3574 The 648th

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Everyone takes the limits of their own vision for the limits of the world.

-- Schopenhauer --

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This post will be of interest mainly to my sister.  I'm posting here rather than writing her an email so I can keep the links handy for myself, too.

A while ago another blogger mentioned the "Endless Mountains" in northeastern Pennsylvania.  I was in high school in that area when the contest was run to name the mountains (which are not mountains at all, but an eroded plateau).  I searched the internet to see if I could get any information on why that was the winning entry (we all thought it was a stupid and arrogant choice), but the contest isn't mentioned anywhere.

However, I did stumble on a lot of info on the 648th Radar Squadron, Benton AFS.  Seems like a lot of alumni of the base want to remember the place - unbelievable, but true.

(For those reading this who are not my sister and don't already know, the base was on top of Red Rock mountain, next door to Ricketts Glen State Park, in a deserted and man-forsaken section of northeastern  Pennsylvania.  That's where I lived through high school.  It's isolated with a capital "I", with some of the worst weather anywhere.  We actually had an Independence Day picnic cancelled one year because it snowed.)

What I've found:

Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benton_Air_Force_Station.

Unit page (sorta like "classmates.com"), 20 members, plus me - I joined so I could see the roster and read the notes.  Nobody there I remember.  There's an email address in the notes for some guy who is looking for information on commanders, history, etc. http://unitpages.military.com/unitpages/unit.do?id=712468.  If you have info, Sister, maybe you could contact him?

Wilkes Barre "Times Leader" article on the history.  http://www.radomes.org/museum/documents/BentonAFSPAlookingback.html

The most interesting pages: http://www.radomes.org/museum/showsite.php?site=Benton+AFS,+PA
Has links to photos (snork!  I've got better ones!  Maybe if I can locate them, I'll send them.) and all kinds of info, including a roster of 80 people who had been stationed there (including email addresses for most).    80 isn't many, considering that at any one time there were at least 200 men stationed there, and they rotated in and out every two to four years for twenty-five years.  The list does not include:
Lt. Burchard (on whom I had the worst crush)
Sgt Joe Prevost
Sgt Giddens
Sgt Obie Philpot
Maj Warren Munson
Airman Tom Nichols
Our father, who was head radar honcho and commander for most of that period!  He was the first radar officer when the base opened in 1951, and was off and on associated with the base for the next umpteen years, including as commander.  But nobody remembers him?**


There are a lot more missing whose names I can't recall, but if I saw them on the list I'd recognize the names.  There's a button for adding names, but I hesitate to add any because I'm not sure of dates, first names, functions, ranks, and so on.  I think people have been adding themselves and their friends.

By the way, I'm pretty sure it was Daddy who designed that early emblem with the bat.  The really ugly one that embarrassingly displays no understanding whatsoever of a bat's anatomy. 

So, Sister, do you remember anyone else who was there and is not on the list?  Are there any on the list you'd like to contact?  Know a guy named Dave Schwartz whose father was stationed there (his email can be found at http://www.radomes.org/museum/guestbook.php?guestfile=2005/guest200507.txt)?

I also found this bit of special interest at http://www.ufoinfo.com/filer/1999/ff9936.shtml.  It's a bit more detailed than the item you, Sister, had sent me about the same topic.  Since few people follow links, I'm incorporating it verbatim:

PENNSYLVANIA ABDUCTION FROM AIR FORCE BASE

BENTON AIR FORCE STATION --I retired from the Air Force in 1990 as a Chief Master Sergeant. I was on the SAC Nuclear Disablement Team for many years. We would respond to any incidents/accidents or problems with nuclear weapons. I know of an incident that occurred on March 5, 1965, at Benton Air Force Station, Red Rock, Pennsylvania. Benton was part of the Air Defense Command Interior Radar Defense Zone. Two radar technicians (one being my brother) were repairing the height finder radar antenna located northeast of the 648th Radar Squadron site. An "object" described by my brother as being a small saucer shaped object landed nearby. The two technicians decided to investigate. As they approached the saucer, a beam of light came out and struck both technicians. That was the last they could remember, and they failed to report to their command post. Air Policeman went to search for the two technicians, but they could not be found. All their tools and equipment were located near the antenna they were fixing. The Pennsylvania State Police were alerted and a search of the area began. Sixteen hours later, a state trooper found the two technicians walking on Route 487 about 10 miles from the site south of Lopez. The two technicians seemed dazed and were transported to a hospital in Williamsport. They were examined and found to be dehydrated and confused. No alcohol or drugs were found in their system. They were later transferred to an Air Force Hospital at Stewart AFB, NY. Trace amounts of alpha radiation were found on their clothing and strange marks were discovered on their necks.
Special Agents from the Office of Special Investigations interviewed the technicians. They related their story up to the point of the beam of light. They could not remember anything after that. A psychiatrist wrote in the report that each technician experienced something they could not fully explain! They both spent two weeks in the hospital and were released back to their unit. My brother was reexamined at the Air Force Psychiatric Center, Sheppard AFB, TX in 1966. During a session with an Air Force psychiatrist, the doctor asked him if he thought he was abducted by extraterrestrial visitors! That was the first time anyone ever mentioned a UFO connection to my brother. My brother thought the Air Force knew. He told me years after the incident, he had nightmares about creatures poking instruments into his eyes, ears, and mouth. My brother served out his tour and was honorably discharged. He went onto college and worked for Boeing Aircraft Corporation until he retired in 1994. He won't speak about the incident. Thanks to CMSgt. Walter.

You do know that Daddy had been working on Project Blue Book during that period he was at Wright-Patterson?

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**Actually, I did meet someone once who did remember Daddy.  When Jay and I went to Daughter's graduation from Penn State, we stayed at a B&B in Bellefonte.  The host asked where we were from, and when I said I had grown up on Red Rock, we learned that we both had been there at the same time.  He'd been an airman.  When I told him who my father was, his face darkened, and he said, "I hope you don't mind, but I have to say, your father was a tough SOB.  A royal bastard."  I said, "Yeah.  I know.  I can show you scars."
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3573 Sense

Friday, July 13 (Eek! Friday the thirteenth!), 2012

"Realistic" and "afraid of failing" do not mean the same thing.

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Wow.  Really think about that green quote.  It can be interpreted and applied several different ways, all instructive.

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I'm reading a book of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which includes "The  Curious Case of Benjamin Button".  In that story, I found the following sentence:  "In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and more attracted by the gay side of life."

I can't help wondering what today's youth make of that.

Fitzgerald uses the word "gay" at lot, in the 1930s "carefree fun" sense.  It has completely lost that meaning now.  Also, I wonder what younger folks make of the expression "social intercourse".  Do they think it means friends with benefits?

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Hal, the BMW, "threw a code" the other day.  Ever since they put computers and sensors in cars, my cars have "thrown codes" with scary indicator lights which required a trip to a service bay, pretty regularly, it seems.  They tell us that the purpose of the sensors is to warn us of problems before they get big enough to damage the cars.

Yeah.  Uh-huh.

