Ouch! That has to smart

It turns out Barack Obama is only in favor of women getting equal pay for equal work when it comes to women who work for somebody else; or maybe it's just that Obama has problems with the idea of hiring women for positions of responsibility.

Obama pays the women on his staff 83% of what he pays the men on his staff.

McCain, on the other hand, pays the women on his staff better than he pays the men by a few percentage points, mostly because he has female staffers who are allowed to do more than serve the men coffee and attend to the typing and filing.

But I'm a partisan, so you shouldn't just trust me. You can look it up yourself. Deroy Murdock at National Review lays out the facts in nice order. And, just in case you don't trust him either, he gives his sources so you can check them yourself.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmEzMTZmNTk5MDI0NTZmNjUwMjllN2ZlZTc0MWFmYzY=

I wonder what the law is on these in Pennsylvania

Debra has an issue with ATV's crossing their property; and, sorry to say, but Hobbs is getting a little old to handle the groundhog problem. I bet if she buys one of these and fences it back there all that with the trespassers will stop; and Hobbs can enjoy a well deserved retirement from groundhog control.

We're talking a bargain price also - five hundred bucks.

I'm thinking one of them would nicely solve the problem of deer eating my lily buds. I have to talk to Linda about this. We've been thinking of getting a pet. May as well get one that can pull his weight.

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2835

Wow! That's a turnaround jump shot

Barack Obama is the basketball player in this race, but he seems to have had his guard down when John McCain pulled off an impressive turnaround jump shot from outside the three point line a couple of weeks ago by picking Sarah Palin to be his VP running mate.

The odds on McCain as the next president are now up to 51% on Intrade, while the odds on Obama are down to 48%. The odds on McCain were well below 40% seven days ago.

Intrade is a website for legal gambling, in case you didn't know, just like Hialeah Park, the New York Stock Exchange and the PA State Lottery. If you buy a share of McCain for $51 today they will pay you $100 on November 4th, if he wins. So he's like a horse running in the fifth race at Hialeah who goes off at a little under two to one. Last week his payoff was somewhat over five to two; and a month ago his payoff was over three to one.

Uh, Oh! Joe Biden can't like this trend. The odds of him being replaced on the Democratic ticket are up to twelve to one today. The odds of him being replaced were over thirty to one a week ago. I wonder if some members of Obama's staff are placing a few bets on the side, selling old Joe short, so to speak.

I think I have all that odds stuff right. If Pop were still with us I would ask him. He could explain it with great certainty. Mom also. They both knew a lot about the odds on lots of things.

http://www.intrade.com/

This all brings back fond memories of a long running conversation I had with Pop about the possibility of developing a system for beating the horses based on Pop's knowledgeably held belief that most punters tend to be biased toward longs shots and thus increase the payoff odds of favorites above the actual probability that they will win the race.

This bettor bias belief of Pop's was deeply ironic and interesting in that the only person he knew with certainty to be a long term winner at the track was Doc. Doc's investment methodology was to watch all the various factors closely and patiently until he identified a particular long shot horse who was ready to win a particular race based on his history, the running conditions and the histories of the other horses in the field of competition, about all of which he maintained encyclopedic knowledge.

And Doc was also disciplined. If doc happened to go to the track with the boys and no such special pick was running that day, or if the conditions were not exactly right for a horse he had picked, say because it was raining, or because another horse had been scratched from the field, Doc would content himself with $2 bets all day. "Discipline and patience," Pop used to say, "Doc has the patience to wait and the discipline to withhold his bet unless everything is perfect." Not that Doc's horse would win every time; but enough of his twenty and thirty and fifty to one longshots won to return his overall investments and more. Pop knew this because Doc, as his best buddy, shared his picks, and Pop would send a few bucks to the track with Doc when he went, as he did a few times a year, to take advantage of a special situation.

After saying that over the long run he had won some money on Doc's picks, Pop would always mention that Doc would chide him at the track when they went together and Pop wagered a five or ten dollar bill on some horse because he liked the name or whatever. "Why do you do that, Johnny," Doc would say, "You, of all people, know that you can't win at gambling."

Pop and Doc, those were a prize pair to listen to, and if Norfi was with them. . . heavens, the conversations you could hear.

But back to my long running conversation with Pop about betting systems. Pop knew a lot about betting systems because a lot of people he knew were firm believers in a wide variety of betting systems. Pop believed that the betting bias in favor of longshots was real, but that it was was not sufficient to make it possible to beat the track's fifteen percent vigorish by betting regularly on favorites. And, he would always say, "What the hell's the fun of betting on a five to four favorite and then going up to the window to collect twelve fifty on a ten dollar bet. "

Near the end of his life Pop was tickled pink when I brought him a long and pretty careful news article about a scholarly paper by a group of college professors who not only proved the theory that the track odds could be beaten by betting on favorites, but who actually presented the reasoning and the sequence of bets they had made to prove the theory. As I recall it their system depended on identifying and taking advantage of certain kinds of odds spreads over the field of horses in a race combined with the running times of those horses in prior races.

I haven't looked it up online, but you can if you want to, I expect. It would be a scholarly paper written in the mid to late 1980's. And if you look it up you can apply the system yourself, although I'll warn you that it required a lot of study over some weeks before Pop agreed that it might work, resulting in a couple of percentage point edge beyond the track take for the bettor in those specific races where the stars aligned perfectly.

Also, unfortunately, the system itself appeared to me to be massively time consuming to work, although today I imagine you could set it up on a personal computer, if you know a lot about Excel or any of the Mathlab type packages, and if you're ready to do a lot of work learning about downloading betting and odds history, and the time performance histories of a lot of horses.

Then too - The fact that it can work means that many people have probably already perfected automated versions of that system, which in turn means the odds edge it can provide will have dropped since the professors published it.

Surprise, Surprise

Back on August 12th I posted about people supporting illegal immigration by making the ridiculous argument that there are "jobs Americans won't do." After destroying that argument I mockingly asked why the open borders extremists don't also argue for the use of child labor to do jobs that fully grown Americans can't do because they're too big to fit into tight spaces and such.

http://sullysside.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-about-jobs-legal-american-workers.html

The people I mocked in that post were complaining about an Immigration Department enforcement raid which found 600 illegal alien workers at an Iowa meat processing plant.

Well, imagine my surprise when I saw an article today about that same Iowa meat processing plant. It turns out that the owners there were also using underage child labor. I was relieved to see that they were doing that long before I posted my thing; because I would have hated to learn that I gave them the idea.

But seriously, why should it surprise anyone that an employer who will break the law to employ and exploit illegal aliens will also break the law to employ and exploit children? Such employers want easily manipulated workers who can't complain about unjust treatment. Illegal aliens fit the bill because if they complain the employer can easily replace them with a new illegal alien willing to work for any wage and under any conditions. Children also fit the bill, because they're too ill-informed to know they can complain.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008809100366

We need to get control of our borders and we need to set reasonable limits on legal immigration. There is a logical argument to be made for controlled levels of immigration of people with specialized education and complex job skills and such. There is no logical argument to be made for wide open borders and wide open visa systems which allow a literally unlimited number of illegal aliens to enter the country.

There's no need for me to joke about this

The green goofballs in Boston just installed a windmill on the roof of city hall. Even though they were given the windmill for free, it cost $13,000 to install. It provides enough electricity for 19 light bulbs - when the wind is blowing. I guess Boston city workers sit in the dark when the wind isn't blowing.

