Like most politicians, the ones in Greece have been spending like drunken sailors for decades. And besides stealing or spending every penny of current taxes they collect, the Greek politicians have been buying votes with promises of future pensions and benefits that everybody knew were way beyond reasonable and affordable.
So a couple of weeks ago the world woke up and suddenly nobody with any sense wanted to loan the Greek government more money by buying its bonds. But that doesn't mean the drunken party is quite over in Greece. For this week American and German and French and British politicians decided to fund one last burst of Ouzo soaked revelry for the Greeks.
I can almost understand why the Kraut and Frog and Limey politicians have decided to send almost a trillion dollars to the Greek politicians. For one thing they were stupid enough to give the Greek politicians a sort of license to print Euros or at least issue bonds denominated in Euros. And, for those of you who don't know, Euros are the new fangled paper money that all the Europeans use, so if the Greek bonds go bust all the Euro denominated bonds may go bust. For another thing, the Greeks are now part of the European Union, so if the Greek government stops paying welfare to all the lazy and deadbeat Greeks those Greeks can just move to France or Germany or England and sign up for welfare there.
This has, of course, raised some difficult questions for politicians all over Europe. The Germans, for instance, are asking their politicians why they have to work and pay taxes until they are in their late 60's before they can retire while their politicians are sending money to Greece, where even the people who actually do work are allowed to retire and start collecting pensions at 55 years old.
But enough about the Krauts and Frogs and Limeys. The truth is that I really don't give a darn about how they spend their money. If they want to send money to Greece that's their business.
What I want to know is why our politicians have also decided to send money to bail out the Greeks when their problems are completely the result of their own foolishness. Don't get me wrong here. I have nothing against Greeks. I've liked all the Greeks that I've ever met and I was going to Greek restaurants in Chicago well before John Belushi made Greeks cool.
The Greeks have a beautiful country over there and, unlike the Krauts and the Limeys, they know how to cook. But it makes no sense for politicians to send my tax dollars to Greeks who get to live the easy life in world renowned vacation spots like Santorini and Rhodes and Mykonos and Corfu while I have to slave like a dog in cold and rainy Pennsylvania.
Novertheless President Barack Obama, and Senators Nancy Pelosi and Chris Dodd, and Representative Barney Frank and their pals have decided to send $50 Billion of my money and your money to Greece so the scam over there can continue for a little while longer. For, make no mistake, the Greek welfare state model of paying people for not working is not sustainable. Socialism appears to work fine until you run out of other people's money. And it's not just Greece that's running on debt. Italy and Spain are not far behind. We'll be hearing from them for bailouts within a couple of years. And France, Germany, the U.K. and we ourselves are not a whole lot of years behind them. Ponzi schemes eventually end.
But lets talk about Greece for the monent. I just checked and learned that there are about 11 million Greeks who are still in Greece. So, by my calculations, our corrupt politicians just sent almost $500 per Greek to their corrupt politicians so they can do what's necessary to quiet down the folks in the streets of Athens and such. With cheap Ouzo selling for about $10 bucks a quart that means you, the American taxpayer, are buying each Greek 50 quarts of booze which should keep the streets of Athens pretty well anesthetized for at least a couple of months. With the addition of the German and French and British money the Greeks will probably remain quiet for a few years.
The deluge has been put off for now.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
It's windy out there
Linda is in the kitchen making chicken stir fry as low fat penance for eating a Bridie and a Scotch Egg at the Phoenixville Irish festival. The Bridie was ground meat filling inside puff pastry, the whole thing about as long and fat as an eight inch roll. The Scotch Egg was some sort of sausage meat molded around half a hard boiled egg and then breaded and deep fried. Linda let me take a little bite of each. The Bridie I would call pretty decent; but the Scotch Egg probably explains why most Scots emigrated when they could.
I ate Fish and Chips and then about half of a Funnel Cake for dessert. While we were eating we ran into a British woman and her husband who were also getting Fish and Chips. The woman looked like the Queen Mother when she was about eighty or so. She said she has been in the U.S. for several years. A nice lady; but like most Brits she talked funny.
The Irish festival was interesting; but I'm not sure Phoenixville drew the crowd it was hoping for, perhaps because it was partly cloudy and surprisingly windy. The wind was probably gusting up toward forty miles per hour. And it still is gusting very strongly. I just got back from walking the paths over on the other side of the creek with my pole clipper. There were many small branches broken off the trees, and a few big ones. Oddly enough the biggest broken off branch is from a Red Maple while there are no branches broken off the Silver Maples. And it's the Silver Maple that is supposed to be the fragile one. Go figure. It's one of those mysteries; like the fact that Scots wrap their eggs in sausage meat and play bagpipes while Brits talk funny and look like the Queen Mother.
Not that I'm down on bagpipes. They had a bagpipe band down in Phoenixville that wasn't half bad; although I wondered if the bagpipers were a little chilly under their kilts, what with the wind. And I wondered why there were Scottish bagpipers and a Scottish food vendor at an Irish festival. You would have thought there would be an Irish food vendor; but maybe the Irish in Ireland did something even more questionable with their eggs, assuming they had eggs to go with their potatoes. Irish Stew and Corned Beef and Cabbage are pretty much the only Irish food items I can think of except for those those cinnamon dusted Irish Potato things that they sell around Saint Patty's Day. But come to think of it I've only ever bought those Irish Potato things at the Jewish Deli up in Fort Washington, so maybe they aren't even Irish.
While we were walking around the Irish festival we ran into Rich, who regularly dances with a woman named Monica up at the Ballroom on High in Pottstown. He was there specifically to catch the performance of Charlie Zahm, whom Linda and I once heard at one of the The Joyful Noise performances that used to be held at a couple of the local churches. We learned that Rich and Monica travel all the way from the Fort Washington area to Pottstown to go to the ballroom.
Very interesting, especially when coupled with the fact that we ran into Bob and Grace at the Norristown Arts Festival the other week and learned that Bob travels all the way from Norristown by bus to go to the ballroom. Given the relatively small number of regulars we've gotten to know at the ballroom our recent proclivity to bump into them at festivals is surprising. We've met an average of one and a half ballroom people and one Brit at each festival so far this year. Curious.
Talking about statistics, I've been keeping track of how much meld partners supply during each hand at our weekly pinochle games. We've always repeated as a rule of thumb that you should count on your partner for two meld when deciding whether and how much to bid. I want to see whether that rule bears out in practice.
I ate Fish and Chips and then about half of a Funnel Cake for dessert. While we were eating we ran into a British woman and her husband who were also getting Fish and Chips. The woman looked like the Queen Mother when she was about eighty or so. She said she has been in the U.S. for several years. A nice lady; but like most Brits she talked funny.
The Irish festival was interesting; but I'm not sure Phoenixville drew the crowd it was hoping for, perhaps because it was partly cloudy and surprisingly windy. The wind was probably gusting up toward forty miles per hour. And it still is gusting very strongly. I just got back from walking the paths over on the other side of the creek with my pole clipper. There were many small branches broken off the trees, and a few big ones. Oddly enough the biggest broken off branch is from a Red Maple while there are no branches broken off the Silver Maples. And it's the Silver Maple that is supposed to be the fragile one. Go figure. It's one of those mysteries; like the fact that Scots wrap their eggs in sausage meat and play bagpipes while Brits talk funny and look like the Queen Mother.
Not that I'm down on bagpipes. They had a bagpipe band down in Phoenixville that wasn't half bad; although I wondered if the bagpipers were a little chilly under their kilts, what with the wind. And I wondered why there were Scottish bagpipers and a Scottish food vendor at an Irish festival. You would have thought there would be an Irish food vendor; but maybe the Irish in Ireland did something even more questionable with their eggs, assuming they had eggs to go with their potatoes. Irish Stew and Corned Beef and Cabbage are pretty much the only Irish food items I can think of except for those those cinnamon dusted Irish Potato things that they sell around Saint Patty's Day. But come to think of it I've only ever bought those Irish Potato things at the Jewish Deli up in Fort Washington, so maybe they aren't even Irish.
While we were walking around the Irish festival we ran into Rich, who regularly dances with a woman named Monica up at the Ballroom on High in Pottstown. He was there specifically to catch the performance of Charlie Zahm, whom Linda and I once heard at one of the The Joyful Noise performances that used to be held at a couple of the local churches. We learned that Rich and Monica travel all the way from the Fort Washington area to Pottstown to go to the ballroom.
Very interesting, especially when coupled with the fact that we ran into Bob and Grace at the Norristown Arts Festival the other week and learned that Bob travels all the way from Norristown by bus to go to the ballroom. Given the relatively small number of regulars we've gotten to know at the ballroom our recent proclivity to bump into them at festivals is surprising. We've met an average of one and a half ballroom people and one Brit at each festival so far this year. Curious.
Talking about statistics, I've been keeping track of how much meld partners supply during each hand at our weekly pinochle games. We've always repeated as a rule of thumb that you should count on your partner for two meld when deciding whether and how much to bid. I want to see whether that rule bears out in practice.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The case of the mysterious Rubbermaid
Since Easter we've had a nine cup Rubbermaid food container hanging around the house. Someone left it here; and we've been surprised no one's said anything because it's clearly a top of the line sort of model. Unfortunately it doesn't fit in well with our motley collection of such stuff, so I can't just put it in the mix.
So there it sits, on top of the refrigerator, waiting for Linda to puzzle out who its owner is. She suspects that Alex is somehow involved in getting it to our house; but she's not sure whether it came from Boston or whether Alex and Christina were given some food in it which they brought back to our house from Easter dinner at John A's house.
Meanwhile, I'm now more than one third of the way through my twelve step smoking cessation program. Since May first I've been having only eight cigarettes per day. Contrary to Jas's cynical comment on the phone a month or so ago I haven't cheated on the program even once since New Year's Day.
So there it sits, on top of the refrigerator, waiting for Linda to puzzle out who its owner is. She suspects that Alex is somehow involved in getting it to our house; but she's not sure whether it came from Boston or whether Alex and Christina were given some food in it which they brought back to our house from Easter dinner at John A's house.
Meanwhile, I'm now more than one third of the way through my twelve step smoking cessation program. Since May first I've been having only eight cigarettes per day. Contrary to Jas's cynical comment on the phone a month or so ago I haven't cheated on the program even once since New Year's Day.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Giants walked the earth in those days
I'm thinking about work. Specifically I'm thinking how lucky I was that I didn't end up crippled from trying to handle the 100 pound sacks of potatoes that Harry set me to unloading when I first started working for him at about 12 years old. Those potato sacks were stacked about head high to me. Fortunately there were only two ranks of them at the front of the truck, stacked bricks and mortar fashion. Some potatoes got bruised after I learned that there was no way I could handle those sacks on my shoulder the way I had seen Harry do. I tried the best I could to slow the descent of the higher stacked bags and ended up slowly dragging each to the end of the truck where I was again presented with a rank on bags almost head high once I climbed down. It took me several hours to unload probably thirty bags of potatoes.
Now that I'm thinking about this I'm realizing that I can't ever remember encountering hundred pound sacks of potatoes again. It just may be that Harry was getting old enough by then to doubt his ability to handle them. And it may be that he was paying attention to how I was unloading them; although I don't remember him checking on me. I've always thought I could easily have been dead under one of those sacks for most of a day before being discovered.
This came to mind again today, for I was thinking about it the other day in another context, because I'm listening to a Larry McMurtry book about Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley. McMurtry is skeptical about a lot of Buffalo Bill's yarns, such as his claim that he killed an Indian at eleven years old while defending himself during a raid on a cattle drive he was working; but he seems pretty certain that the man was telling the simple truth about starting work at eleven years old. And McMurty mentions that his father and his several uncles were all handling more or less full responsibility for work on his grandfather's ranch by eleven years old in the early 1900's.
One of the things Buffalo Bill certainly did at eleven years old, according to McMurtry, was to singlehandedly take a small herd of twenty or so cattle to an army outpost thirty five miles away from Leavenworth Kansas, presumably after he had proven himself reliable at delivering messages on mule back within several miles of town. And that was at a time, the 1860's, when there were still at least some untamed Indians still to be found in Kansas, if only in the form of occasional raiding parties from wilder regions west of there. I've been trying to put myself into the mind of an eleven year old responsible for those cattle during what had to be at least one overnight, knowing that there might well be Indians about, even if that was unlikely.
Giants walked the earth in former days.
The other day I was reviewing the various sorts of work I've done over the course of my life in the context of finishing up a stint at one of the more boring sorts of work I've ever endured. And I promised myself I would make a list, so here goes.