I'm ready to yell "BULL POOPY!" to that.  It seems to me that the sole purpose is to create service business, because not once, ever, has the sensor indicated a real problem!  In every single case, without exception, it has been diagnosed as a "bad sensor", which gets replaced.

I think we're getting ripped off.  You'd think that if the sensors were doing any good, in the past twenty years they'd have come up with better ones that didn't crap out and cry wolf all the time. 
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3572 Rant on a very scary platform

Thursday, July 12, 2012

What you think, you become.

-- Buddha --

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I know a few people who are worried about Sharia law creeping into US courts.  Well, if that worries you, don't look at your Muslim neighbors - look at Texan Republicans.  The Christian Taliban is here, and it's centered in Texas.

The Texas Republican Platform is downright scary.  It hates everybody, especially gays and people of non-northwestern-European extraction.  It wants a very high national sales tax (something like 25%?) instead of an income tax.  (Note that rich people spend a much smaller percentage of their income on taxable goods than poor people, so that the burden of a high sales tax falls most heavily on those who can least afford it.) If you can't afford health care, and can't manage to keep a full-time job with a company that provides it, then you obviously don't deserve to live.  It guts education budgets.  Lots of scary stuff. 

From the platform (the link is mine, and the red is my emphasis):

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification)[Silk note - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_order_thinking_skills], critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority"

{Note - since the furor, they have claimed the "critical thinking" part is an error - note that it's still there - but they stand by the "challenging the student's fixed beliefs (a buzz word for indoctrination?) and undermining parental authority" part.}

They want to stick to teaching only rote facts, and their approved "facts" only.  They want to raise a generation of children who cannot think logically and critically, who have actively been taught not to think for themselves.  Well, of course.  People who are taught to obey authority and not think logically and critically for themselves are much easier to control.

Fiendishly clever.  Dumb down the populace, discourage critical thinking, teach them to believe what they are told by the authorities (while your own children go to private schools in Switzerland or even Canada), then you can control them, and they will like it!  They'll even think you're taking care of them.

Turn them all into sheeple. Good little sheeple.

Louisiana school textbooks are also in the news.   They have been reducing school budgets, too.  They really want to change from public schools to all private (read that as conservative Christian) schools, run on a voucher system.  Yeah, Christian, and ideally only Christian religious schools.  Jewish and non-sectarian schools are finding it difficult to get approved for the vouchers, let alone Muslim schools. (An aside - is that even constitutional?  Vouchers is still tax money.)

There are three publishers of textbooks approved for those schools, and those books are ridiculous.  For example, one of the books teaches that dinosaurs were fire-breathing dragons. Another claims that the Loch Ness Monster is real, and has been proven to be a pleisosaur (even the Scots are laughing at that).  Therefore, since man and dinosaurs are currently coexisting, this conclusively disproves evolution.

What!?

Do they even know what the theory of evolution says? Do they have any concept of what it means to "prove" or "disprove"? Are they aware that there are many living dinosaurs, near-dinosaurs, and dinosaur-era flora and fauna all over the place? Like the coelacanth? Alligators and crocodiles? Cockroaches? Ginko trees? Ferns? Bacteria? Oh, foo. I forgot - we're not allowed any logic or critical thinking.

I almost wish the south would just secede again.  You know, I think the north would just let them go this time.

There's commentary on the topics of the Texas Republican Platform and Louisiana textbooks all over the internet.  The weekend's coming.  Take some time to do some reading.  The US is becoming the laughingstock of the world.

Something to think about: What other countries oppress people's thought processes and allow ingorance to continue, with the approval and support of the government? 

The answer is frightening.

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It's best if you look up stuff yourself, but if you're unfamiliar with the use of search engines, here's a start:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/louisiana-students-loch-ness-monster-disprove-evolution_n_1624643.html#slide=more219313

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/07/01/texas-gop-platform/2/

http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2010RPTFinalPlatform.pdf
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3571 Throwing out books

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Everything we ever buy is either an investment or a liability.

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Every time I go to the country house I am overwhelmed by stuff, like, oh, say, the books.  I have literally thousands of books.    It has to be close to or over 5,000 books.  I am absolutely not bringing them all down here.  Maybe a few hundred of the best - the valuable ones, the ones I want to read again, the ones I haven't read yet, and a few of the reference books (like the Black's law dictionary, oriental rug and vintage jewelry guides, the encyclopedia of needlework, etc. - ones that address stuff the internet isn't as good at).   But I was stumped as to what to do with the rest.  There's just so many, and I couldn't bear the thought of throwing them out.

Then I read this:  http://magnificentnose.com/2011/05/16/i-can%E2%80%99t-believe-you%E2%80%99re-throwing-out-books/.   She's a librarian.  She throws out books.  At the link she describes why they are no good for donation, and her criteria.

She has given me reasons and courage.  I'll pick out what I want to keep, a few sets and modern bestsellers I'll sell, then open the rest to vultures.  Anything left over after vultures have picked through I think I can throw out without too much pain.  Hey, vultures didn't even want them.
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3570 Being evil

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Some people are energized by conflict.  If you aren’t, you will always lose if you play by their rules.

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Search hits:

I've got four posts (out of several thousand) that get repeated search hits.  In the fall and winter, the one on  how to pronounce Ashokan gets several hits per week, sometimes several a day.  Why fall and winter?  I don't know.  In the spring and early summer it's the one about tiny ants, again multiple hits per week, lately several per day.  Why spring and summer is obvious.  Year-round it's the one about the odd error message, maybe two hits a week.

The only other one that shows noticeable activity is the brain cancer timeline.

No one ever leaves a comment on any of them.  "Gee, thanks for the info" would be nice. 

Now I'm chuckling evilly to myself, because future searches for those terms will land them here, where I say nothing about those topics. Notice I didn't include links.  Snork.

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A "game" I never understood:

Telephone.  Where someone starts a sentence or two and it's whispered from person to person around the circle, and at the end it's very different.  The times I've participated it was presented as "an illustration of how gossip gets distorted in the telling".

Bull poopy.  The times I was in the circle it did not illustrate how gossip was honestly distorted.  It was an illustration of how people will perversely TRY to distort information.  They cheat.  Always, in every case, the person who whispered it to me purposely mumbled, spoke super quickly, and ran words together at an unnecessarily low and breathless volume.  It pissed me off because it was obvious that they were trying to make sure I didn't hear it. 

It would be more illustrative of the purpose if everyone in the circle could honestly say they'd tried to pass it clearly.  Then it would be a surprise that it still got distorted.

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Word confusions:

Along with loose/lose, sight/site, and all those others, add wander/wonder and in tact/intact.

At least four times in the past few days I've come across "professional" writers describing people as "wondering around" when they are walking aimlessly.  Hey, they aren't even pronounced the same.

I'm getting tired of people describing something which is unbroken as being in tact.  I should be grateful it's not "in tacked" I guess.

The telephone game is nothing.  Soon people won't understand each other at all.  Or worse, THINK they do when they don't.