Perhaps they plan to use the windmill to power the light bulbs in the offices where the mayor's relatives and old buddies are supposed to be working. Since those "workers" hardly ever show up anyway it doesn't matter whether he wind blows or not.

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1118058&format=text

Always delightful, always maddening

Camille Paglia is one of the best writers out there. No matter what your politics are she's almost certain to outrage you at least a few times every column.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index.html

Read this before tomorrow!

The bad news is that when the Large Hadron Collider is turned on tomorrow it may create a black hole which will swallow the earth, or it may make this whole universe not be.

The good news is that if it destroys this universe your infinite number of other selves will go on living in all the other universes where they live.

The really bad news is that if it makes the universe not be there won't be a sound and light show.
The sort of good news is that if it creates a black hole which swallows the earth you'll be around forever to hear and see the sound and light show, but you'll be getting kind of stretchy. Everyone else will also get stretchy, but you won't notice because they'll be sucked in so fast. On the other hand they will also be around forever, except they won't see you get stretchy because you'll be sucked in so fast.

I'd go on, but understanding the relativity bit and the time thing and stretchy thing at the event horizon of a black hole is way above my pay grade. So you ought to take the above with a grain or two of salt. But take the grain of salt today, because tomorrow it could get sucked down into the black hole so fast you won't be able to taste it, even with your gynormously stretchy chameleon tongue.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23552722-details/Countdown+to+man

Update - September 11
If you're reading this and your computer screen isn't very long and stretchy, the Large Hadron Collider has not destroyed the universe, nor has it created a black hole which swallowed the earth - yet. And you shouldn't be too paranoid even if you hear that the very big brained scientists who will be playing with it like it was a very big super soaker water gun believe with all their hearts that my frog can be in two places at the same time, and, that while he is occupying two separate lilypads in the space time continuuuuum, so to speak, his two little web footed doppelgangers can croak insults to one another instantaneously by, like, cosmic mental telepathy, no matter how far apart the lily pads are.

Another reason you shouldn't worry is that very famous celebrities believe you shouldn't worry. http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i40245

Do you have plenty of warm clothes?

In response to a previous post here Nephew David wrote a question on my wall at Facebook about the probability of serious global cooling. Fortunately Facebook sent me an email about it because I don't know how to get to the damn wall to read what's on it. And I wanted to read what's on it a couple of weeks ago because I got an email that made me think a young gal who should have her mouth washed out with soap also wrote stuff there after seeing my cowboy hat picture, although David told me he didn't see what she wrote when he went to this supposed wall.

Have I mentioned that my cowboy hat picture is the very best child's picture in the known universe. I would post it here, but I don't know how to post pictures here. Facebook is very easy to post pictures on. Maybe too easy, because like, Dude, some of the young folks who have posted pictures there are seriously going to be like embarrassed in ten or twenty or forty years when their like kids and grandkids find those pictures.

Anyway, here's a post by Edward John Craig on National Review's Planet Gore blog that talks about sunspots and the little ice age and why the way out there in the heliosphere scientists think we should be thinking about it. As a surprise bonus it also explains why you have straight black hair if you are one of the so-called "black Irish;" but you have to read kind of between the lines to get the joke about that, and you have to know where Spain is, and what kind of people live in Spain and what kind of people mostly live in Ireland and so forth, headsplittingly boring stuff they don't teach in schools nowadays. Anyway, even if you don't know where Ireland or why Spanish rice is kind of pink the post is very interesting because it explains why you might like freeze your ass off this winter or next winter.

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTk4YjBkMDk5NDM4Zjk5YmIzN2UxNGVjNTVmMTQ1Mjk=

We deserve better!

The Demos are trying to sell Joe Biden as a po' boy from Scranton. If Barack Obama bought Joe Biden as a coal miner's daughter type Pennsylvania native scion he's a lot less smart than he appeared when he rolled over Bill O'Reilly on taxes last night.

Here's a random thought that struck me while watching Obama swish O'Reilly around on the floor like a dust mop and then unscrew his head and slam dunk it.

After this election we're going to have to look at either Obama's big wart or McCain's turkey wattle neck for the next four years. Not pleasant. And then there's that thing with the tongue Palin does behind her lower lip when she's thinking.

And if that's not enough; all three of the above pale next to the thought of listening to Biden talk out of both sides of his mouth for four years. What a supercilious asshole. Caligula's horse is a lot more believable as a popular favorite for a Senator's stall and trough, and he didn't get re-elected 6 times. At least half of the three or four dozen voters down in Delaware must be brain damaged from smelling all that chicken shit.

Anyway, after eight years of putting up with George W's earnest Alfred E. Neuman imitation we deserve better.

Here's a wrinkle about Iran I hadn't thought about

This article about how we're about to sell a $7 Billion anti-missile system to The United Arab Emirates caught my eye. I've been so blinded by all the talk about Iran threatening Israel that I've tended to forget that an Iranian bomb also threatens a whole bunch of other people. Iranian Shiites may not hate Sunni Muslims quite as much as they hate Jews and Americans; but they hate them plenty much. There's going to be a lot of money in selling anti-missile systems to all the oil rich countries that are going to want to have a chance of stopping an Iranian missile. Figure on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia being next up to bat to pay several billion for such systems, and there is only one country that can supply them.

http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080909/tbs-usa-uae-missile-7318940.html

It's nice that there's money to be made by our aerospace industry. But don't get me wrong. I think it will be a very, very bad day for the world if Iran manages to develop a nuclear weapon. And it will be an even worse day if Iran manages to develop compact nuclear weapons that can be delivered with ballistic missiles. Iran already has missiles which can reach the other oil producing states in the Middle East, and also Israel, which is "the little Satan" in the eyes of the Muslim fanatics who run Iran. And Iran is working on missiles able to reach most of Europe.

Note that this is not a panic thing. This is a long run risk thing. I'm no expert on these weapons; but I do know there is a big difference in difficulty between developing unwieldy two ton nuclear devices like the bombs dropped on Japan, and developing a few hundred pound device which is shaped to fit into a missile reentry nose cone. It took the U.S. and the Soviet Union several years and dozens of nuclear tests to develop reliable warheads for missiles. With more modern computers to do modelling and all the information that is out there in the public domain it will probably take Iran less time; but it will still take a couple of years minimum from the time of the first test explosion to the time they can have a short range missile ready to launch with a reliable warhead.

Figure at least a couple of years before Iran tests a bomb, then at least a couple more years before they can put a bomb on a short range missile, then at least a couple more years before they can put it on a medium range missile, say one that can reach Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, India, and a lot of other nearby countries. That means it's at least five or six years before things will get really dicey.

But five or six years isn't very long if you're thinking about how to defend against such missiles. Just installing and testing one of these anti-missile systems is probably a several year affair.

Stupid is as stupid does

Meanwhile in breaking news from Norristown:

Gordon Glantz, managing editor of The Times Herald, published a perfectly predictable column slamming the GOP for a lot of things, one of which was stupidity.

Which was interesting, because Mr. Smarty Pants Managing Editor Glantz wrote in the next to last paragraph - "A choice of Jindal - a Native American no less - would have shown that the Republican Party still has some residual mojo. . ."

He meant Bobby Jindal, the Republican fellow those Good Old Boys down in Louisiana elected to be their Governor a couple of years ago.

