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- In the Infosphere, United States
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Felix Jumper
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My dentist said he needed a hand like this...
3,525 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1601 – 1800 of 3525 Newer› Newest»Nobel Peace Prize to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Take THAT, Drumpf (and Kim and Rouhani...)!
(Been working all night, got a MS emailed just now, so need to catch a few Zzzzzz).
I suspect we'll have a war with Iran pretty soon. Toles has the summary. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2017/10/06/calm-before-the-storm-really-means-chaos-before-the-bedlam/?utm_term=.8886b7e7e1a9
It does look like Tillerson has committed lèse-majesté and will be duly dismissed. Marco Rubio won't get it. He's in lèse mode. As Joel's story notes, he's got lots of outraged constituents.
Tropical storm winds for the Washington area Monday?
Trump will be speaking? (Reminded of the Blowhard New Yorker cover)
A local fire department has purchased ballistic vests for its personnel in case they have to do emergency rescue work while under fire. What are we coming to?
I visited Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami this morning. Members' day plant sale. The grounds had been cleaned up quite well (some patches still closed). There was minor damage to buildings, notably an expensive custom rain gutter hanging from one. A very few trees lost. Most palms look somewhat roughed up, some untouched. The neighborhood looked a bit messier, and the main access road to the Garden was closed for debris removal. Still, apart from an occasional blown-over ficus tree and plant debris piles, the affluent neighborhoods look fine. I got an encouraging report from the Keys, even more encouraging from Ft Myers.
Up in Broward County, the twice-a-year palm and tropical plant extravaganza at Searle Brothers nursery was a bit ragged but plenty of nice plants on sale.
Looking for the right meat for hamburgers. I've recently come to like them a lot because of the umami. I cook them in a cast iron fry pan with ribs on the bottom, so the patties are raised up and don't fry in their fat, which accumulates below. "Ground beef" and "ground chuck", supposedly 80-20, leave a lot of fat in the bottom, while "ground sirloin" 90-10 leaves almost none, which leads me to suspect the fat percentages aren't as advertised. I'd like to find something more or less intermediate, that doesn't have all the body parts I imagine are in "ground beef". How do butchers determine/estimate the fat percentage in ground meat?
It seems Mozart had a starling for three years, and either he taught it, or the bird learned by itself (starlings are good mimics), the beginning of the last movement of his Piano Concerto 18. The bird made a couple of changes, but Mozart liked the bird’s version so much that he incorporated them into the concerto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart%27s_starling
http://starlingtalk.com/mozart1.htm
Good morning y'all. I see we are on page 9 now of comments. I am topsy-turvvy on my sleep and have not managed to readjust.
The percentage of hamburger is based on fat weight vs meat weight. I am guessing fat is less dense than lean meat, so you get a lot more volume. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-08-18/entertainment/8801230909_1_ground-beef-lean-ground-ground-sirloin
So you might use the eureka method and measure overall density, or special sensors, or just for very lean meat just add a ratio of fat (the meat itself would not be totally lean.) Or you could grind it yourself. This article explains how ground beef is made.
https://www.nefga.org/forum/other-outdoors/outdoors-recipes/62280-how-do-they-calculate-the-lean-hamburger-meat
I usually buy 85% when I do buy hamburger. I don't mind some grease, all the better for cooking veggies or potatoes in or to drizzle over my dog's food bowl. I would just eat smaller servings (I went through a bagful of hamburger-- around 1 pound or so, over a few days last week in various recipes.) The umami is worth it indeed.
I am now working out a diet plan that is low fructose & low FODMAP and around the right calorie ballpark for me, so I need to measure how much I eat which has not been my style before. Carbo moderation is also key.
Reducing fructose does help the gut issues (fructose malabsorption seems to be confirmed.) and I've recovered some energy I lost after my last major attacks of pain. I am afraid that it does seem that beans are out due to their fructose and other indigestible sugars in excess, (red lentil in small quantities have been OK)
I now think I have the explanation for why I have never done well (indeed been quite sick) on vegetarian or vegan diets, even though I enjoy vegetarian food. But I've never had symptoms quite like this before this year.
I've never liked eating a lot of fruit and between this and allergies I'm largely stick with citrus fruit and berries, in modest quantities (other fruit in scant quantities.)
In other news, I've developed a fondness for my toaster oven's ability to bake sourdough cinnamon rolls (homemade, easy pinch & measure, fold ingredients in, knead, roll, cook. 20 minutes.)
With Senate Foreign Policy Committee chairman Corker, it feels like the ground has shifted, or at least he's become much more public about concerns about the Trump administration and Trump in particular.
Of course I made that comment seconds before Hohmann's 202 showed up.
James Fallows, "It’s What Bob Corker Does Next That Counts" (because the gutless wonders in the GOP's House and Senate leadership won't do squat):
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/corker-trump/542385
...Corker has moved toward a better place for himself in the annals of Senate history than he would have had only 24 hours ago.
This most definitely should not be the last step for Corker. If he believes what he says, then as the chairman of the relevant committee in the Senate he has important tools to use. He can issue subpoenas and summon executive branch witnesses as soon as he can get his colleagues back in town. He can draft legislation about the procedure, the grounds, and the justifications before the U.S. commits troops to war. He could urge his colleagues toward the next step through their stages-of-tragedy relationship with Trump. Stage one was carping and dismissal during the first half of 2016, when he was an entertaining long-shot. Stage two was Vichy-regime acquiescence to him during the campaign. Stage three was “support” early this year, toward the goal of the Gorsuch confirmation and the hope of a tax-cut bill. Now we see the inklings of stage four, with the dawning awareness of what Corker spelled out: that they have empowered something genuinely dangerous. It’s time for Corker to act on that knowledge, and his colleagues too...
RIP, Y.A. Tittle. Some years ago, author David Halbertsam was en route to interview Y.A., when he (D.H.) was killed in an auto accident. No doubt that would've been a great interview, had it occurred.
The smoke from the Northern California fires is oppressive. I went outside to feed my outside cat and had to retreat inside with a fit of coughing. No ashes like we had with the Oakland Hills fires in the 90s but enough to cancel all sorts of outside activities, kids soccer practices, etc. I am a good hour and a half Drive from Santa Rosa.
Pacifica
Pacifica, that sounds like an unusually long distance for smoke to be wafting so strongly.
PSA: Jon Stewart is a guest on Stephen Colbert's show tonight. It won't be pretty, but Trump and Pence will utterly deserve every moment of it.
Florida gets occasional fits of smoke. Okefenokee Swamp and the Everglades burn. The former did so earlier this year. More rarely, forest fires. The reverse also happens. Paynes Prairie, on the south side of Gainesville was lately threatening to turn into a lake, something it had done for a while in the 19th century.
I queried my vendor about a package that they'd shipped from a suburb of Sydney, Australia. It somehow ended up at Coventry, England, UK, according to Australia Post tracking. The vendor checked, and it's going back home to Sydney and will be re-shipped at Australia Post's expense to the US.