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How childhood misunderstandings get stuck:

I was washing dishes and stacking the rinsed dishes in the drainer to air dry.  I was less than 8 years old - not sure how old, really.  My mother noticed I was rinsing them with cold water.  She got angry at me and said, "Cold water!  They'll NEVER dry!" and grabbed a dishtowel and started to dry them, slamming things around angrily.

That stuck.

It's stuck in my head now that if things get wet with cold water, they'll never dry.  Of course I know better now, but logic doesn't count. I think of it every time I wash dishes, rinse clothes, step in a puddle, get splashed by the garden hose, take a bathing suit off.  I'm still afraid they'll never dry, and there's a faint residual fear of mold.
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3569 Kindle Battery Fix.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Don't wait. Patience isn't a virtue, it's a plague.

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There seems to be a common problem with Kindle batteries.  They die.

When I first started using my Kindle, the battery lasted a very long time, like for weeks, even if I didn't turn it off but just let it go to sleep between uses.  Over the past few months, it's been getting very bad.  Now I have to charge it morning and night, and it's useless to take it with me anywhere I'll be waiting, because it will likely die in the waiting room.

Worse, if the device decides there's not enough power for WiFi (which eats the battery, so I keep it off) it won't start WiFi when you want it, which means you can't download any new books.  Even while mine is ON THE CHARGER! the WiFi won't start.

I searched both online and the info book that came on the Kindle.  It seems to be a common complaint.  The cure is Home->Menu->Settings->Restart.

Surprise.  My Kindle doesn't have a Restart under Settings. I bought it new for like 1/3 the regular price when the next upgrade was coming out, so I guess it's pre-"Restart" button.

I finally found a brief mention somewhere of an alternate restart procedure.  Turn it on, then hold the on/off switch to the right for at least 20 seconds, just like when you turn it off, but a minimum of 20 seconds.  When you next start it, it'll reload, and POW!  No more battery problems.

Mine is now acting just like new.
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3568 Fabric

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Do what you want, not what is expected of you. Otherwise you will hate your life.

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Whatever was wrong yesterday seems to have righted itself.  I was already feeling better by late afternoon.

I had been trying to find a local fabric store, with little success.  The closest one, a JoAnn, is a good 25 minutes south, so I went there yesterday.  I want to buy some fabric for some things for the Nugget, and maybe for some some curtains.  (I have always made all drapery and curtains for every house I've lived in.  I bought sheers and cafes for this house because --- I couldn't find a fabric store!)

I went to the JoAnn's yesterday evening, and I think I've found out why fabric stores are dying.  It's likely that no one is sewing much these days.  Not because nobody has the skills, but because the fabric prices are completely ridiculous! 

Think about a plain old simple lightweight woven cotton.  One yard.  Maybe with a print on it.  Woven by machine, yards and yards of it shooting out of the loom and into the print rollers, then out to a machine that rolls it around a slab of cardboard.  What is it about that fabric that makes it worth $12 to $16 a yard?

That's utterly ridiculous.  

That's almost $24 for enough to make an outfit for the Nugget (allowing for pattern matching and including waste).  $48 because the outfit I have in mind is reversible.  An outfit that we could buy anywhere for less than $15.

At one time in my life I made almost all my clothes.  There's no way I could do it now.  I couldn't afford to.

Greed has killed the market.

I guess these days sewing and fabric stores are just for unique things, like costumes, or special outfits that may as well be costumes.  Something that cannot be found in a department store, and that you are willing to take out a loan to pay for.

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I still don't understand English.  Singular is "wife".  Plural is "wives".  So why, if we changed the "f" to a "v", do we still add an "s"?  Same with "life", and "knife".

Is it because "wive" is a verb (as in to go a-wiving in Padua)?  But, but, but, why not "wifes" and "lifes" and "knifes" as the plural?  (Well, "knifes is different".  That is itself a verb, but "knive" is not.  Which is also confusing.)

Compare to "fife", and "strife".  There's NO RULE!

Why is English so arbitrary?
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3567 Something's wrong

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Being good at taking tests won't get you very far in life.

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(Snork.  There are a lot of Mensans who need to read the green quote above.  More than a few seem to think that high scores alone should somehow get them acclaim - even though they have accomplished little else in their lives.  In fact, too many are a burden.)

I'm feeling a little like April 2 of 2011, when I ended up in a White Plains hospital for four days, with a nasty kidney. 

I've still got the stone in the left kidney.  It can't be zapped because of my fragile capillaries.  But a plethora of tests over the past year has said it isn't moving and hasn't grown.  That doesn't mean I can't throw another stone, though, or that the right kidney is immune.

I've got that "something's off" feeling.
[But that could be the heat and oppressive humidity.]

I've got a pain in my lower back, in pretty much the same place as in April 2011.
[But I often have pain in my lower back, that's normal.  And it does seem to be sensitive to posture, which in theory the kidney wouldn't be.]

I keep feeling like I have to piddle and poop, just like in April 2011.
[But I ate a quinoa mix late Thursday that's given me all kinds of problems ever since.  Probably the dried onions in it.  It's been pretty obvious that my body wants to get rid of every trace of it.  The flatulence has been incredible, like an enormous blast every 15 minutes yesterday.]

I don't have any blatant nausea or fever, but my stomach does feel off.  For one thing, it's hanging out and I can't hold it in.  I don't want anything around my waist - not even panty elastic.  It feels like there's a rock inside, just above the navel.  And I'm not interested in food.  I feel like I've got a lump in my throat and a tiny touch of acid reflux.
[Well, ice cream sounds good.  Maybe it IS the heat and humidity, and the remaining effects of the quinoa.]

I feel blah, and I'm hoping it has nothing to do with the kidney. I'm hoping it all goes away pretty soon.
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3566 Letter to Laura

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Don't try to fix anyone.  It never works and can break you.

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In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, she knows that homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.  This letter to Laura has been floating around the internet.

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan,

James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus,
Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia
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3565 Flip of the lip

Saturday, July 7, 2012

When life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic.

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Verizon "news" has an article today about the recent propensity of politicians to use previously objectionable words, even when they know the microphone is on.  They give two examples of elected officials using the word "ass----".

Then it was Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's turn on Thursday at a news conference at which he discussed a shooting a few blocks from the center of the city's July Fourth celebration. He said he wasn't going to let the city's image be harmed by "some little ass---- 16-year-old."

I am confused by the placement of the "----".  When did "hole" become the naughty part, and and "ass" become acceptable?

I don't understand.
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3564 Bits

Friday, July 6, 2012

If you don't know, it doesn't hurt to ask. It does hurt if you don't.

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The Supreme Court recently ruled that life sentences (which some states mandate for certain crimes) for young offenders (below 18, I believe) is unconstitutional, being "cruel and unusual punishment", on the theory that someone that young is heavily externally influenced.  They may have had rotten upbringing, terrible adult models, a life of hopelessness, bad peer pressure which they are too young to resist, and so on, which must be taken into consideration.

Yeah, ok, I can see where they're going with it.  And yes, a lot of kids who did heinous things can still grow up into responsible adults with the right positive influence.