To me Bobby Jindal being a Native American didn't sound exactly right, even though a politically correct fellow like Gordon Glantz said he was. First off, as a good Republican I have a mental picture of Bobby Jindal to go along with my mental appreciation of his policy positions, and in my mental picture Bobby Jindal is a good couple of shades darker than I remember Tonto and Cochise being. I was pretty sure he wasn't the kind of Native American who used to hold up his hand and say "How" when he wasn't shooting arrows at John Wayne.

Those gun toting racist Republican hicks out in Alaska elected the wife of a Native American as Governor a couple of years ago; but he's descended from kayaking Native Americans, the sort who used to hunt seals and walruses. The Republicans in Colorado elected a fellow descended from the sort of pinto pony riding, buffalo steak eating Native Americans Glantz was thinking of, but not Louisiana. I was pretty sure Louisiana Republicans elected a fellow who was born in this country but who's ancestors were Shrimp Vindaloo eating Indians, you know, folks who were from the Indian Subcontinent rather than from the Indian Territories.

But I like to be careful about such things; so I did a couple of clicks on this newfangled internet thingy that Mr. Glantz must not have heard about, to check my memory and my thinking. And then I wrote Mr. Glantz a respectful email:

"Only the Times Herald could have a managing editor who thinks Bobby Jindal is a "Native American" and is dumb enough to put it in a column.

Do you do your research before or after you neglect to check the headlines for spelling?

Another, less reliably leftist managing editor might have meant he was born in America. But you, of course, meant that his ancestors counted coup on white devils like Custer out on the great plains.

Turns out his ancestors, given his parentage, are a lot more likely to have counted coup on Mohammedans or British accented white devils over in old India.

Regards,
Sully

P.S. Love your 'stache, but I recommend you ditch the white jacket for a rainbow tie-dye. "

Me again - In the interests of fairness I shall certainly post Mr. Glantz's reply if he makes one. Incidently, since sending him the email I have reconsidered my opinion of Mr. Glantz's droopy at the sides moustache. On reflection it makes him look like an underdeveloped walrus, or else a walrus after the attentions of a pinniped version of Lorena Bobbitt. He should ditch the picture.

Update: My remarks above relate to the picture of Mr. Glantz in the print edition of The Times Herald. His column of Sunday, September 7th wasn't up on the website (as of September 7th). There is a different picture of him on the web. In that picture he doesn't have a Fu Manchu moustache.

Update - September 9th - In today's paper The Times Herald published a tiny little correction of this pretty big error on Mr. Glantz's part, given that he regularly writes about national politics. The correction reads. "In Gordon Glantz's column on Page A4 of Sunday's edition, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was incorrectly identified as a Native American."

Obama will say Ouch! when he reads this

Over at Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog a poster took on the issue of why Barack Obama continues to trade punches with Sarah Palin even though his real opponent is John McCain.

I'm betting the writer is a graduate of a top notch college which has a Womyn's Studies Department. Alternatively, this is such a pitch perfect example of it's genre that the writer may even be Camille Paglia posting under a pseudonym.

"Joe NS Says: September 6th, 2008 at 2:50 PM

The Democratic campaign is not in a meltdown. The proper image, I believe, is that of a long metal chain the links of which are one by one sliding off the edge of a bench. One can see what is happening, very slowly at first and then accelerating, with horror or glee depending on party affiliation; but it’s very definitely underway.

It is nearly impossible to credit it, but the Palin pick has caught the Democrats so flat-footed that they have clearly decided the only counterpunch they have is to argue that Sarah Palin cannot be a mother and a vice-president at the same time. That is a flat-out incredible position for a Democrat to take. It is unvarnished surrealism. And I fear it might even work. The truth, however, is that they really have no other option at this point. Largely because of the psychology of BO himself, I believe.

In any sensible assessment of his current predicament, Obama MUST IGNORE Sarah Palin. To have the Democratic presidential nominee fencing on almost a daily basis with the Republicans nominee for vice-president is only a little short of insane. Palin was wrong on one matter: the longer the jousting between them continues, the more voters will notice that the proper level of comparison of Obama and Palin is not between Obama as community organizer and Palin as mayor, but between Obama as community organizer and Palin as a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, PTA. Obama should put Sarah Palin out of his head. So why can’t he?

It’s simple: She’s sexier than he is.

One of the things that has always seemed to me creepiest about the 2008 presidential campaign has been its erotic - I would even say homoerotic - atmospherics. Sheer celebrity, of course, tends to push things that way, to be sure; but with Obama something else has been going on, something that is often referred to as “narcissism” or “self-absorption” or, more honestly, as “seductiveness.” Though others may take offense, I think it was always more the self-fascination one sees in a young girl posing in front of a mirror. Edwards displayed the syndrome as well, but once he left the race, Obama had the enchantress slot all to himself. McCain? Hillary?? I don’t think so.

Now here is Sarah Palin, who directly threatens the male narcissist’s amour propre because she seems to be reorienting the eroticism in the campaign toward its “traditional” locus in ordinay life: toward the female. Sarah Palin is amazingly erotic. But even more amazing: It’s perhaps the least important thing about her? Like a belle who meets an unforeseen competitor for the title of most alluring, Obama has reacted badly and, let’s be honest, a little bit cattily.

In sum, hell hath no fury . . . ."

Take time for one minute of incisive political news

If you can only afford the time for one minute of political news today this short video is your best bet.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/portrayal_of_obama_as_elitist?utm_source=videomrss_83996

Or, if you really don't care about politics you can spend your minute learning about the completion of more than one hundred years of scientific study of a crucial topic.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/cosmopolitan_institute_completes

A word on recent slurs aimed at my frog

Two guest have recently alleged that my frog has been gaining weight. I'm pleased to report that I've reviewed his pictures of three years or so ago and can report that he is as svelte as ever, or at least as svelte as he was three years ago.

Such comments are tempting me to give him the hop of the house as a test of his athleticism, but I'm resisting. The last time he was decidedly uncooperative about returning to his bowl. And I've slowed down a bit in the ten years of so since the last time.

If he should somehow become released to hop free and I can't catch him before Linda gets home it will not be good. Must resist!

The boring nitty gritty of engineering

This video by a retired General Electric executive patiently takes you through the facts about wind energy. The most interesting thing about it is the insight it gives into the sheer scale of the national economy.

If you know me you know someone who personally knew someone (Grandpop L) who started his life in a world and time when less mechanical power was generated in the entire world than can today be generated by ten, or maybe twenty, of the wind generators this fellow talks about. Grandpop L was born at a time when for 99.9% of the world's population one horsepower was generated by one horse, or else it was generated by four humans busting their asses.

Jules Verne, who died in 1905, was probably the most outrageously visionary thinker alive when Grandpop L was born in the 1890's. Told on his deathbed that within a hundred and three years a rational person would envision the world producing and erecting a thousand, let alone nearly three hundred thousand, windmills of the size this fellow talks about, Jules Verne would have dismissed the idea as a fever dream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_W4_bv4c9w

Hat tip to Mario Lewis who linked to this video on National Review's Planet Gore blog.

Dusty work and translation services

Whew! I just came in from mowing the prairie areas that I've been leaving alone all summer. Dusty work - there was a lot of ground up dried grass and weeds flying around. Even my tractor won't mow twenty-four inch tall growth neatly the first time or the second time through, at least not now, late in the season, when the blades are dull and all dinged up from me using the mower deck like it was a brush hog out in the woods. So I mowed the prairie about ten inches high last week, and then took it down to about six inches high the other day. Today I finally took it down to match the four inch or so height of the grass around the house.