-Unloaded 100 pound sacks of potatoes from a truck, possibly the most dangerous job I've ever done if you discount jobs that have involved driving.
-Waited on customers at the fruit and produce market.
-Sorted endless tomatoes into greens, pinks and ripes, and resorted them again and again and again, after unloading a tractor trailer load of boxes of them. I still remember the ugh factor of encountering a rotten one, seemingly always by surprise. This may have been one of the more useful early jobs I ever did. You have to learn to achieve a sort of out of body zen state to mentally survive sorting tomatoes for 12 hours.
-Unloaded most of a tractor trailer load of watermelons over the course of two days between waiting on customers at the market. I did that before reading Chairman Mao's phrase, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-Helped more or less at a paper mill on the night shift, when I wasn't napping in the bin of paper scraps because the regular workers didn't consider me much help. I took away and still retain amazement at the the balletic artistry the lead guy exhibited as he threaded the first run of pulp through the big machine's almost quarter mile long run of rollers. I also remember the size of the cockroaches down in the level under the machine, where mushy paper pulp was almost a foot deep, and where I had to go once because I dropped a tool down there.
-Machined endless strangely shaped fiberglass wheels with brass bushings whose purpose I still can't imagine. One of my jobs was to help the foreman muscle a 55 gallon drum of brass shavings into his pickup truck every few days. Evidently he could hide taking the brass; but he couldn't hide using one of the union guys to help him load them after the shift end.
-Did public opinion polling of Job Corps dropouts in the projects in Chicago. It was hard for that company to find literate people willing to put on a jacket and tie and walk into the projects to question Job Corps dropouts so the job paid what I thought was a pretty good hourly rate; but I didn't know the half of it at the beginning. It turned out that achieving two completed interviews was considered reasonable quota for a 40 hour week. My supervisor berated me for turning in five interviews with my 40 hour time sheet that first week, and she had me correct the error by filling out a second time sheet under a variant of my name. I never made that mistake again and I became much more efficient at getting interviews as I learned the ropes. That job ended up paying an effective hourly rate that was astronomical. But it did have associated expences. After the first week I paid a fraternity brother to drive me and keep the car running so he could help with a fast getaway if necessary or at least report my disappearance to the police. But I never had so much as a really scary encounter during the course of doing a hundred or so of those interviews.
-Counted shoppers emerging from a supermarket and noted how many bags of groceries they had. For quality control purposes I was part of a two man team with a fraternity brother. We customarily started the day with a gallon of wine in my car facing the entrance to a supermarket and we ended the day recording very suspect numbers; but the market research company loved our work. Put not your faith in data unless you gather it yourself.
-Chauffered for a very wealthy family. I learned about pecking orders since I was at the very bottom of the chauffer one since I drove a Chevy station wagon. The black guy at the top of that pecking order was responsible for one of those 1920's cars with the separate compartment for the chauffer, something out of a movie. Plus he had an actual uniform and hat. I say he was responsible for the car because he never actually seemed to drive it. He only dusted it with a soft cloth. His Mrs. Gotrocks employer never went out.
Well, that's enough for now. I haven't even gotten to the Navy yet. I'll think on this jobs business again.
Now that I'm thinking about this I'm realizing that I can't ever remember encountering hundred pound sacks of potatoes again. It just may be that Harry was getting old enough by then to doubt his ability to handle them. And it may be that he was paying attention to how I was unloading them; although I don't remember him checking on me. I've always thought I could easily have been dead under one of those sacks for most of a day before being discovered.
This came to mind again today, for I was thinking about it the other day in another context, because I'm listening to a Larry McMurtry book about Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley. McMurtry is skeptical about a lot of Buffalo Bill's yarns, such as his claim that he killed an Indian at eleven years old while defending himself during a raid on a cattle drive he was working; but he seems pretty certain that the man was telling the simple truth about starting work at eleven years old. And McMurty mentions that his father and his several uncles were all handling more or less full responsibility for work on his grandfather's ranch by eleven years old in the early 1900's.
One of the things Buffalo Bill certainly did at eleven years old, according to McMurtry, was to singlehandedly take a small herd of twenty or so cattle to an army outpost thirty five miles away from Leavenworth Kansas, presumably after he had proven himself reliable at delivering messages on mule back within several miles of town. And that was at a time, the 1860's, when there were still at least some untamed Indians still to be found in Kansas, if only in the form of occasional raiding parties from wilder regions west of there. I've been trying to put myself into the mind of an eleven year old responsible for those cattle during what had to be at least one overnight, knowing that there might well be Indians about, even if that was unlikely.
Giants walked the earth in former days.
The other day I was reviewing the various sorts of work I've done over the course of my life in the context of finishing up a stint at one of the more boring sorts of work I've ever endured. And I promised myself I would make a list, so here goes.
-Unloaded 100 pound sacks of potatoes from a truck, possibly the most dangerous job I've ever done if you discount jobs that have involved driving.
-Waited on customers at the fruit and produce market.
-Sorted endless tomatoes into greens, pinks and ripes, and resorted them again and again and again, after unloading a tractor trailer load of boxes of them. I still remember the ugh factor of encountering a rotten one, seemingly always by surprise. This may have been one of the more useful early jobs I ever did. You have to learn to achieve a sort of out of body zen state to mentally survive sorting tomatoes for 12 hours.
-Unloaded most of a tractor trailer load of watermelons over the course of two days between waiting on customers at the market. I did that before reading Chairman Mao's phrase, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-Helped more or less at a paper mill on the night shift, when I wasn't napping in the bin of paper scraps because the regular workers didn't consider me much help. I took away and still retain amazement at the the balletic artistry the lead guy exhibited as he threaded the first run of pulp through the big machine's almost quarter mile long run of rollers. I also remember the size of the cockroaches down in the level under the machine, where mushy paper pulp was almost a foot deep, and where I had to go once because I dropped a tool down there.
-Machined endless strangely shaped fiberglass wheels with brass bushings whose purpose I still can't imagine. One of my jobs was to help the foreman muscle a 55 gallon drum of brass shavings into his pickup truck every few days. Evidently he could hide taking the brass; but he couldn't hide using one of the union guys to help him load them after the shift end.
-Did public opinion polling of Job Corps dropouts in the projects in Chicago. It was hard for that company to find literate people willing to put on a jacket and tie and walk into the projects to question Job Corps dropouts so the job paid what I thought was a pretty good hourly rate; but I didn't know the half of it at the beginning. It turned out that achieving two completed interviews was considered reasonable quota for a 40 hour week. My supervisor berated me for turning in five interviews with my 40 hour time sheet that first week, and she had me correct the error by filling out a second time sheet under a variant of my name. I never made that mistake again and I became much more efficient at getting interviews as I learned the ropes. That job ended up paying an effective hourly rate that was astronomical. But it did have associated expences. After the first week I paid a fraternity brother to drive me and keep the car running so he could help with a fast getaway if necessary or at least report my disappearance to the police. But I never had so much as a really scary encounter during the course of doing a hundred or so of those interviews.
-Counted shoppers emerging from a supermarket and noted how many bags of groceries they had. For quality control purposes I was part of a two man team with a fraternity brother. We customarily started the day with a gallon of wine in my car facing the entrance to a supermarket and we ended the day recording very suspect numbers; but the market research company loved our work. Put not your faith in data unless you gather it yourself.
-Chauffered for a very wealthy family. I learned about pecking orders since I was at the very bottom of the chauffer one since I drove a Chevy station wagon. The black guy at the top of that pecking order was responsible for one of those 1920's cars with the separate compartment for the chauffer, something out of a movie. Plus he had an actual uniform and hat. I say he was responsible for the car because he never actually seemed to drive it. He only dusted it with a soft cloth. His Mrs. Gotrocks employer never went out.
Well, that's enough for now. I haven't even gotten to the Navy yet. I'll think on this jobs business again.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The chicks are in the mail
I went to the post office this morning to mail off Stephen King's novel The Stand to an eager Amazon book buyer and learned that you can send live chicks via overnight mail. The guy in front of me in line received a box of them. Who woulda thunk it? I didn't actually ask if other kinds of livestock can be mailed; but I suspect this means that if someone should be of a mind to send a bunny rabbit to Hatfield Packing, for instance, they can simply box it up and ship it overnight via the post office.
But enough of livestock. I have to report on the current state of Norristown, which Linda and I visited on Saturday when they were holding a street fair to celebrate their designation of Dekalb Street as an Arts Avenue. While there we had a pretty decent lunch in a little Mexican restaurant at the corner of Airy and Dekalb. And we watched a performance of the Ballet Foklorico De Mexico in a big tent they had set up next to the county jail. And we took the opportunity to check out the old Lutheran Church that's between Airy and Main to see what the Copts have been doing with it. We also stopped in to see Saint Patricio's Church to check whether there have been any more changes since we were there a few years ago for an Irish corned beef.
Norristown when I was growing up seemed to be mostly Italians and Irish and Blacks, but there must have been some Germans skulking around since they had a Lutheran Church. Now the town seems to be mostly Blacks and Mexicans and, surprisingly, Coptic Egyptians; but there is still a marker from the Italian past on Dekalb Street. Al R told me to check for it, and sure enough it's still there, although perhaps it's not as old as he thinks.
LaRoma Pizzeria is still at Marshall and Dekalb; but it's menu says that it's only been the "Home of Fresh Dough Pizza since 1960." In 1960 Al would have been 14 years old.
While we were down in Norristown we ran into Bob and Grace from the ballroom, of all people. It turns out that Bob lives on Buttonwood Street and he's been mostly getting to the Ballroom on High in Pottstown by bus. Small world that it is Bob's son came to meet up while we were talking to him and Grace and we learned that Bob's son recently started in Sam's department at Mascaro.
I was going to write about the slaughter of the innocents; but I've got to run now. I Need to make a salad to go with the pork enchiladas and corn bread that I'm making for dinner. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the slaughter of the innocents.
But enough of livestock. I have to report on the current state of Norristown, which Linda and I visited on Saturday when they were holding a street fair to celebrate their designation of Dekalb Street as an Arts Avenue. While there we had a pretty decent lunch in a little Mexican restaurant at the corner of Airy and Dekalb. And we watched a performance of the Ballet Foklorico De Mexico in a big tent they had set up next to the county jail. And we took the opportunity to check out the old Lutheran Church that's between Airy and Main to see what the Copts have been doing with it. We also stopped in to see Saint Patricio's Church to check whether there have been any more changes since we were there a few years ago for an Irish corned beef.
Norristown when I was growing up seemed to be mostly Italians and Irish and Blacks, but there must have been some Germans skulking around since they had a Lutheran Church. Now the town seems to be mostly Blacks and Mexicans and, surprisingly, Coptic Egyptians; but there is still a marker from the Italian past on Dekalb Street. Al R told me to check for it, and sure enough it's still there, although perhaps it's not as old as he thinks.
LaRoma Pizzeria is still at Marshall and Dekalb; but it's menu says that it's only been the "Home of Fresh Dough Pizza since 1960." In 1960 Al would have been 14 years old.
While we were down in Norristown we ran into Bob and Grace from the ballroom, of all people. It turns out that Bob lives on Buttonwood Street and he's been mostly getting to the Ballroom on High in Pottstown by bus. Small world that it is Bob's son came to meet up while we were talking to him and Grace and we learned that Bob's son recently started in Sam's department at Mascaro.
I was going to write about the slaughter of the innocents; but I've got to run now. I Need to make a salad to go with the pork enchiladas and corn bread that I'm making for dinner. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the slaughter of the innocents.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Aargh! She's over there messing with the soup
Linda is working at home today, so things are pretty tense around here. Earlier she somehow found time to come down from the computer room to kibbitz while I was measuring the water and now she's over there gratuitously stirring the soup, which I just stirred. If I don't stay nearby she will surely return and again try to ruin the delicate balance of flavors by skimming off the tiny bit of oil that has leached out of the pepperoni. As it is, despite my grouching she insisted on changing the burner setting.
This wouldn't be important except that my split pea soup is worthy of world renown due to the decades of patient experimentation I've put into its development. The only reason it isn't better known is that I've never considered the world worthy of the recipe, so I've followed the advice in the Sermon on the Mount.
This wouldn't be important except that my split pea soup is worthy of world renown due to the decades of patient experimentation I've put into its development. The only reason it isn't better known is that I've never considered the world worthy of the recipe, so I've followed the advice in the Sermon on the Mount.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Pulling through
The other night Linda and I got a surprise at Sam and Deb's when they described how funny a comedian at their golf club was. What got our attention was that Sam and Deb had never heard of a pullthrough parking spot. That surprised us because we've been joking between ourselves about the luxury of finding a pullthrough spot for years.