Per our fire department
Only cal 911 if you see flames - merely smelling smoke is not enough
Pacifica
Per our fire department
Only cal 911 if you see flames - merely smelling smoke is not enough
Pacifica
Pacifica,
you are just the person I'd like to talk to, if I only could find a way to do that.
The LA Times has shocking fire photos.
I'd been commenting on Trump and lèse-majesté. Tonight, there's all sorts of demands that Republican politicians who "insult" Trump should resign, starting with Sen. Corker. Sen. Cotton sounds like he wants to be Secretary of State.
The Garden of Lights is beginning to materialize. First electronic flower bed was assembled today. I only took the photos.
https://flic.kr/s/aHskTfWWdh
Gmbka,
Do you know yello on Facebook? Or TBG? Or Cassandra? If there are any folks from the tiara race that you know, they have access to my gmail address.
Pacifica
Pacifica, I'll send an email to TBG.
Oops, I lost her email. College qua Parkian?
Pacifica, another Boodler contacted TBG and I think she can give me your email.
Just sent TBG my email
Maddow dropped the dime on Rep. Nunes obstructing the House investigation by not subpoenaing the right folks and a Dem. Rep explained that if the House didn't get in step it could give the RUssians further openings to claim it was all false.
Between that and Corker it seems like a few people have decided to go full court press on the Russia issue and go with "threat to national security" thing-- whcih we ALL knew before he even got elected, except Trumpers and a few million bots. Ken Starr said indictments will come.
It's a crazy week and Pruitt just wanted to let a foreign mining industry destroy one of the most valuable salmon fisheries in the world. (Pebble Mine) We have to watch the looting now, and Jones act needs to be reauthorized. I think aid to help evacuate some of Puerto Rico is a smart idea. They'e US citizens and they will be really delighted to vote, I believe, in 2018.
So... politics as Senate is on pro forma break.
In other news, we had a Canadian thanksgiving. Mr.Hastings got a healthy share of beef short rib and I got an unhealthy share. We are driving each other nuts with insomnia, so wish us well-rested soon.
Florida's state House of Representatives is 2 to 1 Republican and the new Speaker's top priority is to further cut back Medicaid. It'll take a lot of Puerto Ricans to turn the state even faintly purple, except maybe for presidential elections. Even there, the astonishing influx of white retirees into The Villages is creating a big Republican bastion.
I think we will see Trump's cabinet in a hurry to undo as much Obama and hand out as many goodies as possible as quickly as possible. Those giveaways won't be as easy to undo as the Obama executive orders and regulations.
Sending special hugs to gmbka, and ear-scritches to Mr. Hastings.
Don't know that it'll matter, but the Post's story of Judge Roy Moore taking lots of undisclosed money from "the charity he founded" is a marvel.
A friend from AL shared that and one of his friends basically said he would still vote Moore because he hates Dems that much. I said it was soulless to vote for a known crook over a honest person.
In much of the country, Democrats seem to be so hated that we may be stuck with the great Republican demolition project for years to come. Trump's slobbering (Frank Bruni's term) minions may have more time than they expect. This scathing new history may be relevant. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-republic-for-which-it-stands-9780199735815?lang=en&cc=us
There was the refrain in Louisiana... "Vote for the crook, it's important." That was for convicted racketeer (Democrat) Edwin Edwards over KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
Also, "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard."
Did the Louisiana voters really need to be told that (lizard-wizard)?
Well, considering Drumpf was elected mainly through voters in the Midwest, I suppose so.
Makes me wonder what sort of country I live in. I went to grade school at UCLA education dept's training school. Totally what would now be called "liberal". I imagined everyone was like that, more or less. As I get older I don't become more conservative, but I learn more and more about my fellow citizens, how reactionary they can be, how people like me are not everyone as I had assumed. Maybe California should secede. Who needs to be in the same country as Alabama?
Apparently so...
"Edwards received 34 percent of the vote while Duke received 32 percent. Governor Roemer placed third, 80,000 votes behind Duke."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Edwards
Apparently Calexit would make no economic sense, but Republicans seemingly would like to expel the Pacific coast, excepting Alaska. Of course that would result in the new Pacifica joining a new NAFTA and Trans Pacific Partnership. New England and New York would somehow weasel their way into the club, too. The big remainder would have the wind knocked out of it.
My stray package that went to the UK rather than the US is said to be in transit from UK to US.
Economic is not the only reason for something like Calexit. Economists argue it's all about $. Lawyers about who's at fault. Engineers about what makes things run more smoothly. Etc. These are not single-criterion decisions.
Homemade focaccia with onion, olive oil and salt on top will be ready at 6 PM, so warm up yer faxes now!
On the average our president has uttered 5 lies a day since he took office, writes der Spiegel based on WaPo. He must be running out of them at some point.
Liebestod (love death); now dostadning (decluttering before you die). Doesn't seem operatic.
George Will has quite the ornately written column. "Pence is a reminder that no one can have sustained transactions with Trump without becoming too soiled for subsequent scrubbing."
In the toy department, Aston Martin is getting interested in promoting recreational submarines.
http://www.vb32963online.com/STORIES%202017/OCTOBER%202017/VB32963_Veros_Triton_Aston_Martin_Teaming_Up_On_Supersub_Issue041_101217.html
Any Trumpie walk-outs from Fed Ex Field today, when some 49ers took a knee during the anthem?
Looks like they showed real teamwork with the stand/kneel. Made a nice photo.
Indeed, Dave! https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/did-trumps-tweet-make-it-safer-for-nfl-players-to-kneel-for-the-anthem/2017/10/15/d99f20ca-af44-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html
George Will should stick to baseball, but occasionally he has something to say about other things.
Also heard a brief item re this on NPR hourly news. "BREAKING: The astronomical marvel of two collapsed stars smashing into each other had never been seen before. Until now":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/10/16/scientists-detect-gravitational-waves-from-a-new-kind-of-nova-sparking-a-new-era-in-astronomy/?tid=a_breakingnews&utm_term=.ac3e9f83fcdc
Of course fundy naysayers will still cling to their creation mythologies, which don't involve all those science-y math-y things.
I think we all know THIS feeling. "The Enormous Emotional Toll of Trumpism / Every day it’s something. Or 10 somethings. Can we really live with three more years of this, let alone seven?":
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-enormous-emotional-toll-of-trumpism
At a certain point, the distaste becomes exhaustion. Donald Trump’s presence in our national life has been alternately infuriating, embarrassing, revolting, gross and bizarre. His non-stop assaults on our political norms are testing our capacity to sustain constant outrage without giving in to despair...
Try as you might to put him out of your mind, he blunders back into your consciousness. He lumbers across your television and cellphone screens in his giant Trump suits, squinting and pouting with his silent, sullen wife or exhausted looking cabinet members in tow. One minute he’s tearing up international agreements. The next, he’s tweeting out his inner demons, mocking people of color, taunting unstable dictators with stupid nicknames and generally wreaking havoc. The Trump Show is the reality TV train wreck you can’t turn off, no matter how badly you want to...
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-radnofsky-impeachment-20171016-story.html
Impeachment is a political, not criminal process. "High crimes and misdemeanors" comes from England, and does not mean crime or misdemeanor. It means a high official has caused or is causing substantial harm to society.