While I was mowing I had my best guess at Mom's old recipe for string bean and little meat ball stew simmering on the stove. I'll give you the recipe for that tomorrow after I see what what it tastes like.

While I was mowing I was also thinking about why I started to mow the grass the way I do. And it came to me that the original reason was the rug Dory and John Hamano had in their living room back in the 1970's. The rug was all they had in the living room that first time when we went over to their house, but what a rug it was. It was a Chinese made oval carpet about ten or twelve feet long, very colorful and very neatly textured. The pattern of the colors and the varying depths of the pile made it fantastic, like a picture in three dimensions.

We lost touch with John and Dory decades ago but I still remember their rug, and I still texture the lawn to be like that rug. Or rather every spring I have a vision of texturing it, cutting it to various depths in patterns, to be like that rug. And then I hate so much to mess up the luxuriant growth of the areas where the grass and the wildflowers are getting tall, that I never cut the high growing areas until I absolutely have to in late summer. Linda, of course, has an opinion or two about all this, so I cut the area within about a hundred feet of the house like a regular lawn. But I let the farther away areas grow tall so the grass can sway in the wind, except for mown paths that lead here and there.

John and Dory were interesting folks. I met Dory at work where she was a salesperson briefly. He was a salesman with IBM. Their living room was bare of furniture because their idea was to fill the house piece by piece with really fine furniture. If that rug was an indicator they must have a house full of some really great furniture by now. Thinking of them I'm reminded that they were somewhat unusual. She was Jewish American, but she spoke Japanese fluently from college and then some time in Japan, teaching English I think on a sort of work study basis. He was Japanese American, but he spoke almost no Japanese. She interpreted when he talked to his grandmother. She could interpret in real time, as though she was a machine and not even involved in the conversation if she wanted to.

Mom used to interpret when I talked to Grandmom L, but she was a terrible translator because she was never not involved in the conversation. It used to make me crazy. I would ask Grandmom a question. And Mom would answer for Grandmom without even interpreting what I asked. Or Grandmom would say something long and obviously interesting and Mom would have a little conversation with her in Italian and then tell me something very short in English. Or I would ask a question and they would have a conversation with lots of grinning, and then Mom would tell me Grandmom said something not funny at all.

It was obvious my access to important information was being restricted. So I would try to talk to Grandmom on the sly, but we could never really communicate across the language barrier. Trying to talk to her as she was cooking or whatever would get you some great treats because she and Aunt Mary R always, always!, had something good either baking or else in the refrigerator, but talking to Grandmom seldom yielded information. And Aunt Mary was as bad as Mom as a translator, although Aunt Mary could tell you some pretty good stories on her own if Mom wasn't there to inhibit her.

With Aunt Mary you could always get a great piece of cake and hear something very interesting about who did what to whom and when. Sometimes even why and where. And with names too. One time a person Aunt Mary had just said was a horse's ass happened to visit, and she offered him a piece of cake, and had a nice smiling little conversation with him. Then, after he left, she said, "See, like I said, a real shtunad; but whataya gonna do, you can't pick your relatives."

But it was Grandmom who I wanted to communicate with. So I would try to get Pop to translate, but he would claim not to be able to speak Italian well enough, even though I knew from observation that he could understand it perfectly well. He very rarely said anything in Italian, but he would get the jokes just as fast as everybody else did when he listened in to Grandmom L and Aunt Mary R and Julia, Mom's Goomah, and Sia Gigette, Pop's aunt from the other side of the family, when they were sitting around the kitchen table talking.

The really old ladies, Mom's Goomah and Sia Gigette, were already like a hundred years old then, at least, and they knew a lot. Mom's Goomah, Julia, was usually pretty quiet, but when Sia Gigette was around she would get rocking and rolling just as well as the others.

Sia Gigette was a special and interesting case. One time when they didn't know I was listening I heard Mom tell Aunt Carmella and Aunt Tavia that Sia Gigette would never die. "She's too nasty to die," Mom said. And Aunt Carmella and Aunt Tavia laughed and agreed, even though Sia Gigette was their aunt, just like she was Pop's aunt. "She's a bitch on wheels all right," Aunt Carmella said. And Aunt Tavia said, "You can say that again." And then they laughed about the time Mom asked Sia Gigette, "How's she different from your daughter?" or something like that right in front of Grandmom A after Sia Gigette made some remark about, uh, one of my relatives on Mom's side.

Anyway, when Mom and Aunt Mary and Julia and Sia Gigette were together in the kitchen down on Walnut Street they said the best stuff, stuff that made Mom look around to see who was listening; but they said it all in Italian. They said stuff that sometimes made her and Aunt Mary laugh so hard they would be like they were crying. Sometimes one of them would say something that would even make Mom break briefly from Italian into English.

"No!" She would say, and then "Goomah! Be good," or "Sia Gigette! He did not!" Or she would make that shh gesture and say "Mom! Little pitchers have big ears." Then they all would turn to where me and Matty were looking in the door and they would laugh and laugh. And if they were really loud in there Grandpop would mumble that phrase that Pop later told me meant "chickens in the barnyard," or something like that. Me and Matty would see that Grandpop was shaking his head with a little smile on his face in the living room, and Pop would have a big broad smile.

But Pop would never translate, or he would tell us something that was a little funny, but not something funny enough to have made Aunt Mary scream, "Stop! You're makin' me wet my pants."

My last word on Sarah Palin

Before last night Hillary Clinton was the most likely woman to become President of the U.S.

Last night, with that speech, Sarah Palin became the most likely woman to become President of the U.S.

She's not a lock, mind you, there is a lot of campaign ahead before she can even become vice-president; but you can be sure nobody in the media or among the political types will be taking her for granted or petting her on the head and saying she's just a token woman after her speech last night.

Which puts Hillary in a tough situation. In order to become the Democratic Party nominee in 2012 she needs to make sure Barack Obama loses to John McCain this November. But if Barack Obama loses her toughest rival becomes vice president.

An interesting take on Sarah Palin's speech

At National Review's blog The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez compared Sarah Palin to Mary Tyler Moore, of all people. And the comparison is perfect. She quoted the theme song to Mary Tyler Moore's show, which was set in Minneapolis.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzFiNGY3YTUzYWM2NGVmOTA1YmVmZWU4Zjc1YTM5MTE=

"Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all"

I'd take a bet on very long odds that Joe Biden is a lot less confident today about facing her in their debate. This woman will go into that debate very confident of coming out with his head to display in her office with her dad's bear skin rug and the rack of the last caribou she shot; and she'll be smiling all the while.

There's a new sheriff in town.

Best quote, "Before I became governor, I ran for and became mayor of my home town. A mayor's like a community organizer, only with real responsibility."

Now they can come for us quickly

Technology proceeds by slow stages but then it all adds up to a stunning change.

The bad news is the robots will be able to get to us quickly with the nets if they ever decide to come and take us away.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080902171117.htm

The good news is it can't be long before we can sit back and enjoy a movie while we're being driven somewhere by our car.

A great motto

In the season of politics I'm always reminded of one of history's great quotes. It's more melodious in French than in English:

"Il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!"
"We must be audacious, and again audacious, always audacious."

