We 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.
Peterson lets a wise, seasoned Canadian journalist (Rex Murphy) tell his story. Gotta love the guy, along with his Scots/Irish (Newfie) style and rhythm.
You can see where Mao came from. His horrors were just historically normal. Of course, this is historical fiction but Frazer tried to make it realistic. Sir Harry, I feel, was the original James Bond.
From Amazon:
Lusting after a clergyman’s wife, smuggling opium to Hong Kong, coupling with an Amazonian woman river pirate, groveling before a ruthless warlord, and becoming the sexual plaything of the most beautiful and evil woman in the world, Sir Harry Flashman, the supreme antihero of the Victorian era, is ready to rise to the occasion to matter what depths of dishonor he must plumb. In this uninhibited and uproarious adventure, Flashman is once again at his irascible best.
The large varieties do not work well in the northern US due to their needs for a lengthy growing season, but you can grow the smaller versions. I prefer the store-bought versions.
Numbers are good tools, but some things are computationally reducible, and some not. Most interesting thing I've read recently. I had to read it three times to get the gist of it.
... we argued that even though at the most fundamental level numbers really aren’t involved, our sampling of what happens in the universe leads us to a description that does involve numbers. And in this case, the origin of the way we sample the universe has deep roots in the nature of our consciousness, and our fundamental way of experiencing the universe, with our particular sensory apparatus, place in the universe, etc.
What about the appearance of numbers in the history of science and engineering? Why are they so prevalent there? In a sense, like the situation with the universe, I don’t think it’s that the underlying systems we’re dealing with have any fundamental connection to numbers. Rather, I think it’s that we’ve chosen to “sample” aspects of these systems that we can somehow understand or control, and these often involve numbers.
In science—and particularly physical science—we have tended to concentrate on setting up situations and experiments where there’s computational reducibility and where it’s plausible that we can make predictions about what’s going to happen. And similarly in engineering, we tend to set up systems that are sufficiently computationally reducible that we can foresee what they’re going to do.
As I discussed above, working with numbers isn’t the only way to tap into computational reducibility, but it’s the most familiar way, and it’s got an immense weight of historical experience behind it.
But do we even expect that computational reducibility will be a continuing feature of science and engineering? If we want to make the fullest use of computation, it’s inevitable that we’ll have to bring in computational irreducibility. It’s a new kind of science, and it’s a new kind of engineering. And in both cases we can expect that the role of numbers will be at least much reduced...
These guys (why no women?) have so many technical skills that it amazes me. It humbles me, because I have no clue. I am overpaid, due to my credentials.
I asked a guy on the job today how he learned all of this. All of these electronic things, testing equipment, big machines, soldering equipment, vacuum engines, air-handlers. A fully-tattooed hispanic guy. He said "Some guys go to school for this, but I learn it on the jobs." I said "Like an apprentice?" "Yes. Four years, bad pay, but now I make plenty." "Are you union?" "Naw. Great boss. Good job. Plenty of work every day."
"Can I ask you what you do for fun?" "I play with my kids, and I play baseball. We have a team plays 3 days a week. Not too good, but good enough. My wife brings the beer."
A happy guy. Gotta love it. Land of opportunity. I recalled that lawyers used to learn their job by apprenticeship and self-education. Abe Lincoln did, and became prosperous working for the railroads. Railroads were the Silicon Valley of the time.
That's an olde New England Catboat, fully-refurbished with a small diesel engine, a hand-pump head, and three reefs in her sail. Not that I would sail when I needed 3 levels of reef. Watermen did in the old days, for sure, and anybody can be caught in a squall.
Like most boats, Catboats were designed as work boats. Recreational boating and yachting are recent developments.
I kinda love this craft despite the fact that, right now in life, I'd rather drive the tractor.
Said Joshua Slocum about the Spray. Spray was an abandoned and partly rotten Chesapeake oysterman, abandoned on the beach in Fairhaven, MA.
Apparently she was an unusually well-balanced boat. You could lash her tiller and she would stay on course all night. He rarely needed to man the helm, which made solo sailing possible. Autopilot.