"Impeachment requires no actual lawbreaking, and conviction by the Senate does not mean that an official has been found guilty of a crime. Impeachment requires no intent to do wrong. In fact, the first impeachment conviction in U.S. history involved a judge who was unable to perform his duties due to senility. He was, in other words, incapable of legal intent to do wrong."
BTW the author of the impeachment article is the second guest on Ian Masters tonite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors
Getting ready to go to Europe, and how I dread having to try to explain what's been happening in the US, and why. I think I'll just tell people that I voted for Hillary, and shake my head sadly; that's what worked this past winter, but so much more has befallen our country in the intervening months.
Claim to be Canadian.
I can pass for upper-upper Midwest and have been mistaken for Canadian.
I'm heading to England in a week or so. If asked, which I doubt will happen, I'm planning just to say that we're even more screwed up than you are, and England is a mess.
In Germany they are in the process of forming a Jamaica coalition. This name is based on the colors or the Jamaican flag, green, black, and yellow. Black is the color of the conservatives (Merkel's party), the environmentalists are green, and the liberals, in the European sense, own yellow. Bilateral agreements between black and either partner are feasible, but there are large differences between the Greens and the Liberals. But they have to come together because nobody wants the xenophobic popularist right-wingers in the government and the reds, the Social Democrats have decided to go into opposition. They did very poorly in the last election in September.
Merkel's party just lost a major state election to the Social Democrats.
gmbka,
Are German parliamentary elections held at fixed intervals or is there the possibility of a "snap" election like what they held in England earlier this year? If Merkel becomes chancellor again, will she be likely to serve a full four year term? I guess if the coalition falls apart, she would have to try to assemble another one.
I had to look that up. Snap elections in Germany require either a successful no-confidence vote or the inability of the winning party to form a government. Otherwise elections are held every 46-48 months after the first session of the newly elected parliament.
Jennifer Rubin, commenting on a quote from Sen. Mike Lee: "His hypocrisy is emetic."
New Zealand is taking its Bird of the Year competition a little too seriously this year. There’s been vote rigging and a mysterious Instagram account accusing the white-faced heron of racism and calling the kiwi a "fat flightless fuck."
[New Zealand Herald]
From Vox sentences.
Things are winding near the end, I think.
Sleeping during the day makes me much calmer reading the daily news, better than when reading breaking news. I take 20, 24 hour blackouts at a time as needed.
Trump is beyond a lame duck. McCain, Bush, and Obama are all speaking out against the politics of fear, bigotry, and white supremancy; the latter two as they hit the campaign trail.
I pray this is done by Halloween, but it all depends on the indictments and arrests.
Kiwi.
http://www.mrvintage.co.nz/new-products/kiwi-kiwi-by-dick-frizzell.html
While Trump seems to be flying apart, the same was true of his campaign. Republican members of Congress seem to be shunning McCain and Corker rather than him. The budget passed the Senate so now they can pass tax cuts. The Koch brothers are no doubt happy. I expect Trump to tear up NAFTA, further sabotage the Affordable Care Act, and do foreign policy by tantrum. It's relatively easy to get things done when you don't have an agenda, apart from punishing "enemies."
I don't know when indictments might come down.
A neighbor was bent out of shape by news of "protesters wanting to demolish the Tomb of the Unknowns." It seems someone took a photo of somebody kneeling there during a ceremony where spectators were expected to stand. Sheesh.
The Post has more on Roy Moore's charity, which had already looked like a piggy bank for its founder. It didn't report generous compensation to its founder as "income."
Politico has a wonderful headline story by Michael Grunwald on Florida's Cape Coral.
Pacifica,
How are things with you and all the fires?
BBC of all stations reported every hour that an individual attacked randomly passers-by with a knife in Munich. Police published a description of the suspect, blond, unshaven, overweight, moving by bicycle and carrying a back-pack with a yoga mat. Some on social media immediately assumed that he had his black hair bleached. 2 hrs after the first attack he was apprehended, no fewer than 500 police men were actively searching for him. It turned out that he was a German living in Munich, known to police for having had drug use issues in the past.
The assumption is that he is mentally ill, and all those who believed in the terror hype look a bit stupid now.
BBC of all stations reported every hour that an individual attacked randomly passers-by with a knife in Munich. Police published a description of the suspect, blond, unshaven, overweight, moving by bicycle and carrying a back-pack with a yoga mat. Some on social media immediately assumed that he had his black hair bleached. 2 hrs after the first attack he was apprehended, no fewer than 500 police men were actively searching for him. It turned out that he was a German living in Munich, known to police for having had drug use issues in the past.
The assumption is that he is mentally ill, and all those who believed in the terror hype look a bit stupid now.
All the victims suffered minor injuries only and were released from the hospitals.
I was watching a Martha Stewart cooking show yesterday. She was saying the word MarinAHHde like she was getting paid per use. But the meat was MarinAYYted, not MarinAHHted. You think you’d want to stick with one pronounciation across the word’s variants.
The event sponsor, Red Bull, has a grander, more grandiose video of a stand-up paddle race from San Francisco's Ocean Beach through the Golden Gate. This one is a combo of low-key narration and people doing things in huge surf that really shouldn't be tried. Even the Coast Guard gets a bit of attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4UEgwSGVZg&t=19s
Has Drumpf really decided to take the high road and not respond to McCain's statement that he's a draft dodger? Some slime will spill from his mouth before long.
Fact vs Metaphor
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-41681927/it-s-very-hard-to-step-into-atheism-says-dan-brown
Dan Brown, one of the biggest selling authors of all time, has told BBC Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur that although he no longer believes in the Christian faith in which he was raised, he cannot quite give up on the idea of a higher power either.
Mr Brown said that research for his latest book had led him to believe that the laws of physics alone were enough to create life, but it was very hard for him to become an atheist.
"I am certainly moving in that direction, but for me in my life, it is still hard to sort of say there's nothing," said Brown.
He also warned of the dangers of religion reading "metaphors as fact". [For example, Adam and Eve, which is metaphor, yet fundamentalists treat it as fact.]
Or maybe he realizes he IS a draft dodger, and doesn't want to reopen that.
Mole day was yesterday (6.022 x 10^23: number of atoms in a single mole.) At least I remembered more quickly why that day mattered this year.
Had an eventful weekend in terms of people, so crashed yesterday. Hopefully today goes better. Woke up early and could not go back to sleep so I suspect I am in for a nap by noon.
I am fished out on politics for right now and will be ready to fight tomorrow for the rest I am taking today, I hope.
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Jeff Flake will run for President in the Republican party in 2020.
Jennifer Rubin: "Who knows — Corker-Flake in 2020? Stranger things have happened."
In Florida, a bit of peculiar politics. Gov. Rick Scott, who evidently wants Bill Nelson's Senate seat, is suddenly interested in state parks, water pollution, Everglades restoration. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a boyish redhead from a genuinely agricultural background whose agency doles out concealed-carry permits, is running as the gun guy.
Maybe a vigil during the next World Series game at Historic Dodgertown, an old Florida baseball training site that still exists? There's a brew pub across the street.