Georges Danton, who said it, never lost his way with words - or his attitude. Just before they cut off his head he said, "Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing."

Impossible not to like a wiseguy like that. He went out with style.

Stock up on warm clothes!

In case you didn't notice August was the first month since 1913 without a single sunspot. In general sunspot activity has been significantly low this year. Some scientist types have been talking about the low sunspot activity for a while, but they've been pretty muted about it because real scientists wait for the data rather than promote paranoid fears (like a certain ex Vice-President I could name if this weren't a strictly non-political post).

The link to the article that I've pasted below will give you a hint about why you may need warm clothes soon. If you want to be really terrified about climate change google Maunder Minimum and read all about it. Or, if the Little Ice Age of the Middle Ages is too long timey ago for you young whippersnappers google, "year without a summer." That happened a few years before Grandpop L and Grandpop A were born.

http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History+First+Spotless+Month+in+a+Century/article12823.htm

A great letter about wrestling and the media

Jonah Goldberg at National Review's blog The Corner posted this letter from a reader which took me back even farther than the writer can remember. He talks about the World Wrestling Federation in the 1980's. I remember when me, Sam and Jas were watching Bobo Brazil wrestle the bad guys in the late 1950's. I don't know whether Sam and Jas realized that wrestling was phony back then, but I did. Just as I know the claims of fairness by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the New York Times are utterly phony.

Here's the letter for you wrestling fans:

"I’m 31, and when I was a kid the World Wrestling Federation would not admit that what it was doing was fake. We all knew Hulk Hogan and Jake the Snake were really just doing a big sweaty man-ballet, but they would never admit that fact. The media today is just like the WWF back then. They won’t admit that what they’re doing is phony, and that almost every supposedly non-partisan, registered independent host on the networks, CNN, and MSNBC is a liberal democrat. They, like the WWF in 80’s, will not admit that their obvious charade is phony."

Me again - I'm just re-reading that letter and realizing the writer was just being born when I was 31 years old. It's good to see a member of the younger generation is growing up smart. Or maybe this member of the younger generation is getting old enough to be smart.

There's an old political saying. I think it was Winston Churchill who used to say:
'A man who's a conservative at age 18 has no heart.
A man who's a liberal at age 30 has no head.'

Good times!

We've had quite a week here in Collegeville.

First Ken and Gail M visited last Wednesday after dropping Scott off at University of Pennsylvania for his Sophomore year. We had a great dinner at Francescos down in Phoenixville just across from the Colonial Theater. Good Italian food and great conversation. Ken and Gail stayed over and left for Cleveland on Thursday morning.

Then Alex and Christina arrived from Boston late Friday night (3:00 AM Saturday morning actually). How hard it is to remember when I had such energy. Work a long week including Friday, move furniture from one apartment to another over the course of a couple of hours, and then decide to drive six hours through the night. Oh to be 25 years old again.

Then a raucous Saturday morning coffee clatch with Sam and Jas, and a relatively rare appearance by Dave C. Great stories. Joey C, doing well in California now, a man now. An old man now, but not as old as me and Dave. Remembering and laughing about how he used to go to sleep crouched up on his forearms and chest and knees with his butt up in the air, making a little tent under the covers. Wondering now why none of us ever took a rubber band and shot a bobby pin hard at the spot on the covers where his butt was. I'd be willing to bet Dave C did that, at least once. Remembering now that Alex and Dave A, I'm sure it was them, broke the little crystal penguin, probably by shooting things at it with rubber bands. And then they propped the pieces together so it appeared whole.

Remembering how we used to play ball tag, ball tag with a hard rubber ball!, in their parents' basement, which was panelled and furnished, unlike our basement. And remembering how we used to shoot bent bobby pins and tightly folded paper projectiles at one another with rubber bands til somebody was crying. It's amazing we all still have use of both our eyes.

Remembering how quiet we used to be for a little while after an eruption from our parents upstairs when the general noise level, or a particularly sharp crash or scream or something, would remind them that we were down there. "What the hell are you little indians doing down there?" Sometimes, many times, the phrase contained a more outrageous characterization than "indians." What can one say about an era when a too tightly wound Mom or Dad might be pushed to the point of screaming at their kids, referring to them as "little bastards" or "little sons of bitches". What can one say about an era where it wasn't at all unusual to hear "Don't make me come down there. If I come down there I'm gonna beat the shit out of you." It shouldn't surprise that we would often be quiet and "good" for at least a few minutes after that. And then me or Dave would grab Joey or Jas or Sam and give them a good noogie and we would be off again.

Anyway, Jas and Kathy had the whole family, plus Mark and Linda L and Chris and Kit from the dances at the Ballroom on High Street, over to their house for a picnic yesterday, Labor Day, not that we have ever especially honored Labor Day except as an excuse for a picnic. A beautiful day, a great feed, great company. A little bittersweet because that may be the last picnic up on Canci Court since John and Kathy are retiring next July and may sell the house and move to a smaller one. We'll miss Fort Trappe if that happens.

Remembering that Pop always said "Well, that's another summer shot to hell" at the end of each Labor Day picnic in the old days. And that he always said "It's downhill from here," about the winter each New Years day.

Marianne complained about me calling her little stuffed lion "Lion-Lion" in my post the other day. She said his name was "Line-Line," but I still think "Lion-Lion" is the more correct. Why should I be limited in my writing by the echoes down the years of her childish inability to properly pronounce his name at the time? Marianne doesn't know where Lion-Lion is either. She says he disappeared when Mom and Pop moved out of the Trooper house. Maybe Sam or Jas buried Lion-Lion with Jippon. Or maybe Sam or Jas got too careless and let Jippon actually get his jaws on Lion-Lion one time after all the sleight of hand incidents. If so they aren't talking.

A funny story about language. In 1991 or so, when I was reporting on township meetings for The Collegeville Independent, a politician complained about the way I quoted him when I translated his casual spoken words to normal english. So the next week I took special pains to quote him exactly and at great length. I quoted every word he said at the meeting, starting with his complaint. I know I quoted him very exactly after his complaint because I checked the borough secretary's recording of the meeting after transcribing his remarks - as in "Wha yall think was gonna happn? Yall cut the grage money! Ain't no surprise, truck diden get no repairs, diden get fixt, so it broke down, at's what happen you cut the grage money. An idjit coulda tol ya at was gonna happn, any idjit. I tol ya, tol ya at the time, any idjit coulda tol ya."

And what did I get for my trouble? Why that ungrateful fellow had the nerve to complain again, maybe even a bit more vociferously. But he didn't complain the next week when I went back to translating him into English.

What a boat!

Alex and Christina rented a Jeep Commander for their drive down here because they needed to move her into a new apartment before they left Boston. Wisely they took my car to drive down to Philly to go to church and visit some friends this morning. So I just took their rental for a little spin to the Wawa to see how it feels and handles.

What a boat! No, I take that back. What a land ship!

Not wanting to scratch it I parked a reasonable seeming distance from the bollards at the Wawa based on the view over the hood. After I got out I saw that I was almost five feet away from those bollards.

Reminds me of driving the aircraft carrier. We had to remember that, from our position on the bridge, when a sailboat disappeared under the loom of the flight deck dead ahead it was almost 600 feet in front of the bow. Not that it mattered much. Sailboats and cabin cruisers and suchlike only disappeared dead ahead under the loom of the flight deck when we were going out of San Francisco in the deep channel just to the right of the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. We weren't going to maneuver to avoid them even if the bow lookout warned that one of them was about to be pulped.

