Maggie's Farm

They can do complex calculations, but people need to pick the axioms. Yes, infinity is a strange concept.

 How do mathematicians choose their axioms? 

Maybe knowledge of Greek, Latin, or whatever old languages would help. What does the word "holy" mean? I guess it sorta means "sacred," but what does that mean, exactly?

Our English bibles are titled "Holy Bible," so it matters. Might be a translation from Latin or Greek or something, but from what? I get that "holy" is a Germanic term, later anglicized by those Anglo-Saxons. It seemed to mean whole or complete or, by extension God-connected in some special way, like Heilige Nacht.

Having been raised Protestant, I do not quite get the ideas of holy or sacred. They feel like kind of pagan terms to me, like the unapproachable statues of Athena or Apollo in Greek temples, or the Holy Cow, and there are the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Grail and The Holy Land. I guess the ideas I was raised with do not connect much that is material with the transcendent - except Jesus - but what do I know or understand? Not much, but I do appreciate CS Lewis' discussions about imagination and every kind of mental life.

I am not a materialist. I do not understand existence at all but I feel it's beyond normal, or beyond human comprehension. 

Help me out, genius readers. 

Seenthe classic 1964 movie Zulu? I think it made Michael Caine's career.

A sequel is Zulu Dawn. 

Probability Doesn’t Exist: Nothing Has A Probability

Hmmm.

Still undergoing renvoation by its Chinese owners. I always enjoyed the 1930s feel. It was a pleasant, elegant place with a good friendly bar.

 Inside the Waldorf Astoria’s $1 billion makeover

 The project has been mired in difficulty, starting when the holding company owning it was replaced in 2018 by another Chinese holding company. More recently, the chief executive in charge of the Waldorf project resigned after the price tag for the hotel/condo project ballooned to nearly $3B.

200 or so years ago is about 8 generations, which means around 250 ancestors alive at that time, and 500+ cumulatively over those years.

For most people, though, that math likely overestimates because due to rural and small towns, social class, religion, castes, etc., there was more inbreeding than the math reflects. Cousins of various sorts,, etc.

I do have the names, approximate addresses (towns), and burial sites of almost all of my ancestors back to around 1600 and some to the mid-1500s. After that, even church records have deteriorated. A DNA check is fun to go way back. I know mine.

Maybe a smart reader can take on this topic. 

Mrs. BD is a big fan of live music. She loves opera and chamber music. Yes, she also loves the NYC Ballet. Yes, she loves New York. So do I.

As with church, I find feeling confined in a seat difficult. ADHD? Who knows. I am restless. Most of us know Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, but it is interesting to watch the 10-12 musicians. Instead of getting a wall of sound from a recording, it's easier to watch each musician making a sound.

I understand why chamber music was meant to be performed in a room where you can move your chair, maybe talk with somebody, have a cocktail - and not in Alice Tully Hall. You can barely hear the harpsichord in an auditorium.

Regarding brains, how does the bass fiddle guy remember every note to play for 6 Bach concerti? Or everybody else on the music team? It is complicated music.

 Is Bach the greatest achiever of all time?

 Around the HQ, we stick with the un-Yankee, Southern Italian/Sicilian Christmas Eve fast, which means seafood. In past years, I have had the real 7 Fishes with fried baccala, steamed mussels, scungilli,  etc etc. A wonderful fish feast which it would be a stretch to term "fasting." The Catholics are very clever with their concept of fasting.

The best-known Sicilian Primi is Pasta Con Sardi - pasta with anchovies (ie small sardines) - what I term Pasta With Minnows aka Pasta with Bait.

What is an "anchovy"? Never, ever use those tinned brown over-salted anchovies that they put on cheap pizzas. Disgusting stuff, cat food for a cat you hate. If you can't get fresh anchovies (they are white)  at your local fish market, use the canned white anchovies in olive oil. Tasty. Good Italian markets have good fresh or oiled white anchovy filets.

Here's the recipe. Yes, to be authentic it needs the breadcrumbs. And here's another Vigilia favorite: Fried Baccala Balls. I've also had these with mashed potato in the cod mix to hold it all together. Nothing is more delicious.