However, the ruling scares me because some of those kids are unredeemable.  They're already broken well past any chance of repair.  The thought of their being turned loose scares me.

I'm thinking of kids like those two in their early teens who kidnapped a toddler from a mall in England, and tortured him in multiple creative ways before finally killing him.

Who could torture a toddler?  There's something more wrong with those kids than just bad influences.

I do hope that all the Court shot down was state mandates, not judges' discretion. 

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Similar topic, some guy (18 when he committed the crimes, so the above doesn't apply) has been sentenced to an aggregate 130 (or maybe 135?) years after being found guilty of a series (7, I think) of armed robberies.  His buddies in crime took the plea-bargain and testified against him.  They each got much shorter sentences.

The guy thinks it's very unfair, because, after all, "it's his first offense!" Even his idiot lawyer is saying that.

Uh, no, you committed at least seven armed robberies (who knows how many more), discharging the gun at least twice, and were found guilty of all of them.  I figure that's at least seven offenses.

It's just the first time you got caught.

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 I don't know if everyone sees the same thing when they watch videos on YouTube.  On my screen, I see a column of videos on the right that seem to be related to the one I'm watching - same topic, same creator, same keywords, whatever.  The top video in that list is a "paid distribution" video.  Someone paid a bunch of money to get prime position on the recommended list.  It's not related in any way to the one I'm watching.

For the past very long time, it's been Mormon videos.

Someone is paying a truckload of money to get me (us?) comfortable with Mormons.

I wonder why.

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Well, it's summer, and we're getting news stories about kids and hikers lost in the woods/desert/mountains.   Some kids have been lost for days, with hundreds of searchers looking for them.

(An interesting aside - a little girl had wandered away from her family's campsite.  Hordes of searchers, all male.  Two women wanted to join the search, but were told no, that they wanted only trained search parties familiar with the terrain, so the women simply set out on their own.  The child was found by the women.


Why?  Because the child had heard the men calling her name, but hid when she heard them because she had been taught to be afraid of strange men.  She was afraid of being abducted.  She responded to the women.


Story from the "Free Range Kids" website.)

Here's what I don't understand.  Howcome they don't use tracking dogs?  Tracking dogs are used to locate criminals all the time.  Seems like finding a kid in the woods should be a snap.  Just start from the kid's bed or wherever they were last seen, and go.  But you almost never hear of that.

Yeah, ok, there aren't a lot of dogs trained for it (although almost any dog can do it once they know what you want so I don't know why there aren't a lot), so one would have to be flown/helicoptered in.  But hey, a lost kid! 

Here's a story of how a dog can follow a trail for miles in intense heat, picking out the one trail from hundreds of overlapping trails, with the least sniff of the target scent.  Amazing.

If my Nugget ever gets lost, I want a dog on the case!
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3563 Water and Fire

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Men are much more willing to compromise their health and sanity to make more money, women are more willing to compromise their financial status in order to have a more fulfilled, balanced life.

-- Kandralla --

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Today's dose of politics.  I had noticed that the conservatives seem to do a much better job of swaying opinion, destroying the credibility of ideas they don't like, appealing to the lowest denominator, and mobilizing people.  This explains how they do it, and the reason the liberals can't seem to get organized:  http://www.alternet.org/story/156084/it_is_no_mystery:_the_real_reason_conservatives_keep_winning?akid=9008.227416.8411ip&rd=1&t=8.

--------------------------------

Hercules' mother (let's call her HM) has been visiting Daughter and Hercules.  She arrived  Saturday and left yesterday morning.  Daughter was very uptight about her visit.  I pretty much didn't cross the street while she was here.  The woman flat-out drives me crazy.

Daughter is one of those people who needs alone time often.  We all know that when she's "in a mood" you don't prod her and absolutely don't touch her.  She came over here at one point and said, "Mom, I keep telling her I need some quiet time, and she keeps touching me!  She keeps putting her arm around me and asking what's wrong!  How do I make her leave me alone!?"

On Sunday, Hercules crossed the street to say hello, with the Nugget in the wagon.  He said as soon as HM changed her clothes, they were going to the beach at the end of the block.  I noticed that the Nugget was wearing a swimming diaper.  Daughter's car was gone.  I got an ominous feeling.

Ok, you need to know about "the beach".  It's not like the Jersey shore beaches.  Those are on the ocean.  This is a stretch of mixed sand and broken glass on a curve of Raritan Bay.  The Raritan River, the Hudson River, and The East River dump into Raritan Bay.  (Ever watch Sienfeld?  Remember Kramer swimming in the East River?  Raritan Bay is where that water goes.)  The bay water is murky.  About the only thing that lives in it is horseshoe crabs, and they have the constitution of cockroaches.  The crabs are the only reason the "beach" hasn't been paved over - it's where they lay their eggs every spring.

The last time we had the Nugget on that beach, she splashed water in her face, and Daughter got upset.

I got a little worried and asked if I could go along.

This was from when we first arrived:

Yup.  HM fully intended to take the Nugget into the water, to "get her comfortable" in water.   She carried her out into the waves, up to HM's chest.  Waves hit the Nugget in the face.  She got water in her ears, eyes, mouth, and I stood there wondering what pathogens and parasites might be in that water.  Hercules long ago gave up his cocoanuts to HM.  I was freaking out, but I kept my mouth shut.

It was a good thing I was there.  The two of them frequently got distracted, they'd be standing there looking at something with their backs to the Nugget (and the Nugget never stands still), and she'd be running off up the beach or into the water and they didn't notice until I'd yell "Grab her!"

There were horseshoe crabs in the water.  At one point Hercules was trying to herd a mating pair into shallower water and HM was trying to get a picture, and neither of them had any idea where the Nugget was.

I was glad when I looked up the seawall and saw Daughter arriving.

---------------------------------

Hercules gets cluster headaches.  He'll go weeks or even a few months without, and then he'll get slammed.  The weekend HM was visiting, he had several.  When Daughter arrived at the beach, a bad one hit, so he left.  By the time we got back to the house, he had gone to bed.

I wonder if there was a connection.

---------------------------------

Fireworks out there.  It's 10 pm and there's no point in going to bed.  Somebody on the next street behind me sounds like they're dynamiting their house.  I didn't go to the seawall to watch any.  You can see a lot of NYC, Staten Island, and up and down the NJ shoreline from there.  Don't know why, but I'm just not interested.

Someplace to the north just over the water had a huge show last night, maybe somewhere on Staten Island.  It went on for almost an hour, and there were never fewer than five huge double chrysanthemums in the air at any instant.  I could just see it from my dining room window.  It was amazing, but all I could think about was the expense.  What municipality around here has that kind of excess in their budget?  What could all that money have been used for instead?  Oh, maybe like repairing bridges, or water mains?  Soup kitchens and shelters?  I think it left me a little disgusted.

"Hey, we've got an extra $800,000 here!  Lets BURN it!!!"

---------------------------------

Oh, almost forgot.  Nugget was slapping at her right ear yesterday.   Thanks for the gifts, HM.
.