It is theorized that she (and he) were sunk by a collision with a steamer.
If perfect safety were somebody's goal, they should never ride in a car. Everything in life, including "quarantining," is a risk.
If this exacerbation of preexisting vaccine hesitancy persists, the costs will be irreversible. Contracting Covid-19 poses a much greater risk of death than the J&J vaccine. Moreover, people who don’t receive the J&J vaccine face a far greater risk of all blood clots, including CVST, by contracting Covid-19 than they do from taking the J&J vaccine. Since early in the pandemic, we’ve known that people with Covid-19, especially those who are severely ill, have an increased risk of blood clots, leading clinicians to administer prophylactic anticoagulation. University of Oxford researchers found that the likelihood of CVST in the two weeks after being diagnosed with Covid-19 was 100 times the risk in the general population without the disease and about eight times the incidence following the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which, like the J&J vaccine, employs an adenovirus platform. There was also an increased incidence of other potentially fatal blood clots in the abdomen after Covid-19 diagnosis...
Stay for lunch. It'd just be a bite, she said. Scraps, mainly. The manservant with the striped jacket came and went. He brought meaty moist proscuitto crudo slices and a dark rucchetta salad. Rich Venetian oxtail stew with slices of fried polenta. I like it best like that, said Marta Marzotto, heaping our plates. Slices off a huge pink Mortadella. You must have some of this, said Marta. A present from Pavarotti. The mortadella looked not unlike its donor, minus beard and teeth. There was a subtle chicken and lemon casserole. The most beautiful gorgonzola I'd ever seen. Entire, hacked open and voluptuously spilling out its creamy blue guts. The countess offered wine from an unlabelled bottle. A fine fruity white wine that was drunk even less than the food was eaten. We ate with massive, weighty cutlery made for real hands, and drank from Marta's fantastical colored goblets of Murano glass. Then a gloriously substantial coffee semifreddo. Have some more, said the countess generously, shovelling semifreddo on to my plate. It's warming up.
That is an Italian luncheon. Until halfway through the book when I decided to google her, I had thought that Marta was fictional. Nope. She befriended the author. While married to Count Umberto Marzotto, she managed a long affair with Sicilian artist, movie-maker and famous Communist Renato Guttoso who figures prominently in the book. A close pal of Picasso. Colorful people, adding a lot of life to life. La dolce vita, so different from life in Yankeeland.
We had a memorial hike for my dear late brother-in-law Bob this weekend in the Shawangunks. Around 20 of us I think, relatives and pals who knew and loved Bob. Bob, of course, had been the fittest of us all if you don't include my other sister's wonderful kids, in their 20s.
Minimal bouldering, just up and down hills. I prefer bouldering and so does Bulldog, but not everybody does. I love uphill bouldering, but downhill is a bitch.
Funny thing about group hiking and bouldering is that the group speads out, whether by fitness level or by conversation or nature-looking. Every once is a while, you need to reassemble for mapping, water, and a granola bar.
Afterwards, a late (3 pm) group brunch at Mohonk. You deserve a couple of beers. It's a 4th generation Bird Dog family getaway place, and Bob always loved it there.
Typical boulder field up there. Scramble up! It's good fun.
Next time, one of our famous urban death march hikes in NYC
The wood is mostly rotten now, but our place in CT had a big old stone boat long-abandoned next to a stone dump in one of our outer meadows. The metal parts, chains, and bolts are still there.
These sleds were used to remove rocks and even boulders from crop fields or hayfields to build either stone fences or to throw in rock dumps. They were laboriously pulled by oxen, mules, or, later, tractors. Loaded and unloaded by hand, of course, with the aid of muscle and crowbars.
Tough life being a farmer in New England. No wonder those that could moved to Ohio. After the sheep frenzy, it was dairy. Now, dairy is in barns and not fields in New England, but still pleny of maize grown in the flood plains.
Recommended. You do not need to be a STEM student or an MD to understand this history. I had not known that this author had a serious family history of mental illness.
The delicious and refreshing Watermelons of today have
Said 
He spoke truth to power and made heresy a virtue."