So I put a question on facebook to see what others thought of when presented with the idea of finding a "pullthrough." Don A thought of a pullthrough at a bank or a fast food place. Sandy H thought of a place to turn around. Marianne mentioned specific pullthrough spots for big things like RVs and trucks.
After seeing that I did a google search and found that there is a facebook page for people who love pullthrough spots and that page has something like 128 fans. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/I-3-pull-through-parking-spots/110710052284415
But at the pullthrough spot facebook page I found that most of its fans appear to be young people. And it's not young people who need pullthrough spots. Young people can still turn their heads around to see, so they should only take parking spots require them to back out. It's us old geezers who need the pullthrough spots. I'm no fan of big government but it seems to me that young people should not be allowed to use or block pullthrough spots. We need a law that restricts the use of pullthrough spots to stiff necked geezers.
So I put a question on facebook to see what others thought of when presented with the idea of finding a "pullthrough." Don A thought of a pullthrough at a bank or a fast food place. Sandy H thought of a place to turn around. Marianne mentioned specific pullthrough spots for big things like RVs and trucks.
After seeing that I did a google search and found that there is a facebook page for people who love pullthrough spots and that page has something like 128 fans. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/I-3-pull-through-parking-spots/110710052284415
But at the pullthrough spot facebook page I found that most of its fans appear to be young people. And it's not young people who need pullthrough spots. Young people can still turn their heads around to see, so they should only take parking spots require them to back out. It's us old geezers who need the pullthrough spots. I'm no fan of big government but it seems to me that young people should not be allowed to use or block pullthrough spots. We need a law that restricts the use of pullthrough spots to stiff necked geezers.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Don't trust the media. . . but you knew that.
The Tea Party people held a rally in Searchlight Nevada on Saturday. CNN's anchor woman showed no pictures of the crowd but basically dismissed the event as a flop, saying that only "hundreds of people, at least dozens of people" were there.
Here are some pictures of the crowd and the highway leading to the event. The security firm handling the crowd control estimated 30,000 people. Other estimates ranged from 9,000 to 14,000 attendees. And those numbers didn't take into account the fact that there was a massive traffic jam on the road headed to the event, so many people never even got there.
Why would CNN anchorwoman Fredricka Whitfield get the number so wrong? Why indeed?
If you want to see the entire CNN transcript it is here.
Here are some pictures of the crowd and the highway leading to the event. The security firm handling the crowd control estimated 30,000 people. Other estimates ranged from 9,000 to 14,000 attendees. And those numbers didn't take into account the fact that there was a massive traffic jam on the road headed to the event, so many people never even got there.
Why would CNN anchorwoman Fredricka Whitfield get the number so wrong? Why indeed?
If you want to see the entire CNN transcript it is here.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Today's new word is iatrogenic
This is a article written by a businessman who set out to understand the health care system after his father died of an infection he got while in the hospital. The author says he's a Democrat, and he says he favored health care reform this year.
It's a long article; but if you want to understand the problems that we currently have in our health care system it's a good place to start.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/
"Iatrogenic" by the way means "caused by physicians." Every year hundreds of thousands of people die due to physician and hospital mistakes. In a way that isn't surprising, because doctors are no different from other people and hospitals are no more efficient than other human institutions. They're not perfect -they have bad days, they make mistakes, and sometimes they're careless or distracted. And, sometimes they are simply wilfull. What killed the author's father is the fact that doctors and hospitals don't pay enough attention to infection control and sterilization. On the simplest level many doctors resist the added time and effort needed to really control hospital caused infections, and hospital administrators are not willing to push them on the matter, in part because our current system of health care reimbursement does not penalize hospitals for bad results.
It's a long article; but if you want to understand the problems that we currently have in our health care system it's a good place to start.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/
"Iatrogenic" by the way means "caused by physicians." Every year hundreds of thousands of people die due to physician and hospital mistakes. In a way that isn't surprising, because doctors are no different from other people and hospitals are no more efficient than other human institutions. They're not perfect -they have bad days, they make mistakes, and sometimes they're careless or distracted. And, sometimes they are simply wilfull. What killed the author's father is the fact that doctors and hospitals don't pay enough attention to infection control and sterilization. On the simplest level many doctors resist the added time and effort needed to really control hospital caused infections, and hospital administrators are not willing to push them on the matter, in part because our current system of health care reimbursement does not penalize hospitals for bad results.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Snakes and hawks and eggs benedict, oh my
As luck would have it I went to Gettysburg with Sam and Don today. So I got mediocre Eggs Benedict for breakfast and a nice battlefield walk and drive; but I missed quite a bit of natural drama around here.
Linda got to see several garter snakes emerge from the yucca plant in front of the house after hearing them rustling around in there. She figures they must have been hibernating either under the yucca or between it and the foundation of the house.
A little later a large hawk landed in the small maple tree just in front of the patio and then proceeded to go down to the ground and try to catch something. Linda thinks it was a Coopers Hawk, but she didn't sound too confident about her identification.
It just goes to show that there's no place like home; although Gettysburg was pretty nice. It was the perfect day for touring around out there. Ideal shirtsleeve weather, and there were only moderate numbers of other tourists because it's so early in the season.
Linda got to see several garter snakes emerge from the yucca plant in front of the house after hearing them rustling around in there. She figures they must have been hibernating either under the yucca or between it and the foundation of the house.
A little later a large hawk landed in the small maple tree just in front of the patio and then proceeded to go down to the ground and try to catch something. Linda thinks it was a Coopers Hawk, but she didn't sound too confident about her identification.
It just goes to show that there's no place like home; although Gettysburg was pretty nice. It was the perfect day for touring around out there. Ideal shirtsleeve weather, and there were only moderate numbers of other tourists because it's so early in the season.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
If it's springtime that must be a wolf spider
Linda is on the phone trying to get us senior citizen discounts on the tickets for a play this Saturday night. When did we suddenly get old enough to qualify for senior citizen discounts? It seems only yesterday we were in our fifties.
Meanwhile we've had spring like weather around here for the past week, so the snow is almost gone. Yesterday the last snow that was holding down part of the clump bamboo grove finally melted away. The aggressive radiating bamboo has been clear of snow for several days and, in the way of these things, the evil aggressive bamboo has sprung back up even more eagerly than the clump bamboo.
There's been a slight interlude. First Linda professed to see a stink bug on the side of the small couch, so she advanced gingerly to catch it because you don't want to squash those things. Suddenly a scream rang out. The supposed stink bug turned out to be a medium sized wolf spider that went flying. It was, I imagine, not amused at being gently grabbed with a napkin and it quickly retreated under the couch. To her credit Linda grabbed it again with the napkin, much less gently, after I tilted back the couch. Scratch one wolf spider. It's getting past time for me to replace the weather stripping at the bottom of the front door. And it may be getting past time for Linda to see the optometrist about the prescription for her glasses.
Now that both our heart rates are back to normal, where was I? Ah yes, Spring is in the air. The pond is now ice free and the pair of possessive geese have been back for a few days. They were driving off another pair earlier today. You would think that pond would be big enough for two or even more nesting pairs; but that is decidedly not the case. The possessive pair will tolerate ducks on their pond; but they will not tolerate other geese. Later, after they have young they will join up with the pair that ends up in possession of the other pond up the way; but for now they want exclusivity.
I just brought in the last of the semi-cured wood, the rounds I cut and split in the fall from the big partially rotted branch that broke off the apple tree down toward the creek, so there had better not be too many more cold nights. I have got to get to cutting next winter's wood. So far I have only a trivial amount that I've cut by hand. I already have an apple tree and a couple of maples that are within range of the electric chainsaw marked for harvesting, and there are two fallen mulberries that are worth starting the gas saw up for. Aside from that Dan has a big pile of hard to split rounds put aside for me up behind the old house. I'll retrieve those as I go back and forth to mow over there this summer.
I have a fire of the apple going in the stove right now. Such great wood! Even half cured it burns hot.
In other news I think we will have our first crocus blooming tomorrow. Last year we had them before the end of February which was early.
Meanwhile we've had spring like weather around here for the past week, so the snow is almost gone. Yesterday the last snow that was holding down part of the clump bamboo grove finally melted away. The aggressive radiating bamboo has been clear of snow for several days and, in the way of these things, the evil aggressive bamboo has sprung back up even more eagerly than the clump bamboo.
There's been a slight interlude. First Linda professed to see a stink bug on the side of the small couch, so she advanced gingerly to catch it because you don't want to squash those things. Suddenly a scream rang out. The supposed stink bug turned out to be a medium sized wolf spider that went flying. It was, I imagine, not amused at being gently grabbed with a napkin and it quickly retreated under the couch. To her credit Linda grabbed it again with the napkin, much less gently, after I tilted back the couch. Scratch one wolf spider. It's getting past time for me to replace the weather stripping at the bottom of the front door. And it may be getting past time for Linda to see the optometrist about the prescription for her glasses.
Now that both our heart rates are back to normal, where was I? Ah yes, Spring is in the air. The pond is now ice free and the pair of possessive geese have been back for a few days. They were driving off another pair earlier today. You would think that pond would be big enough for two or even more nesting pairs; but that is decidedly not the case. The possessive pair will tolerate ducks on their pond; but they will not tolerate other geese. Later, after they have young they will join up with the pair that ends up in possession of the other pond up the way; but for now they want exclusivity.
I just brought in the last of the semi-cured wood, the rounds I cut and split in the fall from the big partially rotted branch that broke off the apple tree down toward the creek, so there had better not be too many more cold nights. I have got to get to cutting next winter's wood. So far I have only a trivial amount that I've cut by hand. I already have an apple tree and a couple of maples that are within range of the electric chainsaw marked for harvesting, and there are two fallen mulberries that are worth starting the gas saw up for. Aside from that Dan has a big pile of hard to split rounds put aside for me up behind the old house. I'll retrieve those as I go back and forth to mow over there this summer.
I have a fire of the apple going in the stove right now. Such great wood! Even half cured it burns hot.
In other news I think we will have our first crocus blooming tomorrow. Last year we had them before the end of February which was early.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tar and Feather Specter?
Linda spent a couple of minutes listening to Senator Arlen Specter's so called town hall meeting last night and then declared that he ought to be tarred and feathered.
Senator Specter, who is clearly afraid to actually meet with voters since he was disrespected at his last real town hall meeting, set up a sham meeting which was strictly a telephone event. The couple of questions we listened to were nice easy soft pitches designed to let him spout his bull without fear of contradiction. I pictured him surrounded by three or four advisers who were feeding him talking points.
What is it about long term politicians that prevents them from understanding when their time has passed? Specter has been a joke for close to a decade. He should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. And hopefully he will be come November.
Meanwhile, in other news, the clump bamboo canes are showing amazing resilience. As the snow has been melting more and more of them are standing up again. It's hard to believe that they didn't get kinked from being held down almost flat to the ground for almost a month. The evil linear growing bamboo is also recovering somewhat; but many of its canes are not going to stand proud. I'll need to do quite a bit of pruning over there.
And, I was looking at the pine trees behind the house the other day in a whole different light. I had a mental picture of them as pretty big trees; but now that there's a leaner in among the group I've had to give some consideration to just how difficult and dangerous it would be to cut a couple of them to get to the leaner. I think I'm going to punt on that and get a professional to come in and do it. I'm guessing those trees are over a hundred feet tall.
Senator Specter, who is clearly afraid to actually meet with voters since he was disrespected at his last real town hall meeting, set up a sham meeting which was strictly a telephone event. The couple of questions we listened to were nice easy soft pitches designed to let him spout his bull without fear of contradiction. I pictured him surrounded by three or four advisers who were feeding him talking points.
What is it about long term politicians that prevents them from understanding when their time has passed? Specter has been a joke for close to a decade. He should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. And hopefully he will be come November.
Meanwhile, in other news, the clump bamboo canes are showing amazing resilience. As the snow has been melting more and more of them are standing up again. It's hard to believe that they didn't get kinked from being held down almost flat to the ground for almost a month. The evil linear growing bamboo is also recovering somewhat; but many of its canes are not going to stand proud. I'll need to do quite a bit of pruning over there.
And, I was looking at the pine trees behind the house the other day in a whole different light. I had a mental picture of them as pretty big trees; but now that there's a leaner in among the group I've had to give some consideration to just how difficult and dangerous it would be to cut a couple of them to get to the leaner. I think I'm going to punt on that and get a professional to come in and do it. I'm guessing those trees are over a hundred feet tall.