Flake as GOP candidate-- let's see. That he will try for Prez '20 as long as he has a shot-- yeah.
Honest Ad bill up, text looks good and its preamble is alarming in the statistics listed for propaganda share of targeted ads to swing states.
FISA reauthorization bill allows for more amicus curiae and third party expertise (neutral)
GAO has estimated (as of Sept) that extreme weather has cost the federal government over 350 BILLION dollars.
BadRabbit ransom software has hit Ukraine, Russia, Japan and some other. Ukraine banks not badly affected (may be related to earlier virus they already handled.) Troll farms for Russia run by some Americans, too-- one host was traced to Staten Island. (Makes sense to have the stuff stateside if possible. Ethnic Russian-Americans.
Questions remain about Niger and why 40 ISIS killed 4 American soldiers.
Bush jokes with Obama behind Clinton's back for a nice feel good story of the day. (Word is that as Clinton said "and we will be citizens before and after" Bush said to Obama "Except you")
Trump got dissed by Flake, and somebody threw Russian flags at him as he walked to the Senate luncheon with McConnell. "Trump is Treason."
Dems don't want to cut government lawsuits redirecting money to third parties. GOP does.
It's been a busy news day as usual, but at least no angry tweets are dominating the day. Things are wobbling back in the right direction-- almost-- briefly. However, we do have this crazy tax bill and the House paralysis to worry about. Rohrabacher has not been allowed offical money for his London jaunt to see Assange, and he is a bit restricted in his committee work now. Nunes has been subpoening despite being recused, and Paul Ryan is... still Paul Ryan. Pity. I just wonder how many of the house GOP will be indicted or compelled to resign when all is said and done.
Pj-
The air quality after the fires was terrible. School children here were kept in for recess and lunch. Son is an AYSO scoccer coach and all games and practices a week and a half ago were cancelled, at least for the under 8 set.
Last Thursday night we had 4 tenths of an inch of rain. That seemed to scrub the air.
Sorry for the delay in responding, I was out of town at my nieces wedding and didn't take my tablet with me.
Pacifica
We just got the last downpour ahead of a cold front marking the arrival of Dry Season. 49º forecast Thursday morning.
The soggy evening made for not the best conditions for checking preps for a wedding coming up at the Botanical Garden on Saturday evening. It was also first tryout for 64 computer-programmed little floodlights. An Aldi is going up nearby, which perhaps says something about the demographics.
GAO is likely to be punished for that climate change/bad weather report. Last Week's Science magazine reports early results from "The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2." The satellite can identify all sorts of carbon dioxide sources and sinks. I bet the satellite will fall victim to budget cuts. Promptly.
Interior now has a rule that employees are not to get involved with non-federal activities, and so are to shun, as best as possible, people working for local governments and non-profits.
Sears has broken up with Whirlpool. 101 years.
I'd like to know why sliced bagels aren't sliced all the way through.
Surf reporting from Rincón, Puerto Rico has resumed.
http://rinconsurfreport.com
Looks like our ambassador to New Zealand, one Scott Brown, caused Trumpish offense on an official trip to Samoa.
He sure can pick 'em.
He knows the best people.
The US ambassador to NZ is also the ambassador to Samoa and probably a few other small island nations, so he has the potential for a misstep in several places.
On CNN International, "Banana banana banana":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ei_sZyvHxs
FPL, the big Florida electric utility, wants to bill customers $1.3 billion for repairs due to Irma.
Our water company is billing us for 200 years of damage due to sloppy construction and maintenance.
Lots of rotting water systems around.
Puerto Rico is almost unique in the US with its lousy electric system. They could possibly use help from Cuba, which I think cleaned up its electricity mess.
I went to an office today that had gated parking. You know: get the ticket. get it validated, insert the ticket to get back out. I'm following a lady on the way out. She's fumbling looking for the ticket, then the machine isn't taking her ticket, she's about to get out of the car, but I shout "The gate's open." She says something unintelligible and drives away. I find it funny how we can be a slave to process even when we don't have to be. And I'm not really being critical, I'm pretty sure I went through the same process myself the last time I was there.
HF, was the gate closed when she got there and started the ticket business, and while she was engaged with getting the machine to accept her ticket, the gate opened but she didn't notice? (Maybe it became late enough that pay to park was finished for the day, or the system was slow to respond, or the system decided to accept her ticket despite refusing it earlier, or ??) Well, we only have two eyes, and they are programmed to work together so we only look in one direction, and may not see things on the periphery that would be obvious if we were looking that way.
Once as assistant referee (linesman) in a soccer game, I thought the forward right in front of me was going to cross the ball, so I looked to the center of the field in front of the goal to see if other attackers might be in offside position, but no cross eventuated and the attacker went down and complained he had been fouled, and why didn't I see something so close to me. He had a point, but I couldn't look in both directions at once--I decided he would make the pass, but he didn't. Angle can be more important than distance, in the parking garage case, too.
Regarding infrastructure decay, we all want low costs for every mandatory thing (the basis of our civilization, such as water supply, roads, police, etc.) so we can consume more private goods, and we may benefit a regulated utility or state highway agency that spends less by voting for the State legislators that create regulations and taxes that keep the immediate costs down while the infrastructure decays so we can consume more junk now. That's what has happened, and is not too hard to decipher. I attribute it to a culture that glorifies individual consumption rather than the strength of the collective society. How the US turned in that direction I attribute to having commercial TV as the main cultural medium (commercial = promoting individual consumption), which is now being challenged by Interned media that are even more individual vs. collective.
Jim,
The gate was up the whole time. I think that's why it wouldn't accept her card. My thought, when it happened to me before, was that I wanted to make sure credit went where it should. That's just stupid. But we attempt to go through the motions anyway.
Same stories, but very different outcomes for Trump and Weinstein.
"This is, perhaps, the depressing lesson of the Weinstein and Trump stories. The allegations are similar. The evidence is similar. But power still protects, and while Weinstein had lost enough power to imperil his protection, Trump has only amassed more."
Vox
As to gated parking, when I asked what the purpose is when everybody can walk into the foyer of the facility and exchange the parking ticket for a coin that opens the gate, I was told that this prevents people not in the know from parking there. I liked that simple solution. :-)
New Yorker has a piece on Roy Moore as "Fruit Salad" back in law school. He's a West Point graduate, by the way.
Whitefish electric contract has leaked. Nasty. Very nasty.
I tried to lookup the story of the Park Service denying the permit for the 45 foot tall naked woman statue on the mall. I typed the (incredibly vague) query "woman" into the Post's search. I didn't get back what I expected.
Showing results for "roman"
Search instead for: “woman”
Why would the WP search think I mistyped roman? I didn't. When I clicked the "woman" search link, it gave me more results than I wanted and the one I wanted was not on that first page. So I recalculated. But I just don't get what the search double-check-the-dumb-user thing is trying to do. I expect it's buried in some unintelligible neural-net algorithm or something, but it's just weird that a viable word is ignored.
I did not have that problem:
https://tinyurl.com/y7bqg9qg
I made it tiny in case Jumper has a wirty dord filter.
