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.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
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.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
This Just In from our Florida correspondent
Jas just called, first joking that he wanted to come over for coffee. He didn't have to joke; it's going to be a very long time before my thoughts don't turn to making coffee when I see his name on the little phone view screen.
He called to check on our plans to fly down to Florida. And to report that the state is having its coldest winter in something like forty years. Jas and Kathy are wearing winter coats around because of the 50 degree highs and sub-freezing lows. It's been going down to the low forties by 9:00 at night, which is when all The Villages geezers are usually speeding along in their open golf carts, running back home from the music and dancing in the square.
Hopefully it will warm up some before we get down there. Temperatures at this time of year are supposed to be going up to the high sixties during the day.
He called to check on our plans to fly down to Florida. And to report that the state is having its coldest winter in something like forty years. Jas and Kathy are wearing winter coats around because of the 50 degree highs and sub-freezing lows. It's been going down to the low forties by 9:00 at night, which is when all The Villages geezers are usually speeding along in their open golf carts, running back home from the music and dancing in the square.
Hopefully it will warm up some before we get down there. Temperatures at this time of year are supposed to be going up to the high sixties during the day.
Stuffed olives, Rebecca, Pop, the OED and knives.
Don A, the other Don A who is now down in Florida for the winter, sent me a bunch of information about stuffed olives after seeing my little taunt about the very good appetizer Rebecca made for Christmas Eve.
Rebecca said her appetizer was "stuffed olives"; but actually it was little meatballs stuffed with pitted olives. Then she proceeded to argue that her little meatball recipe was the authentic one and that my memory of the olive being on the outside of the meat filling was faulty. This article sent me by Don is one more proof that she was wrong:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/preserved/2009/04/08/ascoli-piceno/
I suppose it's not surprising that Rebecca stubbornly maintained and defended her mistaken view despite the evidence, for Grandpop L used to periodically tell a joke that went like this:
Question - What's worse than having a dead body in the living room?
Answer - Having a stubborn Marche' knocking at the door.
The implication, of course, is that Marche's in general are a stubborn lot, impossible to get rid of. And Rebecca, of course, is three-eighths Marche' by the following calculation.
Grandmom and Grandpop L were both Marche's from Ascoli Piceno, as was Grandpop A. That makes Rebecca's dad three-fourths Marche. Grandmom A was not from Ascoli Piceno - she was born "a Muro Lucano" according to her birth certificate, which is in the L side electronic picture file I sent you a couple of years ago if you had a need for the family pictures.
"A Muro Lucano" means - well perhaps that will be your homework assignment. I figured out what it means many years ago before Al Gore invented this internet thingy, with the help of a librarian, much to Mom's irritation. Find and rattle your family own skeletons if you want to.
Speaking of family skeletons, there is evidence in the family picture album of at least two instances that prove Shakespeare was very right for all the ages when he wrote the best known line in Troilus and Cressida.
Now to other matters:
It's as cold as a brass bra on a witch's tit out there, as Pop and a friend of mine from Missouri named Randy often used to say at this time of year. A very useful quote which will stay useful for a lifetime.
Pop also used to say "another year shot to hell" each year on or after New Year's Day just as he would always say "another summer shot to hell" on or just after Labor Day each year. Not that he brooded on those things. Pop was a very optimistic person, perhaps the most naturally optimistic person I've ever met. Also just after New Year's Day, regarding the cold winter, which he most definitely did not like he always used to say "we're over the hump, it's all downhill from here." Pop managed to see the light at the end of every tunnel of life earlier than anybody else could see it. And he was optimistic about that light even after it became clear that the light might be an approaching train.
Don't go through life brooding about the approaching train that's gonna get you in the end no matter what you do. Most of the time the light is actually the other end of the tunnel, and even when the light is a train you may as well meet that train in a good mood, enjoying life until the moment it gets you.
I generally make my dentist appointments for 8:20 in the morning in part because the dentist usually has on the Philly radio station that has played the Monty Python song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at about 8:30. Life is too short to go through as a brooding mope.
In other news: Samuel came by last evening Samuel to give me and Linda a presentation on the knives he's selling. A very interesting presentation, and we bought some of his knives to complement the very fine ones Alex and Christina gave us for Christmas. After his presentaion we spent some time over coffee and discussion of David Serdaris's books and of the Oxford English Dictionary, of all things because Samuel said he was interested in books that contain interesting historical information, so I pulled out The Profession and the Madman to give to him.
The madman in the book made the best of his unfortunate situation, being in an insane asylum for life due to an unfortunate crime or two, by making himself the most prolific contributor to the OED. The professor in the book, on the other hand, spent twenty years of his life being grateful for the many contributions being made by mail by a certain fellow and didn't learn that the fellow was in an insane asylum until he decided to visit the recluse and thank him in person.
Here's a piece of advice for you younger married folks. There are a lot of things one must tolerate in life because they're impossible to avoid. And then there are other things one tolerates because of sheer foolishness. We, for instance, have been using a drawer full of annoyingly dull knives all our life because we were too foolish to buy decent knives way back when. This doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money all at once on good knives. But it does mean you should judiciously accumulate good quality stuff in those areas of life where you can purchase something that will truly last a lifetime.
If anybody is interested in books send me an email detailing the kinds of books you like along with your mailing address. If I have a book or two or a dozen that I think you will like I'll either put it aside for you or mail it to you - media mail is very cheap. My email address is sully(mylastname) at AOL dot com.
Rebecca said her appetizer was "stuffed olives"; but actually it was little meatballs stuffed with pitted olives. Then she proceeded to argue that her little meatball recipe was the authentic one and that my memory of the olive being on the outside of the meat filling was faulty. This article sent me by Don is one more proof that she was wrong:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/preserved/2009/04/08/ascoli-piceno/
I suppose it's not surprising that Rebecca stubbornly maintained and defended her mistaken view despite the evidence, for Grandpop L used to periodically tell a joke that went like this:
Question - What's worse than having a dead body in the living room?
Answer - Having a stubborn Marche' knocking at the door.
The implication, of course, is that Marche's in general are a stubborn lot, impossible to get rid of. And Rebecca, of course, is three-eighths Marche' by the following calculation.
Grandmom and Grandpop L were both Marche's from Ascoli Piceno, as was Grandpop A. That makes Rebecca's dad three-fourths Marche. Grandmom A was not from Ascoli Piceno - she was born "a Muro Lucano" according to her birth certificate, which is in the L side electronic picture file I sent you a couple of years ago if you had a need for the family pictures.
"A Muro Lucano" means - well perhaps that will be your homework assignment. I figured out what it means many years ago before Al Gore invented this internet thingy, with the help of a librarian, much to Mom's irritation. Find and rattle your family own skeletons if you want to.
Speaking of family skeletons, there is evidence in the family picture album of at least two instances that prove Shakespeare was very right for all the ages when he wrote the best known line in Troilus and Cressida.
Now to other matters:
It's as cold as a brass bra on a witch's tit out there, as Pop and a friend of mine from Missouri named Randy often used to say at this time of year. A very useful quote which will stay useful for a lifetime.
Pop also used to say "another year shot to hell" each year on or after New Year's Day just as he would always say "another summer shot to hell" on or just after Labor Day each year. Not that he brooded on those things. Pop was a very optimistic person, perhaps the most naturally optimistic person I've ever met. Also just after New Year's Day, regarding the cold winter, which he most definitely did not like he always used to say "we're over the hump, it's all downhill from here." Pop managed to see the light at the end of every tunnel of life earlier than anybody else could see it. And he was optimistic about that light even after it became clear that the light might be an approaching train.
Don't go through life brooding about the approaching train that's gonna get you in the end no matter what you do. Most of the time the light is actually the other end of the tunnel, and even when the light is a train you may as well meet that train in a good mood, enjoying life until the moment it gets you.
I generally make my dentist appointments for 8:20 in the morning in part because the dentist usually has on the Philly radio station that has played the Monty Python song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at about 8:30. Life is too short to go through as a brooding mope.
In other news: Samuel came by last evening Samuel to give me and Linda a presentation on the knives he's selling. A very interesting presentation, and we bought some of his knives to complement the very fine ones Alex and Christina gave us for Christmas. After his presentaion we spent some time over coffee and discussion of David Serdaris's books and of the Oxford English Dictionary, of all things because Samuel said he was interested in books that contain interesting historical information, so I pulled out The Profession and the Madman to give to him.
The madman in the book made the best of his unfortunate situation, being in an insane asylum for life due to an unfortunate crime or two, by making himself the most prolific contributor to the OED. The professor in the book, on the other hand, spent twenty years of his life being grateful for the many contributions being made by mail by a certain fellow and didn't learn that the fellow was in an insane asylum until he decided to visit the recluse and thank him in person.
Here's a piece of advice for you younger married folks. There are a lot of things one must tolerate in life because they're impossible to avoid. And then there are other things one tolerates because of sheer foolishness. We, for instance, have been using a drawer full of annoyingly dull knives all our life because we were too foolish to buy decent knives way back when. This doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money all at once on good knives. But it does mean you should judiciously accumulate good quality stuff in those areas of life where you can purchase something that will truly last a lifetime.
If anybody is interested in books send me an email detailing the kinds of books you like along with your mailing address. If I have a book or two or a dozen that I think you will like I'll either put it aside for you or mail it to you - media mail is very cheap. My email address is sully(mylastname) at AOL dot com.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
I got five gallons of diesel for the tractor yesterday, so I'm of a mind to wish for snow. This winter has started off well but we need more. We haven't had a really good winter for snow for a few years. Bring it on! I have plenty of wood stored up for the stove.
Now for the subject of Christmas Eve, which Rebecca reminded me of at Sam and Deb's house yesterday before she convinced me that I have to bit the bullet and yank my jammed toe back into proper alignment. . . which I may do once I get up the nerve when Linda isn't around to hear the scream. And then again, I may not. Who declared Rebecca a toe doctor to know whether I should torture myself intensively by yanking at that thing or whether I should simply leave it alone to torture me subtly and naggingly until it gives up?
Enough with the toe. It's mildly throbbing down there; but I have more important things to concern myself with, namely a rant on the general disrespect for tradition among the younger generation.
We deep fry battered vegetables and breaded fish on Christmas Eve because in the proper scheme of things, before the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization, no meat was allowed until midnight. This tradition has, of course, been corrupted for many a year by the introduction of red tomato gravy made with meat, which some barbarians insist on putting on my Spaghetti Aglio e' Olio, thus turning it into a fusion cuisine nightmare.
This practice is by no means new. It started in the 1990's, thankfully after Pop was no longer around to see it. Mom, however, was still around, and we had many a discussion about whether it should be permitted, the uneasy compromise being that we would not make the red gravy but would turn a more or less blind eye to its introduction into the house.
This year, however, Rebecca went further. She suggested that she would bring stuffed olives and I agreed to the suggestion in a moment of weakness. Thus did meat, actual meat, impossible to deny, enter the house on Christmas Eve. I agreed, of course, because stuffed olives are perhaps the finest achievement of Italian cuisine, at least in the appetizer category.
But then, when Rebecca brought what she said were stuffed olives they turned out to be olives in the middle surrounded by little meat balls. She made some claim that her dog had eaten the olives meant for stuffing, so she had to revert to pimento stuffed olives. Then she went further and claimed that putting the meat outside of the olives was actually the original Marche' recipe. Sam's Marche' cook book quickly proved that wrong; but it wasn't necessary.
My memory may have degenerated a bit over the years; but this is something impossible to get wrong. I distinctly remember Mom and Aunt Mary discussing the people who used pitted olives and the people who put the meat on the outside of the olive as they spiral cut the olives away from their pits, a fairly delicate task.
I just finished, by the way, a porchetta sandwich on a Corropolese medium kaiser roll. And I'm fairly confident you didn't. There was quite a bit of porchetta left over on New Year's Eve from that 9 pound roast I cooked; but I somehow neglected to give any of it away to the departing guests. I have five containers of it in the freezer, plus the bowl I've been finishing sandwich by sandwich since New Year's day.
Meanwhile, a large flock of starlings is flying and walking around the lawn out there even as a fifteen or so mile an our wind is whipping the 25 degree air around. It's hard to imagine just how those birds survive in this cold. Why don't they go south? They're clearly finding stuff to eat out there on the frozen ground; but wouldn't they find tastier and warmer stuff in Georgia or South Carolina where they would have warmer feet?
Sam and I talked to Al and Jas down in Florida yesterday and they were whining about the temperatures dipping into the fifties during the day. These starlings should be down in Florida annoying them.
There are, however, some small consolations for living up here in the cold. I have the woodstove roaring away in there. Sitting by it as those damned starlings freeze there little feet off because they're too stupid to fly south is one of those consolations.
In other news: Five scientists, no doubt working very hard down in Australia, where it is summer for those of you who are geographically challenged, have figured out how bees land. I was intrigued by this paragraph:
"First the scientists built a bee landing platform that could be inclined at any angle from horizontal to inverted (like a ceiling), then they trained bees to land on it and began filming."
One has to wonder whether it really took five scientists to do that; or whether a couple of those scientists were looking for an excuse to go to Austrialia and catch some rays.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223074657.htm
Now for the subject of Christmas Eve, which Rebecca reminded me of at Sam and Deb's house yesterday before she convinced me that I have to bit the bullet and yank my jammed toe back into proper alignment. . . which I may do once I get up the nerve when Linda isn't around to hear the scream. And then again, I may not. Who declared Rebecca a toe doctor to know whether I should torture myself intensively by yanking at that thing or whether I should simply leave it alone to torture me subtly and naggingly until it gives up?