Traditionally, you have to have Struffoli for dessert even though I find it inedible.

Truth is, in recent years we just make poached salmon with yogurt-dill sauce, to be ready to serve at room temp. after getting home from church.

I think Patrick O'Brian's The Ionian Mission might be the best of his historical fiction series. While Stephen is on a spying mission in Spain, here's Jack with his violin with something baroque:

 Now when the fiddle sang at all it sang alone: but since  Stephen's departure he had rarely been in a mood for music and in any case the partita he was now engaged upon, one of the manuscripts he had bought in London, grew more and more strange the deeper he went into it. The opening movements were full of technical difficulties and he doubted he would ever be able to do them anything like justice, but it was the great chaconne which followed that really dsturbed him. On the face of it, the statements made in the beginning were clear enough; their closely-argued variations, though complex, could certainly followed with full acceptation, and they were not particularly hard to play; yet, at one point, after a curiously insistent repetition of the second point, the rhythm changed and with it the whole logic of the discourse. There was something dangerous about what followed, something not unlike the edge of madness or at least of a nightmare; and although Jack recognized that the whole sonata and particularly the chaconne was a most impressive composition he felt that if he were to go on playing it with all his heart it might lead him to very strange regions indeed...

It's taken decades for me to realize my time limits on absorbing/processing/tolerating certain things. In this case, I mean artsy things like museum shows, dance performances, music performances, theater, and the like. After an hour, my brain needs a break. Maybe it's a flaw and I have my share.

Yeah, I get a kick out of all such things - including architecture. 

OK, last weekend we went to the Picasso show at the MOMA. Wonderful. An easy and interesting one hour. This weekend in NY we checked out the Met Museum's Manet and Degas show on Saturday. Too much, too many masterpieces I've seen in books, and it would have taken 2 hours to get through it with good attention and my natural interest. Yes, it's a very popular show.

And yesterday a 2+ hour Baroque concert at Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall).  Mind you, Mrs. BD is far more advanced in music and dance than I am, but by intermission she seemed to be fading due to music overdose. (Opera and dance never have that effect on her.)

Here's my point of view: Re visual arts, these were made to decorate churches or, in recent centuries, wealthy homes. You checked out one or two at a time. Nice pictures, but not lined up in museums for the masses. Fun. Re music, it's different because there's all sorts. Pop music with lots of rhythm and repetition is easy but more ambitious music - masses, or symphonies, or long concertos - were not mostly written for 2+-hour performances (except opera). However best in world The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is, after a while you get music-museum brain. Or I do.

Another thing that bugs me about museum art and what I call "museum performances": the reverential attitude. Sure, cool things are precious but if you feel you can't cough it is silliness. Things are made mainly for entertainment and sales. Much as I admire, envy, and respect musicians and musical composers, they would let me cough or make a snarky comment to my wife. It's not church.

I liked this casual painting in the Manet/Degas show: Manet's painting of the Monet family on vacation. The kid looks bored. I do have a spot in my house for that pretty picture, but it's not for sale: 

1950s and today, in Litchfield County. Can't make a living fairy farming in CT now.

Penn Station is a sort-of terminal in NYC for the Long Island Railroad, AMTRAK, and the New Jersey Transit - all heavily used. One cool - if only 150 years late - is a new stop for the LIRR in Grand Central.

Grand Central Terminal has a total of 67 Metro North tracks serving the New Haven line (to Boston), the Harlem Line (s commuter line to Dutchess Co., NY), and the Hudson Line which connects to Yankee Stadium but mainly goes to Poughkeepsie. There is also a train to Montreal (The Adirondack). It might be AMTRAK - I get confused about all of the lines and destinations because there are so many.

The magnificent old (1910) McKim, Mead and White Penn Station was knocked down in the 1960s. Apparently there were some good reasons to do that . Since I almost never use that station, I am grateful that the also grand Grand Central Terminal, which I use frequently, was saved from the urban renewal wrecking ball. Lifetime of memories there.