Suppose you are pitching and a runner reaches third base. You throw a wild pitch, and he scores. IMO that is an "earned" run that should be charged against you. But suppose you are removed after the runner reaches third, and a different pitcher makes a wild pitch. Is that still an earned run? You will be charged with it in either case (because the runner was yours), but earned or not?
As of Monday, we can begin playing indictment bingo. First indictments from Mueller investigation issued, sealed. Arrests on Monday of at least one person.
Manafort seems a gimme, so is Felix Sater. Schneiderman in NY has already indicted Manafort for state crimes, if I understand it right. It might be a bit much to hope for the tsunami to hit Monday, but whatever is coming, I believe will be a few strategic checks which will accelerate the endgame. No more stalemate.
Time for "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" anon. For Halloween, I got three pumpkins to bake and freeze. What can I say, my deep freeze has room and they should keep through the winter. Recipes welcomed (I like pumpkin soup, pumpkin gratin, pumpkin pie but canned pumpkin is pricey to eat often.)
Any plans for this Halloween?
Jim10, Alas, yes, that gets tallied to the ERA of the pitcher who let the runner get on base (not struck out) because the second pitcher did not have a role in the men on base situation. Ideally you would not relieve a pitcher mid-inning, so when that happens there's a good reason (and that goes to the ERA.)
New Yorker has taken notice of the CNN (WSJ confirmed) report on the Mueller investigation.
Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Philippe has begun.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans seem in an absolute panic to pass a tax cut. Now to see how the Freedom Caucus reacts to efforts to pass appropriations for the remainder of the fiscal year as well as raising the debt limit. Early January could be really interesting.
LA Times: "Wildfires devastate California pot farmers, who must rebuild without banks or insurance" and 17 deaths in California from West Nile virus. Republicans seem determined to gut the CDC. Who needs to worry about all those stupid foreign viruses when all you have to do is shut off travel?
I missed that a tropical storm had formed-- Gulf? The trajectory is curious. The archives says it formed off Honduras. I see Phillipe NOT forecast to be a hurricane, which means this season of 10 consecutive hurricanes may have ended with Ophelia. May that record not be broken.
Phillipe is the thing that was expected to dump rain on Washington and New York. Now well to the east. It's moving across Cuba and will cross southern Florida.
Looks like a big rain maker, but moving fast enough not to be a calamity.
Dave,
I saw a crop outlook for Florida's citrus crop and it looks worse than horrible this year. Between greening and the hurricane, it looks like the orange crop will be about half of what it was three years ago. Grapefruit are even worse off. I usually get Indian River oranges from a local Lions Club. I wonder what they will have this year and how expensive it will be!!
It looks like the local high-quality Indian River shippers will have some fruit. I suspect that growers of premium fruit have been better able to care for their trees than bulk growers. The orange juice business is collapsed. Thanks to a bad esophagus, I can barely consume citrus. Grapefruit is missed.
I'm back from watching Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away" at the movie theater. I'd only seen it on DVD. The heroine is smart and generous in a world where (nearly) everyone else is (usually) greedy. I'd forgotten the hamster-operated spinning wheel.
The visuals remain a powerful testament to the value of hand-made art in a computer age.
I was searching through the produce department for oranges, tangerines, or clementines, and there were some but they didn't look very good. I ended up with a handful of tangerines, the first of which proves to be either somewhat elderly or born with a REALLY TIGHT peel that's extremely thin, and, at rough guess, about 273 seeds. Not what I was hoping to find but maybe it'll taste good.
It's National Cat Day, or so I'm told, and, in honor of the occasion, the Summercat is hogging the couch blanket. Since we've got a rainstorm and the temperature just dropped sharply, I think that's rather unkind of her.
I'm looking forward to finding out who's in the sealed indictments, and it rather pleases me to think of those scabby little twerps like Manafort and Flynn being in a muck sweat about it. Which is rather unkind of ME, no doubt, but there it is.
"Spirited Away" featured a filth monster that, washed in the Bathhouse of the Spirits and emptied of a huge pile of garbage, turned out to be a splendid River Spirit that gave the heroine a special little ball of spirit food, which fed the subsequent plot.
The filth washed off is nothing compared to the Schmutzsturm that's already rising in response to the CNN report of a sealed indictment. There's demands that Mueller resign or be fired, Hillary Clinton be electrocuted, and on and on. I assume a fair number of public figures will be in hiding for at least the next week.
It's early for what little Florida citrus remains. We should have a few navels soon.
Dave reminds me of McPhee's book, Oranges.
When McPhee turned his formidable attention to "Oranges," one would have supposed the fruit to be the long-term staple of an economy. It was, but the freezes of the 1980s wiped out the northern end of the citrus region, along the Florida Turnpike, competition from Brazil hurt, and there was failure to prepare for the predicted arrival of the two diseases that have laid waste the groves. Control of the first was crippled in part by court rulings against mandatory removal of healthy trees near infestations in urban areas. Homeowners ended up receiving rather generous compensation for trees that would have died, anyway.
Apparent terror attack in NYC is deflecting news attention from Mueller's Russia probe. Almost TOO convenient for Trump, as if... NAH.
Still across The Pond, at a hotel where the only English language news networks are BBC World and Sky News, although I'd imagine CNN International must be almost unbearable to watch. Until Monday, their main story was all-Catalonia, all-the-time, with sexual harassment stories on the side.
SCC: "Their" = BBC and Sky.
Last night I found out that somebody stole my social security number. Therefore I'll file a police report a little later and then prepare myself for a long waiting time at the SSA office. What fun.
As it turned out, my SS# was not stolen, the SSA website is dysfunctional in that it associates wrong information with my name and number. I should have known. The person I talked to was not at all surprised.
Gmbka,
Blogger edited out
Whew!
That's a relief, gmbka!
I'm lucky I have a pretty rare last name, but for many, given the size of the US, there are others with the same name and birth date, and maybe even place of birth, and SSA (and credit agencies, etc.) has a difficult problem keeping them all apart.
Maybe an alternative would be like what they have in Denmark. Everyone has a person number, issued at birth or citizenship or acceptance of residence, and the last ten digits are the coordinates of where you live. If you move, you go to the police station and register your new home. It's at the cop shop not because it's related to crime, but because cop shops are the most widely distributed government offices. Consequently Denmark does not need to conduct a census, they know all the time who lives where. In the US there is no analogous Federal agency with lots of local offices to the Danish national police.
In Germany you had to report your place(s) of living to the authorities in all states. When they felt it necessary to institute a federal authority to report to, the big argument was who should have access to these data. In the end the business lobby won, and now the citizens have to turn to every single company to request to be taken off their list. Data protection? There is not much of it.
Those data falsely associated with my name and social security number gave me headaches when I first tried to get a credit report and then wanted to open a social security account. In both cases I was denied because I could not answer the questions to identify myself because I did not take out a car loan in 2013 (or ever) and therefore also not answer the questions relating to it nor did I ever live on one of the streets they suggested. What a mess.