Friday, February 26, 2010
The snowstorm was a dud
All last night the wind raged and howled as snow came down at what seemed like a rapid rate; but even as the snow was falling it was apparent that the storm was more or less a dud. Most of yesterday's snow melted on contact with the roads and the driveway even as it piled up on the old snow in the yard and appeared impressive. And when the snow did stick it insulated the roads and driveway so there was a layer of relatively warm wet under the five or so inches that actually did accumulate.
Last evening Linda and I had a moderately exciting drive back from Sam and Deb's house at about 9:40. By then there were a couple of inches of snow on the roads where the wind was drifting it across from fields in exposed areas. All in all we had less problems on the road than we did in playing pinochele with Sam and Deb. They beat us handily in the first game and were leading heavily in the second when we decided we had better leave. Debra had an amazing run of luck with her cards. It seemed that neither she nor Sam could bid without the other having eight or ten meld and a couple of aces. I don't think they went set more than a couple of times and they took most of the bids.
This morning the snow looked impressive while it was still coming down; but when I went out at about noon to plow I was able to do the driveway in two passes.
I just returned from a trip out to the post office and the gas station. The roads were already simply wet since the sun has been out. And, thankfully, all the essential services, like the gas station and the tanning salon were open as normal.
There's something to be said for snowstorms at this time of the year. The sun is high enough to clean things up pretty quickly once the snow stops. We're hoping that Mark and Linda L were able to get their driveway plowed because we're planning to meet them for dinner if they can do it. The plan is to go to The Texas Roadhouse, which we've been wondering about for years as we've passed it on Route 422 going back and forth to the Ballroom of High.
We deserve steaks tonight because yesterday we ate pretty healthy beef barley soup that I made. And, on Wednesday we had only a light dinner because we needed to get out of here pretty promptly to go up to Pottstown for our Tango lesson.
Speaking of the tanning salon, Alex called the other night to tell us that those SOBs down in Washington are trying to tax tanning. It seems they were going to tax botox treatments and boob jobs; but the cosmetic surgeons, the Botox maker and the boob implant people must have been able to put together a fatter set of bribe envelopes than the tanning people.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2124186720091221
Who knew there were 20,000 tanning salons in the U.S.? Imagine how many wrinkle wranglers and boob ballooning surgeons there must be to outbid the tanning industry when it comes to bribing Harry Reid and the other corrupt Senators and Congresscritters down there in DC.
Is this a great country or what?
Last evening Linda and I had a moderately exciting drive back from Sam and Deb's house at about 9:40. By then there were a couple of inches of snow on the roads where the wind was drifting it across from fields in exposed areas. All in all we had less problems on the road than we did in playing pinochele with Sam and Deb. They beat us handily in the first game and were leading heavily in the second when we decided we had better leave. Debra had an amazing run of luck with her cards. It seemed that neither she nor Sam could bid without the other having eight or ten meld and a couple of aces. I don't think they went set more than a couple of times and they took most of the bids.
This morning the snow looked impressive while it was still coming down; but when I went out at about noon to plow I was able to do the driveway in two passes.
I just returned from a trip out to the post office and the gas station. The roads were already simply wet since the sun has been out. And, thankfully, all the essential services, like the gas station and the tanning salon were open as normal.
There's something to be said for snowstorms at this time of the year. The sun is high enough to clean things up pretty quickly once the snow stops. We're hoping that Mark and Linda L were able to get their driveway plowed because we're planning to meet them for dinner if they can do it. The plan is to go to The Texas Roadhouse, which we've been wondering about for years as we've passed it on Route 422 going back and forth to the Ballroom of High.
We deserve steaks tonight because yesterday we ate pretty healthy beef barley soup that I made. And, on Wednesday we had only a light dinner because we needed to get out of here pretty promptly to go up to Pottstown for our Tango lesson.
Speaking of the tanning salon, Alex called the other night to tell us that those SOBs down in Washington are trying to tax tanning. It seems they were going to tax botox treatments and boob jobs; but the cosmetic surgeons, the Botox maker and the boob implant people must have been able to put together a fatter set of bribe envelopes than the tanning people.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2124186720091221
Who knew there were 20,000 tanning salons in the U.S.? Imagine how many wrinkle wranglers and boob ballooning surgeons there must be to outbid the tanning industry when it comes to bribing Harry Reid and the other corrupt Senators and Congresscritters down there in DC.
Is this a great country or what?
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
A blast from the past
This morning I got a call from Susan the daughter of The Count. It turns out Count is now 87 years old and in a nursing home and he has been reminiscing about the Redpeppers. So Susan has been trying to track down folks her father and brothers remember from the picnics in the 1950's and 1960's. She found the Redpepper team picture and Pop's picture as a pitcher that I apparently posted on Flikker a couple of years ago and finally worked her way to me.
We had a very interesting conversation. Susan and her brother Michael are ten years or so younger than their brothers John and Ronald whom we knew better. I told her to remind John of the time we dared him to break the little window at the peak of Trooper School with a baseball thrown from home plate of the baseball field. He amazingly did it after only three or four throws although it had to be at least a two hundred and fifty or three hundred foot throw and the window was three stories up there.
Susan now lives in Tennessee and has a 22 year old daughter. Her brother John still lives in Philly and has two boys. Her brother Ronald lives in Newport Florida. And her brother Michael lives in Trevose. The Count, whose real name is Gaspare or Gap, has not been too well because of his heart.
I suggested that Susan hook up with Marianne on Facebook and also suggested that she friend Angie R. And I told her she probably should friend Don A if her dad wants to get into old Norristown stuff. Don is a few years older and knew those guys who hung around the corner of Main and Walnut and over at Lou's a lot better than me or Sam and Jas. I gather that John is trying to interest Count in using a computer so perhaps he can get in touch via email and Facebook and such.
Talking to Susan brought back vivid memories of those picnics. She too remembers looking forward to them all year long - the ball games, the corn roasting on the big grill, that creek where we bigger kids would catch crayfish and minnows, the ball games.
Good times!
We had a very interesting conversation. Susan and her brother Michael are ten years or so younger than their brothers John and Ronald whom we knew better. I told her to remind John of the time we dared him to break the little window at the peak of Trooper School with a baseball thrown from home plate of the baseball field. He amazingly did it after only three or four throws although it had to be at least a two hundred and fifty or three hundred foot throw and the window was three stories up there.
Susan now lives in Tennessee and has a 22 year old daughter. Her brother John still lives in Philly and has two boys. Her brother Ronald lives in Newport Florida. And her brother Michael lives in Trevose. The Count, whose real name is Gaspare or Gap, has not been too well because of his heart.
I suggested that Susan hook up with Marianne on Facebook and also suggested that she friend Angie R. And I told her she probably should friend Don A if her dad wants to get into old Norristown stuff. Don is a few years older and knew those guys who hung around the corner of Main and Walnut and over at Lou's a lot better than me or Sam and Jas. I gather that John is trying to interest Count in using a computer so perhaps he can get in touch via email and Facebook and such.
Talking to Susan brought back vivid memories of those picnics. She too remembers looking forward to them all year long - the ball games, the corn roasting on the big grill, that creek where we bigger kids would catch crayfish and minnows, the ball games.
Good times!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Twenty two chronometers
Well, Charles Darwin finally made it back to England on HMS Beagle, after a five year voyage. He spent most of his time ashore during the voyage since the actual transit time betweeen the various stops was only about 18 months. Of course the Beagle itself spent a lot of the other 36 months at sea in and around the harbors where Darwin was set ashore for his explorations.
The appendixes at the end of the book turned out to be almost as interesting as the book itself. For instance, the Beagle left England with 22 chronometers in order to be sure that Captain Fitzroy could accurately chart the longitude of a bunch of places, which was the real job of the ship. Even with 22 of the most accurate clocks that could be bought in 1831 the ship's itinerary was planned to allow stops in many places whose longitude was known with fair precision so Fitzroy could calibrate his chronometers by observing and timing the occultations of stars by the moon. Fitzroy took an instrument maker whose sole job was maintenance of the clocks.
It came to me as I was listening to all of this that the sheer amount of detailed mathematical work which needed to be done after the Beagle returned to England was unbelievable. By taking his observations at the known longitude places Fitzroy would have related the time shown by all of those clocks to the actual known time of the occultation. None of this would have had any precise meaning until after he returned to England and compared the time on the clocks to standard Greenwich Mean Time. At that point Fitzroy, and several assistants no doubt, would have had to go back and reconstruct the whole voyage to calculate the real longitude of all the places where he took what had to be tens of thousands of soundings and bearings to known points of land. Almost unbelievable how much detail work had to be involved.
The other thng that struck me was Darwin commenting at length on how easy the voyage was relative to the previous voyages of Captain Cook and the other earlier explorers. The Beagle was 90 feet long and 24 feet wide in the beam. It was home to no less than 74 men for those five long years. Of course that was far fewer men than the Beagle had carried when it was outfitted with 12 cannon as a warship. For that purpose the crew was 120 men. As a survey ship the Beagle carried only 6 cannon.
We think of Charles Darwin as the plump bald guy with the heavy brows whose picture was taken in 1854, or as the fusty old bearded guy whose picture was taken in 1868. But when he went off on the Beagle he was a determined looking 22 year old. A rich 22 year old, by the way. He took a servant with him for the five year exploration trip. He was the grandson of the Wedgwood pottery guy and also the son and grandson of two generations of very prominent doctors. His grandfather had the nerve to turn down King George the 3rd's invitation to be his personal doctor.
The Voyage of the Beagle was an interesting listen.
The appendixes at the end of the book turned out to be almost as interesting as the book itself. For instance, the Beagle left England with 22 chronometers in order to be sure that Captain Fitzroy could accurately chart the longitude of a bunch of places, which was the real job of the ship. Even with 22 of the most accurate clocks that could be bought in 1831 the ship's itinerary was planned to allow stops in many places whose longitude was known with fair precision so Fitzroy could calibrate his chronometers by observing and timing the occultations of stars by the moon. Fitzroy took an instrument maker whose sole job was maintenance of the clocks.
It came to me as I was listening to all of this that the sheer amount of detailed mathematical work which needed to be done after the Beagle returned to England was unbelievable. By taking his observations at the known longitude places Fitzroy would have related the time shown by all of those clocks to the actual known time of the occultation. None of this would have had any precise meaning until after he returned to England and compared the time on the clocks to standard Greenwich Mean Time. At that point Fitzroy, and several assistants no doubt, would have had to go back and reconstruct the whole voyage to calculate the real longitude of all the places where he took what had to be tens of thousands of soundings and bearings to known points of land. Almost unbelievable how much detail work had to be involved.
The other thng that struck me was Darwin commenting at length on how easy the voyage was relative to the previous voyages of Captain Cook and the other earlier explorers. The Beagle was 90 feet long and 24 feet wide in the beam. It was home to no less than 74 men for those five long years. Of course that was far fewer men than the Beagle had carried when it was outfitted with 12 cannon as a warship. For that purpose the crew was 120 men. As a survey ship the Beagle carried only 6 cannon.
We think of Charles Darwin as the plump bald guy with the heavy brows whose picture was taken in 1854, or as the fusty old bearded guy whose picture was taken in 1868. But when he went off on the Beagle he was a determined looking 22 year old. A rich 22 year old, by the way. He took a servant with him for the five year exploration trip. He was the grandson of the Wedgwood pottery guy and also the son and grandson of two generations of very prominent doctors. His grandfather had the nerve to turn down King George the 3rd's invitation to be his personal doctor.
The Voyage of the Beagle was an interesting listen.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The big global warming lie is coming undone
For the past couple of years people have been digging deeper and deeper into the details of the so called research that the global warming believers have been basing their reports on.
Now we learn that the oldest thermometer station in Europe, which is in Czechoslovakia, actually show that temperatures have gone DOWN over the past two hundred years. Pehaps that's why the global warming fanatics removed that thermometer station from their data. They did the same thing with the 130 year old thermometer station in Darwin, Australia. And they did the same thing with the over 100 year old thermometer station in Central Park in New York.
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTJjNGQ1Mzk2OWM0NWRkZjBmYWU5MWYxNjc2ZTNmNjQ=
Now we learn that the oldest thermometer station in Europe, which is in Czechoslovakia, actually show that temperatures have gone DOWN over the past two hundred years. Pehaps that's why the global warming fanatics removed that thermometer station from their data. They did the same thing with the 130 year old thermometer station in Darwin, Australia. And they did the same thing with the over 100 year old thermometer station in Central Park in New York.