I have not seen the new Penn Station (sort of renewed in time for the holidays). What do readers think about it?

Spent a great day in NYC, mainly looking at the Picasso Fontainbleau show at MOMA, urban hiking, and getting to one of our favorite lunch places. Readers know that I am a Picasso junkie, and the amount of varied stuff he produced during a 3-month summer vacation is mind-boggling. 

However, on our walking we happened to see the crane lowering the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Cool. 

City jammed with tourists. All good, mostly. 

Mrs. BD dragged me down to Brooks, cuz moths destroyed my wedding and funeral suit. Plus she wanted my dressing to be up-to-date. Spent a fair amount of money. We do go out quite a bit and I am lazy with clothing because I am not looking to pick up chicks these days and have nobody to impress with clothing except to be appropriate for the occasion.

FYI, they have excellent help and service, and also do bespoke stuff if you want with good Italian wool.  She was not entirely satisfied with the fit of the two suits she wanted for me, but the title tells you the response. Yes, well-tailored by their folks, but not perfect like some prosperous people have. Whatever.

Mrs. BD is right - men look their best in well-fitted suits, assuming they are in decent shape. Can say the same for womens' dress, of course.

I'm happy to use this stuff for a wedding, but want no more damn funerals right now. Or my own.

Local Italian men and women look great.  That's how you can tell them from the tourists. Not the kids though who try to look American.

In the Veneto, outside Venice, we stopped by a few Palladio designs around Padua and Vicenza.

This is Villa Foscari (aka Malcontenta) from the back, in the rain. The grander front faces a canal.

When Tomas Jefferson saw Palladio's work, he ripped up his design for Monticello and just copied. 

What books or authors can keep you laughing out loud, even if you feel grumpy?

My personal top two are Carl Hiassen and the Jeeves books. Also, Peter deVries.

What about you? 

I'd guess my Dad took me to Brooks Brothers since I was 13 years old. It was on NYC trips, to the old flagship store on Madison Ave. What an emporium that place was, with elevator operators and ancient but well-dressed salesmen.

Naturally, the visiting also included Abercrombie and Fitch right down the street, my favorite store in NY, to look at the fancy fishing and hunting stuff.  Both of those wonderful places are now gone. I do happily own an old A&F 20 ga s/s.

Brooks Brothers (since 1818) has been through some ownerships over recent decades, but I think they have it right with this new guy. 

Mrs. BD claimed that my one grey suit had been outdated anyway. So on a rainy Saturday she dragged me to a big Brooks Brothers store way down in White Plains, NY to do some shopping with/for me. First time in a long marriage that I ever let that happen. I played passive and grouchy while they suited me up - 2 suits, cashmere blue sports coat, shirts I didn't need, and a bunch of khakis. No more clothes shopping for the remainder of my life...

It's a shame that they no longer use Alden for shoes, so I got no dress shoes which I didn't need. I have narrow feet, and need "Narrow." Good dress shoes last 30-40 years anyway.

Excellent service, excellent tailor - all good. Now I guess I will be ready for a wedding or funeral - whichever comes first. 

American English incorporated lots of Dutch and Indian, and changed some Brit words: How English words evolved on a foreign continent.

A reader brought up the topic. Technically, a wooden Nova Scotia fishing boat. Fiberglass now, mostly. Do I like the look? You bet.

A quote: 

"The days of Novi boats having a reputation of being a 15-year boat – work them hard (and in weather you probably would not want to be out in in a “Maine-hull”), and when they get nail-sick just take the engine out and install it in a new hull and leave to old hull on a mud bank, ended with the introduction of fiberglass.

The commonest style Novi seen in New England for decades was probably the Cape Island Launch.

As said on an earlier Novi thread, some of these boats had the advantage over Maine-style hulls in being comfortable -- spanker sail up -- laying-to at night. Thus, their cruising range and ability to stay out in rough water exceeded that of the “Downeast”-type.

The nomenclature gets confusing, as Nova Scotia was always thought of as being even more culturally, as well as directionally, down-east than Maine..."

Here's one, in Rockport, Maine.