Enough with the toe. It's mildly throbbing down there; but I have more important things to concern myself with, namely a rant on the general disrespect for tradition among the younger generation.
We deep fry battered vegetables and breaded fish on Christmas Eve because in the proper scheme of things, before the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization, no meat was allowed until midnight. This tradition has, of course, been corrupted for many a year by the introduction of red tomato gravy made with meat, which some barbarians insist on putting on my Spaghetti Aglio e' Olio, thus turning it into a fusion cuisine nightmare.
This practice is by no means new. It started in the 1990's, thankfully after Pop was no longer around to see it. Mom, however, was still around, and we had many a discussion about whether it should be permitted, the uneasy compromise being that we would not make the red gravy but would turn a more or less blind eye to its introduction into the house.
This year, however, Rebecca went further. She suggested that she would bring stuffed olives and I agreed to the suggestion in a moment of weakness. Thus did meat, actual meat, impossible to deny, enter the house on Christmas Eve. I agreed, of course, because stuffed olives are perhaps the finest achievement of Italian cuisine, at least in the appetizer category.
But then, when Rebecca brought what she said were stuffed olives they turned out to be olives in the middle surrounded by little meat balls. She made some claim that her dog had eaten the olives meant for stuffing, so she had to revert to pimento stuffed olives. Then she went further and claimed that putting the meat outside of the olives was actually the original Marche' recipe. Sam's Marche' cook book quickly proved that wrong; but it wasn't necessary.
My memory may have degenerated a bit over the years; but this is something impossible to get wrong. I distinctly remember Mom and Aunt Mary discussing the people who used pitted olives and the people who put the meat on the outside of the olive as they spiral cut the olives away from their pits, a fairly delicate task.
I just finished, by the way, a porchetta sandwich on a Corropolese medium kaiser roll. And I'm fairly confident you didn't. There was quite a bit of porchetta left over on New Year's Eve from that 9 pound roast I cooked; but I somehow neglected to give any of it away to the departing guests. I have five containers of it in the freezer, plus the bowl I've been finishing sandwich by sandwich since New Year's day.
Meanwhile, a large flock of starlings is flying and walking around the lawn out there even as a fifteen or so mile an our wind is whipping the 25 degree air around. It's hard to imagine just how those birds survive in this cold. Why don't they go south? They're clearly finding stuff to eat out there on the frozen ground; but wouldn't they find tastier and warmer stuff in Georgia or South Carolina where they would have warmer feet?
Sam and I talked to Al and Jas down in Florida yesterday and they were whining about the temperatures dipping into the fifties during the day. These starlings should be down in Florida annoying them.
There are, however, some small consolations for living up here in the cold. I have the woodstove roaring away in there. Sitting by it as those damned starlings freeze there little feet off because they're too stupid to fly south is one of those consolations.
In other news: Five scientists, no doubt working very hard down in Australia, where it is summer for those of you who are geographically challenged, have figured out how bees land. I was intrigued by this paragraph:
"First the scientists built a bee landing platform that could be inclined at any angle from horizontal to inverted (like a ceiling), then they trained bees to land on it and began filming."
One has to wonder whether it really took five scientists to do that; or whether a couple of those scientists were looking for an excuse to go to Austrialia and catch some rays.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223074657.htm
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Departures and Arrivals
Alex and Christina headed back to Massachussetts today, So things are pretty quiet here in Collegeville just now.
When Jas called me late in the afternoon yesterday my first thought was that he was wanting to come over for coffee; but those days are over - he was calling from the welcome center just inside the Florida border. He and Kathy are no longer Pennsylvanians. They'll come back in April to sell their house; but based on how Jas was talking while here the two of them aren't going to be coming back for many extended stays.
Alex and Christina suggested that we all go and see the new Avatar movie in 3D last evening. We came away dazzled. Everything you may have read about the movie being seeded with trite and stupid political messages is true; but the sheer technical power of the thing easily overwhelmed the sheer idiocy of a great director putting such hackneyed tripe in his work. And the story and acting were on the whole pretty good for what is after all a combination kiddy film and second childhood film.
The movie is going to be a major hit with a very long run as word of mouth promotes it. If the director is smart he's right now working on a directors cut that will eliminate the stupidest of the references that will date the movie in five or ten years.
Even if he doesn't do that, I think people are going to remember and watch the film for a long time in the same way they watch the first Star Wars movie and Jurassic Park, as milestones in storytelling at new plateaus of technical capability.
The Pandorans in Avatar are very believable aliens, and the natural environment of the planet Pandora is very realisticly presented even while it is cleverly alien. Some of the plant and animal life on Pandora is reminiscent of the best thinking of writers like Larry Niven.
I'm thinking that the technology of movie making is getting to the point where realistic Puppeteers and Kzinti and Moties are possible. We may soon be treated to Ringworld and Mote in God's Eye as movies. I hope they do a better job with those than they did with Starship Troopers which was only so so. The bugs were true to Heinlein's sketchy description of them in the book; but what worked in 1950 for a novel did not work on the big screen. Plus, of course, the movie makers missed the whole point of Heinlein's book; but that was only to be expected.
Hollywoodians are very talented gabbling lefty geese. When they digest a plot the effect is much the same as what happens when you run grass through a goose. What comes out after processing is not recognizable.
In other news we've been having as cold a December as I can remember. Alex went out on the pond the other day and reported the ice almost 4 inches thick in the center. I can't recall ever walking on the pond this early in winter. It usually freezes solid enough to support weight in mid January or even February.
As a result of the cold and the fact that I've been home during the days I've been burning a heck of a lot more wood that I expected. I need my cracked toe to get better so I can get out there and get cutting and hauling more over from the other side of the big creek. Dan the woodcutter has quite a bit of unsplittable stuff set aside for me, but that's next year's wood, or even the year after, since unsplit rounds take a long time to dry out. The woodstove will handle and burn anthing that will fit through its door; but unseasoned rounds take some care and planning and plenty of dry kindling since they won't take fire easily.
The good news is that sunspots started to arrive again early in December and we've now had 22 straight days with sunspots. So it appears the latest solar minimum may be over. Better late than never. Global warming is a concern; but the sort of global cooling we could get if the sun fails to resume it's normal pattern and goes into a deep minimum (as it did in the late Eighteen Hundreds when they called the period the Little Ice Age) would really be serious. Global warming extends growing seasons in the main crop growing regions. During the Little Ice Age of the Eighteen Hundreds growing seasons shrunk and there were real agricultural problems.
When Jas called me late in the afternoon yesterday my first thought was that he was wanting to come over for coffee; but those days are over - he was calling from the welcome center just inside the Florida border. He and Kathy are no longer Pennsylvanians. They'll come back in April to sell their house; but based on how Jas was talking while here the two of them aren't going to be coming back for many extended stays.
Alex and Christina suggested that we all go and see the new Avatar movie in 3D last evening. We came away dazzled. Everything you may have read about the movie being seeded with trite and stupid political messages is true; but the sheer technical power of the thing easily overwhelmed the sheer idiocy of a great director putting such hackneyed tripe in his work. And the story and acting were on the whole pretty good for what is after all a combination kiddy film and second childhood film.
The movie is going to be a major hit with a very long run as word of mouth promotes it. If the director is smart he's right now working on a directors cut that will eliminate the stupidest of the references that will date the movie in five or ten years.
Even if he doesn't do that, I think people are going to remember and watch the film for a long time in the same way they watch the first Star Wars movie and Jurassic Park, as milestones in storytelling at new plateaus of technical capability.
The Pandorans in Avatar are very believable aliens, and the natural environment of the planet Pandora is very realisticly presented even while it is cleverly alien. Some of the plant and animal life on Pandora is reminiscent of the best thinking of writers like Larry Niven.
I'm thinking that the technology of movie making is getting to the point where realistic Puppeteers and Kzinti and Moties are possible. We may soon be treated to Ringworld and Mote in God's Eye as movies. I hope they do a better job with those than they did with Starship Troopers which was only so so. The bugs were true to Heinlein's sketchy description of them in the book; but what worked in 1950 for a novel did not work on the big screen. Plus, of course, the movie makers missed the whole point of Heinlein's book; but that was only to be expected.
Hollywoodians are very talented gabbling lefty geese. When they digest a plot the effect is much the same as what happens when you run grass through a goose. What comes out after processing is not recognizable.
In other news we've been having as cold a December as I can remember. Alex went out on the pond the other day and reported the ice almost 4 inches thick in the center. I can't recall ever walking on the pond this early in winter. It usually freezes solid enough to support weight in mid January or even February.
As a result of the cold and the fact that I've been home during the days I've been burning a heck of a lot more wood that I expected. I need my cracked toe to get better so I can get out there and get cutting and hauling more over from the other side of the big creek. Dan the woodcutter has quite a bit of unsplittable stuff set aside for me, but that's next year's wood, or even the year after, since unsplit rounds take a long time to dry out. The woodstove will handle and burn anthing that will fit through its door; but unseasoned rounds take some care and planning and plenty of dry kindling since they won't take fire easily.
The good news is that sunspots started to arrive again early in December and we've now had 22 straight days with sunspots. So it appears the latest solar minimum may be over. Better late than never. Global warming is a concern; but the sort of global cooling we could get if the sun fails to resume it's normal pattern and goes into a deep minimum (as it did in the late Eighteen Hundreds when they called the period the Little Ice Age) would really be serious. Global warming extends growing seasons in the main crop growing regions. During the Little Ice Age of the Eighteen Hundreds growing seasons shrunk and there were real agricultural problems.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Good for the Queen
This article tickled me because the picture through the train window reminded me how much Mom looked like Queen Elizabeth. There is a picture of her on the golf cart with Pop which can cause you to do a double take.
The article also interested me because of how small an entourage the Queen travels with. Our presidents have gotten to the point where they travel like God Emperors, with a cast of thousands.
A friend once told me he was in Philly when the first President Bush came down Market Street in his motorcade. He said a normal seeming fellow in a business suit spontaneously got up on one of those concrete planters or trash can holders and yelled out, "All hail the king," or something like that.
Just so! Surely it's important for the president to have good security. But is it really necessary for him to travel with the huge entourage that commonly attends him. The president is not a God Emperor. He's a fellow we elect to do a job for us for 4 years. His office and he deserve respect; but really.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236632/Your-commuter-carriage-awaits-The-Queen-catches-train-journey-Sandringham-Christmas.html
The article also interested me because of how small an entourage the Queen travels with. Our presidents have gotten to the point where they travel like God Emperors, with a cast of thousands.
A friend once told me he was in Philly when the first President Bush came down Market Street in his motorcade. He said a normal seeming fellow in a business suit spontaneously got up on one of those concrete planters or trash can holders and yelled out, "All hail the king," or something like that.
Just so! Surely it's important for the president to have good security. But is it really necessary for him to travel with the huge entourage that commonly attends him. The president is not a God Emperor. He's a fellow we elect to do a job for us for 4 years. His office and he deserve respect; but really.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236632/Your-commuter-carriage-awaits-The-Queen-catches-train-journey-Sandringham-Christmas.html
Monday, November 30, 2009
Some Good News, Europe May Be Waking Up
The numinously neutral and peaceful Swiss have voted 57.5 to 42.5 to ban the erection of more minarets in their country. Great news which Daniel Pipes thinks may validate the support of realistic policies inhibiting the spread of practical submission to Islam in the rest of Europe.
There is certainly a significant element of racism (or whatever we’re calling religious bias these days) in that Swiss vote; but that does not negate the fact that continued encouragement of immigration of Muslims who have no intention of assimilating into the existing culture of Europe (and the U.S.) is madness since it will almost inevitably lead to a murderous clash.
Hopefully it’s not too late for a line to be drawn without widespread bloodshed.
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/11/swiss-ban-minarets
I also posted this at Zombie Contentions:
http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/some-good-news-europe-may-be-waking-up/
There is certainly a significant element of racism (or whatever we’re calling religious bias these days) in that Swiss vote; but that does not negate the fact that continued encouragement of immigration of Muslims who have no intention of assimilating into the existing culture of Europe (and the U.S.) is madness since it will almost inevitably lead to a murderous clash.
That it was the usually quiet, low-profile, un-newsworthy, politically boring,
neutral Swiss who suddenly roared their fears about Islam only enhances their
votes’ impact.
Hopefully it’s not too late for a line to be drawn without widespread bloodshed.
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/11/swiss-ban-minarets
I also posted this at Zombie Contentions:
http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/some-good-news-europe-may-be-waking-up/
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Inconvenient Truths
First there was the inconvenient truth that the world has been cooling since 1998 or so; despite the very clearly stated predictions of the global warming folks that it would continue to warm.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that we've just enjoyed a couple of the most mild hurricane seasons since modern records have been kept despite the alarmist claims of the global warming fanatics that we would certainly face more and bigger hurricanes.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists on the global warming side of the debate kept a careful silence while politicians and dissipated British princes made unbelievable claims about doom being around the corner if we didn't all go back to living like good peasants while they continued living like pashas.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists on the global warming side of the debate refused to release the basic data on which they based their climate models despite the fact that the data amounted to little more than temperature records kept by government paid for thermometers.
Finally, in the past couple of weeks we've learned the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists at East Anglia University and their worldwide associates who have been the primary providers of data and predictions behind all the hype about global warming have been running a Stalinist campaign to destroy their opponents by making them unpersons in the scientific community.