Greetings from our next stop Across The Pond. At least (if that's the right term) we have CNN International here, so have caught up on the latest Trump news. Chuckled over the person who tweeted that whoever disconnected Trump's Twitter account for 11 minutes should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking of which, I gather that Aun Sang Suu Kyi is caught between the proverbial "rock and a hard place" re the plight of the Rohyngia refugees and power of the Myanmar army, who are looking for any misstep on her part in order to neutralize her. Such a tragedy.
My wife and I have the same birthday and it makes for a cute story but it's been reeking havoc on our insurance. It seems one bill came in for my accident a year ago and the system used date of birth to charge it to my wife instead of me. That kicked out of the system for some reason. It's taken three hour-long phone calls to get it sorted out and we aren't certain it's even been fixed yet.
Agencies of all kinds can wreak havoc. I once lost my social security card and got a replacement which had my husband's social security number on it. Fortunately I found my old one again. But this may be the reason why I have problems with them now.
The Danish people-tracking system would set off panic in the US.
I'm semi-seriously debating getting an expensive ticket (over $300) to Angels in America, the two-part National Theatre show coming to Broadway. I've seen the second half on NT Live; the first half would be interesting and I think the whole thing impressive, but the cost of a minimum two-night trip to NYC could be used for quite a lot else.
Jenna Abramas died at the age of 3, but her picture suggested she be in her mid-thirties. She was the darling of alt-right, tweeted in perfect English, but had never set foot in the US. She tweeted from St. Petersburg and could have been anybody.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2017/nov/03/jenna-abrams-the-trump-loving-twitter-star-who-never-really-existed
One can get that much attention by being noxious on Twitter?
I wear a cloak of invisibility. And pretty much avoid Twitter.
Recently we had a major gathering of family and friends. At one table something political was discussed when a friend who was not in the know blurted out "if we didn't have this idiot for a president ...", and the conversation froze. She told me later that those two Trump-voters were such nice guys and she never would have guessed, and the two nice guys enjoyed and praised her cooking the night before. Now there is a nice example how political opponents all of the sudden are forced to acknowledge that the "others" turn out to be human beings, too, once they are not anonymous any more..
NYC, LA, "These Stunning Aerial Photos Reveal an Unseen Side of Two Iconic U.S. Cities":
http://fortune.com/2017/11/04/photos-new-york-los-angeles-aerials/
Another mass shooting near San Antonio. I guess this again is not the right time to talk about gun control.
Looks to be a white guy, dishonorably discharged from the USAF (Sinclair). He was reportedly chased and shot at by two men in a vehicle; he shot back.
The church's pastor was away in Oklahoma. It looks to have been a normal, if rather conservative, Baptist church.
The church where I'm a member has security measures mostly aimed at keeping the children at the day care center safe. I suppose there will be discussions, but I can't think of much that can be done. Museums seem to have problems with their security checkpoints creating crowds that would easily be mowed down.
Lamar Smith, chair of the House Science Committee, is retiring. He's been a great hero of the War on Science.
I may do jury duty this week. Probably will.
To get into the building, a large tower in Van Nuys, you have to go through a security station like an airport’s. That creates a crowd of people queued up outside. That queue is a juicy target for someone wanting to kill, driving a car through it, or with an automatic weapon. I will see if there are bollards keeping cars away.
I’m coming to think it’s dangerous to go anywhere that has a predictable large crowd, large being 50 or more. What a country where one would have that thought.
Leonhardt's column today in NYT is about the "conspiracy of inaction" on sexual abuse over the past decades, centuries. I suspect it's coming more into the open as a result of Drumpf, an admitted practitioner, becoming President. So watch what you wish for.
Maybe the president encouraged women to complain and accuse. The outrage of his remarks in this respect was quite pronounced. This would be one positive fall-out of his election.
I suspect that lines outside of stores for Black Friday will be somewhat less popular this year.
Along with sexual abuse, the strong Florida State University response to a fraternity-related death may mark changing attitudes. While FSU has a reputation as a party school (as does UF), it's a "flagship" school in a state of 20 million. Getting admitted is not easy. The university has wanted to get into the Association of American Universities, like UF and Georgia Tech.
In Orlando, Universal Studios announced it's building two hotels for 2,800 guests. To be lower-priced than any of their current ones. Might as well just make it look like a cruise ship. Universal's part of Comcast. Deep pockets.
Last week, a conservation biology class, I take it an undergraduate one, visited Archbold Biological Station in central Florida and of course got to meet the famous Florida scrub-jays, which have been studied for many, many jay generations.
Of course I wonder whether half of them might get job offers from Goldman Sachs.
Got a tracking notification from UPS. It was from Lightning Source, Inc., which turns out to be a custom printer of books. Should be one from University Press of Florida. I've previously gotten such books from Oxford, surprising for sale items.
UPS has resumed service to all of Puerto Rico.
It looks as if the Democrats won the VA governor election. Yay.
Yes, the AP called the Virginia race earlier than I thought they might. I figured it would be after 9:00 and they called it around 8:15 or 8:20. This is a pleasant surprise.
Big WHEW!
Looking at the Post's map, I'm surprised at how some of the smaller SW cities appear to have gone heavily Democratic... Roanoke, Martinsville, Danville, and Stanton. I'm not surprised by Albermale (Charlottesville) and Montgomery (Blacksburg). How is Loudoun more blue than Fairfax Co?
It's a sweep of the three top positions -- governor, lieutenant governor, AND attorney general -- and someone said that at least 4 delegate seats changed hands as well. YESSSSS!!!!!!
Oh, and the transgender candidate won Manassas, booting that disgusting, sexually obsessed Marshall guy, and I cannot think of a better candidate to have taken the seat from that grotesque. Talk about rubbing his face in the dirt!
The Overgrown Toddler is petulant about the governorship, twittering that Gillespie lost because "he did not embrace me." I would dearly love to inform him that NOBODY wants to embrace him, no one, in no way, at no time. Not for any reason!
I also feel obliged to point out that it looks like Democrats swept the military vote in Virginia. There's a big blue patch down in the Hampton Roads area, which is not exactly a bastion of Democrat voters. The military tends to be a collection of rock-ribbed conservatives, but SOMEBODY down there voted Democrat!
I figured Trump would call on the Pence-Kobach commission to investigate whether busloads of non-whites crossed the Potomac yesterday in order to vote fraudulently for Northam et al.
Further good news! "Maine just resoundingly became the first state to expand Medicaid by ballot initiative":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/07/maine-could-become-the-first-state-to-expand-medicaid-by-ballot-initiative/?utm_term=.e98a93be2323
...On Tuesday, Maine became the first state to expand Medicaid with a ballot initiative. And it passed overwhelmingly: Maine voters agreed to grant health care to an estimated 70,000 low-income residents by a nearly 20-percentage point margin by the time the measure was called by election watchers. In other words, a sizable number of voters in Maine just voted to do the exact opposite of what the state's Republican governor and Republicans in Washington have been trying to do...
PJ,
how was England, London?
Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to London, gmbka. I have had knee problems a few times this year and my knee swelled up about a week before I was supposed to go. I could barely walk, so I had to cancel. I'm quite bummed about missing the trip. I will get an MRI on the knee to figure out what is causing my problems.