3562 A HOTW Confession

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.

-------------------------------------------------

If you stop at a traffic light, and people in the cars ahead of you, to the side of you, and behind you are all bopping their heads and singing as loudly as they can, quickly tune your radio to the local music station.  They're playing American Pie.

-------------------------------

"Back in the day", most females my age thought Paul was the handsome Beatle.  A few thought John was good-looking.  Nobody ever mentioned a crush on George or Ringo.

Well, I'm finally coming clean.

I thought Paul was cute, but not at all sexy.  John was mysterious, but I didn't find him sexy.  In fact, just the opposite.  He sorta turned me off.  Ringo, let's face it, although he's turned out to be the most level-headed and possibly nicest, was just plain funny looking.   Looks have not always been my first criteria (look at some of my picks for HOTW (Honey of the Week)), but Ringo had been something of a clown, too, and didn't come across as all that smart.

I liked George.  He was quiet and had the strongest, most masculine, face of the four.  If you watched his eyes when the group was doing an interview, he was absorbing, reacting, and separating himself from the others.  I really liked him, without "knowing" him at all.

I was never able to say that in public back then without getting strange looks, snorts, and an argument.

I'm saying it now.


[http://youtu.be/8eEQ4J6Lnrs]


[http://youtu.be/a48gIt84AZc]

---------------------------------

I wasn't a big Beatles fan anyway.  They had some good stuff (mostly in the "Rubber Soul" era), but it wasn't like I would seek them out.  When I wasn't listening to folk singers, I was a Stoner.  "Paint It Black", "Goin' Home", "Satisfaction", "Angie".....  Yeah.  Of course, the Rolling Stones weren't much to look at.  None of them.

The music of the late '50s to the late'70s was pretty incredible.  People wrote real songs then.  People sang (well, except for Dylan, but we forgave him).  People played real instruments with real skill.

Video killed popular music.  Now it's all flash and appearance.  You have to have "the look".  Innovation and talent are secondary.

Pooh.
.

3561 Cammo

Monday, July 2, 2012

To touch a rock is to touch the past.

To touch a flower is to touch the present.

To touch a child is to touch the future get fired.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I seem to have suddenly gained 10 pounds, distributed from my collar bones to my knees.  I don't know how.  But for the past two months, nothing fits.  Even my bras are choking me.

I was worried that maybe it had something to do with the kidney, but it doesn't seem to be edema.  My extremities are not affected.  It's flat-out fat.

Back to counting calories I guess.  I bet it was ice cream that did it.

Given that nothing fits, I'm almost lucky that there's heat.   I prefer loose clothing when it's hot anyway.  Easier to put on, allows air flow, blah blah.  There's a reason they wear mu'u mu'us in Hawaii.

I've been wearing some mu'u mu'us I bought in Hawaii, and caftans from the Smithsonian catalog and from African importers.  I really like them.  I'd wear them all year, except that it's hard to wear a coat over a caftan.

One day I slipped a caftan on to go downstairs to answer the door when the bell rang as I was getting out of the shower.  I didn't have any underwear on, and, surprise, I discovered I don't need panties with caftans or mu'u mu'us.  Nobody's going to see anything.  Nothing "touches" anything.  Air flow is very much increased.

Being me, I wondered if I ought to put something on.  A bra is sort of necessary to prevent movement, and embarrassment in a cool draft, but panties?  That got me thinking about thongs (not the shoes... thongs used to be shoes, you know).  I've never understood thongs.  They are definitely not comfortable.  That thin part up the back is incredibly annoying.  It rubs sensitive spots.  They don't protect outer clothing.  All they "cover" is a triangle of fur in the front (and mine is blond), so why bother?

Anybody want to explain why anyone voluntarily wears thongs to me?  I mean as a regular thing, during the day.  I can see their value in intimate encounters....
.

3560 Necrophelia?**

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Communication is the key to getting along.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 (**Title misspelled just enough to push the post further down in search results, but still convey the idea.)

Memory foam mattresses are popular.  We are supposed to believe that you sleep well on them because there are no pressure points.  I don't know why people believe that.  I guess because ads tell you to believe that.

I bought one last year because it was a Woot-off of a "name" brand, at a very good price, and I thought that because it is flexible, it would be easier to get the mattress into and out of an enclosed Chinese bed.

I hate it.  It's very hard on my back, because I need those pressure points to keep me changing position while I sleep, so without them I don't move enough, and when I wake up my spine is frozen in whatever position I slept in all night.  Which means that if I fell asleep with my face in a book, which often happens, I could be in real trouble in the morning.

You know, the first time I saw the commercial for the things, saw the hand sinking in, I knew that there was one particular use of a mattress for which these mattresses would be extremely badly suited.

For "playing", you need firmness and a certain degree of REBOUND.  The folks at the store when I bought the mattress for the sleigh bed were laughing at me, because I was bouncing on all the mattresses.  

Memory foam has zero rebound.  It's dead.  You have to work twice as hard.  Worse, the more weight in a spot, the deeper you sink.  So when you have double the weight in a spot, the sinkage on the bottom is extreme, and it becomes difficult to move at all.  Certainly any quick side-to-side movement is impossible.  Also, body heat softens the foam, so the more interesting things get, the deeper you sink.

What amazes me is that although they've been around for years, we are only now hearing those complaints, and only verbally, on TV talk shows, or in conversation, or at group dinners.  You read reviews online or in ratings magazines, and no one ever mentions that little problem.

Why?  Have people forgotten how springs feel?

("Sleep like the dead", eh?  Who wants to make love like the dead?)

.

3559 Get off my lawn! #3

Sunday, July 1, 2012

"There's no sense beating a dead horse.  But if you've reached the point where you even seriously consider that abusing a dead animal might improve your lot in life, I say go ahead and give it a shot."

-- Anthony Myers --

------------------------------------------------

Thursday, at the country house, I was debating staying another night, and then visiting someplace nice on Friday morning.  Like maybe go to Poet's Walk, or to the Rhinecliff Hotel to have breakfast on the patio and watch the ships on the Hudson, or to the Ulster Town Park to dabble in the water and feed the fish, or to North and South Lakes and check out the view over the escarpment, or to Rhinebeck to do some window shopping, or to visit any of a dozen waterfalls, or to climb the tower at Mohonk (there's a picture here, for more search for "Mohonk Fire Tower"), or I could even wander around Woodstock, get a tarot reading, buy some special incense.

I ultimately decided not to stay another night, but thinking about all the places I missed made me realize that here, at the city house, there's no place around here that I want to go.  There are a few quaint places, but they're crowded and difficult to get to.  There's the shore, and beaches, but they are crowded and too developed.  There are wooded parks, but they are too tamed and manicured and lifeless.  Nothing I've found around here so far is soothing to the soul.

At the country house, even the simple drive to interesting places is beautiful and relaxing. Not so, here.  Even if you find a wonderful spot, by the time you've fought traffic to get there and find a safe place to leave the car, you're ready to bite the head off any (obviously lost) rabbit that crosses your path.
.

