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
Tuesday, January 19. 2010
Monday, January 18. 2010
The blurb says this:
Last November, at the central market in Valencia, opera singers disguised as shopkeepers were selling produce at the various stalls there. Verdi's Il Travatore starts playing over the loudspeakers & they burst into song. None of the shoppers has a clue what's going on.
Too bad the recorded sound quality is poor, but what a kick.
Of all of the entertaining and/or interesting radio shows we enjoy (when we have time to hear them), there is one which I think comes closest to the Maggie's Farm sensibility - The John Batchelor Show.
Around here, it comes on late at night on WABC. It's more intelligent and informative than anything on the boob tube. If you don't know it, give him a try.
Very cool bumper music too.
Except when you need a specific course for a specific purpose or requirement (eg Physical Chemistry), I recommend choosing courses by the teacher, not by the topic.
At a medical meeting recently, I found myself making the same mistake I have often made: picking meetings by topic instead of by speaker. You can get more out of a brilliant person talking about Coke vs. Pepsi than you can from a mediocrity discussing your medical topic of interest.
Sunday, January 17. 2010
 Our dear pal Sippican is moving from the MA seashore to central Maine on the mighty Androscoggin River.
If there is good grouse country nearby, I will be a visitor.
Rumford, to be specific (pop 6000). Whether he has a reason or not I have no idea. Rumford is an interesting old lumber mill town, with turn of the century mill company housing developments which would be of interest to any student of the history of town planning.
Photo is the Sipp family's new house. I like it. It's not a house - it's a home.
But does it get broadband?
Saturday, January 16. 2010
Something America needs more of: good shoeshine stands. This one is in Grand Central Station, NY - a train station which hosts several shoeshine stands of various styles. Those guys do a better job than you could ever do yourself, and a good, solid, comfortable pair of shoes is like a good old friend. Gotta care for them.
I am told that high quality leather shoes, well-cared for and never worn two days in a row (the 2 lbs. of foot sweat per day is a problem for leather's endurance), should last 40 years or more. I own about three pairs of 20+ year-old dress shoes which are just entering their prime years.
It takes a minimum of three legs to build a stool, and a minimum of three logs to build a good fire.
A BD daughter recently learned this basic Boy Scout fact after failing to start holiday fires. It requires a tent of wood to hold in enough heat to produce and ignite the heated gasses which create the rapid oxidation we call a flame. The flame is the burning gasses. The complex and mysterious chemistry of ignition is the key to flame.
The gasses, of course, are hydrocarbons. Wood is nothing but unripened oil or pre-coal. I explained to her (she does not seem to have a chemistry brain yet) that slow oxidation is called "rotting," slightly quicker oxygenation is called "smoldering," quick oxidation is called "fire," and extremely quick oxidation is called "explosion."
Medium controlled oxidation is called "life," and why we exhale CO2 (hydrocarbons + oxygen = mostly CO2 + H20 + heat/energy), and why we are above room temperature most of the time. It's an exothermic chemical reaction. We animals are masterfully designed to control and harness these chemistries in our bodies.
|
