What have you done, o Sunflower, to hang your head so?
I’d say, “Open thread,” but the posts here are a whole lot of open and not a lot of thread.
The Sunflower Is Ashamed
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Author: Brian J. Noggle
I Had Just Discovered Eydie Gorme
Popular singer Eydie Gorme dies at 84:
Eydie Gorme, a popular nightclub and television singer as a solo act and as a team with her husband, Steve Lawrence, has died. She was 84.
I bought Blame It On The Bossa Nova recently; I got it on vinyl at either the spring Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library or at the local antique mall. We’ve listened to it a number of times, including her biggest solo hit:
I just last week got one of her Spanish titles on CD, Canta en Español.
What a wonderful voice, silenced. Rest peacefully.
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The Wheels Within Wheels Come Off
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has ties to an organization to defend Republican Paul Ryan:
The arm of the Mark Zuckerberg-backed immigration reform group that focuses on conservatives is going on air in Milwaukee with a pro-reform spot defending Rep. Paul Ryan, POLITICO has learned.
Americans for a Conservative [sic] Direction bought roughly $350,000 worth of TV time targeted toward Ryan’s district, a source tracking the air wars said.
Now notice the subtlety here: The pro-immigration amnesty group has the name Americans for a Conservative Direction to fool the simple mouth-breathing conservatives into thinking the group is conservative. You know, sadly, the same kind of low-information conservatives who turned out for Todd Akin in the primary when Claire McCaskill said Todd Akin was too conservative for Missouri.
So this CINO organization is helping Ryan out to bolster him because he might or does support the immigration reform thing going on in Washington.
But, unfortunately, some low-information liberals who nominally support the effort that the Americans for a Conservative [sic] direction support don’t see the ruse as demonstrated by a tweet:
Mark Zuckerberg is funding GOP asshat Paul Ryan through a shell group. Yet another reason you should not use Facebook.
Unfortunately, even though Zuckerberg is not a conservative, his action here does a two-fer: It helps a Republican through supporting a nominally liberal cause, and it makes out like big business through shell corporations and corporate money is helping the Republicans, which is an illusion that gins up the liberal base. So even if it hurts Facebook or Zuckerberg in the short term, it still helps the liberal cause.
* I include [sic] with the description conservative in the name of the organization because there’s no way this reform ‘conserves’ anything. As with many ‘conservative’ policies, I disagree with some of the loudest, most self-appointed guardians of the Conservative Flame in thinking that the immigration reform is A Very Big Deal. No, it’s a small deal that exacerbates existing problems in the country–namely, too much public spending on social programs, the immersion of the individual into the tribe, too much centralized control through the Washington machine. But it’s a symptom, not the cause, and the rifts this particular Hill to Die On creates in the country and in the Republican Party are far more damaging than the particular legislative package.
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Draw the Trauma Out
As seen on Amazon:
You know what’s more humane to a cat than a declaw? Holding a cat down every month while you glue some press-on nails on each and every one of its claws, that’s what!
I’m surprised that the “Customers Also Bought With This Item” section did not include gauze, bandages, and scale mail armor. (Not chain mail, because that catches the cat’s claws uncomfortably. Take my word for it.)
We recently integrated three cats into our household as house-only cats, and at first the veterinarian was not in favor of a declaw and counseled us lightly against it. But as the end of their first week of isolation in my office, I thought about them moving into the household where, as we enter middle age, we’re getting nice furniture, and I decided to blunt them.
In my mind, here’s the humane scale:
- They have a procedure, use special litter for a couple weeks, and get the run of the household with a loving family for the rest of their lives.
- They don’t get declawed, and we worry every day of our lives that they will damage something. And when they damage something, we mourn it and/or have it repaired and worry every day that they will damage it again and/or shred our other declawed cats, which they very well might.
- We either before or after something or somecat has been damaged place the bladed cats with someone else who might not take as good of care as them as we do.
- We wrestle with them every month to get these things on them.
Some people have strange ideas of the humane treatment of animals. Forcing a cat to take medicine is bad enough. This sounds like torture to both the humans and the cats.
But I have made the links above Amazon Associates links, just in case you disagree and I can profit from your naiveté.
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You Know Who Lives In Huntleigh?
Huntleigh ranks as richest U.S. community:
According to the “Wall Street Cheat Sheet,” our fair burgh has the fairest of them all when it comes to the richest communities in the U.S., based on the annual income of the top five percent of earners in the community.
Huntleigh, conveniently tucked between poor neighbors Ladue and Frontenac, has a median income of about $2.7 million for those five-percenters.