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTJjNGQ1Mzk2OWM0NWRkZjBmYWU5MWYxNjc2ZTNmNjQ=
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
A new recipe you may or may not want to try
I haven't tried the recipe Beppe Bigazzi talks about at the link below; but perhaps I will the next time something that cooks up "better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon" comes wandering around. Ruperto de Nola, writing in the classic days of Italian cuisine, recommended spit roasting after basting with olive oil and garlic. Remember to soak for three days in spring water. Very popular in Arezzo, they say.
Watch the short video! His young assistant keeps trying to get him off the subject; but she can't once he gets on a roll.
Fluffy, the other white meat.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article7029058.ece
Watch the short video! His young assistant keeps trying to get him off the subject; but she can't once he gets on a roll.
Fluffy, the other white meat.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article7029058.ece
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The new snow turned wimpy
Yesterday they were predicting two to five inches of snow around here; so I went out and more or less eliminated the worst of the moguls in the driveway. I also widened it just in case we really got a significant snow. All this while I was making Lobscouse for dinner.
The Lobscouse turned out to taste remarkably like Mom's stew, even though it was just meat, potatoes, onions and about a third of a can of left over LeSeur peas, all simmered for about three and a half hours after a brief frying of the beef and then the onions in a tablespoon of olive oil. Oh, and I also put in a couple of teaspoons of instant beef boullion, a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire Sauce and few small bay leaves. This was for a pound of beef cubes, three onions and about half of a five pound bag of potatoes. Mom always put celery and carrots in her stew. And she never put in a can of beer, which is what most of the Lobscouse recipes called for.
Next time I think I'll try adding carrots and celery along with the beer.
It's snowing pretty good again out there but from the forecast I doubt we'll get more than an inch or two of total accumulation.
The Lobscouse turned out to taste remarkably like Mom's stew, even though it was just meat, potatoes, onions and about a third of a can of left over LeSeur peas, all simmered for about three and a half hours after a brief frying of the beef and then the onions in a tablespoon of olive oil. Oh, and I also put in a couple of teaspoons of instant beef boullion, a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire Sauce and few small bay leaves. This was for a pound of beef cubes, three onions and about half of a five pound bag of potatoes. Mom always put celery and carrots in her stew. And she never put in a can of beer, which is what most of the Lobscouse recipes called for.
Next time I think I'll try adding carrots and celery along with the beer.
It's snowing pretty good again out there but from the forecast I doubt we'll get more than an inch or two of total accumulation.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Mmmm! Nice and warm in the house
I just came in from digging out a bit in front of the mailbox. Too late, as it turns out. The mailman had already dropped off the mail. Why would he be early on a day when many of the roads on his route are probably a mess? And a day where he needed arms like an orangutan to reach into most of the mailboxes.
When I went to the Post Office earlier to mail off three books I found that the Collegeville PO has the very best snowplow guy in the United States, or at least one of the best. By 11:00 he had that parking lot completely cleared and wet. Meanwhile, the road outside the post office looked like it got ahead of the Collegeville Municipal plow guys. It was thick with ice and crusted snow.
The guys at the Post Office told me the plow guy should do a good job considering what he charges. Whatever he charges it wasn't enough for the job he did on this snowfall.
Three stems out of the whole clump bamboo grove down by the garden managed to shrug off the wet snow and stay standing. All of the others in that clump, and all but two of those in the long grove of the evil linear spreading bamboo on the other side of the yard, are bowed down to the ground. By appearances it seems impossible they will ever be able to straighten up. Appearances have been deceiving in the past; but I'm not sure I've ever seen the bamboo so thoroughly smashed down as it is today.
The pine trees turn out to be pretty vulnerable to this sort of snow. The pine grove behind the house is strewn with broken off branches up to four and five inches in diameter at the base, and the pine trees along the driveway have large branches still bowed down to the ground. There are also a good number of big branches broken off the deciduous trees. I'll cut the deciduous wood up for firewood next year; but I can't use the pine because it makes too much creosote.
Maybe I'll cut up those pine branches into six foot lengths and we'll make a bonfire with them to celebrate the beginning of spring. Or perhaps we'll hold off having a bonfire and weinie roast til the beginning of April when Jas and Kathy will be back up from Florida.
As always at this time of year the good news about snow is that the sun melts the heck out of it pretty quickly. The driveway was like a toboggan chute this morning when I went out; but it is already getting much less daunting. Tomorrow it should be pretty much normally negotiable, although it will be narrow for a while. The banks of snow on either side of it are pretty high and dense.
Somehow I got completely sidetracked from the reason I sat down to write. When I came in I had to take off my sweatshirt because the house is so warm. The downstairs is now at 72 degrees, down from the high of 73 that it reached an hour or so ago. The upstairs is at 78, down from 79 that it reached earlier. The sun really warms it up a lot when the ground is covered with snow.
I have noticed that the house doesn't hold the heat the way it did when it was new. Back then it used to go up into the 80's (downstairs) on a sunny day and it would then hold that heat until well into the evening. On such days I used to light the woodstove at eight or nine at night and that, in turn, would keep the house in the high 60's til it really got cold outside late at night.
All this is a long way of getting at the fact that a lot of alternative energy things, solar especially, are being written about and analyzed based on the energy production in the first year when the system is new. But just like this house, those systems will degrade as they age. In the case of solar cells I read somewhere that it only takes a very little scratching on the surface of the cells to cut their energy production significantly, because the scratches scatter light rather than letting it go straight through. Naturally those solar cells will work best in the hot and dry areas like the Southwest, where, as it happens, there is lots of sand and dust being blown around that can scratch the surfaces.
I keep an eye on solar power stuff because 24 years ago when we designed this house I specifically settled on a roof pitch that is pretty close to the optimum for solar cells in this latitude. Back then I expected to eventually install solar panels on the roof once they got economical. Well, here we are, a quarter of a century later, and solar panels are still not even close to being a good investment in this area, even with the government tax credit subsidy. Solar assisted hot water would be just barely a good investment, given that we already have the properly sloped South facing roof; but only if it could be depended on to function without problems for fifteen or twenty years, which I don't believe it can be.
Update: I had to go out and put the bucket back on top of my wrapped up fig tree. for some reason that tree is bending over this year.
When I went to the Post Office earlier to mail off three books I found that the Collegeville PO has the very best snowplow guy in the United States, or at least one of the best. By 11:00 he had that parking lot completely cleared and wet. Meanwhile, the road outside the post office looked like it got ahead of the Collegeville Municipal plow guys. It was thick with ice and crusted snow.
The guys at the Post Office told me the plow guy should do a good job considering what he charges. Whatever he charges it wasn't enough for the job he did on this snowfall.
Three stems out of the whole clump bamboo grove down by the garden managed to shrug off the wet snow and stay standing. All of the others in that clump, and all but two of those in the long grove of the evil linear spreading bamboo on the other side of the yard, are bowed down to the ground. By appearances it seems impossible they will ever be able to straighten up. Appearances have been deceiving in the past; but I'm not sure I've ever seen the bamboo so thoroughly smashed down as it is today.
The pine trees turn out to be pretty vulnerable to this sort of snow. The pine grove behind the house is strewn with broken off branches up to four and five inches in diameter at the base, and the pine trees along the driveway have large branches still bowed down to the ground. There are also a good number of big branches broken off the deciduous trees. I'll cut the deciduous wood up for firewood next year; but I can't use the pine because it makes too much creosote.
Maybe I'll cut up those pine branches into six foot lengths and we'll make a bonfire with them to celebrate the beginning of spring. Or perhaps we'll hold off having a bonfire and weinie roast til the beginning of April when Jas and Kathy will be back up from Florida.
As always at this time of year the good news about snow is that the sun melts the heck out of it pretty quickly. The driveway was like a toboggan chute this morning when I went out; but it is already getting much less daunting. Tomorrow it should be pretty much normally negotiable, although it will be narrow for a while. The banks of snow on either side of it are pretty high and dense.
Somehow I got completely sidetracked from the reason I sat down to write. When I came in I had to take off my sweatshirt because the house is so warm. The downstairs is now at 72 degrees, down from the high of 73 that it reached an hour or so ago. The upstairs is at 78, down from 79 that it reached earlier. The sun really warms it up a lot when the ground is covered with snow.
I have noticed that the house doesn't hold the heat the way it did when it was new. Back then it used to go up into the 80's (downstairs) on a sunny day and it would then hold that heat until well into the evening. On such days I used to light the woodstove at eight or nine at night and that, in turn, would keep the house in the high 60's til it really got cold outside late at night.
All this is a long way of getting at the fact that a lot of alternative energy things, solar especially, are being written about and analyzed based on the energy production in the first year when the system is new. But just like this house, those systems will degrade as they age. In the case of solar cells I read somewhere that it only takes a very little scratching on the surface of the cells to cut their energy production significantly, because the scratches scatter light rather than letting it go straight through. Naturally those solar cells will work best in the hot and dry areas like the Southwest, where, as it happens, there is lots of sand and dust being blown around that can scratch the surfaces.
I keep an eye on solar power stuff because 24 years ago when we designed this house I specifically settled on a roof pitch that is pretty close to the optimum for solar cells in this latitude. Back then I expected to eventually install solar panels on the roof once they got economical. Well, here we are, a quarter of a century later, and solar panels are still not even close to being a good investment in this area, even with the government tax credit subsidy. Solar assisted hot water would be just barely a good investment, given that we already have the properly sloped South facing roof; but only if it could be depended on to function without problems for fifteen or twenty years, which I don't believe it can be.
Update: I had to go out and put the bucket back on top of my wrapped up fig tree. for some reason that tree is bending over this year.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
We're finally getting the promised blizzard out there
It's been snowing pretty hard all day; but there wasn't any significant wind to speak of until an hour or so ago. As a result the big pine trees have branches arching down to the ground. And many branches have broken off, including the one that landed on my car. I had to cut it up with the loppers to get it to where I could move it off. The car seems okay; but there's no sense checking on that yet. We're not going anyplace tonight, and probably tomorrow either.
I plowed the driveway at 10:00 or so and got stuck a couple of times. Then I plowed it again at about 2:30 and got stuck again a couple of times. Dense and heavy wet snow. The snow hasn't been falling as hard since mid afternoon; but there are probably another few inches out there.
The tractor gave me a bit of a scare this last time I plowed. I got it stuck after quite a little session of rocking and ramming a stubborn pile of compressed snow. So I had to get off and shovel out the wheels a bit. The upstart was that when I got back on it revved up revved up, but the wheels wouldn't go in either forward or reverse.
It took me a while to figure out that I had knocked the master transmission knob that hides down under the seat from the turtle setting into the neutral range. I've probably only shifted that master setting four or five times in the 24 years since we've had the tractor. The only reason to touch it is when you want the rabbit setting for going on a road, not that it goes all that fast on the rabbit setting.
We have plenty of wood in the garage and food to last for as long as this global warming keeps hurling itself at us.
The wind is really whipping out there now, but I think the snow is too heavy and wet to drift much.
I plowed the driveway at 10:00 or so and got stuck a couple of times. Then I plowed it again at about 2:30 and got stuck again a couple of times. Dense and heavy wet snow. The snow hasn't been falling as hard since mid afternoon; but there are probably another few inches out there.
The tractor gave me a bit of a scare this last time I plowed. I got it stuck after quite a little session of rocking and ramming a stubborn pile of compressed snow. So I had to get off and shovel out the wheels a bit. The upstart was that when I got back on it revved up revved up, but the wheels wouldn't go in either forward or reverse.
It took me a while to figure out that I had knocked the master transmission knob that hides down under the seat from the turtle setting into the neutral range. I've probably only shifted that master setting four or five times in the 24 years since we've had the tractor. The only reason to touch it is when you want the rabbit setting for going on a road, not that it goes all that fast on the rabbit setting.
We have plenty of wood in the garage and food to last for as long as this global warming keeps hurling itself at us.
The wind is really whipping out there now, but I think the snow is too heavy and wet to drift much.
A near run thing
We woke to a winter wonderland here. Snow drifting down during the night had all the tree branches deep covered. Very picturesque, except for the bamboo grove down by the garden, which is a mess, most of its tall stalks weighted down to the ground helter skelter.
Fortunately I decided to walk out to get the Times Herald and discovered that the beautiful scene was very deceptive. A moderate sized branch broke off the big pine tree behind the garage and fell on my car; but it doesn't seem damaged. I'll get to that later. That car isn't going anywhere today.