None of them ever was pulped, at least when I was driving, but that used to be an interesting time. Most interesting was observing how slow the pleasure boats were actually going when they were torqued up to the max trying to keep up with us as we accelerated after going under the bridge. Twenty knots, and almost all of them were falling behind. Twenty five knots, and they were planing, the ones that could. Thirty knots, and all but the slim racing boats were lagging.

Most times we continued at thirty knots until we were a hundred miles or so off shore, all the racing boats having long since dropped away from lack of fuel. Then we would come around to whatever course and make whatever speed we needed to to maintain thirty knots of wind down the angle deck while we recovered our eighty or so aircraft, which would fly out from the shore base they went to before the ship pulled into port.

If the recovery operation went smoothly, within eighty minutes or so, all would be sweetness and light. If it went not so smooth the Captain's face would get redder and redder as the minutes passed and we would know that the next day would see a lot of drills for the flight deck crew and a round of visits to the bridge for quiet little chewing outs of the commanders of the offending squadrons. If there were too many exciting incidents, incidents like landing signal officers saying one too many times or a little too shrilly, "power, power, power!," or "left rudder, left rudder, left rudder!" or "wave off! wave off!" the Captain's head would look like it was about to explode with a bang louder than the bang of each of the aircraft as it hit the deck. The next week or so would be exhausting, drills at all hours of the day and night, practicing, practicing, practicing until he was satisfied - not that he was ever truly satisfied.

Every carrier landing is a potential disaster as a hundred thousand pound aircraft hits the deck at over a hundred miles an hour and is decelerated to a stop in a couple of hundred feet, especially once the bow is filled with parked aircraft. And don't even think about the possibilities when planes are landing one per minute while others are being refueled and armed with bombs and rockets and proceeding to the bow catapults one per minute to be launched.

On the port wing of the bridge we had a red control panel shaped like the flight deck with buttons, each of which could nearly instantly douse the part of the real flight deck near where they were on the toy flight deck with fire fighting foam and salt water. We had had a long lecture about the financial effects of such a dousing on the electronics and such of multi-million dollar aircraft when we were indoctrinated in the use of that system. Following that lecture the Captain had told us that we should not for a moment hesitate to push one, or as many of those buttons as he told us to, if he should ever tell us to. Further he told us that we shouldn't hesitate for a moment to push one or as many of those buttons as we thought necessary in the event we ever saw fire on the flight deck, even if he was occupied with other things and hadn't yet told us to.

Thirty knots was about as fast as we ever went when I was driving, or even when I was on the bridge and just observing before the Captain approved me to drive. I was aboard when we went faster, during the sea trials we went through just after coming out of the shipyard, but I wasn't on the bridge during that day. The bridge was packed with senior officers that day and I was a very raw Ensign then, still sometimes a bit unsure which way lead toward the pointy end of the ship and which way lead toward the blunt end of the ship in the interior passageways. Not that I ever let the sailors in my deck division ever know I wasn't utterly confident.

Admiral Rickover himself was aboard on the day of the sea trials. He was personally on the bridge when they tested the ship's acceleration from dead in the water to it's maximum attainable speed and then tested its maximum ability to decelerate by executing an all back emergency engine order. I was on the fantail during that test. It's probably the only way in life to get an appreciation of just how much force a team of 120,000 horses all pulling as hard as they can in one direction can exert. The fantail was bouncing, actually bouncing, under the strain - hard to believe thick steel can flex enough to allow that kind of bouncing. The whole of the hundred thousand ton ship was vibrating and shivering so much that you moved around on the deck like one of those little men on the vibrating football game board if you stood flatfooted.

Update - When I qualified as officer of the deck a few months later after a grilling about ship handling and safery procedures and such by the Captain and all the department heads in his sea cabin up behind the bridge the Captain congratulated me with some words he clearly relished. "Congratulations Mr. A. . ., You are now a qualified Officer of the Deck of the largest warship in the history of the world. Report to Mr. B on the bridge and relieve him of the watch." Reflecting on it later I became sure he was appointed to command of that ship with those same words. They were true at the time.

The Reagan class carriers outweigh the Enterprise by a few thousand tons nowadays. But they aren't faster! As the first nuclear powered carrier, built in the 1950's with cost no object, Enterprise was way overbuilt, especially the engineering plant with its eight reactors and four engine rooms.

For you non-Navy types, Officer of the Deck is Mr. Sulu's job in Starship Enterprise. I never fail to get a little thrill when Captain Kirk orders, "Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu." And I'm one of the few Star Trek watchers who always remember that Mr. Sulu is still up there on the bridge of Enterprise keeping a sharp watch in charge of the ship while Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are back in the engine room or transporter room with Scotty, or playing tourist down on the planet with Bones and whatever crewman is going to be vaporized by the aliens.

About Sarah Palin and "experience"

There has been a lot of commentary about whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be President should she and John McCain be elected, and should something then happen to McCain.

Elizabeth I became Queen of England in 1558 when she was 25 years old. She did fairly well by her country.

From what I’ve seen and read of Sarah Palin so far she’s got as good a prospect as any of the four in the running to do okay if she should suddenly become President at 45 years old. Aside from her experience in government, a woman who has successfully juggled a full time job and five kids ranging in age from one year old to late teen age while staying on good terms with a 20 year husband knows quite a bit about delegation, decisionmaking and practical crisis management.

Very few of our presidents have been anywhere close to “qualified” by experience for the job. The good ones have exhibited good judgement. Some of the worst ones have been the best qualified on paper.


Update - Jonah Goldberg at National Review posted a great letter from a reader on this issue:

"Who would you hire?

To borrow from Ross Perot (not always a good idea), would you hire any of these people as a manager at your company?

Palin you'd offer the job to right away, and then you'd sweat until she accepted it.

McCain would seem like a decent choice, but wouldn't make or break you either way.

You'd wonder how Obama possibly thought he was qualified, and you'd leave him to be hired by some other company where they fall for people who say all the right things.

And you'd be telling stories about Biden's interview, and making jokes about it, for years."

Maybe McCain got the idea of picking Palin from this

Maybe Senator John McCain got the idea of picking Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate from this video. It's pretty funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh-lW2opLyQ&feature=related

And, it turns out that way back when she competed in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant after being selected as Miss Wasilla. She also won the Miss Congeniality award in Wasilla. Apparently she hasn't always been congenial since then; her Alaska political opponents call her Sarah Barracuda. She can probably go one on one with Barack Obama on a basketball court, she hunts, she fishes and she's married to a part Eskimo who's a union member and a champion snowmobile racer. Oh, one other thing, she returned to work three days after having their fifth kid. The Democrats will be making a big mistake if they underestimate this woman, especially since their presidential candidate isn't a lot more experienced than she is.

This 2006 newspaper article gives her whole history.

http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/story/8334949p-8231037c.html

The things you remember

It's funny the things you remember. I was just at the bank depositing a check preparatory to paying the last of our ridiculously outrageous real estate tax bills. While I was at the bank I got a couple of hundred dollars in twenties. I'm pretty modern about paying with credit cards for most things but Linda is somewhat less so. We go through an outrageous number of twenty dollar bills around here.