I am so sorry to hear that, pj. This was clearly not our year. Sigh. I hope your knee problem turns out to be something that is easily dealt with. My very best wishes and please let us know.
Sorry about the knee. In May, I arrived in New Zealand and promptly strained/sprained my right knee right in downtown Wellington, so rearranged the trip, limped around Wellington for a couple more days than intended, and finally drove north to Auckland.
Best wished with the MRI. I had a painful, odd swelling of the left foot a year or so ago, nothing showed up on x-rays. Get the knee better before Congress takes away income tax deductions for medical expenses.
Last week, the New Yorker ran a review of a long, meaty biography of Stalin. His Great Terror destroyed the Soviet military's officer corps, much of the Communist Party, whole factories full of workers, and of course followed the terror famines that killed millions.
The destruction of the State Department, EPA, and various other agencies is starting to look more than a bit Stalinist, albeit without the executions. I've gotta go to the library to read Michael Lewis at Vanity Fair.
I recently read Platonov The Foundation Pit. It is a chilling description of the Stalin era were millions of lives were sacrificed for a cruel ideology. Platonov also attempts to explain why Russians are prone to having authoritarian regimes.
Seems that karma's caught up with Judge Roy Moore. If anyone's still in touch with Vukovar, perhaps there's a particularly delicious local link.
Doubt that Moore can come up with a bumper-sticker slogan analogous to Edwin Edwards' notorious "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard." Hmmmm, "Vote for the diddler, not the ???" I got nuttin' here.
"Show some nerve, don't vote for the perv."
In the early 70s, I read "The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko" by Zhores Medvedev. The Stalinist abolition of genetics in favor of Lysenko's b.s. didn't seem to lead to any deaths, but did end careers and ruined Soviet plant breeding. Later on, Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow," which came across as credible. I think I read it before Pol Pot did his best to destroy Cambodia. In that context, I haven't figured out how North Korea seems to have a growing population. Maybe it's Potemkin statistics.
A Post story says the DCCC is expanding its target list for next year's House races.
Today is 9 Nov. I checked the German newspapers and nothing of relevance seems to have happened, unlike on 9 Nov 1848,1918, 1923, 1938, and 1989 when the wall fell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_9_in_German_history
That's a very scary day in German history! At least it ended well.
A new book compares communism/bolshevism to a religion. Looks like an interesting read.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/11/23/bolshevisms-new-believers/
Fresh photos from helping install a horde of little floodlights for the Thanksgiving to New Year show at a small local botanical garden. https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8NvKAw
From the Post's 202: "Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) lost a Republican primary in 2010 but stayed in the Senate by waging a write-in campaign against the GOP nominee. She publicly urged appointed Sen. Luther Strange, who lost to Moore in the September primary, to try repeating that feat."
The Aldi south of us, whose construction was barely delayed by Irma, has its lights on and shelving installed.
Query from an astute (LOL!) reader during Friday's on-line chat, "The Fix's Ask Aaron: The week in politics":
https://live.washingtonpost.com/fix-ask-aaron-20171110.html#4935317
Q: Jones, Moore and a GOP write-in
Let's say that Doug Jones wins a plurality of votes in the Alabama run-off, but not an outright majority against Roy Moore and any Republican write-in candidate. Does Alabama law declare Jones the winner, or would there need to be another run-off between only the two top vote-getters?
A: Aaron Blake:
I don't believe there is any runoff provision for the special election.
— Nov 10, 2017 12:40 EST
Here is more from the Paradise papers than you ever wanted to know:
https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/the-new-offshore-leak-e969006/
With the Paradise Papers (and the Panama Papers before it), my attitude mirrors the Republican attitude to comprehensive immigration reform. I'm in favor of comprehensive corporate tax reform only once they stop corporate income tax shelters.
HF,
the publication of these tax shelters and their users certainly will not help with planned corporate tax cuts at the expense of the middle class.
Hey Calypso, I notice (above) that Summercat3 is still reminding you of who's boss ;-)
""Why Cats Love Boxes, According to Science":
https://www.inverse.com/article/38257-why-do-cats-like-boxes
"How a German Newspaper Became the Go-To Place for Leaks Like the Paradise Papers" [Süddeutsche Zeitung]:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-a-german-newspaper-became-the-go-to-place-for-leaks-like-the-paradise-papers
Interesting, NP, thanks.
Looks like there's frenetic efforts to do something about the Alabama election, including perhaps changing the date to January.
Doug Jones' fundraising emails continue to emphasize financial parity with Moore. No mention of Judge Moore's bad publicity.
Now, I'm trying to make a hotel reservation. Got as far as entering the credit card number and the website suffers a failure. Call, get as far as discussing rate, and the phone breaks up. Did NK nuke the US?
An LA Times story confirms that Doug Jones isn't seizing on the Moore allegations, preferring to tell his own story.
First rule of politics is that when your opponent is self-destructing, get out of their way.
Yello, I wish all the Democrats would follow that first rule and focus on what they want to do rather than responding to the self-destructing guy.
Via The Hill, it's not much of a poll (half retirees), but sort of encouraging for Doug Jones.
http://winwithjmc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Alabama-Senate-Executive-Summary-General-Election-Poll-2.pdf
Re cats in boxes -- I subscribe wholeheartedly to the, "Plus general weirdness" theory.
I've been having fun with the newest Roy Moore info, including the interesting details about him having been banned from the local mall for repeatedly badgering teen-age girls: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/locals-were-troubled-by-roy-moores-interactions-with-teen-girls-at-the-gadsden-mall
There's also an assertion that he'd been banned from the YMCA for the same thing but there's no details on that. Yet.
And, “It was common knowledge that Roy dated high school girls, everyone we knew thought it was weird,” former deputy district attorney Teresa Jones told CNN in comments aired Saturday. “We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall...”
https://www.newamericanjournal.net/2017/11/politics-makes-strange-bedfellows-but-jesus-not-this/
My, my, my! It's a little early to start planning on attending Senator Jones's inauguration, but this certainly has livened up the race, hasn't it?
Luther Strange was appointed on the notion that he'd serve the remainder of Sessions' term, which goes through the end of 2020. So Jones could have two years in office to endear himself to Alabama voters, something that most likely won't happen. Every day he's in office, he'll be accused of betraying his state, his country, Jesus, and football.
Of course by 2020, there could be a raging recession, the Iranians or someone else might have sunk an aircraft carrier, then shot down stealth bombers sent to retaliate, and the destruction of Obamacare might have bothered even Alabamians.
My guess is that so many senators line up against Moore is also because they did not want him there in the first place.
Dang another shooting, just outside Redding in Tehema county.
I am so proud of myself. Granddaughter locked the bathroom door with no one inside. In previous days I would have my husband deal with it. But it was either find out how to open the door or make a trip to McDonalds. YouTube to the rescue. Once I found the micro screwdrivers from hubbies stuff, it was less than two minutes before I was inside.