You know who lives in Huntleigh? John Donnelly, that’s who.
Yeah, I keep flogging that book, but I’m really excited about it. Sometime in the next three or four years, I’ll probably sell my 100th copy of it.
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You Will Never Again Experience MfBJN The Way It Was Intended
Firefox 23 nixes support for outdated blink HTML tag:
Mozilla announced on Tuesday that Firefox 23, the latest version of its browser, will not support the HTML tag blink.
I’ve used that tag for years, off and on, on this blog. I’ll be sad to see it go.
Frankly, it’s just a case of the cool designers finally promulgating their disdain for a particular tag. Heaven forfend the hipsters start thinking that italics look weird.
(Link via VodkaPundit.)
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Book Report: Realm of Numbers by Isaac Asimov (1959, 1967)
I have tried to read this book many times in the years past; the first time, actually, was when I needed something portable to stick in my pocket so I could read it at the airport while waiting for my sainted mother’s flight to arrive. That, my friends, was six or eight years ago.
So I stuck it in my pocket again recently and, since I’m running behind on my reading this year (I might crack forty books this year if I buckle down), I resolved to finish it. And I did.
But I bogged down a bit in the same spot as last time.
The first part of the book is as much history as mathematics: Asimov explores ancient civilizations and how they began enumerating and coming up with the basic concepts such as 0, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. So far, so good. Not only is this basic mathematics, but it’s history and narrative in nature. Then, when he gets to square roots, exponents, and higher order concepts, the history that makes the first half of it so easy and enjoyable to read evaporates, and he focuses on proofs and formulae. As such, the juice that made the book succulent dries up. Yeah, I learned some things, but some of it rolled right over me, and I was content to let it do so.
But at 140 pages, it can be a quick enough read once you give yourself permission to skim the formulae at the end. It’s also a bit of a gateway for me to acutely wanting to refresh my math skills. So if you’re into that sort of thing, give it a whirl. There are a couple of others in the line, Realm of Algebra and Realm of Measure, that I’ll keep my eye out for, but you don’t find a lot of Asimov at book sales and garage sales. Sadly, people have turned from informed and informative books like this to reality television and Twilight fan fiction tie-ups.
Books mentioned in this review:
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Rejected New Names for EADS
Vodkapundit comments on the renaming of EADS to Airbus Group and thinks it sounds like a band name.
Well, what would he have thought these names that they ultimately rejected?
- t.A.T.u. The Plane
- Jefferson Airbus
- The Ever Winner Airbus Group
- E.A.D.S.L.O.
- Oengo Boenigo
But, on the plus side, you can still call its employees Airbus Groupies.
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USDA To Lay Low, Wait Till The Heat Is Off
After the complaints of a local magician went viral, the U.S. Department of Agriculture delayed the enforcement of a new rule requiring businesses with animals to prepare emergency plans.
As of Wednesday, the requirement is temporarily off the books while the department looks into how it should be applied across the spectrum of animal businesses. They range from zoos and research facilities with thousands of animals to Marty Hahne, an Ozark man doing children’s magic shows who uses a single rabbit.
That is, the rule has not been rewritten or stricken from the books. Instead, it’s going to be examined. Maybe they’ll change it. Maybe they’ll just put it into effect when the public’s attention is elsewhere.
Hey, I should just be happy that OSHA has not decided that its regulations apply to software test users. After all, I put those poor virtual people through hell every day.
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Book Report: Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein (1947, 1981)
This book is one of Heinlein’s young adult rocket jockey pieces, the ones that made him famous and wealthy enough to do his longer, adult sleep-with-your-mother books later.
The book is set in the near future of its publication date (1947). A trio of high school seniors build a rocket in their back yard (roughly). It fails on launch testing, but their steady improvement has brought their attention to a government scientist, a sort of maverick, who happens to be the uncle of one of them. He has them join him in building and outfitting a real rocket on the cheap (government funds are tight, you know) and flying to the moon. When they get there, they pick up radio signals from someone who has beaten them to it… Nazis!
In the 21st century, the book is an artifact. Nazis have been played for fictional foils in the seventy years beyond their actual shelf life, but in 1947 and shortly thereafter, there must have been a real fear of redoubts of holdouts in places like South America. Going to the moon must have seemed like quite a dream. And high school students with that ability and interest? They must have been more common then.