I can remember when a twenty dollar bill represented one-third of my pay for a sixy hour week at Harry's Potato Market. That was before I claimed to have another job opportunity after my first year of high school and Harry raised my pay to $1.20 an hour. Of course that was cash pay, so there were no outrageous taxes taken out of. And the job carried some fringe benefits. I got all the fruit I had any desire to eat, and I could take home all of the spotted fruit Mom had any desire to make into pies and such. And I sometimes got to accompany Harry on his trips with that old truck to deliver boxes of produce to various little stores and restaurants in Norristown and Bridgeport and Trooper and Plymouth Meeting. Harry would talk to the owner and I would carry the box into the back. Sam, or was it John, told me about a time when a box fell off the back of the truck on Airy Street and spread fruit all over the road as they went up a hill. "Don't look back," Harry said, as they roared away.

Whoa! A hawk, a redtail I think, just made a kill down by the bamboo grove where I mowed yesterday. And there he flies away. That garter snake who's been hanging around in the garden must have gotten complacent travelling toward the creek. He forgot there is no high grass now. Well, he won't be wriggling long. It's surprisingly rare that I see a hawk on the ground - maybe ten or fifteen times in the thirty years we've been up here in Collegeville. Nature photographers must be supernaturally patient people.

Anyway, back to Harry. Another fringe benefit of my job at Harry's was watching Harry and the other characters who came and went at the Potato Market during those late grade school and early high school summers. Harry was a Sicilian of a kind they don't make anymore, or, if they still make them, you don't see them in this country any more. Or maybe I don't hang around in the right places anymore.

Several of Pop's friends were Sicilians. Lardy and Chink, I think, were Sicilians. Louis Hop was also a Sicilian, but he was an altogether different kind of Sicilian, and he wasn't really one of Pop's friends, he was a neighbor. Reds and Tommy were also Sicilians, I think, but they weren't Pop's friends either, they were business associates.

Reds was also an albino, a very exotic person in 1950's Norristown. I only saw him a couple of times, and that was when I happened to be with Pop on a trip to town when Pop visited him to drop something off or pick something up. Reds talked about coins sometimes after he and Pop had finished comparing their lists and doing their calculations.

Reds talked about coins as investments, not coins as spending money like the ones in the big bowl Uncle Joe Sky had in the middle of the dining room table as a centerpiece. Uncle Joe would tell me to dip into that bowl and take a few of those coins when I went to his house with Pop. I knew I wasn't allowed to dip into that bowl when I went by myself to visit Aunt Lucy. Aunt Lucy made the best waffles, and she would make those waffles anytime if you just went in and said hi and sat down at the kitchen table and talked with her while she stirred up the batter and heated the waffle iron over the gas. She was funny, Aunt Lucy, and interesting to talk with; but mostly I remember her waffles. She put lots the Caro syrup on top of the waffles on her plate. I liked to put a little pool of syrup on the side of my plate and just dip each bite of waffle in it.

Much later Pop said Reds was one of the smartest guys he knew and he wished he had the money back then to invest in coins the way Reds told him to. Pop had a pretty good coin collection but he just put it together by looking at all the coins he got in change. Sometimes he got a lot of change. When I asked why it was so dark in Reds' apartment Pop told me Reds had to stay inside with the shades drawn because too much light bothered his eyes. He also told me Reds had no hair anywhere on him when I asked why he had a bald head and no eyebrows. Another time Pop told me Reds had no pores, so he couldn't sweat and had to be careful about getting too hot.

Pop's friends, the boys he called them, were a diverse lot. I think the three Jiggses, Frankie, Chollie and Louie, were Neapolitans. Cappy was a Mundelaise, and Worm's people were Bolognese, I think. Butch and Doc's people were Marche's, like our people. The Count's people, I think, were Roman, from Rome that is. None of us thought of ourselves as Roman Romans. We were Italians in those days. Sicilians were Italians too, but they were a different kind of Italian. We went to Holy Saviour church. The Sicilians had their own church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Have I mentioned that I'm a pure Marche' from all four grandparents. That's pronounced Mark with emphasis on the M and the K and a little "eh" on the end. I could have joined the Marche' Club, but I never did because Pop never did. He had a long standing grudge about the Marche' Club from the time he returned from the Navy and they denied him a little disability payment he should have gotten by virtue of Grandpop A's membership. Sam and Jas could have joined the club as well if they wanted, but Marianne couldn't have - no girls allowed. Not that it matters anymore; the club is gone. Our generation is the last to have enough pure Marches to make a local club.

Grandpop L, a club member in good standing, had a little joke he told about Marche's that Mom translated for me. "What's worse than a dead body in the living room?" "A live Marche' at the door." I guess it works better in Italian. The idea is that you're going to get be able to get rid of the dead body a lot easier than you're going to be able to rid of the hardheaded Marche'.

Grandmom L, who was a Marche', used to occasionally refer to Sicilians as "Le Chiboudeys," when she was going strong with Mom and Aunt Mary M at the kitchen table. Or she would call them "Shockeys." But she only talked about them like when her daughter-in-law Aunt Nancy wasn't around. Shockey was just an Americanization of Sciacca, which was the village most of the Norristown Sicilians came from. Pop or his buddies would call one another Shockeys or Napolitans or Mundelaise or Bolognese all the time as in "You Shockeys are all alike" so that wasn't interesting. The fact that Grandmom L might refer to a Sicilian as a Shockey wasn't anything special.

But Chiboudeys was clearly something different, something interesting, especially because it was accompanied with that little hand flip Grandmon L gave when she smiled in that way she only did with Mom and Aunt Mary when she thought us kids weren't watching. It was a broader, purposely transparent version of the smile Mom would have on her face when she would say "This is delicious," about some dish she had taken a couple of little tastes of. I don't think Hillary Clinton ever met Grandmom L or Mom, so she must have learned that smile from someone else.

That hawk is down there again and he has something else. A mouse. It must be good hunting in the newly mown field. I have never seen a hawk on the ground twice in one day.

Mom dodged my questions about Chiboudeys for a long time. And when she finally did tell me what it meant the explanation made no sense. Mom said Chiboudeys meant "onion eaters." That made no sense because Mom had also told me once that they were so poor in the 1930's that Grandmom L would sometimes only have an onion to put in Grandpops lunch box as a substitute for a piece of fruit. So there was a clear case of a pure Marche' biting into a raw onion with his lunch sandwich and yet mom's claiming Grandmom used "onion eaters" as a secret epithet that made them all laugh.

Mom uncomfortably dodged when I presented her with this obvious inconsistency and she would never visit the issue again. It's a terrible world. A world in which a mother will lie to her own son.
And I still don't know what "Chiboudey" meant.

The real reason Obama picked Biden

All the political commentators are wondering why Barack Obama picked Senator Joseph Biden as his running mate. And none of them can seem to come up with a good reason.

Biden is much older than Obama and he's been a senator for more than thirty years, so he hardly fits Obama's message of "We are the change we have been waiting for." And Biden is from Delaware which only has a few electoral votes, so he doesn't add much to the ticket in that regard. Biden has a lot of experience on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, so he probably knows where Azerbaijan is, and he probably knows that the Georgians in the news a lot lately don't eat grits and gravy. But Biden being so experienced is a bit of a two-edged sword. Having Biden on the ticket may reassure some folks, but it may also reinforce the concern among other folks that Obama himself doesn't have much experience.

So why did Obama pick Biden when he could have picked someone like Governor Ed Rendell? Rendell is younger than Biden, and he's a much fresher face on the national scene. And Rendell might have some real clout when it comes to winning Pennsylvania's big electoral vote count.