3558 Get off my lawn! #2

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Given that on the internet you can be anything you want,

it's strange that so many people choose to be stupid.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't understand English.  Lie, lies, lied.  So far, so good.  But one who lies is a liar.  Why not lier?  Where'd that "a" come from?


-------------------------------

The city of Kingston, NY, looks pretty sad.  (Well, to be technical, it's not Kingston, it's Ulster.)  Piper had told me that a lot of businesses were failing, and the number of jumpers off the bridges and other suicides had skyrocketed.  I don't know that for a fact, that's just what he said. 

Anyway, I went to the big local shopping strip, you know, Talbots, Coldwater Creek, Pier 1, a bunch of big box and chain craft, furniture, food, book, hardware, etc. stores along the highway, where everyone for a 30-mile radius shops, on Wednesday about 3 pm, looking for fans.

The parking lots everywhere were practically empty.  The few people I saw in the lots and stores were ancient.  Ancient enough that they were all bent over and moving very slowly.  Where was everyone else?  Not shopping, that's for sure.

---------------------------------

Remember when I said back during the Egyptian uprising that I was suspicious of the "help" of the Egyptian army?

Uh huh.  I told you so.

---------------------------------

The Republican party will have their convention in Florida.  They have banned water pistols, paintball guns, anything that will shoot liquids regardless of their degree of similarity to real guns, on the streets anywhere within x distance of the hall.

Um, they have not banned REAL guns, concealed or otherwise.  Details here: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/water-guns-banned-handguns-allowed-at-gop-convention/

Duh?  I guess it makes as much sense as anything else these days.

---------------------------------

The Chinese seem to be mostly very sensible people.  But they screwed up royally with the "one child per couple" policy.  Yeah, it did what it was supposed to do to slow explosive population growth.  But now the chickens are coming home to roost.  The parents under that policy are getting older.  It is traditional that the children support the parents in their old age.  With five children, each adult child shouldered 1/5 of the burden.  But now each young couple has four elderly people to support, all by themselves, and they're having difficulty doing it.

Somebody didn't think ahead.

---------------------------------

I rarely watch team sports on TV.  Baseball was on in the background the other day.  I walked past, noticed, stopped, and watched for a while.  Huh?  I thought about that for a minute.  Why am I watching this?

The behinds.  Baseball players have pretty behinds.  I was watching their behinds, not the game.
.

3557 Get off my lawn! #1

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Maybe we should just give the presidency to

whomever can raise the most money

and just be done with it.

-- Shoebox.com --

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Well, we've had our second "boil water" advisory in two weeks.  Welcome to NJ.  Three mains collapsed, and it will take weeks to repair them, so no outdoor water (gardens, lawns, car washing) until then.  I'm beginning to miss the extremely hard, silty, smelly and bad tasting well water at the country house.  It was at least dependable, always there. And relatively free.

--------------------------------

The usual people are screaming about the Supreme Court approving the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA).  The government site for information on the law is at http://www.healthcare.gov/law/index.html.  There's an excellent brief and clear synopsis at http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vb8vs/eli5_what_exactly_is_obamacare_and_what_did_it/c530lfx, which I highly recommend.

Somebody did a poll where they asked people if they approved of it or not.  If the respondent said no, the pollsters then asked if they approved of each of the individual parts, and they found that almost all of them liked almost all of the pieces of the law.   That doesn't make any sense.

Conservatives want to gut the mandate part.  Oddly, they want to keep the "no refusal for pre-existing conditions" part.  Do they really not understand that you can't have one without the other?  Otherwise, people simply won't get insurance at all until they get some catastrophic condition, THEN they'll buy insurance.  That won't work, fellas.  Premiums for all of us would be astronomical. 

Buncha idiots!

The governor of LA says LA will "defy the federal government" and refuse to implement the law.  Apparently he's unaware that any state can do anything they want as long as they achieve the goals of the law, which is lower costs and full coverage.

What leaves me spinning is that conservative types like to think of themselves as having family-oriented and Christian values, while they think liberals are immoral family-destroying godless atheists.  Or something.  But, uh, isn't taking care of your neighbors a Christian value?  And who is more likely to do that?

Contrary to what the talking heads tell us, Canadians and Brits seem quite happy with their health care systems.  When did "socialize" become a dirty word?  Why is "profit" such a wonderful word?  As Dr. Phil would ask, "How's that workin' for ya?"

---------------------------------

I went to the country house mid-week, so there was a lot of listening to the car radio.  Some woman is all ticked off about the rash of female stars appearing in magazines without makeup.  She points out that they all have perfect lighting, perfect hair, perfect tans, and "some work done".  Now here's the part that had me screaming.  She says that all women need makeup to look good, and to pretend otherwise is trashing womanhood.

She's NUTS!

If anything, SAYING that all women need makeup to look good is trashing womanhood!

(Yeah.  I'm yelling.)

----------------------------------

If you're trying to lose weight, substituting "pure natural" cane sugar or honey for high fructose corn syrup isn't going to help.  It's all sugar!  Sugar sugar sugar!  Empty calories.
a) "pure" or "natural" is irrelevant when it comes to gaining or losing weight.
b) a calorie is a calorie.
c) sugar cane and corn cane are related.  Corn syrup is used in processed foods because it's cheaper, that's all.
d) if you don't know how many calories were in what you just ate or drank, it's cheating to consider it zero.

---------------------------------

What's with all the catheters?  Every public bathroom I've used in the past two years has had used urinary catherers in the sanitary bins in the stalls, or worse, on the floor, and especially restrooms in nightclubs frequented by younger women.  Is there some kind of silent epidemic going on?  I don't understand?  Why do so many young women use them?  I just don't get it.

----------------------------------

An Albany area TV station has an ASL (sign language) interpreter in a small box on the lower right of the screen for all newscasts.  Which is a nice idea.  But!  They also always broadcast a station identifier overlay. On the lower right corner of the screen.  Over the interpreter.  You can see that the interpreter is there, but you can't see her hands.

Has no one from the station ever noticed?  Or don't they care?
.

3556 Severe weather?

Friday, June 29, 2012

The fruits of the second amendment are usually rotten.

-----------------------------------------------

This is what it feels like:

[http://youtu.be/tVEPvXBEOSE]
.

3555 Gaslight abuse

Sunday, June 24, 2012

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed

and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

-- Malcom X --

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The movie Gaslight (1944) was mentioned today.  I'd never seen it, so I looked it up and the reviews  made me want to see it.  I found the entire movie several places online, but always in Spanish, with no closed captioning.  Duh?  So I ordered it from Amazon.

Searching for "gaslight" turned up several references to "gaslighting" as pertains to domestic/relationship abuse.  I'd never hear the term in that context before.  That exploration led me to http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/index.html, a very interesting site.

When we think of abuse in a relationship, we tend to think of battering, or the threat of violence, or coercion.  But there are other much more subtle forms of abuse.

I read all of the section "The 'Con'".  It was eye-opening.  I didn't realize that some of the relationships I've been in were abusive.  But now that I think about it, yeah.  I recognize it. 