The book depressed me a bit on the meta level. Here was young adult literature in America’s prime. Science lectures wrapped into it, reasoning skills emphasized, and every boy is a tinkerer and a good shot. Some kids who read this book probably went on to make the trip to the moon a reality. Meanwhile, in 2013, young adult fiction is all fantasy, vampires, and intrigues. Not what man can do, unless man is doing it to another man for some slight advantage.
One could argue that we’ve really lost something in how we entertain our young and what aspirations it leads them to. But one would probably waste one’s time.
Books mentioned in this review:
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Topical Music
First, the song “Fistfight in the Waffle House”:
Now, the story: Waffle House Armed Robber Gets the Surprise of a Lifetime When Customer Decides to Fight Back With a Gun:
An Atlanta crook picked the wrong Waffle House to target early Monday morning. That’s because when the bandana and hoodie-wearing bandit walked into the restaurant and pointed a gun at patrons, one of them reached for his gun and fired back.
Brothers and sisters, that is D.U.M. dumb. It’s a scientific fact that there are more guns in your Georgia Waffle House at any time of day or night than at your local Friends of the NRA meeting.
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Unintended Consequences: Homeland Security Causes Job Loss
Well, I’m only speculating here, but no doubt future numbers will bear out that domestic drone surveillance use is or will soon cause big problems in the home skylight industry.
On the other hand, I’m looking forward to my new career as a home skylight tinfoil cover installer.
(Link via Ace of Spades HQ.)
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Book Report: The Phantom of the Footbridge by Ron Boutwell (1999, 2006)
I picked up this book at the local used bookstore in its local interest section, but it doesn’t seem to be available online even though Springfield is lousy with them. It was published by a local Christian theatre company, and its protagonist is a young pastor who takes over a church (that later becomes the playhouse of the theatre company) in 1925. On his walk from the train station to the boarding house where he’s staying, a hooded figure meets him on a footbridge and tells the new arrival that he will bring a child who needs help tomorrow night, and the pastor must help him. This is the phantom of the footbridge.
It’s a very short novel–140 pages–carries with it more than a hint of Dickens in its plotting and characters. Unfortunately, the execution is not as picturesque as Dickens, but the author did a lot of research on the environs of North Springfield in the middle 1920s, and he makes sure to mention every landmark that people pass as they walk (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But the story lacks in those bits.
But I enjoyed it enough in its expository way.
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Book Report: Let It Rot by Stu Campbell (1975, 1990)
I bought this book some time ago when I first got into gardening, since I’d heard that composting was all the rage, and I wanted to learn more about it. I’ve been doing some “composting in place” — basically you take some organic material, toss it in your garden, and throw some dirt on it — but I got some extra material from trimming back some bushes and the bucket in which we kept our kitchen scraps was getting full. So it was time to read this book.
It covers a variety of information not only about the history of composting, but also some different strategies, enclosures, basic scientific principles of it, and overall, how neat composting is.
But I won’t be doing it seriously.
Because, brothers, composting is work. It’s not a matter of just throwing waste you generate in your yard and your kitchen into a pile and watering it and turning it every once in a while. For starters, to get the best compost, you’ve got to go out and seek things that you don’t have, or at least I don’t have, including different kinds of organic material, manure, and so on. Secondly, he talks about six inches of this, three inches of that, and inch of this, and then repeating it. That’s a compost berm. Come on, I’m not interesting in rebuilding Cahokia Mounds here.
I can buy the soil amendments I need, even organic compost, in the quantities I need to make my soil better for what bit of gardening I do. Given how little time I have of late to actually get out there and weed or pick ripe vegetables and fruit, I don’t need to take on another bit of labor for it based in the neatness of it or the protection of Mother Gaia.
Still, I learned a lot that I’ll never use, except maybe to make some compost tea–that is, let rain collect in my scraps bucket and water with that–and perhaps consider a little tumbler. But I’m not going to be a proper composter, and I never would have given up on that thought without this book. So I guess I can say it changed my life.
Books mentioned in this review:
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Have a Nightmare on Me
Giant carnivorous, venomous centipedes here in the Ozarks? You betcha:
“I was climbing up to Devil’s Tea Table down near Kissee Mills and grabbed a stick to pull myself up,” Maynard recalled about his July 17 hiking trip. “This thing was on the back side of the stick and got me on my right index finger. It felt like someone had stuck a hot soldering iron under my skin.”
Maynard had inadvertently grabbed a 6-inch giant red-headed centipede, and it bit him with its two sharp fangs, injecting venom that caused his finger to immediately swell. Sweating from pain, he knew he was in trouble.
. . . .
The 6-incher that bit Maynard was a pipsqueak. Miller said giant red-headed centipedes can grow upwards of 10 inches in length.