Isn't it about time to step back from all the hurry to hamper the world's economy and thus condemn hundreds of millions of people to lives of poverty and even actual starvation with hairbrained schemes like Cap and Trade until some of those inconvenient truths are examined carefully by real scientists with access to all the data?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
Here's a report on the global warming "scientists" claiming their dog ate the primary data, so unfortunately no one can check and see how they twisted it to get the conclusions they wanted.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
And here's a 30 minute video that tells about how the so called global warming scientists corrupted other data they came in contact with. In one case they sent out one of their toadies to do a shoddy half baked tree ring study despite the existence of a far more professional and extensive Finnish study. In another case they turned a set of Finnish lake sediment data upside down to achieve the hockey stick graph they wanted.
The Finns are proud and protective of their tree ring and lake sediment studies, so a nice sense of outrage comes through in the video, making it funny in parts. If only NOVA here in the U.S. were still doing science programs on PBS instead of propaganda programs
http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2
Then there was the inconvenient truth that we've just enjoyed a couple of the most mild hurricane seasons since modern records have been kept despite the alarmist claims of the global warming fanatics that we would certainly face more and bigger hurricanes.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists on the global warming side of the debate kept a careful silence while politicians and dissipated British princes made unbelievable claims about doom being around the corner if we didn't all go back to living like good peasants while they continued living like pashas.
Then there was the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists on the global warming side of the debate refused to release the basic data on which they based their climate models despite the fact that the data amounted to little more than temperature records kept by government paid for thermometers.
Finally, in the past couple of weeks we've learned the inconvenient truth that the so called scientists at East Anglia University and their worldwide associates who have been the primary providers of data and predictions behind all the hype about global warming have been running a Stalinist campaign to destroy their opponents by making them unpersons in the scientific community.
Isn't it about time to step back from all the hurry to hamper the world's economy and thus condemn hundreds of millions of people to lives of poverty and even actual starvation with hairbrained schemes like Cap and Trade until some of those inconvenient truths are examined carefully by real scientists with access to all the data?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html
Here's a report on the global warming "scientists" claiming their dog ate the primary data, so unfortunately no one can check and see how they twisted it to get the conclusions they wanted.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
And here's a 30 minute video that tells about how the so called global warming scientists corrupted other data they came in contact with. In one case they sent out one of their toadies to do a shoddy half baked tree ring study despite the existence of a far more professional and extensive Finnish study. In another case they turned a set of Finnish lake sediment data upside down to achieve the hockey stick graph they wanted.
The Finns are proud and protective of their tree ring and lake sediment studies, so a nice sense of outrage comes through in the video, making it funny in parts. If only NOVA here in the U.S. were still doing science programs on PBS instead of propaganda programs
http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2
Monday, November 23, 2009
Perhaps the funniest skit Saturday Night Live has ever done
Saturday Night Live writers were obviously channelling what was really going through the mind of Chinese Premier Hu Jintao when he and President Obama did that joint press conference last week.
"While you are here, are you at least going to treat me to dinner and a movie? I think it is the polite thing to do before doing sex to me."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxYSduRES1o
"While you are here, are you at least going to treat me to dinner and a movie? I think it is the polite thing to do before doing sex to me."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxYSduRES1o
Herons, an eagle, ducks and a cat
It's November and the minds of great blue herons turn to thoughts of love, or maybe to thoughts of squabbling over territory. One of them has been persistently chasing another one, or else two of them are persistently chasing one another, back and forth across the property between here and the pond. Who but a heron can tell the difference between one and another? If this was a nature show on PBS or The Discovery Channel the scene would now shift to graphic heron porn; but this is an unscripted nature show so they'll probably retreat out of sight if they get down to making new herons.
But enough of the doings of herons. Last evening Linda and I went to Benny's 70th birthday party down in Kimberton. Benny put out quite a spread at the Kimberton Arts Center for about a hundred people. A bunch of folks from the Ballroom on High were there, along with Benny's family and others that he's met over the years. A real Italian event. Much of the dance music was from the Mob Hits CD, it seemed. Perhaps Benny grew up in South Philly. They have a nice dance floor at that place.
Afterwards we called Alex up in Boston and learned that Christina has had the flu for the past few days. One of her co-workers was diagnosed with Swine Flu, so that may have been the variant.
Now there's a golden eagle cruising around out there. Those herons had better not get too caught up in what they're doing. The ducks on the pond don't like that eagle circling, or maybe they've noticed the black cat stalking around. A lot of excitement over there but the ducks did not take flight the way they do when I walk over to the pond. Perhaps the eagle wants them to take off so he can get one on the wing?
Where was I? This has been quite a dancing weekend. Besides Benny's party we went to the ballroom on Saturday evening for another Samba class and then the dance party. There's clearly a trick to the Samba because older and fatter guys than me do it without getting exhausted. Heck, Vince does it and he's about a ninety years old; yet it wears me out. His secret seems to be that he just shuffles his feet a bit and lets the woman do all the fast moving; but that's hard to do.
A mob of crows just got cued to join in the nature show. About ten of them just chased the eagle away.
Linda and I took a walk around the new shopping center up on 29 the other day and found a store the size of an old time supermarket that sells nothing but cosmetics. It's a very strange movie we humans are acting in. Ten percent unemployment while a dozen stores over there are hiring staff at $8 an hour, and someone thinks there will be enough demand for cosmetics to paint and putty up a thousand Cleopatras for a barge trip down the Nile.
Before I forget, Sam and I talked with Al and Jas down in Florida on Saturday. The Villages is building over a hundred houses a month in new clusters that are stretching for more miles. Jas said his house will be equidistant between Spanish Springs and the new town center that they're planning. He met a couple of guys who drove about 45 minutes in their golf carts to get to the course he played with them. He and Kathy are flying up today (Monday) and they'll be staying until after Christmas.
Alex mentioned seeing the news that someone has hacked the computer system of one of the biggest science centers that has been promoting global warming "evidence." Quite a controversy building there if all those emails are real. According to the hacked and published emails those "scientists" have been tampering with the data for years in attempts to hide the lack of global warming for the past decade. That's the same group that has refused to release their raw data for analysis by others. And the same group that claimed to have "lost" or deleted data because they didn't have enough storage capacity on their computers when it appeared they would be forced to release the data because it was accumulated using government funding.
It appears some supposed scientists have been acting like predatory cats and eagles stalking around and hovering over ducks on a pond. We're the ducks.
Here are some samples from those emails:
Manipulation of evidence:
"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
Suppression of evidence:
"Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment — minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."
From National Review's blog Planet Gore -
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmE2MzdiZGE4ZDYyNDYzN2Y2Y2FmMTBlODEwY2E2OTk=
The BBC has reported that the emails are real. And it offers the suggestion that the "scientists" at that lab improve their computer security so they can manipulate data in the future without fear that their shenanigans will be embarrassingly revealed.
"I trust that they will now be looking at the systems, and investigating how this happened and ensuring that something like this does not happen again."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm
Much better if the ducks never learn about the cat.
But enough of the doings of herons. Last evening Linda and I went to Benny's 70th birthday party down in Kimberton. Benny put out quite a spread at the Kimberton Arts Center for about a hundred people. A bunch of folks from the Ballroom on High were there, along with Benny's family and others that he's met over the years. A real Italian event. Much of the dance music was from the Mob Hits CD, it seemed. Perhaps Benny grew up in South Philly. They have a nice dance floor at that place.
Afterwards we called Alex up in Boston and learned that Christina has had the flu for the past few days. One of her co-workers was diagnosed with Swine Flu, so that may have been the variant.
Now there's a golden eagle cruising around out there. Those herons had better not get too caught up in what they're doing. The ducks on the pond don't like that eagle circling, or maybe they've noticed the black cat stalking around. A lot of excitement over there but the ducks did not take flight the way they do when I walk over to the pond. Perhaps the eagle wants them to take off so he can get one on the wing?
Where was I? This has been quite a dancing weekend. Besides Benny's party we went to the ballroom on Saturday evening for another Samba class and then the dance party. There's clearly a trick to the Samba because older and fatter guys than me do it without getting exhausted. Heck, Vince does it and he's about a ninety years old; yet it wears me out. His secret seems to be that he just shuffles his feet a bit and lets the woman do all the fast moving; but that's hard to do.
A mob of crows just got cued to join in the nature show. About ten of them just chased the eagle away.
Linda and I took a walk around the new shopping center up on 29 the other day and found a store the size of an old time supermarket that sells nothing but cosmetics. It's a very strange movie we humans are acting in. Ten percent unemployment while a dozen stores over there are hiring staff at $8 an hour, and someone thinks there will be enough demand for cosmetics to paint and putty up a thousand Cleopatras for a barge trip down the Nile.
Before I forget, Sam and I talked with Al and Jas down in Florida on Saturday. The Villages is building over a hundred houses a month in new clusters that are stretching for more miles. Jas said his house will be equidistant between Spanish Springs and the new town center that they're planning. He met a couple of guys who drove about 45 minutes in their golf carts to get to the course he played with them. He and Kathy are flying up today (Monday) and they'll be staying until after Christmas.
Alex mentioned seeing the news that someone has hacked the computer system of one of the biggest science centers that has been promoting global warming "evidence." Quite a controversy building there if all those emails are real. According to the hacked and published emails those "scientists" have been tampering with the data for years in attempts to hide the lack of global warming for the past decade. That's the same group that has refused to release their raw data for analysis by others. And the same group that claimed to have "lost" or deleted data because they didn't have enough storage capacity on their computers when it appeared they would be forced to release the data because it was accumulated using government funding.
It appears some supposed scientists have been acting like predatory cats and eagles stalking around and hovering over ducks on a pond. We're the ducks.
Here are some samples from those emails:
Manipulation of evidence:
"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
Suppression of evidence:
"Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment — minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."
From National Review's blog Planet Gore -
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmE2MzdiZGE4ZDYyNDYzN2Y2Y2FmMTBlODEwY2E2OTk=
The BBC has reported that the emails are real. And it offers the suggestion that the "scientists" at that lab improve their computer security so they can manipulate data in the future without fear that their shenanigans will be embarrassingly revealed.
"I trust that they will now be looking at the systems, and investigating how this happened and ensuring that something like this does not happen again."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm
Much better if the ducks never learn about the cat.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Cracked Poetic History For Dog Lovers
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Ralph his bad Samoyed ran
O’er lawns laid out to impress the Han
And made quite free to pee.
So twice five kennel guards were bound
And whipped the circuit well and sound
Of yellow spots on lawn around
That set the Khan’s foul temper free.
Worse yet just then a Japanner laughed
And launched a great fleet that got foul gaffed
By a freak Tai Fun whirling timely round
Which only more Kublai’s wrath compounded
And set ancestral voices prophesying s’mores
Made round Mongol campfires through endless wars.
Merest luck for countries all around
That Ralphie just then playfully rounded
And soothed the Khan’s urge to re-pound
His grandpa Ghenghis’ stomping ground.
For Kublai Khan couldn’t stay annoy’ed
When romping with Ralph, his bad Samoyed.
So now you know why Italy, England and France
Never suffered the horse Mongol warlike dance
And also why the prophesied recipe for a s’more
Came west but slow, after many centuries more.
Both gratitude and blame go to a sassy Samoyed
Who Kublai Khan’s temper quite thoroughly destroy-ed.
I also posted this at Zombie Contentions - http://ckmac.com/thewholething/
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Ralph his bad Samoyed ran
O’er lawns laid out to impress the Han
And made quite free to pee.
So twice five kennel guards were bound
And whipped the circuit well and sound
Of yellow spots on lawn around
That set the Khan’s foul temper free.
Worse yet just then a Japanner laughed
And launched a great fleet that got foul gaffed
By a freak Tai Fun whirling timely round
Which only more Kublai’s wrath compounded
And set ancestral voices prophesying s’mores
Made round Mongol campfires through endless wars.
Merest luck for countries all around
That Ralphie just then playfully rounded
And soothed the Khan’s urge to re-pound
His grandpa Ghenghis’ stomping ground.
For Kublai Khan couldn’t stay annoy’ed
When romping with Ralph, his bad Samoyed.
So now you know why Italy, England and France
Never suffered the horse Mongol warlike dance
And also why the prophesied recipe for a s’more
Came west but slow, after many centuries more.
Both gratitude and blame go to a sassy Samoyed
Who Kublai Khan’s temper quite thoroughly destroy-ed.
I also posted this at Zombie Contentions - http://ckmac.com/thewholething/
Friday, November 6, 2009
Gardens, Bunny Huggers, Clouds of arrows to blot out the sun, Abandonment and Raw Sex
The other evening we had the last three pathetic figs in our salad, an anticlimactic cap to a very disappointing garden year. Then last evening on our walk Linda raised the question, "What ever happened to the White House garden?"
As it happens Michelle Obama's garden, which was quite famous in the spring for a time, hasn't been getting much national attention since then. But it turns out to have produced pretty well if the Huffington Post can be trusted:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/michelle-obama-fall-harve_n_339172.html
Good for the First Lady! Her garden did a whole lot better than mine this summer even if she is, as I suspect, shading the cost figure just a bit. Huffington Post quotes her as saying the garden cost $180.
I'm figuring the real cost of the Ph.D. agronomist who must have tested the soil and planned the amendments was all by itself a whole lot more than $180. And that's leaving out the cost of the round the clock Secret Service guards who had to protect that patch from rabbits and other varmints in a manner calculated not to enrage the bunny and chipmunk huggers. There's simply no way they could have gotten away with fencing that White House garden on the cheap and ugly the way I fence my garden. And there's no way the Secret Service could just blow away any intrusive White House garden bunnies who yearned for a taste of the greenery.