Not only that, but in at least one relationship, *I* was abusive.  Once I wanted out, I was derisive, showed a lack of respect, and purposely undermined his confidence.   This is abuse.

I intend to read all of the rest of that website.
.

3554 My pillow has a purr.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Don’t rely on jobs for anything. They will always try to get the most of out you

by providing as little to you as they can.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Nugget and Titus.

.

3553 Playing tourist

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Many men don't really want to hear what a woman has to say. They say they do,

but they don't, and they telegraph that. They end up teaching their women

not to say anything important, and then complain because they never say anything important. 

 -- Me --

----------------------------------------------------------------

The green has nothing to do with this post.  Well, very little.

I intended to go to the country house this week, leaving Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.  But Tuesday morning The Man asked what my plans were for the week.  He was going to be in NJ on business somewhere toward the end of the week and wanted to set up the schedule so he could visit when I was free.  Naturally I got all excited, and said that my time was flexible, and when could he be here?

Tuesday afternoon, I got the temperature alert for the country house - 98 degrees Wednesday and Thursday.  The a/c is dead there, that's one of those things on the "to fix" list, so my time suddenly became even more flexible.  It would be well over 100 in that house. 

By early afternoon Tuesday, The Man's schedule had changed, too.  No NJ.  He was going to be in Washington, DC, for two days.

So, long story short, I'm in (well, near) DC.  Arrived yesterday, leaving tomorrow.  He's working during the day, but we have the evenings and mornings.

3552 Water, music

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend

will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'."

-- Groucho Marx --

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My phone rang during the dance class last night.  It was a township automated red alert call, saying that the water was contaminated, and we should boil water used to wash dishes etc. and drink bottled water or boiled water until further notice.  A few minutes later Daughter called with the same message, with the additional info that several people had been hospitalized.

I bought some bottled water on the way home.  The store was full of people also buying water.

When I got home I found an email from the township with a link to further info.  They suspect that the contamination occurred from damage to a pipe during construction.

Now, here's the good part.  Right there in the township notice, they say that "the contamination was detected in a water sample taken Friday, June 15."  Note that the alert didn't go out until Monday evening.  People were showing up at the ER over the weekend.  I'm surprised that they admitted a delay.  How does someone break a pipe and not know it?  That leaves them open to a lawsuit claiming that "they should have known - why take samples if you're going to be so blasé about them?"

Gee, thanks anyway for eventually letting us know....

At risk are "infants, toddlers, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems". 

Given that the Nugget had been drinking it, and given that I drink at least 3 quarts of the stuff a day, I guess I'm not so very elderly, and our letting Nugget eat mud pies and whatever she finds on the floor is good for her immune system.

-------------------------

I've been reading through old posts, dating from late 2005 or so, and adding labels so I can find stuff.  I found some posts about some of my musical interests. I do love me some drumline action.

This is an Amy/Navy drum battle.  I'm not positive which is which - I suspect the guys on the right are Navy - but the guys on the left won hands down as far as I'm concerned. (Odd that they are not as precise as college drumlines. The guy on the far left is the only one with "the stoic posture".  And why are the guys in the back masked?  Weird.)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFRikZ2Mwao]

I also love bagpipe, uillean pipe, bodhran, and hammered dulcimer.  The old post at http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2007/07/1349-another-passion.html has videos of them.

---------------------------

I've been disturbed by people who don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose".  Now there's a new one that I'm seeing more and more often:  "break" and "brake".   Even so-called professional writers are screwing that up.  The mental image I get when someone writes "break the car" is, I suspect, not what the writer intended.  "She slammed on the breaks" is a mind-blanker.  I get no image.
.

3551 Belated Father's Day

Monday, June 18, 2012

No one raindrop ever feels responsible for the flood.

-------------------------------------------------

I went to http://www.myphotostitch.com/Make_Pattern/Make_Pattern.html, submitted the following photo, and printed out the resulting free cross stitch pattern. Maybe I'll get it done by 2014.

 

.

3550 Mystery visitor

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Stop dwelling on your childhood and embrace your adulthood. Growing up is becoming the person you wanted to be.

----------------------------------------------------------

 For a while now, perhaps a week or two, this blog has been heavily visited by someone(s) in or near Washington, DC.  Whoever it is, they are not the usual visitor.  Feedjit shows them visiting the latest six or so posts in quick succession, every day, sometimes several times a day.  Feedjit also shows where the link is that they came in on - like I know when someone comes in through a Google search, through Google reader, a link in an email, or via a link in another blog or website. 

This visitor will visit five or six posts in less than a minute, and each visit is coming from a different site - and none of those sites have a link to this blog!  In other words, the link origin is faked, and I suspect the "Washington, DC" may be faked, too.

At first I thought it was someone who didn't want me to know who they were, so they were using a proxy.  Now I think it may be a spam robot.  (There's a (very) remote possibility it could be my own government, triggered by my links to middle eastern blogs and that I read a lot of middle eastern news reports and comment on foreign blogs and reports, but that's just paranoia.)

I'm half tempted to take word verification off.  If it's a spam robot, it'll show its colors immediately.

This is reminiscent of a few years ago when I was getting a lot of visits from Fort Meade, near Washington.  I'd heard, when I lived in that area, that Fort Mead is full of spies.  I asked in the blog "Who's coming in from Fort Meade?", and the visits immediately stopped.  Strange. 

Anyone else seeing anything like this?
.

3549 More Billly Blob

Thursday, June 14, 2012

You’re not as awful nor as brilliant as you think you are nor in the ways you think you are.

----------------------------------------------------------

Back in 2007 I discovered Billy Blob.  Very strange cartoon videos.  I was reading over old posts from back then, followed a link in an old post, and discovered a new video since then.



[http://youtu.be/zJYKIN480rA, also at http://billyblob.com/cartoons/we-are-science-probes.html]
.

3548 Favorite Christmas Carols of the Cracked

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way.  If you don't want to, you'll find an excuse.

---------------------------------------------------------------

[Note for strangers searching for carols - "3548" is the sequence number for this post, not the number of carols.]

Schizophrenia - Do You Hear What I Hear?

Multiple Personality Disorder - We Three Kings Disoriented Are

Dementia - I Think I'll be Home for Christmas

Narcissistic - Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

Manic - Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees ...

Paranoid - Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me

Pyromania - Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, How Beautifully You're Burning

Borderline Personality Disorder - Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

Personality Disorder - You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

Attention Deficit Disorder - Silent night, Holy ooooo look at the pretty, can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle,Bells, Jingle Bells...

Asperger Syndrome - Huh? Carol who?
.

3547 Grave robbers and fashion vultures

Monday, June 11, 2012

Have you ever heard a friend repeat something you said, but mess it up completely? 

Now imagine a billion people doing that. 

-- Jesus Christ --

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Grave robbers:

An archeologist cleans a skeleton during excavations in the Black Sea town of Sozopol, Bulgaria on June 1, 2012. Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Middle Ages pierced through the chest with iron rods to keep them from turning into vampires, the head of the history museum said. According to pagan beliefs, people who were considered bad during their lifetimes might turn into vampires after death unless stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before being buried. (STR/AFP/GettyImages)#  From The Big Picture,  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/06/scenes_from_bulgaria.html.