Six inches of very wet heavy snow on the driveway is harder to plow that fifteen inches of dry powdery stuff. So I decided to plow ahead of the new snow that's expected to fall all day.
I got stuck twice pretty good before I could plow down to the gravel and churn it up enough to assure traction. On that first pass the plow was pushing a ten or twelve foot thrust of snow ahead of the tractor, until it lost traction and left a big curl of compacted wet snow blocking the driveway. It's fun plowing then; because the only cure is to put on the seat belt, back off, and hit that pile at ramming speed until you break through.
What a great tractor John Deere made for us twenty four years ago. Over the years I've abused the thing in virtually every way possible and it just won't break. The snow is now falling at probably an inch an hour or more, and its supposed to get windy later.
I think I'll make some hot chocolate and sit by the woodstove. My sweatpants were soaked by the time I came in so I have them hung on a chair by the stove to dry. Don't worry. I'm wearing my camouflage long johns, which almost look like normal pants.
Perfect. I caught the hot chocolate just as it got ready to boil over in the microwave. Delicious!
In other news, I see that the U.S. Senate has cancelled today's scheduled hearing on global warming, and that Al Gore still refuses to take the energy use pledge. Why should we give any credence to people who run around shouting that global warming threatens the very survival of the human race but who continue to use energy like utter hogs? Al uses twenty times as much energy and generates twenty times as much CO2 as the average American family.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Pledge
Fortunately I decided to walk out to get the Times Herald and discovered that the beautiful scene was very deceptive. A moderate sized branch broke off the big pine tree behind the garage and fell on my car; but it doesn't seem damaged. I'll get to that later. That car isn't going anywhere today.
Six inches of very wet heavy snow on the driveway is harder to plow that fifteen inches of dry powdery stuff. So I decided to plow ahead of the new snow that's expected to fall all day.
I got stuck twice pretty good before I could plow down to the gravel and churn it up enough to assure traction. On that first pass the plow was pushing a ten or twelve foot thrust of snow ahead of the tractor, until it lost traction and left a big curl of compacted wet snow blocking the driveway. It's fun plowing then; because the only cure is to put on the seat belt, back off, and hit that pile at ramming speed until you break through.
What a great tractor John Deere made for us twenty four years ago. Over the years I've abused the thing in virtually every way possible and it just won't break. The snow is now falling at probably an inch an hour or more, and its supposed to get windy later.
I think I'll make some hot chocolate and sit by the woodstove. My sweatpants were soaked by the time I came in so I have them hung on a chair by the stove to dry. Don't worry. I'm wearing my camouflage long johns, which almost look like normal pants.
Perfect. I caught the hot chocolate just as it got ready to boil over in the microwave. Delicious!
In other news, I see that the U.S. Senate has cancelled today's scheduled hearing on global warming, and that Al Gore still refuses to take the energy use pledge. Why should we give any credence to people who run around shouting that global warming threatens the very survival of the human race but who continue to use energy like utter hogs? Al uses twenty times as much energy and generates twenty times as much CO2 as the average American family.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Pledge
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The best kind of hot chocolate
I just came in from plowing the driveway. A pretty straightforward job, although this was probably the third or fourth heaviest snow we've gotten since we moved into this house in 1986. Maybe the second heaviest.
When I went out to plow Alex had just called to say he was going walking on the frozen Charles River. When I got back in because my fingers were getting cold, Linda reported that someone had called 911 on him. So Alex was ushered off the Charles by the forces of the law, one cop waiting for him on the other side of the river and another cop waiting for him at the place he set out. Perhaps he will be on the evening news.
Linda told me this tale of the nanny state in action while I was searching for the old Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate mix that Albert gave us a couple of years back. Turned out that Linda had given the hot chocolate mix to Alex at Christmas time to take back to Massachusetts. But all was not lost, for I found a hoary box of Nestle cocoa powder way back on the shelf of the cabinet that should be marked "Here be dragons" or "Terra Incognita" like the empty places on Darwin's maps.
"Best by December 2007" doesn't necessarily mean it can't be used to make hot chocolate in February of 2010. Especially when you have a hankering for hot chocolate on a cold and snowy day after coming in from an arduous job of running the tractor up and down the driveway a half dozen times.
So I set out to make hot chocolate. But first Linda had to insist there was a recipe for it on the box even though I was telling her that there was no recipe on the box. Then she suggested that I consult Joy of Cooking for a recipe. As though I needed a cookbook to tell me that hot chocolate is cocoa and sugar and milk in more or less the right proportions. The Aztecs and the Mayans used to make hot chocolate before cookbooks were invented. They didn't even have milk.
So here I am enjoying the very best sort of hot chocolate; the sort that someone says cannot be made but that nonetheless is made out of suspect ingredients combined by instinct. Unfortunately there were no ancient crusty marshmallows to melt on top of it. But you can't have everything in life.
In case you find yourself in a similar situation the recipe is two heaping teaspoons of cocoa powder, a cup or so of skim milk, a packet of Equal, a healthy shake or two of sugar from the bowl because the spoon is already wet with milk and a clotted mess of cocoa, and a dollop of half and half. The cocoa was difficult to dissolve until after I heated up the whole mess in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
Linda is out sweeping snow off her car. In a few minutes I'll go out and sweep off my car so I can move both of the cars to the plowed portion of the driveway. Then I can finish up the plowing, warmed by world class hot chocolate. Eat your hearts out Aztecs and Mayas.
Life is good. Alex got his walk on the frozen Charles before he could be snared by the forces of the law. And I got my hot chocolate.
When I went out to plow Alex had just called to say he was going walking on the frozen Charles River. When I got back in because my fingers were getting cold, Linda reported that someone had called 911 on him. So Alex was ushered off the Charles by the forces of the law, one cop waiting for him on the other side of the river and another cop waiting for him at the place he set out. Perhaps he will be on the evening news.
Linda told me this tale of the nanny state in action while I was searching for the old Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate mix that Albert gave us a couple of years back. Turned out that Linda had given the hot chocolate mix to Alex at Christmas time to take back to Massachusetts. But all was not lost, for I found a hoary box of Nestle cocoa powder way back on the shelf of the cabinet that should be marked "Here be dragons" or "Terra Incognita" like the empty places on Darwin's maps.
"Best by December 2007" doesn't necessarily mean it can't be used to make hot chocolate in February of 2010. Especially when you have a hankering for hot chocolate on a cold and snowy day after coming in from an arduous job of running the tractor up and down the driveway a half dozen times.
So I set out to make hot chocolate. But first Linda had to insist there was a recipe for it on the box even though I was telling her that there was no recipe on the box. Then she suggested that I consult Joy of Cooking for a recipe. As though I needed a cookbook to tell me that hot chocolate is cocoa and sugar and milk in more or less the right proportions. The Aztecs and the Mayans used to make hot chocolate before cookbooks were invented. They didn't even have milk.
So here I am enjoying the very best sort of hot chocolate; the sort that someone says cannot be made but that nonetheless is made out of suspect ingredients combined by instinct. Unfortunately there were no ancient crusty marshmallows to melt on top of it. But you can't have everything in life.
In case you find yourself in a similar situation the recipe is two heaping teaspoons of cocoa powder, a cup or so of skim milk, a packet of Equal, a healthy shake or two of sugar from the bowl because the spoon is already wet with milk and a clotted mess of cocoa, and a dollop of half and half. The cocoa was difficult to dissolve until after I heated up the whole mess in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
Linda is out sweeping snow off her car. In a few minutes I'll go out and sweep off my car so I can move both of the cars to the plowed portion of the driveway. Then I can finish up the plowing, warmed by world class hot chocolate. Eat your hearts out Aztecs and Mayas.
Life is good. Alex got his walk on the frozen Charles before he could be snared by the forces of the law. And I got my hot chocolate.
Glorious snow, cannibals, missionaries and Rosebud
Linda thinks fifteen inches. I think more like eighteen inches. Both of us are too lazy to go out and measure the great heap on the picnic table. Eventually I'll have to go out there to plow. I'll measure it then, but of course I'll have to apply an adjustment to the raw data because it's a well known phenomenon that light drifty snow compacts down over time.
Linda reports that the post office has cancelled deliveries for today. Whatever happened to "neither snow nor heat. . ." Back in the good old days when Jas and Kathy were handling the mail this would never have happened.
Speaking of the good old days, The Beagle just got to New Zealand after a stop in Tahiti. And Darwin was going on quite poeticly yesterday about the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean yesterday while I was driving back and forth to the tanning salon. He was marvelling at the days and weeks of travel involved over the heaving trackless ocean to reach the little islands dotted around. He was also decrying the British naysayers he had heard criticizing the missionaries in Tahiti. He didn't quite point out that the naysayers would have been killed, cooked and eaten by the Tahitians in the days before the missionaries, but he hinted at it.
Meanwhile there are two kids down there by the bridge. Maybe seven or eight year olds, little enough so the snow comes up to their thighs. One of them is covered with dusty snow. Oh for the days when snow meant eagerness to get out there in it until the cold damp coming though your gloves and clothes drove you inside to warm up for a few minutes before heading out again. There are deer running around beyond the pond; but I don't think the kids see them.
Quite a lot of activity out there today. A teenage girl trudged across from Stratford toward Bridal Lane carrying a yellow sled a little while ago. She just headed back with another teenager and a younger girl in tow. They're probably going to try to sled down the sidewalks on Stratford. These days the local governments plow and salt too quickly and thoroughly to allow for proper sledding on the streets. Back in the good old days Park Avenue down in Trooper might stay unplowed all day, and when it was plowed there was still a good packed down base of snow to sled on, sometimes for several days. Those were the days when you had to have a plowed road to sled on because the only sleds around had thin metal runners.
Four deer just leaped and ran across the lawn from Bridal Lane to down by the bridge. Those little kids missed quite a sight, although on second thought the deer probably would have skirted well clear if the kids had still been there.
Gotta run now. The tractor calls. I should paint a name on the tractor. Perhaps Rosebud.
Linda reports that the post office has cancelled deliveries for today. Whatever happened to "neither snow nor heat. . ." Back in the good old days when Jas and Kathy were handling the mail this would never have happened.
Speaking of the good old days, The Beagle just got to New Zealand after a stop in Tahiti. And Darwin was going on quite poeticly yesterday about the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean yesterday while I was driving back and forth to the tanning salon. He was marvelling at the days and weeks of travel involved over the heaving trackless ocean to reach the little islands dotted around. He was also decrying the British naysayers he had heard criticizing the missionaries in Tahiti. He didn't quite point out that the naysayers would have been killed, cooked and eaten by the Tahitians in the days before the missionaries, but he hinted at it.
Meanwhile there are two kids down there by the bridge. Maybe seven or eight year olds, little enough so the snow comes up to their thighs. One of them is covered with dusty snow. Oh for the days when snow meant eagerness to get out there in it until the cold damp coming though your gloves and clothes drove you inside to warm up for a few minutes before heading out again. There are deer running around beyond the pond; but I don't think the kids see them.
Quite a lot of activity out there today. A teenage girl trudged across from Stratford toward Bridal Lane carrying a yellow sled a little while ago. She just headed back with another teenager and a younger girl in tow. They're probably going to try to sled down the sidewalks on Stratford. These days the local governments plow and salt too quickly and thoroughly to allow for proper sledding on the streets. Back in the good old days Park Avenue down in Trooper might stay unplowed all day, and when it was plowed there was still a good packed down base of snow to sled on, sometimes for several days. Those were the days when you had to have a plowed road to sled on because the only sleds around had thin metal runners.
Four deer just leaped and ran across the lawn from Bridal Lane to down by the bridge. Those little kids missed quite a sight, although on second thought the deer probably would have skirted well clear if the kids had still been there.
Gotta run now. The tractor calls. I should paint a name on the tractor. Perhaps Rosebud.
Friday, February 5, 2010
This may be the best headline ever written
"RAHM EMANUEL COMPARES DEMOCRATS TO RETARDED PEOPLE, then apologizes to retarded people."