Back here at home I had a visit from two local bunny huggers the other day. They stopped by with their medium sized kinky haired sort of black poodles to ask about the monster pickup truck that Chris the bowhunter parks on the circle near their homes while he's sitting in his tree stand slavering at the chance of putting broadheads into Bambi's mom and dad. I agreed to talk to Chris when I see him about parking his truck in our driveway.
They also expressed concern about the danger to their children of hunters filling the air with far flung arrows. I explained that Chris does not shoot in the manner of Persians raising clouds of arrows to block the sun shining on Spartans so they can fight in the shade. And I assured them that Chris is a very qualified and careful hunter who's unlikely in the extreme to shoot arrows at or anywhere near any children. I didn't feel it necessary to warn them not to dress their children in realistic deer suits complete with big racks of antlers.
On another front, Jas and Kathy left for The Villages on Sunday morning and probably arrived there on Monday night. We've heard no word from them as of yet; but that isn't terribly surprising. They put the Postal Service behind them last Thursday after 35 and 20 years respectively; and now they've put all of us who remain condemned to this chilly northern climate behind them as well.
Not that I'm complaining that Jas is down in Florida and has forgotten all about his older brothers and sister. It's a beautiful sunny day, and the ten point buck spent quite a bit of time earlier chasing does thither and yon about the lawn, over the creek and around the pond. I hope he doesn't wander over toward Chris's tree stand for at least a couple more days. He's pretty magnificent on the hoof.
Gather ye does, buck, while ye may; for at any hour thy time may come.
I will certainly call Al R tomorrow morning at about 10:30 to see if Jas has stopped over there for coffee. Can't count on him to remember to call me.
As it happens Michelle Obama's garden, which was quite famous in the spring for a time, hasn't been getting much national attention since then. But it turns out to have produced pretty well if the Huffington Post can be trusted:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/michelle-obama-fall-harve_n_339172.html
Good for the First Lady! Her garden did a whole lot better than mine this summer even if she is, as I suspect, shading the cost figure just a bit. Huffington Post quotes her as saying the garden cost $180.
I'm figuring the real cost of the Ph.D. agronomist who must have tested the soil and planned the amendments was all by itself a whole lot more than $180. And that's leaving out the cost of the round the clock Secret Service guards who had to protect that patch from rabbits and other varmints in a manner calculated not to enrage the bunny and chipmunk huggers. There's simply no way they could have gotten away with fencing that White House garden on the cheap and ugly the way I fence my garden. And there's no way the Secret Service could just blow away any intrusive White House garden bunnies who yearned for a taste of the greenery.
Back here at home I had a visit from two local bunny huggers the other day. They stopped by with their medium sized kinky haired sort of black poodles to ask about the monster pickup truck that Chris the bowhunter parks on the circle near their homes while he's sitting in his tree stand slavering at the chance of putting broadheads into Bambi's mom and dad. I agreed to talk to Chris when I see him about parking his truck in our driveway.
They also expressed concern about the danger to their children of hunters filling the air with far flung arrows. I explained that Chris does not shoot in the manner of Persians raising clouds of arrows to block the sun shining on Spartans so they can fight in the shade. And I assured them that Chris is a very qualified and careful hunter who's unlikely in the extreme to shoot arrows at or anywhere near any children. I didn't feel it necessary to warn them not to dress their children in realistic deer suits complete with big racks of antlers.
On another front, Jas and Kathy left for The Villages on Sunday morning and probably arrived there on Monday night. We've heard no word from them as of yet; but that isn't terribly surprising. They put the Postal Service behind them last Thursday after 35 and 20 years respectively; and now they've put all of us who remain condemned to this chilly northern climate behind them as well.
Not that I'm complaining that Jas is down in Florida and has forgotten all about his older brothers and sister. It's a beautiful sunny day, and the ten point buck spent quite a bit of time earlier chasing does thither and yon about the lawn, over the creek and around the pond. I hope he doesn't wander over toward Chris's tree stand for at least a couple more days. He's pretty magnificent on the hoof.
Gather ye does, buck, while ye may; for at any hour thy time may come.
I will certainly call Al R tomorrow morning at about 10:30 to see if Jas has stopped over there for coffee. Can't count on him to remember to call me.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Warren Buffett made a big bet on coal
Roger Pielke noticed Warren Buffett’s big bet on coal the other day and wondered what the Sage of Omaha knows.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/warren-buffetts-big-bet.html#comment-form
As it happens Alex sent me a long DOE report the other day that made me think things aren’t as bad as I had thought even if global warming fears are wholly reasonable. Or perhaps I’m just in an optimistic frame of mind.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/pubs/Bituminous%20Baseline_Final%20Report.pdf
If the assumptions of the study and the analysis leading to the executive summary aren’t too far wrong electricity from coal will cost about 50% more with very high CO2 capture and storage. That means fossil fuels alone can support recently normal rates of economic growth for a hundred years or more. If the transition can take place over twenty years it’s not an insurmountable economic problem, if only because many existing uses of electricity are pretty inefficient and the economy will enforce a lot of energy conservation as electicity costs rise. So the actual economic effect of the energy cost change in terms of living standards will be less than a 50% rise.
And that leaves out the possibility that the public will eventually get comfortable with nuclear fission, which is operating now at cost levels that must be at least comparable to coal plants without carbon capture (or else it wouldn’t be operating). It also leaves out the possibility that fusion will eventually become possible at some cost that’s reasonable in the context of rising fossil energy costs due to carbon capture and depletion. Plus, it leaves out wind and solar and biomass and such; but they strike me as nearly trivial in the 20 year term next to the bigger sources of energy despite all of the hype.
The economy commonly reacts to such cost changes, and even worse cost changes, over time without too much disruption if the politicians don’t meddle too much, as they did in the 1970’s for a time. For instance oil and thus gasoline prices can rise and have risen in the past by more than 50% in a year or two without causing more than moderate pain, at least to anyone who has access to the technology to read this, despite all of the whining that always attends such price changes.
Perhaps that’s why Warren Buffet made his big bet on coal.
I also posted this on Zombie Contentions at http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/buffets-big-bet/
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/warren-buffetts-big-bet.html#comment-form
As it happens Alex sent me a long DOE report the other day that made me think things aren’t as bad as I had thought even if global warming fears are wholly reasonable. Or perhaps I’m just in an optimistic frame of mind.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/pubs/Bituminous%20Baseline_Final%20Report.pdf
If the assumptions of the study and the analysis leading to the executive summary aren’t too far wrong electricity from coal will cost about 50% more with very high CO2 capture and storage. That means fossil fuels alone can support recently normal rates of economic growth for a hundred years or more. If the transition can take place over twenty years it’s not an insurmountable economic problem, if only because many existing uses of electricity are pretty inefficient and the economy will enforce a lot of energy conservation as electicity costs rise. So the actual economic effect of the energy cost change in terms of living standards will be less than a 50% rise.
And that leaves out the possibility that the public will eventually get comfortable with nuclear fission, which is operating now at cost levels that must be at least comparable to coal plants without carbon capture (or else it wouldn’t be operating). It also leaves out the possibility that fusion will eventually become possible at some cost that’s reasonable in the context of rising fossil energy costs due to carbon capture and depletion. Plus, it leaves out wind and solar and biomass and such; but they strike me as nearly trivial in the 20 year term next to the bigger sources of energy despite all of the hype.
The economy commonly reacts to such cost changes, and even worse cost changes, over time without too much disruption if the politicians don’t meddle too much, as they did in the 1970’s for a time. For instance oil and thus gasoline prices can rise and have risen in the past by more than 50% in a year or two without causing more than moderate pain, at least to anyone who has access to the technology to read this, despite all of the whining that always attends such price changes.
Perhaps that’s why Warren Buffet made his big bet on coal.
I also posted this on Zombie Contentions at http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/buffets-big-bet/
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Obamandias
I met a traveler, late of Norwayland,
A meme park, cloying as Candyland,
Who said, “A vast, nay global, king is crowned,
Hawaii spawned, of earth split diverse strand,
Pre timely marriage, by two not long for him around.
Oft’ stoned, he education gained, and phlegm,
Plus caustic wife, and rep for writing great renowned.
From him pure peace will sure from passion stem,
To one and all astound, stamped on world around.
On Nobel plinth we erect his image,
Sing fulsome praise unto his visage.
“Here’s to you Obama, this prize of prizes,
We predict, imagine, the deed that to it rises.
To you great king, serene Obama,
Fond hope of hordes of baser mopes,
We grant, we sing, this hail, hosanna,
Based whole on horde of our fond hopes.”
To you who question, we render this,
“Look on his glory, ye deniers, and despair,
For from your every taunt re things amiss,
There’s nary doubt the writers most folks read,
Who grant no wrinkle, on those who leftward lead,
Will with airy twinkle, his flawless rep repair.”
With apologies Percy Bysshe. I also posted this at Zombie Contentions
http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/obamandias/
A meme park, cloying as Candyland,
Who said, “A vast, nay global, king is crowned,
Hawaii spawned, of earth split diverse strand,
Pre timely marriage, by two not long for him around.
Oft’ stoned, he education gained, and phlegm,
Plus caustic wife, and rep for writing great renowned.
From him pure peace will sure from passion stem,
To one and all astound, stamped on world around.
On Nobel plinth we erect his image,
Sing fulsome praise unto his visage.
“Here’s to you Obama, this prize of prizes,
We predict, imagine, the deed that to it rises.
To you great king, serene Obama,
Fond hope of hordes of baser mopes,
We grant, we sing, this hail, hosanna,
Based whole on horde of our fond hopes.”
To you who question, we render this,
“Look on his glory, ye deniers, and despair,
For from your every taunt re things amiss,
There’s nary doubt the writers most folks read,
Who grant no wrinkle, on those who leftward lead,
Will with airy twinkle, his flawless rep repair.”
With apologies Percy Bysshe. I also posted this at Zombie Contentions
http://ckmac.com/thewholething/2009/11/obamandias/
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Dave is going South and Deb is irked about holidays
I've been remiss in reporting that Dave, our man of the woods, told me on Monday that he's moving in with a friend from Norristown for a couple of weeks and then he will he heading south to Florida. That's sort of good and bad news. The good news, for Dave, is that he'll no doubt be a lot warmer in Florida over the next few months than he would be here. The bad news, for me, is that I'll miss running into him in the woods.
The worse news is that Dave mentioned the possibility that he won't return north, at least this far north, next summer. He's thinking of summering in the mountains of Georgia. I told him to keep in touch, which he will hopefully do with Alex when he stops by the occasional library and can get on email.
In other news Debra showed up for a visit a couple of hours ago because she had dropped her mom Dolores off at the hairdresser nearby. We talked her into having a bit of dinner after which she complained that at her school they are not allowed to refer to Christmas and Easter as holidays, instead calling them winter and spring break. But they do refer to Yom Kippur and Kwanzaa as holidays. Kwanzaa, of course is a fake holiday invented by an FBI informant, if memory serves; but Yom Kippur is definitely a religious holiday.
Well. . . after Deb left I got on the computer and one of the first things I found was a post on The Corner by Jay Nordlinger of National Review complaining about the same sort of thing. Here's what he had to say in a post titled Unsilent Night:
"A reader from Boulder, Colo., sends a note that may interest you. It responds to an item in Impromptus today. She says, “In 1994, the Fairview High School Christmas concert was going to close with the students processing out of the auditorium singing ‘Silent Night.’ Huge controversy, with multiple cries against ‘religion in the public schools.’ The school district’s attorneys said no. Since it was too late for the music teacher to arrange for something else, the students began to recess in silence. The audience was having none of it, and started singing ‘Silent Night’ themselves. That story still gives me goose-bumps.”
Holy mackerel, that took brass (and I’m not talking about trumpets and trombones). By the way, I imagine the Boulder people were not able to call that concert a “Christmas concert.” “Winter Serenade”?
Another reader writes to say, “Every December in Chicago, they have the Christkindlmarket. If they called it the ‘Christ Child Market,’ the world would come to an end! And the local bank flashes ‘Happy Holidays,’ followed by ‘Feliz Navidad.’” True, true: You can’t say “Merry Christmas,” but you can say it in Spanish. “And, in my daughter’s public school, they banned Handel but allow black spirituals.” For sure, and thank goodness for spirituals.
We could do this forever, but I’m stopping now. Happy Halloween! (Actually, it’s the day of the Crash, but in any case . . .)"
You can find Jay's post here: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGVjOTg0NzY1MmQ4MjRjOTEzZmM5YTFmZWU0OWFmM2M=
The worse news is that Dave mentioned the possibility that he won't return north, at least this far north, next summer. He's thinking of summering in the mountains of Georgia. I told him to keep in touch, which he will hopefully do with Alex when he stops by the occasional library and can get on email.
In other news Debra showed up for a visit a couple of hours ago because she had dropped her mom Dolores off at the hairdresser nearby. We talked her into having a bit of dinner after which she complained that at her school they are not allowed to refer to Christmas and Easter as holidays, instead calling them winter and spring break. But they do refer to Yom Kippur and Kwanzaa as holidays. Kwanzaa, of course is a fake holiday invented by an FBI informant, if memory serves; but Yom Kippur is definitely a religious holiday.
Well. . . after Deb left I got on the computer and one of the first things I found was a post on The Corner by Jay Nordlinger of National Review complaining about the same sort of thing. Here's what he had to say in a post titled Unsilent Night:
"A reader from Boulder, Colo., sends a note that may interest you. It responds to an item in Impromptus today. She says, “In 1994, the Fairview High School Christmas concert was going to close with the students processing out of the auditorium singing ‘Silent Night.’ Huge controversy, with multiple cries against ‘religion in the public schools.’ The school district’s attorneys said no. Since it was too late for the music teacher to arrange for something else, the students began to recess in silence. The audience was having none of it, and started singing ‘Silent Night’ themselves. That story still gives me goose-bumps.”