I am not particularly sentimental or religious.  I mostly think sterile cemeteries are a waste of material.  If the state would permit it, when I've finished with this body, I would like to be dropped off in the woods somewhere to feed the beasties and trees.  Seems like that's the way it should be.

So am I weird that I am very annoyed when archaeologists dig up bodies?  It really bugs me to see people down in a hole dusting off bones.  Those bodies were put there for a reason, there were people with beliefs involved, and I don't care how "respectful" you think you're being, I say Hands Off!

It really does bother me.  I don't know why.

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Fashion:

Fashion, whether clothing, furnishing, design, anything, makes no sense.   The sole purpose of fashion is to make you feel inadequate and force you to buy new stuff.  It has been so ever since Ogg discovered there's a market for bearskins.

When something new becomes fashionable, I wonder how many people ask themselves, "Is this new thing better than the old thing?  Or just ... different."

Let's rebel.
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3546 End of last week catch up

Monday, June 11, 2012

Harvey Korman, on his using Viagra: It would be like putting a new flagpole on a condemned building.

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I have finished Madame Bovary.   I'd never heard or read a synopsis, or seen any of the movies, so I had no real inkling of the story.  Somewhere along the line I'd seen a deathbed scene from a very old movie, possibly a silent movie, and occasional references to Mme. Bovary's romantic nature and her many assignations.  So I had, without thinking about it, assumed she was something like a Parisian courtesan, and that she died a lingering death of "consumption", and that her lovers sadly abandoned her in the end.  Or something like that.

The real story is very different.

As soon as I finished the book, I watched a 2.25 hour French version on YouTube with subtitles.  The movie left out a LOT!  (Also, the movie made it seem more like she was lured, beguiled, into debt by the predatory merchant with no concept of what she was doing.  In the book, it's more like the merchant was just filling her hunger.  And the movie didn't really get into how her neediness put so much pressure on Leon.  So, don't go by the movies.)

Check one off the very bottom of the bucket list.

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According to the GPS, the country house is about 360 feet above sea level.  Harumph.  It seems higher.

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When I return from a trip to the country house, I have to time it just right.  I have to leave by 2 pm at the latest, or wait until after 5 pm, to avoid rush hour on the Garden State Parkway.  The rush hour traffic isn't bad - it's that there's always at least one accident that has traffic backed up for an hour.  Friday I left at 5 pm, but it turned out that was a mistake.  The Rhinebeck Fairgrounds was hosting a huge antique motorcycle show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  The traffic jam heading toward the (two-lane) bridge over the Hudson River was horrendous.

As I crept along, there were three motorcycles in front of me.  Stop, go, stop, go.  I gave them plenty of room, especially because I appreciated their staying in the lane.  We were passed by dozens of motorcycles roaring down the shoulder on our right, which royally pissed me off.  I mean, if I'd had a gun ... or a barrel of roofing nails ....  They were ignoring courtesy, rules, and speed limits.  But worst of all, it was THE MOTORCYCLE CLUB'S SHOW that generated all this traffic!  It was THEIR FAULT!  And they're just blowing by while we innocents suffer?

When I finally got across the bridge and onto route 209, motorcycles continued to blast by.  55 mph speed limit, and they had to be doing at least 85.  At least.

And they wonder why motorists won't give them a break?  QUIT PISSING US OFF!  Quit acting like laws, rules, and common courtesy don't apply to you.

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I usually return from the country on Thursday, but I was late this week.  So Friday I expected more traffic than usual.  I never use the GPS on that trip because I know the route.  Friday I had it on for no particular reason, and as I entered NJ, I was shocked to hear something I'd never heard before: "Severe traffic ahead.  Recalculating."

Huh?  The traffic application is optional.  I didn't know I had it.

The GPS took me off the Garden State Parkway onto route 3 east, to the NJ Turnpike.  I'm glad I obeyed.  The view of Manhattan from route 3 is amazing!  From the top of the first hill off the Parkway, the cluster of tall gleaming buildings rises high above the trees ahead.  It looks for all the world like a scene from a fairy tale movie.  The sun was in the west hitting the scene full on, and the sky was clear.

Oz!

One of these trips I'll try to take a picture.

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At some point every morning, Nugget goes to the window, points urgently, and says "Amma! Amma!"  Daughter escorts her across the street, and we have this routine.  Nugget pounds on my door, "Amma!  Amma!".  I yell, "Who's that beating on my door?" (Billy Goat Gruff voice) and open it.  Nugget hustles past to look for cat toys (which she prefers to kid toys).

On Thursday, Nugget said it was time to visit Amma, and Daughter said no, Gramma isn't home, and distracted her.  On Friday, Nugget was more insistent and wouldn't be distracted, so Daughter brought her over. Nugget pounded on the door ... and there was no answer.  Daughter tried to explain that the van wasn't in the driveway, Gramma was with the van, gone bye-bye.  Van gone bye-bye, Gramma gone bye-bye. 

Big disappointment.

(Hercules looked up "Amma" to see if it had a meaning and was surprised to find that it is appropriate.  I could have told him - "Amah" is a nursemaid throughout much of southern Asia and India.  So I don't mind if Nugget never masters the "Gr" part.)
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3545 Write

Monday, June 11, 2012

You can cope.  You can always cope, no matter what.  And then later,

you can be proud of having coped.

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I copied this directly from Roba at http://www.andfaraway.net/blog/2012/06/11/pixar-rules-for-narration/, because I knew if I simply linked to it, nobody would read it, and it's well worth reading. 

“Story basics” from Emma Coats, of Pixar:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about until you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

[From Pixar Touchbook, http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html]
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3544 Noises

Sunday, June 10, 2012

"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace"

~Dalai Lama~

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There's still that sound coming from somewhere across the street.  Like high-pitched tree frogs with a mechanical undertone.  It drives me crazy.   Daughter and Hercules can hear it on my porch and in my front rooms.  They don't hear it in their house.  Nobody knows where it's coming from.  It's random, several hours a day, sometimes early, sometimes late.  A compressor?  A pump?  The source seems to be impossible to pinpoint.

I mentioned that the people directly across the street got a dog, Christmas of 2010, one of those tiny silky dogs that people like to put topknot bows on.  The girl there walked it a little at first, but quickly lost interest.  The man comes home from work and sometimes I hear him yell, "Put her in her cage!'  I think the poor little thing spends most of her life in a cage.  Two or three times a day they put her out the front door on a chain, and then seem to forget her.  She quickly does her duty, and then sits in front of the door and whines for half an hour, 45 minutes, yesterday afternoon it was an hour.

You know, I could stand a little barking, but that high-pitched "YEE yee yee, YEE yee yee, YEE yee yee" (keep saying that for a half hour) is driving me crazy.  How can they not hear her and let her in?

I miss the silence of the country house.  
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