From Instapundit - http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/93043/
In other news: If you want to see the most amazing thing ever done with a piece of heavy machinery here's a video that Don A sent me from down in Florida where he's enjoying weather a lot nicer than we have up here where we're waiting for a big snowstorm to start. Don had sent me still pictures of this stunt and I wondered whether it was real or whether it was photoshopped. It's real. The video is about nine minutes long. At the least you should skip through it to see the good parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB1dI44j0Rs
From Instapundit - http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/93043/
In other news: If you want to see the most amazing thing ever done with a piece of heavy machinery here's a video that Don A sent me from down in Florida where he's enjoying weather a lot nicer than we have up here where we're waiting for a big snowstorm to start. Don had sent me still pictures of this stunt and I wondered whether it was real or whether it was photoshopped. It's real. The video is about nine minutes long. At the least you should skip through it to see the good parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB1dI44j0Rs
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Ten to the 120th power
The other day Samuel was here with Don and they got to playing a game of chess. Their game was pretty sophisticated, although Samuel needs to develop more pieces and avoid bringing his queen out too early. As it turned out Don got to chasing Samuel's queen around with his pair of knights and that put him on the path to the win.
During the game Don got talking about playing chess on the internet and to practicing by playing against chess programs. That led to me mentioning this article I had seen by Garry Kasparov in which he discusses why even computers can't play chess by brute force calculation because the possible move combinations in a chess game is about 10 to the 120th power, or 10 followed by 120 zeros. That's an all but ungraspable number. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think the number of elementary particles in the universe is something like 10 to the 86th power.
Even the first eight moves in a chess game allow for more move combinations than there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Computers currently solve the first eight moves and many more; but they don't even come close to solving a full game. It's possible to imagine a computer that will "solve" chess the way a computer recently solved checkers; but there is no current technology that would allow a computer to be fast enough to fully compute a chess game. Current chess playing computers use shortcuts to rule out whole classes of move patterns that are unlikely to be successful as a way to cut down the possibilities.
If you're interested at all in chess or in how the human mind works here's that article by Kasparov in which he talks about how he beat the computers until IBM finally built Deep Blue. Deep Blue was finally fast enough to compute moves out beyond what Kasparov could do by intuition; but to beat him it still it needed the advice of a couple of human chess grandmasters who helped it by making suggestions for how to avoid traps.
Interestingly, Kasparov, a very smart and well rounded man who writes on many topics besides chess reveals in the article that he's more or less in awe of Bobby Fisher who was by no means a well rounded sort of fellow.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592
In other news Sam had to get a tetanus shot because of his little incident with the Cutco knife the other day. He's confident that his sewn up finger will be up to golf when he heads down to The Villages later this month.
Finally, Darwin got to describing his discovery of petrified trees high up in the foothills of the Andes, which reminded me of when Jas and I walked around Petrified Forest National Monument when we drove the southwest a few years ago. While we were walking the paved path Jas wondered if the park had gathered up all the petrified logs and put them near the visitor center. So we left the path at a point where we were out of sight of the ranger station and walked the dry washes for a couple of miles to see how much petrified wood there was out beyond where the tourists regularly go. There were other clumps of logs, although none as impressively dense as those near the visitor center.
During the game Don got talking about playing chess on the internet and to practicing by playing against chess programs. That led to me mentioning this article I had seen by Garry Kasparov in which he discusses why even computers can't play chess by brute force calculation because the possible move combinations in a chess game is about 10 to the 120th power, or 10 followed by 120 zeros. That's an all but ungraspable number. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think the number of elementary particles in the universe is something like 10 to the 86th power.
Even the first eight moves in a chess game allow for more move combinations than there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Computers currently solve the first eight moves and many more; but they don't even come close to solving a full game. It's possible to imagine a computer that will "solve" chess the way a computer recently solved checkers; but there is no current technology that would allow a computer to be fast enough to fully compute a chess game. Current chess playing computers use shortcuts to rule out whole classes of move patterns that are unlikely to be successful as a way to cut down the possibilities.
If you're interested at all in chess or in how the human mind works here's that article by Kasparov in which he talks about how he beat the computers until IBM finally built Deep Blue. Deep Blue was finally fast enough to compute moves out beyond what Kasparov could do by intuition; but to beat him it still it needed the advice of a couple of human chess grandmasters who helped it by making suggestions for how to avoid traps.
Interestingly, Kasparov, a very smart and well rounded man who writes on many topics besides chess reveals in the article that he's more or less in awe of Bobby Fisher who was by no means a well rounded sort of fellow.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592
In other news Sam had to get a tetanus shot because of his little incident with the Cutco knife the other day. He's confident that his sewn up finger will be up to golf when he heads down to The Villages later this month.
Finally, Darwin got to describing his discovery of petrified trees high up in the foothills of the Andes, which reminded me of when Jas and I walked around Petrified Forest National Monument when we drove the southwest a few years ago. While we were walking the paved path Jas wondered if the park had gathered up all the petrified logs and put them near the visitor center. So we left the path at a point where we were out of sight of the ranger station and walked the dry washes for a couple of miles to see how much petrified wood there was out beyond where the tourists regularly go. There were other clumps of logs, although none as impressively dense as those near the visitor center.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
There's a Great Blue Heron wandering around
He glided in and landed down by the bridge and he's now patiently stalking along the creek. I can't imagine what he expects to catch in this cold.
But I didn't sign in to comment on the Great Blue Heron. I signed in to comment on the damn Canadian politician who's planning to swoop down here into the U.S. to have a heart operation.
We keep getting told and told and told that Canada has such a great health care system. If that's the case why is a damned Canadian politician coming down here for his operation? Perhaps all the good Canadian doctors have moved to the U.S.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2510700
In related news Sam and Deb, along with Dolores and Don, came to dinner on Sunday. So we were able to see the stitches in Sam's finger. It turns out they didn't go to the hospital emergency room but rather to the Premier Urgent Care center in Oaks. They got good efficient service there. Sam said the doctor got to him within fifteen minutes of their arrival. This urgent care concept seems to make sense. The hospitals charge far too much for most emergency room care because of the way hospital accounting works. And the waiting times in hospital emergency rooms can be long.
Sam's main concern is that the stitches should be out by the time it's warm enough for golf.
One of the red headed woodpeckers is down there on the sugar maple tree, so I have to go now.
But first I should mention that I've been listening to Charles Darwin's book The Voyage of the Beagle while driving over the past couple of weeks. A very interesting book, although you do have to be patient when he runs on and on about some particular frog, or mouse, or geological formation that has interested him. What's most interesting is how humble Darwin is. He never asserts anything.
He's groping toward explanations for a whole host of natural phenomena besides evolution, including plate techtonics, ocean currents, vulcanism, mountain uplift, climate variation and change, extinction, etc.; but it's clear he doesn't make up his mind until the evidence is overwhelming. On the subject of evolution it's neat that at that at the point of his life when he wrote this book he was still somewhat of a believer in what was later called Lysenkoism, namely that acquired traits are geneticly passed down.
A very interesting book and a very interesting man, not at all like the forbidding bearded elder who's popular image comes down to us as a result of the fact that he ultimately got to the overarching theory of evolution.
On that subject Linda and I finally saw Ben Stein's movie Expelled a few weeks ago. The movie was contentious, and Stein skewered some of the too proud and exclusionary evolutionists; but it's hard for me not to think that Stein is more reasonable in the end than the evolution explains everything true believers.
The book The Voyage of the Beagle is worth reading, and the movie Expelled is worth seeing.
But I didn't sign in to comment on the Great Blue Heron. I signed in to comment on the damn Canadian politician who's planning to swoop down here into the U.S. to have a heart operation.
We keep getting told and told and told that Canada has such a great health care system. If that's the case why is a damned Canadian politician coming down here for his operation? Perhaps all the good Canadian doctors have moved to the U.S.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2510700
In related news Sam and Deb, along with Dolores and Don, came to dinner on Sunday. So we were able to see the stitches in Sam's finger. It turns out they didn't go to the hospital emergency room but rather to the Premier Urgent Care center in Oaks. They got good efficient service there. Sam said the doctor got to him within fifteen minutes of their arrival. This urgent care concept seems to make sense. The hospitals charge far too much for most emergency room care because of the way hospital accounting works. And the waiting times in hospital emergency rooms can be long.
Sam's main concern is that the stitches should be out by the time it's warm enough for golf.
One of the red headed woodpeckers is down there on the sugar maple tree, so I have to go now.
But first I should mention that I've been listening to Charles Darwin's book The Voyage of the Beagle while driving over the past couple of weeks. A very interesting book, although you do have to be patient when he runs on and on about some particular frog, or mouse, or geological formation that has interested him. What's most interesting is how humble Darwin is. He never asserts anything.
He's groping toward explanations for a whole host of natural phenomena besides evolution, including plate techtonics, ocean currents, vulcanism, mountain uplift, climate variation and change, extinction, etc.; but it's clear he doesn't make up his mind until the evidence is overwhelming. On the subject of evolution it's neat that at that at the point of his life when he wrote this book he was still somewhat of a believer in what was later called Lysenkoism, namely that acquired traits are geneticly passed down.
A very interesting book and a very interesting man, not at all like the forbidding bearded elder who's popular image comes down to us as a result of the fact that he ultimately got to the overarching theory of evolution.
On that subject Linda and I finally saw Ben Stein's movie Expelled a few weeks ago. The movie was contentious, and Stein skewered some of the too proud and exclusionary evolutionists; but it's hard for me not to think that Stein is more reasonable in the end than the evolution explains everything true believers.
The book The Voyage of the Beagle is worth reading, and the movie Expelled is worth seeing.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama
I titled this with that old saw because I like palindromes, and because I just got a friend request on Facebook from Dillon L down in Panama.
What a wonderful world we live in. Linda and I saw Dillon for a couple of days a few years ago when we went down to Panama; but contact with him has been intermittent since then. Now that he's on Facebook he was able to find me and I'll easily be able to look in once in a while and see what he's up to. And, I noticed that he is a friend to a woman who may be Randy D's mother. I don't know Randy's mother so I'll hold off contacting her to ask until I see if Dillon makes contact directly with Randy over in Switzerland as he plays with Facebook. It must be ten years since I've been in contact with Randy, and the time before that was probably another ten years back.
But enough of Facebook. When I left off my post the other day about the trip Linda and I took down to The Villages I left off some interesting details.
For instance, on the way home we met a woman at a coffee shop in Savannah who told us that she loved Amoroso rolls when she formerly lived in Allentown or Lancaster or whatever. What are the chances we would meet someone who's first thought on learning we were from near Philly would be to remember Amoroso kaiser rolls? I refrained from telling her that Corropolese kaisers are far superior. Sometimes I'm a surprisingly sensitive person.
I was more impressed with Savannah than Linda was. We didn't, unfortunately, see it at it's best. In fact we saw it at what is probably near its worst. We got there at about nine in the morning when it was in the low 40's and overcast, so the riverwalk was deserted and bleak. Still, I thought it had a certain charm. Linda just thought it was cold and bleak. We were ready for the coffee shop when we finished the mile or so walk. An interesting town, although not as picturesque as I expected. Perhaps we missed the best parts.
The day before Savannah we spent some time in St. Augustine, which was also pretty cold and bleak. Again we saw it at far from it's best. We need to go back there in the late spring or early fall when it's better weather so we can tour the town again in comfort and then get in some beach time. The big highlight was that I got my $6 credit card type lifetime senior pass for the national parks when we went into the old fort. Linda is still much too young to qualify for that deal. . .
We interrupt this blog entry for dinner. . .
An excellent dinner. Linda made rice and stir fry chicken with vegetables. With it we had our daily old people pills washed down with water, and green tea made in the little pot Alex and Christina gave us. Very good.
Just after dinner we got a call from Samuel to report some breaking news: Sam and Deb will not be going to the dance tonight because they've decided to go down to the emergency room instead. It seems Sam was cutting bread with one of their new Cutco knives and there was a bit of a mishap. Samuel reported that no essential parts were detached from his Dad; but it must be a heck of a cut if deb doesn't feel capable of dealing with it.
So, anyway, after we saw Savannah we drove all the way to Petersburg and stayed at a motel that may have seen better days ten or fifteen years ago. The neighborhood also may have seen better days a while back. Not that people weren't sociable. A young lady we saw when we were leaving seemed like the sort of person who has a lot of acquaintances who see her regularly.
Petersburg, as you Civil War buffs know, is just south of Richmond; so we didn't have far to drive to get to Charlotte and Louie's house. Jonathan was home for the weekend so he joined us in going out to breakfast. Charlotte seems to be getting around pretty well on her new hip or knee, or whatever. I get her and Louie mixed up in the replaced joint department. At any rate both of them and Jonny are doing well. Besides the knee, I'm pretty sure it was the knee, Charlotte also recently hurt her back a bit and got laid off from her job. But she was still plenty feisty.