Holy mackerel, that took brass (and I’m not talking about trumpets and trombones). By the way, I imagine the Boulder people were not able to call that concert a “Christmas concert.” “Winter Serenade”?
Another reader writes to say, “Every December in Chicago, they have the Christkindlmarket. If they called it the ‘Christ Child Market,’ the world would come to an end! And the local bank flashes ‘Happy Holidays,’ followed by ‘Feliz Navidad.’” True, true: You can’t say “Merry Christmas,” but you can say it in Spanish. “And, in my daughter’s public school, they banned Handel but allow black spirituals.” For sure, and thank goodness for spirituals.
We could do this forever, but I’m stopping now. Happy Halloween! (Actually, it’s the day of the Crash, but in any case . . .)"
You can find Jay's post here: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGVjOTg0NzY1MmQ4MjRjOTEzZmM5YTFmZWU0OWFmM2M=
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Things are getting beyond ridiculous
A Yale educated sycophant named Rocco Landesman made a fool of himself the other day. Based on what he said in his address of October 21st to the Grantsmakers in the Arts he would have better spent his time and money studying wrestling at Bobo Brazil University rather than Drama at Yale. Mr. Landesman is Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
He said about President Barack Obama, "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar."
First off I'll give him a break and not quibble about the fact that a specific president is a "who" rather than a "that" even though I would have expected better usage from a holder of a Doctorate of Dramatic Literature, even one from Yale.
But let's get on to serious stuff.
Barack Obama is certainly not the first president to write his own books since Teddy Roosevelt because (duh!) since TR there have been many other presidents who have written their own books. Woodrow Wilson wrote multiple books while he was a professor. And Calvin Coolidge wrote books. And Dwight Eisenhower wrote a book. And Richard Nixon wrote books. And John F. Kennedy wrote a book, And even Bill Clinton wrote a book.
It's true that Eisenhower, Nixon, and Clinton arguably had at least some help with their books, and Kennedy almost surely had a whole lot of help. But it has been credibly argued that Barack Obama may have had a bit or more of help writing his books as well.
Now, about that other assertion, that Barack Obama is the first president to write books really well since Lincoln. First off, it's a bit of an odd assertion since Lincoln never wrote a book even though he did a pretty fair job as president and he wrote very good speeches. But regardless, it for sure ain't true, no how, no way; as Huckleberry Finn might have said. For Ulysses S. Grant was a president after Lincoln, and his book was highly praised by no less a critic than a fellow named Samuel Clemens who went by the monicker Mark Twain.
Back before the utter degeneration of university academic standards I would have assumed that a person with a doctorate from Yale would recognize the name Mark Twain; but in case Rocco is reading this, I'll mention that Twain was a middling fair writer back a while ago. One of his many books was titled Pudd'nhead Landesman, or Rocc'nhead Wilson, or something like that.
Now we come to that curious construction whereby Rocco asserts that Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. Aside from it being a tad strange to liken an elected American President with a usurping Roman Dictator, that's simply not true as well, if only because there have been numerous presidents who have certainly been writers, although admittedly some of their books are not very highly regarded.
But if one were to set out to think of a writer president in connection with Julius Caesar, I would have thought it impossible for a Ph.D. to fail to think of Dwight Eisenhower long before thinking of Barack Obama, unless he was on a crusade to find something nice to say about Obama.
For Rocco's benefit I'll point out that, like Caesar, Eisenhower's most famous deed before becoming president, was conquering Gaul. He even wrote about it in his well regarded best selling book, Crusade in Europe, pretty much the way Caesar wrote about it in his well regarded best selling book The Conquest of Gaul.
Now, in fairness to Rocco, I'll mention that they may well not have copies of Caesar and Eisenhower's books at the Yale Drama School, but they're fairly readily available. Really Rocco. Even I have a copies of them.
My copy of Caesar's book starts, "Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est." No it doesn't. I lied. My copy doesn't start that way because I pretty much cruised on autopilot through Latin One and Two in high school. So my copy starts, "Gaul is divided into three parts." Like Rocco Landesman's common sense, of which he must have left two parts back at his other job when he moved to Washington.
In that regard I'm reminded of a little piece of trivia that gives another reason why Rocco shouldn't be quite so ready to praise President Obama's intellectual heft to and beyond the sky in comparison with all presidents "since Lincoln".
President James Garfield, who I'll mention came after Lincoln in case any Yale Ph.Ds are reading this, was said to be able to write an answer in Latin with one hand and in ancient Greek with the other hand in response to a verbal question put to him in English. I just found out he could also juggle indian clubs, with one of which Rocco Landesman should perhaps be smartly tapped upside the head in hopes of loosening the cobwebs in there.
Here's the whole text of Rocco's spiel to read if you think you can stand it. It actually does have some other funny parts besides the paragraph I quoted above; but I don't think Rocco meant them to be funny. They're more like funny pathetic. If he doesn't have a speechwriter he should get one; but before that he should dispose of the crayons they gave him to write and color with at Yale.
http://www.arts.gov/news/news09/arts-works-release-and-speech.html
Update - Hat tip to Scott Johnson at the Powerline Blog http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/10/024805.php
On reflection I'm realizing that's where I originally learned of Rocco Landesman's speech
And: I also posted this on Zombie Contentions at http://ckmac.com/thewholething/
He said about President Barack Obama, "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar."
First off I'll give him a break and not quibble about the fact that a specific president is a "who" rather than a "that" even though I would have expected better usage from a holder of a Doctorate of Dramatic Literature, even one from Yale.
But let's get on to serious stuff.
Barack Obama is certainly not the first president to write his own books since Teddy Roosevelt because (duh!) since TR there have been many other presidents who have written their own books. Woodrow Wilson wrote multiple books while he was a professor. And Calvin Coolidge wrote books. And Dwight Eisenhower wrote a book. And Richard Nixon wrote books. And John F. Kennedy wrote a book, And even Bill Clinton wrote a book.
It's true that Eisenhower, Nixon, and Clinton arguably had at least some help with their books, and Kennedy almost surely had a whole lot of help. But it has been credibly argued that Barack Obama may have had a bit or more of help writing his books as well.
Now, about that other assertion, that Barack Obama is the first president to write books really well since Lincoln. First off, it's a bit of an odd assertion since Lincoln never wrote a book even though he did a pretty fair job as president and he wrote very good speeches. But regardless, it for sure ain't true, no how, no way; as Huckleberry Finn might have said. For Ulysses S. Grant was a president after Lincoln, and his book was highly praised by no less a critic than a fellow named Samuel Clemens who went by the monicker Mark Twain.
Back before the utter degeneration of university academic standards I would have assumed that a person with a doctorate from Yale would recognize the name Mark Twain; but in case Rocco is reading this, I'll mention that Twain was a middling fair writer back a while ago. One of his many books was titled Pudd'nhead Landesman, or Rocc'nhead Wilson, or something like that.
Now we come to that curious construction whereby Rocco asserts that Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. Aside from it being a tad strange to liken an elected American President with a usurping Roman Dictator, that's simply not true as well, if only because there have been numerous presidents who have certainly been writers, although admittedly some of their books are not very highly regarded.
But if one were to set out to think of a writer president in connection with Julius Caesar, I would have thought it impossible for a Ph.D. to fail to think of Dwight Eisenhower long before thinking of Barack Obama, unless he was on a crusade to find something nice to say about Obama.
For Rocco's benefit I'll point out that, like Caesar, Eisenhower's most famous deed before becoming president, was conquering Gaul. He even wrote about it in his well regarded best selling book, Crusade in Europe, pretty much the way Caesar wrote about it in his well regarded best selling book The Conquest of Gaul.
Now, in fairness to Rocco, I'll mention that they may well not have copies of Caesar and Eisenhower's books at the Yale Drama School, but they're fairly readily available. Really Rocco. Even I have a copies of them.
My copy of Caesar's book starts, "Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est." No it doesn't. I lied. My copy doesn't start that way because I pretty much cruised on autopilot through Latin One and Two in high school. So my copy starts, "Gaul is divided into three parts." Like Rocco Landesman's common sense, of which he must have left two parts back at his other job when he moved to Washington.
In that regard I'm reminded of a little piece of trivia that gives another reason why Rocco shouldn't be quite so ready to praise President Obama's intellectual heft to and beyond the sky in comparison with all presidents "since Lincoln".
President James Garfield, who I'll mention came after Lincoln in case any Yale Ph.Ds are reading this, was said to be able to write an answer in Latin with one hand and in ancient Greek with the other hand in response to a verbal question put to him in English. I just found out he could also juggle indian clubs, with one of which Rocco Landesman should perhaps be smartly tapped upside the head in hopes of loosening the cobwebs in there.
Here's the whole text of Rocco's spiel to read if you think you can stand it. It actually does have some other funny parts besides the paragraph I quoted above; but I don't think Rocco meant them to be funny. They're more like funny pathetic. If he doesn't have a speechwriter he should get one; but before that he should dispose of the crayons they gave him to write and color with at Yale.
http://www.arts.gov/news/news09/arts-works-release-and-speech.html
Update - Hat tip to Scott Johnson at the Powerline Blog http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/10/024805.php
On reflection I'm realizing that's where I originally learned of Rocco Landesman's speech
And: I also posted this on Zombie Contentions at http://ckmac.com/thewholething/
Monday, October 26, 2009
A brief visit to the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts
Three days we've been away, and in that time the big sugar maple tree has dropped about half of its leaves. It was at the very peak of its splendor on Sunday of last week, all shades of gold and red and green. What leaves now remain on the tree are yellow or brown.
But I don't want to write about the swift decay of the splendor of the sugar maple, its leaves deprived of essential nutrients by the choking off of tree's systems. I want to write about the splendor of the great Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts, which Linda and I visited this weekend.
We stayed in the Brookline Holiday Inn, which Christina got for us via Priceline. A great location for observing some pretty interesting stuff, and only ten blocks or so from Alex and Christina's apartment. The very first evening was made special when I observed a local copper making time with nine well oiled young ladies who emerged from a building across the street as part of a much larger group who were perhaps the competitors for the Miss Miniskirt Massachusetts title. Every one of those girls had their heads in the clouds; but their legs reached all the way to the ground.
The copper, Steve was his name, loaned his uniform hat to one of the nine he was wooing. I was hoping she would try to make off with it the way Dillon tried to do with the Guardia Civil's fancy tricorn back in Barcelona in the 1960's; but she meekly handed it back after trying it on and displaying it to the passing cab drivers. Those cab drivers were not looking at the hat, and neither was Steve. The Guardia Civil back in Barcelona was definitely focused on his tricorn when he gestured very meaningfully at Dillon with his submachine gun. He looked pretty determined to me; but to this day I don't rightly know if he would have fired had Dillon not thought better of keeping his hat.
Steve got his hat back before he guided the nine young ladies into a cab and told the cab driver it was okay to take the passenger overload. Whether he scored a phone number or not I don't know; but he did give the dollies his email address. I hope he got a number because I don't think those lasses were in condition to remember an email address.
To be continued. . . The next thrilling episode will include our encounter with the exuberant
Russkis at the restaurant, and our tour of the Harpoon Brewery. It may also include
commentary on the events that did not occur when we found our car boxed in by the idealistic young civil engineer who was so preoccupied with saving humanity by delivering materials to the Boston Headquarters for Idealism that she had no time to worry about inconveniencing a few mere humans.
Ah to be young and heedless of the risks of rudeness. Hopefully the next time she will block in someone like me in my much younger days, for even idealists, perhaps especially idealists, need learning in the wages of sin. Randy or Dillon or Paul or Dave or Nick and I would have levied quite some wages on the car of someone who boxed us in back in college days. Thomas Harris had his character Hannibal Lecter go perhaps a smidgen too far; but it is a very certain truth that free range rudeness should be answered with consequences by anyone truly idealistic upon whom it is practiced.
Update: In other news I just got an exceedingly pleasant surprise when I leafed through the mail we collected upon returning home the other day. It included a very nice postcard from Aruba where Alex and Christina are enjoying a great honeymoon, or at least they were when they sent the postcard more than a month ago. They mention seeing "enough colorful fish, sunsets and iguanas to fill at least two honeymoons". The Aruba post office must have tied this postcard to an iguana who then hitched a ride on a fish to bring it to the U.S.
Just think how quickly and efficiently our medical care will be attended to when health care is run by the government the way the post office is.
But I don't want to write about the swift decay of the splendor of the sugar maple, its leaves deprived of essential nutrients by the choking off of tree's systems. I want to write about the splendor of the great Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts, which Linda and I visited this weekend.
We stayed in the Brookline Holiday Inn, which Christina got for us via Priceline. A great location for observing some pretty interesting stuff, and only ten blocks or so from Alex and Christina's apartment. The very first evening was made special when I observed a local copper making time with nine well oiled young ladies who emerged from a building across the street as part of a much larger group who were perhaps the competitors for the Miss Miniskirt Massachusetts title. Every one of those girls had their heads in the clouds; but their legs reached all the way to the ground.
The copper, Steve was his name, loaned his uniform hat to one of the nine he was wooing. I was hoping she would try to make off with it the way Dillon tried to do with the Guardia Civil's fancy tricorn back in Barcelona in the 1960's; but she meekly handed it back after trying it on and displaying it to the passing cab drivers. Those cab drivers were not looking at the hat, and neither was Steve. The Guardia Civil back in Barcelona was definitely focused on his tricorn when he gestured very meaningfully at Dillon with his submachine gun. He looked pretty determined to me; but to this day I don't rightly know if he would have fired had Dillon not thought better of keeping his hat.
