Blues, Wells (1934-1998) brought his harp and his voice from the South to Chicago in 1948 where he played with The Muddy Waters Band until he went out on his own. Whatever country flavor he might have had rapidly disappeared in a unique funky urban sound, with unmistakable harp and unpolished voice. Close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a smoky 1950s Chicago dance club, if you can. (I am listening to his sensual Take Your Shoes Off as I write, from his final live recording, Live Around the World.) He is considered to be the heir of my favorite old-time bluesman, Sonny Boy Williamson, and of Little Walter Jacobs, who he replaced in the Muddy Waters Band. Since his association with Muddy Waters, he had been especially associated with the great and seemingly ageless Buddy Guy, with whom he did several recordings including the live Drinkin TNT and Smokin Dynamite. (Now I am on his great Messin with the Kid.) HooDoo Man, with Buddy Guy on guitar, was his first widely-known album, in 1960. He was known to produce handguns from his skin-tight suits and shotguns from his cars, whenever appropriate. A couple of reminiscences here and here. From an old review by Kelton: The terrific thing about Junior Wells is that he's an unqualified bluesman, stylistically a direct descendant of the Chicago greats and personally an eccentric whose unpredictable singing and harp playing distinguish him from everyone else alive. "Comin' Right at Ya" was the title of one his breakthrough albums in the 1960's and it still describes the Wells oeuvre. In short, he takes no prisoners. Recording to legend, Wells shoplifted his first blues harp and got caught. The judge who heard his case was so impressed with Wells' story that he just wanted to make music that he paid for the instrument himself and set Wells free on the condition that, if he ever made a record, he send one to him. Wells did, years later. The album was called "Blues Hit Big Town."
Tuesday, October 4. 2005
Posted by Bird Dog on March 9, 2005 Masked and Anonymous (2003) This is no immortal movie, and was panned by the genius critics, but it is a must for Dylan fans. The casting is notable, probably because everyone wanted to meet Bobbie: John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, etc. Goodman does his usual amazing job, but Dylan cannot or will not really act. He is just there, with his strangely charismatic, ageless, Chaplin-like presence and his cryptic comments. The sound track is worth owning, with the best Grateful Dead version of Baby Blue. Dylan's version of Dixie is haunting and beats any previous version hands-down. In fact, it replaces all prior versions. The picture itself is a dark surrealistic ramble through a mythic nation torn by pointless civil war and egomaniacal politicians. Dylan's musings about the state of affairs are quotable and Dylanesque, whether he wrote them or not.
Saturday, October 1. 2005
Those greedy trial lawyers at it again Is Teflon teflon-coated? Are these guys vultures, or what? RA
Friday, September 30. 2005
Chicken Korma, 1805 Who knew? Samiz.
Thursday, September 29. 2005
 Fishing for a fishing license in NYSo -- Gwynnie thought she'd like to pursue some Fall troutses in the Empire State, and was not surprised to see that its Dept. of Environmental Protection protects its fishes by making it impossible to get a license! Their newly announced on-line internet program D.E.C.A.L.S. purports to offer on-line licensing, but you can't use the system unless you have used it before! [How to you get on a train that doesn't stop?] But wait! You can get a license by mail if you print out the application and (b) show your on-line D.E.C.A.L.S. number you obtained in (a) above AND (c) pay by credit card - no checks or cash! [How do you send money by mail using an application without blanks for a credit card number?] So, off she goes to use the old method of visiting the nearest NYS town hall -- wonder what the unusable internet site cost NYS residents?
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