After leaving Richmond it was practically a hop, skip and jump to get home. Two hundred and forty miles goes by fast at 70 miles an hour, which Jas's car did with ease, eve after its transmission asked to be checked after we got north of Wilmington with only a ten or fifteen miles to go. We couldn't find anything alarming about the Check Transmission message in the owner's manual so we continued on.
Enough for now except to report that the ground is frozen solid here, so I was able to get another tractor bucket load of wood from the other side of the property. I think I now have enough to get through the winter, although I'll be getting more to pile for next year whenever the ground is frozen.
What a wonderful world we live in. Linda and I saw Dillon for a couple of days a few years ago when we went down to Panama; but contact with him has been intermittent since then. Now that he's on Facebook he was able to find me and I'll easily be able to look in once in a while and see what he's up to. And, I noticed that he is a friend to a woman who may be Randy D's mother. I don't know Randy's mother so I'll hold off contacting her to ask until I see if Dillon makes contact directly with Randy over in Switzerland as he plays with Facebook. It must be ten years since I've been in contact with Randy, and the time before that was probably another ten years back.
But enough of Facebook. When I left off my post the other day about the trip Linda and I took down to The Villages I left off some interesting details.
For instance, on the way home we met a woman at a coffee shop in Savannah who told us that she loved Amoroso rolls when she formerly lived in Allentown or Lancaster or whatever. What are the chances we would meet someone who's first thought on learning we were from near Philly would be to remember Amoroso kaiser rolls? I refrained from telling her that Corropolese kaisers are far superior. Sometimes I'm a surprisingly sensitive person.
I was more impressed with Savannah than Linda was. We didn't, unfortunately, see it at it's best. In fact we saw it at what is probably near its worst. We got there at about nine in the morning when it was in the low 40's and overcast, so the riverwalk was deserted and bleak. Still, I thought it had a certain charm. Linda just thought it was cold and bleak. We were ready for the coffee shop when we finished the mile or so walk. An interesting town, although not as picturesque as I expected. Perhaps we missed the best parts.
The day before Savannah we spent some time in St. Augustine, which was also pretty cold and bleak. Again we saw it at far from it's best. We need to go back there in the late spring or early fall when it's better weather so we can tour the town again in comfort and then get in some beach time. The big highlight was that I got my $6 credit card type lifetime senior pass for the national parks when we went into the old fort. Linda is still much too young to qualify for that deal. . .
We interrupt this blog entry for dinner. . .
An excellent dinner. Linda made rice and stir fry chicken with vegetables. With it we had our daily old people pills washed down with water, and green tea made in the little pot Alex and Christina gave us. Very good.
Just after dinner we got a call from Samuel to report some breaking news: Sam and Deb will not be going to the dance tonight because they've decided to go down to the emergency room instead. It seems Sam was cutting bread with one of their new Cutco knives and there was a bit of a mishap. Samuel reported that no essential parts were detached from his Dad; but it must be a heck of a cut if deb doesn't feel capable of dealing with it.
So, anyway, after we saw Savannah we drove all the way to Petersburg and stayed at a motel that may have seen better days ten or fifteen years ago. The neighborhood also may have seen better days a while back. Not that people weren't sociable. A young lady we saw when we were leaving seemed like the sort of person who has a lot of acquaintances who see her regularly.
Petersburg, as you Civil War buffs know, is just south of Richmond; so we didn't have far to drive to get to Charlotte and Louie's house. Jonathan was home for the weekend so he joined us in going out to breakfast. Charlotte seems to be getting around pretty well on her new hip or knee, or whatever. I get her and Louie mixed up in the replaced joint department. At any rate both of them and Jonny are doing well. Besides the knee, I'm pretty sure it was the knee, Charlotte also recently hurt her back a bit and got laid off from her job. But she was still plenty feisty.
After leaving Richmond it was practically a hop, skip and jump to get home. Two hundred and forty miles goes by fast at 70 miles an hour, which Jas's car did with ease, eve after its transmission asked to be checked after we got north of Wilmington with only a ten or fifteen miles to go. We couldn't find anything alarming about the Check Transmission message in the owner's manual so we continued on.
Enough for now except to report that the ground is frozen solid here, so I was able to get another tractor bucket load of wood from the other side of the property. I think I now have enough to get through the winter, although I'll be getting more to pile for next year whenever the ground is frozen.
Monday, January 25, 2010
A Journey of a Thousand Miles. . .
A journey of a thousand miles. . . ends with a "Check Transmission" message.
Linda and I arrived back home yesterday after a magical week.
First we got on a big hunk of metal with a couple of hundred other people and the unlikely contraption flew us a thousand miles in less than three hours while we ate peanuts and cheese crackers and drank coke and orange juice.
Then we spent four days running around and playing with the other kids at The Villages, swimming in nice warm pools, riding bikes, driving a golf cart, seeing movies, walking all over the place in 70+ degree temperatures and meeting interesting new people. Just for instance, we met this English couple who've visited the U.S. twice, once for six months and this time for one month, without ever going anywhere except The Villages. We found them looking down into the water at Lake Sumter Landing, hoping to see an alligator.
We told the Limeys they could easily see all the alligators they could possibly want by driving a few hours down to the Everglades; but they seemed more interested in staying right where they were so they could play golf every day. Their main interest in The Villages was the warm sunny weather and the inexpensive golf. Evidently, England has a terrible climate and every place closer to England that has a good warm climate has much more expensive golf. They mentioned that golf in Spain and Portugal costs about $75 to $100 a round and that the courses aren't as nice as U.S. courses.
We didn't play any golf down there; but we did visit with Kathy and "The Other Brother" as Sam has dubbed our moved away sibling. By chance Jenny and Doug were there visiting Jas and Kathy the first two days, on their way to Fort Lauderdale; so we got to see their 23 foot sailboat. They described their plans for sailing among the Keys for about 45 days. It sounds heavenly, and makes me think of John Masefield. Well, actually it made me think of the line "all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by." I had no idea who wrote it until I looked up up with google.
Anyway, John Masefield's poem "Sea Fever" is too good not to quote in full. Out of respect I'm going to resist improving a couple of his lines.
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
Lucky Jenny and Doug! Forty-five days loose on a sailboat in the Florida keys. The very thought makes me want to find my Sea Chanty CD, but I had best put that off until Linda is not around.
More about our trip tomorrow.
Linda and I arrived back home yesterday after a magical week.
First we got on a big hunk of metal with a couple of hundred other people and the unlikely contraption flew us a thousand miles in less than three hours while we ate peanuts and cheese crackers and drank coke and orange juice.
Then we spent four days running around and playing with the other kids at The Villages, swimming in nice warm pools, riding bikes, driving a golf cart, seeing movies, walking all over the place in 70+ degree temperatures and meeting interesting new people. Just for instance, we met this English couple who've visited the U.S. twice, once for six months and this time for one month, without ever going anywhere except The Villages. We found them looking down into the water at Lake Sumter Landing, hoping to see an alligator.
We told the Limeys they could easily see all the alligators they could possibly want by driving a few hours down to the Everglades; but they seemed more interested in staying right where they were so they could play golf every day. Their main interest in The Villages was the warm sunny weather and the inexpensive golf. Evidently, England has a terrible climate and every place closer to England that has a good warm climate has much more expensive golf. They mentioned that golf in Spain and Portugal costs about $75 to $100 a round and that the courses aren't as nice as U.S. courses.
We didn't play any golf down there; but we did visit with Kathy and "The Other Brother" as Sam has dubbed our moved away sibling. By chance Jenny and Doug were there visiting Jas and Kathy the first two days, on their way to Fort Lauderdale; so we got to see their 23 foot sailboat. They described their plans for sailing among the Keys for about 45 days. It sounds heavenly, and makes me think of John Masefield. Well, actually it made me think of the line "all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by." I had no idea who wrote it until I looked up up with google.
Anyway, John Masefield's poem "Sea Fever" is too good not to quote in full. Out of respect I'm going to resist improving a couple of his lines.
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
Lucky Jenny and Doug! Forty-five days loose on a sailboat in the Florida keys. The very thought makes me want to find my Sea Chanty CD, but I had best put that off until Linda is not around.
More about our trip tomorrow.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The woodstove fire of the vanities
The other day I noted that geezers in England are buying up heavy unwanted old books and putting them to their best use in fireplaces because they're cheaper than coal by the pound.
That got me to thinking about the heavy unwanted old books out in the garage. . .
Suffice it to say that Shakespeare can be very warming indeed, as can the Art of the Western World. Dickens is positively a font of warmth, and Carl Sagan can generate thousands of BTUs if not billions and billions.
All told I figure there's about a quarter cord of books out there that will never be wanted for reading again. Books are about half as dense as hardwood, so my guess is those books will save me the tractor fuel to haul in about an eighth of a cord of wood. They will also save me from burning uncured wood at the end of the winter if this unusual cold keeps up. I've been burning up the cured wood much faster than in former years.
Rag paper, I've learned, makes excellent kindling; much better than newsprint. One finds it in what were once good quality books, like the fine print one volume edition of Shakespeare's works. Glossy paper, such as one finds in color illustrated books is not so good as kindling. It leaves too much ash because of the clay they put in it.
On one level burning books feels like sacrilege; but I remind myself that Amazon now sells a substantial percentage of new books as electronic files for reading on Kindles and that Google and others are busy digitizing books by the tens and hundreds of thousands so they will be available on line.
If you find yourself wanting to read anything by Shakespeare or Dickens or a host of other authors in certified accurate form for free you can always go to The Gutenberg Project to do so.
http://www.archive.org/details/gutenberg
If you're not too concerned about accuracy and you simply want to find a Shakespeare sonnet or something that contains a particular quote you can always google the words you know of the quote. Doing that will take you directly to a dozen websites that have used that quote. Many of them will have the whole sonnet there for you to read free.
You do have to be a bit careful and alert when you simply google part of a famous quote. There are lots of folks like me out there who use famous quotes with a little twist. When I do that there is always at least a clue that all may not be totally normal on the page; but there are others who give no warning that Shakespeare or Dickens or Coleridge's meaning has been a bit modified.
That got me to thinking about the heavy unwanted old books out in the garage. . .
Suffice it to say that Shakespeare can be very warming indeed, as can the Art of the Western World. Dickens is positively a font of warmth, and Carl Sagan can generate thousands of BTUs if not billions and billions.
All told I figure there's about a quarter cord of books out there that will never be wanted for reading again. Books are about half as dense as hardwood, so my guess is those books will save me the tractor fuel to haul in about an eighth of a cord of wood. They will also save me from burning uncured wood at the end of the winter if this unusual cold keeps up. I've been burning up the cured wood much faster than in former years.
Rag paper, I've learned, makes excellent kindling; much better than newsprint. One finds it in what were once good quality books, like the fine print one volume edition of Shakespeare's works. Glossy paper, such as one finds in color illustrated books is not so good as kindling. It leaves too much ash because of the clay they put in it.
On one level burning books feels like sacrilege; but I remind myself that Amazon now sells a substantial percentage of new books as electronic files for reading on Kindles and that Google and others are busy digitizing books by the tens and hundreds of thousands so they will be available on line.
If you find yourself wanting to read anything by Shakespeare or Dickens or a host of other authors in certified accurate form for free you can always go to The Gutenberg Project to do so.
http://www.archive.org/details/gutenberg
If you're not too concerned about accuracy and you simply want to find a Shakespeare sonnet or something that contains a particular quote you can always google the words you know of the quote. Doing that will take you directly to a dozen websites that have used that quote. Many of them will have the whole sonnet there for you to read free.
You do have to be a bit careful and alert when you simply google part of a famous quote. There are lots of folks like me out there who use famous quotes with a little twist. When I do that there is always at least a clue that all may not be totally normal on the page; but there are others who give no warning that Shakespeare or Dickens or Coleridge's meaning has been a bit modified.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Books cost less than coal by the pound in England
England is suffering from the coldest winter in years. And some smart geezers have learned that thrift shops sell heavy old books for less than the price of coal.
The interesting thing about this is that just today I was looking at a box of old hardbound books in the garage and thinking that I really should just burn them in the woodstove or start putting them in the trash a couple at a time so as not to make the trash bags too heavy.
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth
hat tip to Greg Pollowitz of National Review who posted about the book burners on NROs Planet Gore blog.
The interesting thing about this is that just today I was looking at a box of old hardbound books in the garage and thinking that I really should just burn them in the woodstove or start putting them in the trash a couple at a time so as not to make the trash bags too heavy.
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth
hat tip to Greg Pollowitz of National Review who posted about the book burners on NROs Planet Gore blog.
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