Steve got his hat back before he guided the nine young ladies into a cab and told the cab driver it was okay to take the passenger overload. Whether he scored a phone number or not I don't know; but he did give the dollies his email address. I hope he got a number because I don't think those lasses were in condition to remember an email address.
To be continued. . . The next thrilling episode will include our encounter with the exuberant
Russkis at the restaurant, and our tour of the Harpoon Brewery. It may also include
commentary on the events that did not occur when we found our car boxed in by the idealistic young civil engineer who was so preoccupied with saving humanity by delivering materials to the Boston Headquarters for Idealism that she had no time to worry about inconveniencing a few mere humans.
Ah to be young and heedless of the risks of rudeness. Hopefully the next time she will block in someone like me in my much younger days, for even idealists, perhaps especially idealists, need learning in the wages of sin. Randy or Dillon or Paul or Dave or Nick and I would have levied quite some wages on the car of someone who boxed us in back in college days. Thomas Harris had his character Hannibal Lecter go perhaps a smidgen too far; but it is a very certain truth that free range rudeness should be answered with consequences by anyone truly idealistic upon whom it is practiced.
Update: In other news I just got an exceedingly pleasant surprise when I leafed through the mail we collected upon returning home the other day. It included a very nice postcard from Aruba where Alex and Christina are enjoying a great honeymoon, or at least they were when they sent the postcard more than a month ago. They mention seeing "enough colorful fish, sunsets and iguanas to fill at least two honeymoons". The Aruba post office must have tied this postcard to an iguana who then hitched a ride on a fish to bring it to the U.S.
Just think how quickly and efficiently our medical care will be attended to when health care is run by the government the way the post office is.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The promised recipe for Pasta e' Fagioli and some other stuff
There is a squirrel with a kinked tail sitting in the pot of the baobab. He's been sitting there grooming that tail, looking around, occasionally licking for salt at the sides of the pot for a good fifteen minutes. When Linda came over and stood by the patio doors he froze up until she moved away. His threat recognition system ignores a giant monster sitting fifteen feet away; but it reacts to one standing ten feet away. The amount of time and careful attention devoted to studying such things by the wildlife biologists and such must be truly stupendous.
This particular squirrel has time to waste playing with his tail because the big white oak by the back door has produced a fall of acorns practically beyond all imaginings. Like all the other squirrels, he's probably glutted with acorns and already possessed of enough caches of them to last the winter. Plus he knows he can be blase' about acorns because the black walnut trees have also produced a bumper crop. The walnuts are still in their thick and nasty iodine smelling outer coats on the ground right now; but those coats will rot away and leave just the nuts in their shells, which will lie there contentedly until the squirrels get around to them; because nothing else can eat them. Those nuts are everything but squirrelproof.
But enough of that fat and lazy rodent; who better save his teeth for the walnuts and keep them off the trunk of my baobab tree. I sat down here to complete the recipe for Pasta e' Fagioli that I started a few days ago and then abandoned. I set the beans to simmering on Columbus Day before Jas came to get me for our tour of the new Wegmans and Best Buy, and then I forgot to finish the preparation - at least I forgot to finish the description of the preparation - of the meal. And I just remembered that I promised Linda L a description of the full recipe when we had dinner with her and Mark at the creole restaurant down in Royersford.
Linda L wanted that recipe even though I mentioned that my Pasta Fagiole, which used to be Mom's, and before that her Mom's and Pop's Mom's Pasta Fagiole, has nothing much in common with the recipes the restaurants use and the one that appears on the box of ditalini. Those other recipes are for a watery bean and vegetable country soup which contains some macaroni. My recipe is for a fairly thick bean and macaroni stew flavored with garlic, salt and pepper, and olive oil. Linda L told me that she had tasted my version one time; but for the life of me I can't remember when I ever served such a thing to a crowd.
We ate the finished Pasta Fagiole for dinner on Columbus Day and then again on Wednesday, I think it was Wednesday, of last week. And, of course, I ate some of it for lunch a couple of days last week also, and one time for breakfast even. If you remember, I cooked two pounds of great northern beans pretty much according to the directions on the package, except about four times longer. I did not make Pasta Fagiole out of all of those beans because that would have been enough to feed me and Linda and much of Royersford. Out of the pot that resulted from cooking all those beans I used nine cups for the recipe I made last week. And I also froze three containers, of five cups each.
So, let's get that recipe out of the way before I get off on another digression as I am sometimes wont to do. Cook two pounds of Great Northern Beans on low for several hours, stirring occasionally, until most of them have been reduced to mush. Mom used to like a greater percentage of the beans whole; but then Mom sold out to the point of using canned beans eventually. Pop liked Mom's canned bean ersatz concoction; but he preferred the more mushy bean consistency you can only achieve by simmering those beans to death and beyond. This I know because Pop used to describe how good the bean scrapings from the bottom of the pot tasted when his mother gave them to him. She, Grandmom Filomena, used to cook her beans on the big woodstove that sat in Aunt Carmella's kitchen, and may still sit in that kitchen now, ten years and more after Aunt Carmella passed away.
That stove was huge, and the iron top of it was at least a half inch thick, which I know from playing with the round cover things that were about the size of CDs only much thicker while Mom and Aunt Carmella and Aunt Tavia and sometimes Aunt Mary were having coffee and cookees at the table. You could lift those round things and then let them accidentally clang down very satisfyingly onto the stovetop with that iron tool that slotted into them until you were given another cookie and chased from that kitchen.
You only get the sort of bean curd effect on the bottom of the pot that Pop described if you cook beans until they disintegrate. Which I would remind Mom about whenever I saw her opening bean cans in her later years and I wanted to generate a sharp reaction to liven things up. Despite her immediate reaction, which usually entailed the waving of her big spoon, Mom loved that line of discussion because it inevitably led straight back to feeding families cheaply in the days when she made great pots of beans and macaroni from scratch down on Penn Street. Sometimes it even led all the way back to the story about trapping blackbirds in the back yard of 403 Walnut Street; or the story of Grandmom Angela catching the boarder not shaking the milk and using the cream on top for his morning coffee; or the story of the men sneaking into the rail yard at night to dislodge coal from the cars, so the women could go in the morning to gather it; or the story of Grandmom Angela feeding ten, or was it fifteen, or twenty, with one pound of beef and a whole lot of potatoes and greens - in the era after the blackbirds had learned to avoid her back yard.
But I see that I've done it again, digressed from providing the recipe. Cook two pounds of beans according to the package directions but much longer. About 2/3rds of the way through cooking the beans add two bulbs of garlic, the cloves peeled and more or less finely chopped, of course. Fry the garlic just a bit in about a cup or so of olive oil, to drive the hotness out of it, before adding it and the oil to the bean pot. Also add two or three level teaspoons of salt and half or maybe a whole level teaspoon of pepper. And add a 14 ounce can of tomato sauce for color. If you don't have tomato sauce you can use ketchup or diced tomatoes, but if Mom heard you say you did that the spoon would really have waved. The addition of the oil and garlic will help in keeping the beans from sticking. This is the modern age of dials to control the heat and flat ended stirring spoons with which to scrape the bottom of the pot, not the age of cooking over a wood fired stove and wooden spoons shaped pretty much like blunt sticks. We do not end with bean mush stuck to the bottom of the pot, if we're careful.
From the resulting pot of beans, oil, garlic and tomato sauce for color, remove 9/24ths of the total and mix that with about 2/3rds of a pound of Ditalini cooked to the bare minimum time suggested on the package and then almost completely drained. If the beans are especially thick drain a little less water from the ditalini. If the beans seem a bit thin drain all of the water from the ditalini. That's the recipe I made the other evening. Each of the three containers I have in the freezer contains 5/24ths of that pot. I will probably mix each with about a third of a pound of ditalini, maybe a little more.
Pop used to eat Pasta Fagiole for breakfast whenever there was some of it in the refrigerator. In later years he would sometimes be sitting there in the kitchen window when I went over there for coffee, eating beans and macaroni with that giant flat bowled tablespoon he liked for that specific purpose. We have that spoon, the one with the slightly kinked metal fatigued spot on its handle. We still occasionally use it as a serving spoon for salad, although I prefer a different spoon for that purpose.
Pasta Fagiole is perhaps the ultimate comfort food from the days when people ate cheap and hearty stuff like beans and macaroni for the comfort of a full belly; before some wiseacre thought up the term "comfort food" and thus consigned such foods to mild association with eating to assuage our neuroses.
Update: In other news, scientists have discovered a new species of web spinning spider whose females grow to be bigger than a CD. So far they haven't actually seen a live one, just dead specimens in museums and parts of recently alive ones that have fallen to the ground in the rainforests of Africa. They think the reason they haven't seen a live one in its web is that the females live in the tops of the tall trees where they don't fear most birds and lizards and other such predators on ordinary two or three or four inch in diameter spiders because they look upon them as comfort food.
The scientist who study spiders are apparently short of help. They desperately need a few assistants to climb up those trees, ignoring the trifling snakes and foot long centipedes and other biting stuff, to find those giant spiders and study them, perhaps even capture one to bring down to the ground alive. They assure me that these particular spiders do not jump on things they want to eat but rather wait patiently, camouflaged in their sturdy webs, confident that plenty of food will come to them.
Who says there are no jobs available in this economy?
Update 2: The other night, after I told the story of Lefty and the drapes which Mom always used to tell, Linda told me she had never heard Mom tell her Lefty story, which was a cautionary tale about the taking in of stray troubled souls. Jas and Kathy also seemed to have never heard that story even though Jas remembered that Lefty used to sleep on the pile of burlap bags in the back of Harry's Potato Market until he pulled the knife on Patty. Lefty had a lot, a very lot, of very hard miles on him when we knew him. Mom's story predated that. One of these days I have to tell it here, but not in connection with a food recipe.
Harry took in strays all the time. He took in the quiet and nice black guy from down at the wharf who later stole some money Harry had in the trailor for a trip South to buy watermelons, which caused Harry to buy the pistol about which Patty used to act out a very funny story. And, of course, Harry later took in Eddie Fight, who never stole anything, but who also never did even a lick of work that I ever saw. Eddie had a lot of hard miles on him also, and he could be provoked to crack us up with one of his sayings. "Smarty, eh, smarty had a party." and "Nice man, Harry, very nice man. He'll give you a leaf for a lettuce patch any day."
This particular squirrel has time to waste playing with his tail because the big white oak by the back door has produced a fall of acorns practically beyond all imaginings. Like all the other squirrels, he's probably glutted with acorns and already possessed of enough caches of them to last the winter. Plus he knows he can be blase' about acorns because the black walnut trees have also produced a bumper crop. The walnuts are still in their thick and nasty iodine smelling outer coats on the ground right now; but those coats will rot away and leave just the nuts in their shells, which will lie there contentedly until the squirrels get around to them; because nothing else can eat them. Those nuts are everything but squirrelproof.
But enough of that fat and lazy rodent; who better save his teeth for the walnuts and keep them off the trunk of my baobab tree. I sat down here to complete the recipe for Pasta e' Fagioli that I started a few days ago and then abandoned. I set the beans to simmering on Columbus Day before Jas came to get me for our tour of the new Wegmans and Best Buy, and then I forgot to finish the preparation - at least I forgot to finish the description of the preparation - of the meal. And I just remembered that I promised Linda L a description of the full recipe when we had dinner with her and Mark at the creole restaurant down in Royersford.
Linda L wanted that recipe even though I mentioned that my Pasta Fagiole, which used to be Mom's, and before that her Mom's and Pop's Mom's Pasta Fagiole, has nothing much in common with the recipes the restaurants use and the one that appears on the box of ditalini. Those other recipes are for a watery bean and vegetable country soup which contains some macaroni. My recipe is for a fairly thick bean and macaroni stew flavored with garlic, salt and pepper, and olive oil. Linda L told me that she had tasted my version one time; but for the life of me I can't remember when I ever served such a thing to a crowd.
We ate the finished Pasta Fagiole for dinner on Columbus Day and then again on Wednesday, I think it was Wednesday, of last week. And, of course, I ate some of it for lunch a couple of days last week also, and one time for breakfast even. If you remember, I cooked two pounds of great northern beans pretty much according to the directions on the package, except about four times longer. I did not make Pasta Fagiole out of all of those beans because that would have been enough to feed me and Linda and much of Royersford. Out of the pot that resulted from cooking all those beans I used nine cups for the recipe I made last week. And I also froze three containers, of five cups each.
So, let's get that recipe out of the way before I get off on another digression as I am sometimes wont to do. Cook two pounds of Great Northern Beans on low for several hours, stirring occasionally, until most of them have been reduced to mush. Mom used to like a greater percentage of the beans whole; but then Mom sold out to the point of using canned beans eventually. Pop liked Mom's canned bean ersatz concoction; but he preferred the more mushy bean consistency you can only achieve by simmering those beans to death and beyond. This I know because Pop used to describe how good the bean scrapings from the bottom of the pot tasted when his mother gave them to him. She, Grandmom Filomena, used to cook her beans on the big woodstove that sat in Aunt Carmella's kitchen, and may still sit in that kitchen now, ten years and more after Aunt Carmella passed away.