You can all return to your usual activities, but I did it myself. Yea me,
If Jones wins in Alabama, which I think is highly unlikely, I can't imagine he would have a chance in 2020. Alabama electing a Democrat once would be stunning. Doing it twice might suggest that the earth's orbit has rotated.
Congrats, Pacifica! Nicely done and quickly done, too.
Yaaaay, Pacifica!
Here the locking internal doors can all be opened with a regular screwdriver (or maybe the tip of a table knife). They're not really locked, they just prevent people from inadvertently invading temporary privacy.
Great, Pacifica. Now I want to claim bragging rights, too.
This year I failed to call the window washer before the first frost, the man who is also responsible to move a very large and heavy flower pot from the patio inside. There is one step to overcome, and I figured out how to do that. I "walked" the pot to the step, put a door mat next to the step on the inside, lay the pot with the about 8' high plant on the floor mat, pushed it over the step further on to the floor mat, put it upright again, pulled the floor mat with plant in place and voila. Although I now have to buy a new floor mat because I cannot get it out from underneath the pot, I am still immensely proud!
Yay for the creativity gmbka, too. Can you "walk" the pot off of the floor mat so you can still us it by the door?
Um, that should probably read: Yay for the creativity of gmbka, too. Or something like that.
Um, or something nice like that. Thank you. If I walked the plant of the mat I'd be afraid of damaging the floor because I cannot get it into the saucer.
How is your knee, pj, and also your heart?
My knee is feeling better, thanks. I will have an MRI on Saturday and we will see what that shows. I have an appointment with my cardiologist next Monday. When I saw my doctor about my knee about three weeks ago, she listened to my heart and said it sounded fine. I liked hearing that! I hope the cardiologist's EKG shows the same thing.
Good news from everyone! I like that.
Jim19 - I realize that the privacy lock on a bathroom door is not unpenatrable. My sister had some implement above the door when her children were little, and my niece, the source of my sisters skill, now also has something above the bathroom door for her child’s locking the door.
It is just I never had to deal with that. Son never locked us out of the bathroom. (He did once run away from home and locked himself in the car in the driveway - he was not to cross the street by himself)
In most marriages/relationships tasks/chores get split, either by skill, temperament, or desire. Now that I no longer have a spouse to rely on, taking on the stuff he always just did, can be a challenge.
Unlocking the bathroom door was one of those challenges.
Will be going to Arizona next week for my fathers memorial. My stepmother never participated in anything financial. That scares her beyond belief. Finally my brother hired someone to pay her bills.
Gmbka-good job thinking outside the box so to speak. I am lucky that UPS will knock and put the heavy boxes inside my front door. (Half step from the porch to inside the front door)
Locally, more or less in front of Applebee's, the male driver of a Mazda shot and killed the male driver of a Toyota in an apparent road rage incident at 7 this evening. He then called 911 and pulled into a parking lot, awaiting sheriff's deputies. I was off in the other direction watching Sondheim's "Follies" from London at the movie theater.
I bet Vukovar is chortling (or heaving his guts out) over this, re pervy Roy Moore. It sounds as though Moore finally captured a young female prey, although it took him several years (and perhaps as a young divorcée with a child, Kayla viewed Roy as her meal-ticket). "When did Roy Moore meet his wife?":
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/when_did_roy_moore_meet_his_wi.html
The best part of the tender Roy-Kayla love story is that he they were formally introduced he remembered her from a "dance recital" several years earlier. Only the "dance recital" was almost certainly a beauty pageant as she was an unsuccessful contestant for both Miss Alabama and Miss Alabama USA. So he did finally get his teenager, he just had to wait a few years for her to grow into him.
Oh and did I mention that Kayla was a classmate of the woman who accused him of assaulting her by the restaurant dumpster?
I think a real dance recital could've been even creepier, as presumably the performers might've been nearly all under-age, whereas in at least *some* beauty pageants the contestants are 18 or more years old. Poor ol' Roy had to settle for "damaged goods," rather than some pure innocent virgin.
From Big Brother Airways, "Airlines Have Your Personal Data, And They’re Using It / They know what you like to eat and drink—and even when it’s your birthday. But trying to make you feel special risks things getting creepy":
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-16/airlines-have-your-personal-data-and-they-re-using-it
...Like other carriers debating how to employ “big data” through new digital tools, Delta is exploring where the creepy factor lies in all this customer insight. For example, should a flight attendant wish you a happy birthday? What about appearing with a bloody mary because you ordered the drink on nine of your last 10 flights? What if you’re sitting beside your boss this time? And should flight attendants’ notes on high-value customers be updated and distributed companywide? Right now, they’re not, but what has begun as making use of information they had anyway could soon become a targeted accumulation of data on your travel persona.
Do we want to feel like we’re under the microscope every time we fly? Will we order that second drink? Even watch a racy movie? Entertainment isn’t being tracked as of yet, but creating a big brother environment may not make for happy customers, which after all, is the point of the exercise...
In this vein, I recently went to a lecture, for which I had ordered and printed a ticket. At the entrance of the lecture hall my ticket was not only checked, but also scanned. That means that somebody now knows which books I take out from the library or order from Amazon, which goods I order, my credit card company also knows which restaurant I frequent and where I shop, my grocery store knows what kind of pasta I buy because I cannot resist the rebates I get from the store card, and now somebody even knows which lectures I go to. I am expecting that movie theaters and other entertainment venues will follow suit. Sure, most of these data are stored in different places, but I cannot be sure that they are not sold. I have become what has been called a glass human, and I don't appreciate it.
End of rant.
And since I am at it, here is an article on very rich people who happen to have a broader and more long-term view on taxation and therefore oppose the tax "reform".
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/17/16647544/patriotic-millionaires-taxes?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%20111717&utm_content=Vox%20Sentences%20111717+CID_46ae88ee07de0721a0adc7645110dc79&utm_source=cm_email&utm_term=A%20millionaire%20explains%20why%20he%20wants%20to%20pay%20more%20taxes
I'm a little dumbfounded at Trump's (temporary?) (re)reversal of his reversal of the Obama-era rule that banned import of ivory. Why did this particular outrage raise to his level of consciousness, that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all? Did he talk to someone different? Did Fox/Breitbart come out against it?
HF, I think Laura Ingraham was for the elephants. And maybe daddy figured that Jr didn't need more bad publicity at this time, if you know what I mean.
gmbka, not sure how scanning a ticket barcode would let anyone see what books you check out from the library. I couldn't figure out how to tell what books I've checked out, to tell you the truth. When I worked at a secure site years ago, I used to wonder if my penchant for spy novels would raise any eyebrows (bags were searched going in and out) - never did.
seasea
Here's a video of a friend of mine playing "Amazing Grace" on a resonator guitar. It's an instrumental. After about two minutes of playing, he describes his arrangement on the guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2668uoOePk&feature=share
Most likely your first assumption, he talked to someone different, is correct. Whoever talks to him last sways him.
Suesea, the order of the list of all the data collected about me is wrong. I should have started with lectures and then put in all the other occasions.
pj,
I found your friend and his instruments fascinating, the cigar box guitar even more than the fancy one you linked to. May likes.
Yes, gmbka, Scott is quite good on his cigar box guitar!
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