. . . .
Unlike spiders that inject venom into their prey and then suck out the insides, Miller said, giant red-headed centipedes eat all of the creatures they catch, ranging from other centipedes and insects to small frogs and lizards. The centipedes actively hunt at night…
Frankly, the title of the horror movie would be The Centipedes Hunt At Night.
UPDATE Thanks for the link, Mr. Hill. Hey, readers, don’t forget my novel John Donnelly’s Gold is available for $.99 Kindle and in other formats. Charles Hill himself said of John Donnelly’s Gold:
This really should not have worked as a novel: technical descriptions tend toward the mundane, and most of the techies I know are decidedly short on drama. What makes this worth your time is Noggle’s attention to detail: J. Random Noob will appreciate the extra exposition, and your local expert will nod, “Yeah, that’s exactly the way I’d do that. If I were going to do that, which of course I’m not.” There might be a hair too much geographical exposition — by the time you’re finished you should be able to hire on as a cab driver in St. Louis County — but no matter about that. The plot is more than sufficiently twisty; I’m pleased to report that I did not even come close to predicting the way it ended. And if the dialogue meanders a bit, hey, that’s the way these people talk. I’ve heard them, and so have you.
Doesn’t that sound like it’s worth a dollar?
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The Penpenultimate
Instapundit links to an Amazon deal, the “The Ultimate Matrix Collection” on Blu-ray.
You know what I call “The Ultimate Matrix Collection”?
A DVD of just The Matrix.
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VodkaPundit Channels QAHY
VodkaPundit’s Friday Night Video is last week’s QA Music: "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen.
Steve says:
I first become aware of this song — and Leonard Cohen — in the 1990 Christian Slater vehicle, Pump Up the Volume.
. . . .
It’s impossible to convey my disappointment that long-ago summer when I picked up the soundtrack, only to find it featured an inferior Concrete Blonde cover of “Everybody Knows.”
As I alluded to in my book report on Leonard Cohen’s Selected Poems 1956-1968, actually discovering who sang the version that appeared in the movie throughout except for the scene in the Jeep. In those days before the Internet, if you heard a song but not the artist, it could take aeons before you tracked it down. It took me years of radio listening to catch onto who sang “Baker Street” (Gerry Rafferty) or “Hungry Heart” (Bruce Springsteen). You could ask around, but my cohort at the time didn’t listen to older music. I suppose I could have called the radio station, but it was never that pressing.
At any rate, once I associated Leonard Cohen’s name with the song (Was it in the closing credits? Was it an article about the film? I forget), I went right up to Camelot Music to get a cassette version of I’m Your Man. I’ve since replaced the cassette with a CD and ripped it into iTunes, which explains why I was listening to it just a couple of weeks ago.
Here’s the version I put on the other blog, which has scenes from the film:
Also, there’s no telling yet what Mr. Green thinks of Meco. If he thinks of Meco.
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Some Swedish Total Recall-Style Plot in Jeopardy
Man found in California motel awakens with amnesia:
Doctors are looking into the mystery of a Florida man who awoke speaking only Swedish, with no memory of his past, after he was found unconscious four months ago at a Southern California motel.
Michael Boatwright, 61, woke up with amnesia, calling himself Johan Ek, The Desert Sun reported (http://mydesert.co/145PNGw ).
Boatwright was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room in Palm Springs in February. After police arrived, he was transported to the Desert Regional Medical Center where he woke up.
Hospital officials said Boatwright may have been in town for a tennis tournament in the Coachella Valley. He was found with a duffel bag of exercise clothes, a backpack and tennis rackets. He also carried four forms of identification — a passport, a California identification card, a veteran’s medical card and a Social Security card — all of which identified him as Michael Thomas Boatwright.
A botched memory implant, a double life, extensive skills with weaponry (albeit medieval weaponry), foreign bank accounts….
It looks as though a Swedish plot to infiltrate the United States has gone awry. Or is that what they want us to think?
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A Wounded Animal Lashes Out
Asiana to sue San Francisco TV station over names:
Asiana announced Monday that it will sue a San Francisco TV station that it said damaged the airline’s reputation by using bogus and racially offensive names for four pilots on a plane that crashed earlier this month in San Francisco.
You know, I think it was something else in this incident that might have harmed Asiana’s reputation far more than a juvenile prank.
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Road Travel Safety Tip
Always drive with your hands on the wheel at the ten o’clock and the two o’clock position.
This can obstruct or obscure your spouse’s view of the speedometer and avoid commentary upon how fast you’re driving.
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