That stove was huge, and the iron top of it was at least a half inch thick, which I know from playing with the round cover things that were about the size of CDs only much thicker while Mom and Aunt Carmella and Aunt Tavia and sometimes Aunt Mary were having coffee and cookees at the table. You could lift those round things and then let them accidentally clang down very satisfyingly onto the stovetop with that iron tool that slotted into them until you were given another cookie and chased from that kitchen.
You only get the sort of bean curd effect on the bottom of the pot that Pop described if you cook beans until they disintegrate. Which I would remind Mom about whenever I saw her opening bean cans in her later years and I wanted to generate a sharp reaction to liven things up. Despite her immediate reaction, which usually entailed the waving of her big spoon, Mom loved that line of discussion because it inevitably led straight back to feeding families cheaply in the days when she made great pots of beans and macaroni from scratch down on Penn Street. Sometimes it even led all the way back to the story about trapping blackbirds in the back yard of 403 Walnut Street; or the story of Grandmom Angela catching the boarder not shaking the milk and using the cream on top for his morning coffee; or the story of the men sneaking into the rail yard at night to dislodge coal from the cars, so the women could go in the morning to gather it; or the story of Grandmom Angela feeding ten, or was it fifteen, or twenty, with one pound of beef and a whole lot of potatoes and greens - in the era after the blackbirds had learned to avoid her back yard.
But I see that I've done it again, digressed from providing the recipe. Cook two pounds of beans according to the package directions but much longer. About 2/3rds of the way through cooking the beans add two bulbs of garlic, the cloves peeled and more or less finely chopped, of course. Fry the garlic just a bit in about a cup or so of olive oil, to drive the hotness out of it, before adding it and the oil to the bean pot. Also add two or three level teaspoons of salt and half or maybe a whole level teaspoon of pepper. And add a 14 ounce can of tomato sauce for color. If you don't have tomato sauce you can use ketchup or diced tomatoes, but if Mom heard you say you did that the spoon would really have waved. The addition of the oil and garlic will help in keeping the beans from sticking. This is the modern age of dials to control the heat and flat ended stirring spoons with which to scrape the bottom of the pot, not the age of cooking over a wood fired stove and wooden spoons shaped pretty much like blunt sticks. We do not end with bean mush stuck to the bottom of the pot, if we're careful.
From the resulting pot of beans, oil, garlic and tomato sauce for color, remove 9/24ths of the total and mix that with about 2/3rds of a pound of Ditalini cooked to the bare minimum time suggested on the package and then almost completely drained. If the beans are especially thick drain a little less water from the ditalini. If the beans seem a bit thin drain all of the water from the ditalini. That's the recipe I made the other evening. Each of the three containers I have in the freezer contains 5/24ths of that pot. I will probably mix each with about a third of a pound of ditalini, maybe a little more.
Pop used to eat Pasta Fagiole for breakfast whenever there was some of it in the refrigerator. In later years he would sometimes be sitting there in the kitchen window when I went over there for coffee, eating beans and macaroni with that giant flat bowled tablespoon he liked for that specific purpose. We have that spoon, the one with the slightly kinked metal fatigued spot on its handle. We still occasionally use it as a serving spoon for salad, although I prefer a different spoon for that purpose.
Pasta Fagiole is perhaps the ultimate comfort food from the days when people ate cheap and hearty stuff like beans and macaroni for the comfort of a full belly; before some wiseacre thought up the term "comfort food" and thus consigned such foods to mild association with eating to assuage our neuroses.
Update: In other news, scientists have discovered a new species of web spinning spider whose females grow to be bigger than a CD. So far they haven't actually seen a live one, just dead specimens in museums and parts of recently alive ones that have fallen to the ground in the rainforests of Africa. They think the reason they haven't seen a live one in its web is that the females live in the tops of the tall trees where they don't fear most birds and lizards and other such predators on ordinary two or three or four inch in diameter spiders because they look upon them as comfort food.
The scientist who study spiders are apparently short of help. They desperately need a few assistants to climb up those trees, ignoring the trifling snakes and foot long centipedes and other biting stuff, to find those giant spiders and study them, perhaps even capture one to bring down to the ground alive. They assure me that these particular spiders do not jump on things they want to eat but rather wait patiently, camouflaged in their sturdy webs, confident that plenty of food will come to them.
Who says there are no jobs available in this economy?
Update 2: The other night, after I told the story of Lefty and the drapes which Mom always used to tell, Linda told me she had never heard Mom tell her Lefty story, which was a cautionary tale about the taking in of stray troubled souls. Jas and Kathy also seemed to have never heard that story even though Jas remembered that Lefty used to sleep on the pile of burlap bags in the back of Harry's Potato Market until he pulled the knife on Patty. Lefty had a lot, a very lot, of very hard miles on him when we knew him. Mom's story predated that. One of these days I have to tell it here, but not in connection with a food recipe.
Harry took in strays all the time. He took in the quiet and nice black guy from down at the wharf who later stole some money Harry had in the trailor for a trip South to buy watermelons, which caused Harry to buy the pistol about which Patty used to act out a very funny story. And, of course, Harry later took in Eddie Fight, who never stole anything, but who also never did even a lick of work that I ever saw. Eddie had a lot of hard miles on him also, and he could be provoked to crack us up with one of his sayings. "Smarty, eh, smarty had a party." and "Nice man, Harry, very nice man. He'll give you a leaf for a lettuce patch any day."
Monday, October 19, 2009
Those idiots can't even carve up and pass out pork intelligently
Mark Twain famously said, "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
Well. . . we've just had an example of the liberals in congress passing out pork so stupidly that they gave far more to their opponents than to their supporters.
According to analysis at The Audacious Epigone blog the three most liberal states are Massachusetts, Hawaii and Rhode Island; and the three most conservative states are Wyoming, Idaho and Utah.
Now you would think that the liberals in congress would have passed out more juicy pork to the liberal states than to the conservative states when they put together their big stimulus bill back in February. But according to Recovery.gov the three most conservative states overall got one job for every 3,898 residents; while the most liberal states got only one job for every 10,544 residents.
Wyoming – 61 jobs/532,000 population = one for every 8,741 residents
Idaho – 632 jobs/1,523,000 population = one for every 2,410 residents
Utah – 536 jobs/2,736,000 population = one for every 5,104 residents
Total - 1229 jobs/4,791,000 = one for every 3,898 residents
Massachusetts – 583 jobs/6,497,000 population = one for every 11,144 residents
Hawaii – 249 jobs/1,288,000 population – one for every 5,172 residents
Rhode Island – 6 jobs/1,051,000 population – one for every 175,166 residents
Total - 838 jobs/8,836,000 = one for every 10,544 residents
Congresscritters aren't even smart and efficient when it comes to rewarding their friends. How can it possibly make sense to want to give them more control over the national economy?
State by state conservative versus liberal rankings from http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2009/10/economic-social-and-foreign-policy.html
State by state job creation figures from
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=recipientTopJobs&ViewAll=100
State population figures from
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phNtm3LmDZEMdMS7_GYVYYQ
Hat tip to Razib Khan who writes as David Hume on The Secular Right blog. His post there got me started on this train of thought with his link to The Audacious Epigone.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phNtm3LmDZEMdMS7_GYVYYQ
Well. . . we've just had an example of the liberals in congress passing out pork so stupidly that they gave far more to their opponents than to their supporters.
According to analysis at The Audacious Epigone blog the three most liberal states are Massachusetts, Hawaii and Rhode Island; and the three most conservative states are Wyoming, Idaho and Utah.
Now you would think that the liberals in congress would have passed out more juicy pork to the liberal states than to the conservative states when they put together their big stimulus bill back in February. But according to Recovery.gov the three most conservative states overall got one job for every 3,898 residents; while the most liberal states got only one job for every 10,544 residents.
Wyoming – 61 jobs/532,000 population = one for every 8,741 residents
Idaho – 632 jobs/1,523,000 population = one for every 2,410 residents
Utah – 536 jobs/2,736,000 population = one for every 5,104 residents
Total - 1229 jobs/4,791,000 = one for every 3,898 residents
Massachusetts – 583 jobs/6,497,000 population = one for every 11,144 residents
Hawaii – 249 jobs/1,288,000 population – one for every 5,172 residents
Rhode Island – 6 jobs/1,051,000 population – one for every 175,166 residents
Total - 838 jobs/8,836,000 = one for every 10,544 residents
Congresscritters aren't even smart and efficient when it comes to rewarding their friends. How can it possibly make sense to want to give them more control over the national economy?
State by state conservative versus liberal rankings from http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2009/10/economic-social-and-foreign-policy.html
State by state job creation figures from
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=recipientTopJobs&ViewAll=100
State population figures from
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phNtm3LmDZEMdMS7_GYVYYQ
Hat tip to Razib Khan who writes as David Hume on The Secular Right blog. His post there got me started on this train of thought with his link to The Audacious Epigone.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phNtm3LmDZEMdMS7_GYVYYQ
Thursday, October 15, 2009
You break it, you own it
Colin Powell and Richard Armitage famously cited the Pottery Barn rule in talking about intervention into the affairs of other countries – “You break it, you own it.”
It seems to me that application of a corollary of that rule is a cure for one big problem that ails our current health care insurance system.
Currently, under COBRA, a company’s health insurance provider is required to offer continuation coverage at the company cost rate for two years after someone leaves the company. But after that the provider has no further obligation.
For people with pre-existing conditions continuation coverage is a great boon since they can’t easily get other insurance. On the other hand it’s a potential trap for people who don’t have pre-existing conditions when they leave a company because at that point they can get alternative coverage, but if they stay with the company’s provider they court the danger of developing a pre-existing condition during the two year continuation period.
If COBRA were amended to require insurers to offer continuation coverage to age 65 to anyone they once insure that problem would go away. People who develop pre-existing conditions would have the option of extending their coverage with the insurer who had them when they developed the condition.
Naturally, insurers would have to take this new obligation into account in setting their rate tables. And they would have to negotiate to swap responsibility with other insurers when people move to other states and such. But doing stuff like that is what insurance companies are good at.
All in all, it seems to me that this change would be far less onerous than what the insurers are going to get in the way of regulation because of the very understandable sympathy there is for people who become orphaned and uninsurable two years after being laid off.
Why can’t insurance companies be required to follow a “You own him when he breaks, you own him for life” rule.
Update: Another thing about the health care insurance debate. Why do many persist in saying that a new not-for-profit health care insurance provider is necessary without mentioning that there is already a national association of not-for-profit providers that’s a major factor in the market – namely the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association?
I also posted this at Zombie Contentions - http://ckmac.com/thewholething/
It seems to me that application of a corollary of that rule is a cure for one big problem that ails our current health care insurance system.
Currently, under COBRA, a company’s health insurance provider is required to offer continuation coverage at the company cost rate for two years after someone leaves the company. But after that the provider has no further obligation.
For people with pre-existing conditions continuation coverage is a great boon since they can’t easily get other insurance. On the other hand it’s a potential trap for people who don’t have pre-existing conditions when they leave a company because at that point they can get alternative coverage, but if they stay with the company’s provider they court the danger of developing a pre-existing condition during the two year continuation period.
If COBRA were amended to require insurers to offer continuation coverage to age 65 to anyone they once insure that problem would go away. People who develop pre-existing conditions would have the option of extending their coverage with the insurer who had them when they developed the condition.
Naturally, insurers would have to take this new obligation into account in setting their rate tables. And they would have to negotiate to swap responsibility with other insurers when people move to other states and such. But doing stuff like that is what insurance companies are good at.
All in all, it seems to me that this change would be far less onerous than what the insurers are going to get in the way of regulation because of the very understandable sympathy there is for people who become orphaned and uninsurable two years after being laid off.
Why can’t insurance companies be required to follow a “You own him when he breaks, you own him for life” rule.
Update: Another thing about the health care insurance debate. Why do many persist in saying that a new not-for-profit health care insurance provider is necessary without mentioning that there is already a national association of not-for-profit providers that’s a major factor in the market – namely the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association?
I also posted this at Zombie Contentions - http://ckmac.com/thewholething/
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Being the continuance of Jas and Sull's excellent adventure
When I left off the other day Jas and I were pretty much finished with our exploration of the big new Wegmans, so we drove over to the new Best Buy. We had to drive because the Best Buy is a pretty long way from the Wegmans. That shopping center is big; it has more length of commercial streeds than Norristown did in the 1950's when Al Martino was still a young pup of a crooner and Mom and Pop used to take us down to see the Christmas lights on Main Street.
We would go into Chatlin's Department Store and marvel at the toys, which were up on the fourth floor as I recall. Days of Wonder! Erector Sets and cap guns and bows and arrows and Daisy Air Rifles; and a Lionel Train display with working trains going around and around the tracks. Chatlin's display of trains was almost as big as the one Uncle Froggy used to set up in the combination living room and dining room of Grandmom and Grandpop's row house up on Walnut Street.
All four floors of that old Chatlin's would be lost within one corner of the Best Buy. The place is as big as an aircraft hangar. And it's positively crammed with toys for boys that would have been beyond our wildest imaginings back in the 1950's. The TV in our old house on Penn Street had about an 8 inch screen on which little cowboys and indians may have ridden; but I can't remember ever seeing that TV on. That was no terrible hardship because Uncle Chick and Aunt Mary had a big screen TV next door. Their TV was the most amazing thing I ever spent much time with until Uncle Froggy got the first color set any of us had seen in the 1960's.
I watched Hopalong Cassidy with Uncle Chick on many and many a Saturday morning, both of us lying on the floor with our noses a few inches from the twelve inch screen. Uncle Chick was a big kid on those Saturday mornings. He was also a Slovak, the only Slovak I knew. So I thought for quite a while that all Slovaks were big kids, just as I thought all South Philly Italians were big kids because Uncle Froggy was a big kid.