I think Obama picked Biden because guys like Rendell, guys with a future in politics, dodged when he asked them. They think he won't win. And running for vice-president on a losing ticket is about as healthy for a political career as getting caught in a love child controversy.

Which brings me to John Edwards. He ran for VP with John Kerry in 2004 - and they lost. Being an old VP nominee didn't help him a lot when he ran for president this year. He got trounced by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and that was before the love child controvery hit the papers.

Then there's Joe Lieberman. He ran for VP with Al Gore in 2000 - and they lost. Joe Lieberman more recently found himself ganged up on by members of his own party in Connecticut when he ran for the Senate again. Being an old VP candidate of their party didn't cut much mustard with them.

Most of you have forgotten Jack Kemp, so I'll tell you he was a football player and then a long time congressman. He ran for VP in 1996 as the running mate of Robert Dole. They lost, and nobody has heard of Jack Kemp since then.

Here are some more loser VP candidates - Dan Quayle 1992, Lloyd Bentsen 1988, Geraldine Ferraro 1984, Walter Mondale 1980. All losers, and all have gone nowhere since they lost. There's a pattern here. Running for VP is outright political poison if you lose.

And what if you win? One of the country's countless forgettable VPs memorably described the office of Vice-President of the United States as not being worth a pitcher of warm spit. Less than a pitcher of warm spit, that's what you get if you win!

If you lose you're almost certainly headed for the political graveyard. No young politician with half a brain in his head will accept an offer to run for vice-president unless he's pretty darn sure the presidential candidate he's tying himself to is going to win.

So now you know why Obama picked Biden to be his running mate. The young Democratic Party politicians all turned him down. They've been watching Obama's poll results decline ever since early Spring and they don't like the trend. They're acting excited about Obama, but they think he's a sinking ship and they don't want to go down with him.

Barack Obama picked Joe Biden because he couldn't convince any of the other nationally known Democrats to run with him.

Where's the global warming when you want it?

It's been a very unusual August this year up here in Pennsylvania.

I know it's been unusual because I haven't been in Sam and Deb's pool at all in August. Every other year since he and Deb got the pool I've found occasion to be up there floating around at least once or twice each August. We simply haven't had any strings of the 90 plus degree days and warm nights it takes to get that pool up to the 80 or so degree temperature which has become my minimum required comfort level.

Back in the old days I would happily go into the ocean down in North Carolina when the water temp was in the mid 70's. And back in the really old days I would inch into the ocean in Stone Harbor or Avalon even if the water temp was down in the high 60's or low 70's. Back even further, back way deep into the mists of time, I remember me and Sam and Jas spending long periods in the surf at Atlantic City unless the water was so cold your arches and ankles hurt from standing in it. But that was the ocean, and the ocean is different from a pool. A pool should be comfortable.

Mom and Pop only took us down the shore one or two days per summer back in those really, really, old days, so we approached the beach and the ocean with a certain amount of determination. We were singleminded in getting our full quota, and then some, of sand and surf and sunburn on those days no matter the cost in pain. And there was some pain, for back then before people knew about skin cancer we went to the beach without an umbrella. When Mom slathered the Coppertone of that era on us she was basting us like turkeys rather than swaddling us in any protection.

Me and Jas used to get moderate sunburns on our noses, shoulders and insteps, but Sam, lighter skinned, used to get as red as a lobster. You think I'm kidding, but him and Jas know I'm not. It's surprising he never got sun poisoning.

Marianne, after she arrived to go to the shore with us, spent most of such days in her portable playpen covered with a beach towel like a bird in a cage, so I don't remember her ever getting sunburned. I do, though, have a picture up on the other computer of her chubby little face and her chubby little legs and arms poking out of a cute two piece swimsuit; but I don't know how to put pictures on the blog yet.

I put that in about Marianne because I've gotten some flak for not including her on this blog when I write about Sam and Jas. But, duh, do the math! Marianne wasn't born til 1960 or so. And thus far I've mostly written about stuff that happened in the 1950's. Also, by the early 1960's Mom was plenty wise concerning our ways with toys and windows and bikes and pets and first generation TV remote controls and swivelling easy chairs and other things.

Mom would never have let Me and Sam and Jas out of her sight with something as fragile as a one or two or three or four or five year old. As a result I was too old by the time Marianne became available to participate in interesting events out of sight of Mom to remember her as a participant in many interesting stories, although there are a few. There is, for instance, the interplay of Jippon and Lion-Lion. I haven't gotten around to writing about that yet even though Jas and Sam and I were talking about Lion-Lion just the other week. We were wondering where he is, something we periodically do. We know where Jippon is, but we don't know where Lion-Lion is.

But I have digressed. . .

August is supposed to be hot. It was always really hot when I was a kid, and it was always hot before this year. And just to prove I can do investigative journalism I asked the lily lady the other day if she ever remembers an August as cool as this one, and she can't remember one either. The lily lady has been growing daylillies up there above Fairview Village since back when I first commuted to Fort Washington 33 years ago. Her gardens looked old then, and she looked old then. She has to be twenty, maybe even thirty, years older than me. She's so old I'm amazed each time I stop to look over her garden and find her still alive to answer her door.

So this is not just me. The lily lady said this is the coolest August she ever remembers. So where is all this global warming I've been hearing about?

The Grinches who plan to steal Christmas

Edward John Craig over at NationalReview.com's Planet Gore blog noticed that the Bronx Zoo has cancelled it's Christmas Light display for this Christmas to save energy and supposedly preserve the planet. Treehugger.com says the Wildlife Conservation Society cancelled the Christmas lights because running them for 33 nights used as much electricity as a three person household uses in a year.

Treehugger didn't calculate the effect on all the tens of thousands of children in New York who enjoy the light show and whose lives will be just a little bit poorer for their lack. It also didn't mention that all the thousands of people who won't be going to the zoo on any given evening to see the Christmas lights will either be staying at home on that night with the lights and TV, or they will be out somewhere else doing something that will be using electricity. Finally, Treehugger didn't mention that one of the reasons people who earn enough money to support themselves choose to live in expensive, dangerous, cramped, smelly, ugly and noisy cities is because of the excitement of institutions like zoos and family oriented special events like Christmas lights at the zoo which can only be done when you have lots of people nearby to enjoy them and pay for them.

And, guess what, people who choose to live in dense cities, like the Bronx, are much more efficient users of energy than those of us who have abandoned the cities for all the reasons I listed above. That's because people who live in cities use mass transit a lot more than suburbanites and they tend to live in smaller and more energy efficient homes and apartments than suburbanites. If one or two families out of all the millions of families in New York is pushed over the edge and decides to move to the suburbs because of this kind of stupid, meaningless, self-righteous, nanny-state kind of stuff their decision will probably result in far more energy use and harm to the environment than this dumb decision will save.

Electricity usage is ubiquitous in our modern culture. A far better use of Treehugger's and The Nature Conservancy's time would be to convince people one person at a time to go back to living in caves and cowering in the dark under animal skins from when the sun goes down until it comes up again in the morning.

All treehuggers are not imbeciles, but the folks at The Nature Conservancy who made this decision certainly are. Another thing, I bet they made this decision after a long meeting in an air-conditioned conference room where they drank coffee shipped from South America, tea shipped from India and bottled water shipped from France.