Uncle Froggy lived in Norristown, but he had grown up in Philly and you could tell. He acted like a kid much more than my other uncles. First off, he was a fireman, and when the fire siren sounded he went running. Plus, he drove a big dump truck around as his regular job. But he seemed to go where he wanted pretty much as he pleased with that dump truck. He was sort of like a foster son of the guy who owned the mill where the dump truck was supposed to be; so I guess nobody was keeping real close tabs on him. He also did unusual things when he worked the counter down at Babe's luncheonette. If me or Matty or Sonny went in there and gave him a quarter for a lemonade he would give us a big lemonade, and he would also give us three or four dimes and a nickel back as change. I was pretty little when we still lived in Norristown; but even when I was little I knew that getting four dimes and a nickel back as change for a quarter was unusual.
But I need to stop dwelling on my first childhood and get back to the present one. . .
The Best Buy has a wall of big screen TVs that's about a hundred yards long. Jas and I started off at the left end looking at the little 40 inch sets and then strolled up the marching line of sets until we got to the end of the selection of 55 inchers that cap off the display. In the cavern of the Best Buy those 55 inchers are suprisingly small looking even though any one of them is probably as big as the table in Aunt Mary R's kitchen that would hold enough meat ravioli to feed the 20 or so of us who would eat around it in shifts on Christmas Day because the dining room was, of course, filled with Uncle Froggy's train layout. Matty used to crawl under the train table and pop up through the hole in the middle of it to run the display.
After spending a good bit of time with the TVs we moved along to the laptop computers, the very smallest of which has a screen about the size of Uncle Froggy's first color TV set. The people on those laptop screens don't have green faces and the grass on them is not blue.
But enough of the Best Buy. We left there after spending some time with the young pup salesman near the laptops and learning that he had to go ask somebody else what the difference is between 3G network and a 4G network, or whatever, which Jas wanted to know for some reason. As if either of us would have understood the answer even assuming the salesman had come back with a coherent answer. I just looked up the matter on Wikipedia and I still don't think I understand it even though Wiki probably does have a coherent answer.
I made coffee when we got back to our house, and Jas and I discussed the usual things that we've been gnawing at like bones for thirty years over coffee. Then he suggested that we go for a walk becaue he wanted to see Dave's little camping compound in the woods. So we strolled out the driveway and over to the right of way on our neighbor's property that leads past the water company's little chlorine gas danger building and then past the little strongly fenced enclosure that I think has something to do with the sewer interceptor. That right of way took us back onto our property and put us on the path I keep mowed along the sewer line right of way.
Incidently, our neighbor may not know that the right of way on his three quarter acre suburban lot is not necessarily intended for use by private guys with tractors like me who are too lazy to make a ford across the big creek to allow easier direct access to the other side of their property, so if you see him don't say anything.
Anyway, Jas and I shortly came to where the side path leads to Dave's kraal, for that's what it's become, in the woods. Dave has been more or less been living back there in our woods, happy as a clam or a Masai, for a few years, but the kraal is new this year. Formerly Dave moved around between three or four little campsites where he would simply stretch his hammock between trees but he became more ambitious this year as the cold has started to come on. He now has a little low cabin made of cast off lumber, surrounded by a brush stockade which is quite impressive. Dave doesn't have any livestock in his kraal; but he does have a little semicircular seating area aound the firepit in front of his cabin for visitors.
By a miracle Dave was home at about noon when Jas and I stopped by. I say a miracle because the other day was the very first time I've ever come upon Dave sleeping in any of his campsites in all the times I've walked or driven my tractor over there. A bit inconvenient - I will no longer be able to say to the neighbors or the police that I don't actually know for a fact that Dave sleeps in the woods. Dave has always been elusive. I usually see him coming or going from his dad's house up in the neighborhood on the other side, or I see him on the paths, seldom more than once every couple weeks.
Jas and I spent a few minutes talking with Dave, learning that he's making a longbow, inspired no doubt by Chris the bowhunter who just got his first deer with a longbow a few weeks ago. Dave also told us that it was Chris who made the deer that died of natural causes a couple of weeks ago right near the pond disappear from the place where I dragged it with the tractor. Dave said Chris dragged the deer to a low spot in a gully where it will decompose faster. A mystey solved!
When we were done talking with Dave, Jas and I continued up the paths toward the old house on Route 29. And who should we encounter but Dan who was fueling his chainsaw. I gave Dan permission to cut wood on the property earlier in the fall because I want the field behind the Route 29 house to become a pasture. And Dan needs the money he's been earning by selling firewood since he's out of work. So far he's cleared about an acre of our land, doing a very nice job of it. The stumps are cut low enough so I'll be able to keep it mown without trouble.
It was at that point that Jas suggested lunch at the new Ray's across 29, his treat. Dan commented that he had found the hamburgers at Ray's very good, but considered the french fries a bit greasy. We found him to be right about the french fries, but thought them greasy in a good way, like Boardwalk Fries in Atlantic City. Route 29 isn't Park Place quite yet; but it's come a very long way from the two lane road with no shoulders that it was back in 1978 when we bought this property. It's now three lanes wide in front of the our old house there, and four lanes wide just up the way where the commercial office buildings are across from the big new Wawa.
I doubt that a single one of the pharmaceutical company yuppies who endlessly zip back and forth along that road are aware that Dan is patiently clearcutting in the woods behind a screen of trees and brush that I suggested he leave standing for the moment, piling up dozens of cords of firewood, about seventy yards away. I'm practically certain that not a one of them is aware that Dave is happily living in his kraal, making a longbow and practicing with his sling, generally living a bit of the life of a solitary pre-industrial Masai or Navajo, less than three hundred yards away from their bustle.
For God's sake don't tell them any of this. The new world those yuppies are making is an excellent, a fantastic, world, containing many new wonders; but I like being able to come across older style wonders as well.
Postscript: It would be wrong of me to close this out without mentioning that I just saw that Al Martino died yesterday at 82. Al got his start as a crooner in South Philly back in 1952, the year that Sam was born, and the year before Jas was born, when I was four and just becoming aware of the wonders in the world. http://tinyurl.com/Al-Martino-Dead-at-82
We would go into Chatlin's Department Store and marvel at the toys, which were up on the fourth floor as I recall. Days of Wonder! Erector Sets and cap guns and bows and arrows and Daisy Air Rifles; and a Lionel Train display with working trains going around and around the tracks. Chatlin's display of trains was almost as big as the one Uncle Froggy used to set up in the combination living room and dining room of Grandmom and Grandpop's row house up on Walnut Street.
All four floors of that old Chatlin's would be lost within one corner of the Best Buy. The place is as big as an aircraft hangar. And it's positively crammed with toys for boys that would have been beyond our wildest imaginings back in the 1950's. The TV in our old house on Penn Street had about an 8 inch screen on which little cowboys and indians may have ridden; but I can't remember ever seeing that TV on. That was no terrible hardship because Uncle Chick and Aunt Mary had a big screen TV next door. Their TV was the most amazing thing I ever spent much time with until Uncle Froggy got the first color set any of us had seen in the 1960's.
I watched Hopalong Cassidy with Uncle Chick on many and many a Saturday morning, both of us lying on the floor with our noses a few inches from the twelve inch screen. Uncle Chick was a big kid on those Saturday mornings. He was also a Slovak, the only Slovak I knew. So I thought for quite a while that all Slovaks were big kids, just as I thought all South Philly Italians were big kids because Uncle Froggy was a big kid.
Uncle Froggy lived in Norristown, but he had grown up in Philly and you could tell. He acted like a kid much more than my other uncles. First off, he was a fireman, and when the fire siren sounded he went running. Plus, he drove a big dump truck around as his regular job. But he seemed to go where he wanted pretty much as he pleased with that dump truck. He was sort of like a foster son of the guy who owned the mill where the dump truck was supposed to be; so I guess nobody was keeping real close tabs on him. He also did unusual things when he worked the counter down at Babe's luncheonette. If me or Matty or Sonny went in there and gave him a quarter for a lemonade he would give us a big lemonade, and he would also give us three or four dimes and a nickel back as change. I was pretty little when we still lived in Norristown; but even when I was little I knew that getting four dimes and a nickel back as change for a quarter was unusual.
But I need to stop dwelling on my first childhood and get back to the present one. . .
The Best Buy has a wall of big screen TVs that's about a hundred yards long. Jas and I started off at the left end looking at the little 40 inch sets and then strolled up the marching line of sets until we got to the end of the selection of 55 inchers that cap off the display. In the cavern of the Best Buy those 55 inchers are suprisingly small looking even though any one of them is probably as big as the table in Aunt Mary R's kitchen that would hold enough meat ravioli to feed the 20 or so of us who would eat around it in shifts on Christmas Day because the dining room was, of course, filled with Uncle Froggy's train layout. Matty used to crawl under the train table and pop up through the hole in the middle of it to run the display.
After spending a good bit of time with the TVs we moved along to the laptop computers, the very smallest of which has a screen about the size of Uncle Froggy's first color TV set. The people on those laptop screens don't have green faces and the grass on them is not blue.
But enough of the Best Buy. We left there after spending some time with the young pup salesman near the laptops and learning that he had to go ask somebody else what the difference is between 3G network and a 4G network, or whatever, which Jas wanted to know for some reason. As if either of us would have understood the answer even assuming the salesman had come back with a coherent answer. I just looked up the matter on Wikipedia and I still don't think I understand it even though Wiki probably does have a coherent answer.
I made coffee when we got back to our house, and Jas and I discussed the usual things that we've been gnawing at like bones for thirty years over coffee. Then he suggested that we go for a walk becaue he wanted to see Dave's little camping compound in the woods. So we strolled out the driveway and over to the right of way on our neighbor's property that leads past the water company's little chlorine gas danger building and then past the little strongly fenced enclosure that I think has something to do with the sewer interceptor. That right of way took us back onto our property and put us on the path I keep mowed along the sewer line right of way.
Incidently, our neighbor may not know that the right of way on his three quarter acre suburban lot is not necessarily intended for use by private guys with tractors like me who are too lazy to make a ford across the big creek to allow easier direct access to the other side of their property, so if you see him don't say anything.
Anyway, Jas and I shortly came to where the side path leads to Dave's kraal, for that's what it's become, in the woods. Dave has been more or less been living back there in our woods, happy as a clam or a Masai, for a few years, but the kraal is new this year. Formerly Dave moved around between three or four little campsites where he would simply stretch his hammock between trees but he became more ambitious this year as the cold has started to come on. He now has a little low cabin made of cast off lumber, surrounded by a brush stockade which is quite impressive. Dave doesn't have any livestock in his kraal; but he does have a little semicircular seating area aound the firepit in front of his cabin for visitors.
By a miracle Dave was home at about noon when Jas and I stopped by. I say a miracle because the other day was the very first time I've ever come upon Dave sleeping in any of his campsites in all the times I've walked or driven my tractor over there. A bit inconvenient - I will no longer be able to say to the neighbors or the police that I don't actually know for a fact that Dave sleeps in the woods. Dave has always been elusive. I usually see him coming or going from his dad's house up in the neighborhood on the other side, or I see him on the paths, seldom more than once every couple weeks.
Jas and I spent a few minutes talking with Dave, learning that he's making a longbow, inspired no doubt by Chris the bowhunter who just got his first deer with a longbow a few weeks ago. Dave also told us that it was Chris who made the deer that died of natural causes a couple of weeks ago right near the pond disappear from the place where I dragged it with the tractor. Dave said Chris dragged the deer to a low spot in a gully where it will decompose faster. A mystey solved!
When we were done talking with Dave, Jas and I continued up the paths toward the old house on Route 29. And who should we encounter but Dan who was fueling his chainsaw. I gave Dan permission to cut wood on the property earlier in the fall because I want the field behind the Route 29 house to become a pasture. And Dan needs the money he's been earning by selling firewood since he's out of work. So far he's cleared about an acre of our land, doing a very nice job of it. The stumps are cut low enough so I'll be able to keep it mown without trouble.
It was at that point that Jas suggested lunch at the new Ray's across 29, his treat. Dan commented that he had found the hamburgers at Ray's very good, but considered the french fries a bit greasy. We found him to be right about the french fries, but thought them greasy in a good way, like Boardwalk Fries in Atlantic City. Route 29 isn't Park Place quite yet; but it's come a very long way from the two lane road with no shoulders that it was back in 1978 when we bought this property. It's now three lanes wide in front of the our old house there, and four lanes wide just up the way where the commercial office buildings are across from the big new Wawa.
I doubt that a single one of the pharmaceutical company yuppies who endlessly zip back and forth along that road are aware that Dan is patiently clearcutting in the woods behind a screen of trees and brush that I suggested he leave standing for the moment, piling up dozens of cords of firewood, about seventy yards away. I'm practically certain that not a one of them is aware that Dave is happily living in his kraal, making a longbow and practicing with his sling, generally living a bit of the life of a solitary pre-industrial Masai or Navajo, less than three hundred yards away from their bustle.
For God's sake don't tell them any of this. The new world those yuppies are making is an excellent, a fantastic, world, containing many new wonders; but I like being able to come across older style wonders as well.
Postscript: It would be wrong of me to close this out without mentioning that I just saw that Al Martino died yesterday at 82. Al got his start as a crooner in South Philly back in 1952, the year that Sam was born, and the year before Jas was born, when I was four and just becoming aware of the wonders in the world. http://tinyurl.com/Al-Martino-Dead-at-82
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