Althouse: At the November Café...

November 21, 2016

At the November Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

53 comments:

Owen said...: How long until freeze-up?; 11/21/16, 1:56 PM
gerry said...: Wow. That is a somberly beautiful photograph.; 11/21/16, 2:00 PM
eric said...: We need a rule for the Trump administration that mirrors the Althouse rule on studies about the differences between men and women.

I don't know the exact wording of her rule. But it's basically, any study showing the difference between men and women must show women in a positive light.

How does that apply to Republican and Democrat administrations?

Any economic news during a Democrat administration must be viewed through a glass half full lens. Any economic news during a Republican administration must be viewed as the glass is half empty.; 11/21/16, 2:00 PM
mccullough said...: A forlorn photo; 11/21/16, 2:04 PM
Gahrie said...: if Donald Trump discovered a cure for cancer, the MSM would report it as "Trump throws doctors out of work!"; 11/21/16, 2:15 PM
sane_voter said...: I see there is a controversy about someone named Gigi Hadid, who mocked Melania by doing a bad accent with lame jokes on the AMA awards. Gigi has a mom from The Netherlands and a Muslim father from Israel, whom undoubtedly speak in perfect non-accented english. You can't make this shit up. So sad the music industry has lost over 50% of their revenue over the last 15 years.

/crocodile tears; 11/21/16, 2:18 PM
ceowens said...: A nice straight horizon though. Near the center so not too dynamic. With a bonus Loch Ness Monster near the middle.; 11/21/16, 2:19 PM
AllenS said...: NOV 21(54026)

HIGH TEMP AVERAGE 36º

LOW TEMP AVERAGE 21º

Record High Temp (1990) 64º

Record Low Temp (1978) -12º

More proof of global warming.; 11/21/16, 2:28 PM
Biff said...: Terrific photo.; 11/21/16, 2:29 PM
Sydney said...: I've been trying to read the Doris Lessing novel, Shikasta, after asking for recommendations here a while back. No one actually recommended any of her books, saying she wasn't their cup of tea, but these are her famous ones. Chose Shikasta because the sample on Amazon seemed more interesting to me. I am disappointed. It reads like an Ayn Rand novel - big on ideology and short on plot and character development. Guess she's not my cup of tea, either.; 11/21/16, 2:31 PM
wildswan said...: Great Photo (s)

The Mendota series is like Monet studies of dawn, noon, twilight - except these are seasons, winter closing in on Wisconsin.; 11/21/16, 2:35 PM
Todd said...: Apparently, along with nine-banded Armadillo, British red squirrels can also carry leprosy. Along with humans, these are the only known animals that can be carriers...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/10/leprosy-revealed-in-red-squirrels-across-british-isles; 11/21/16, 2:44 PM
Owen said...: Sydney: I read "Shikasta" (a friend loaned it/them, I think there were several volumes) and was underwhelmed. There were some somewhat clever (but hardly original) plot or structural devices (to enable some deus ex machina stuff, I vaguely recollect, as these beings entered and left "our world") but it felt cold, contrived and ultimately meaningless. Maybe I was missing the point. I tend to go for the hard science (Bear, Benford, Banks, Heinlein, Niven, Pohl) and of course Gibson, Stephenson and the like.

Good luck with it.; 11/21/16, 2:51 PM
MadisonMan said...: The month so far is 8.5 degrees above normal; Milwaukee is almost 10 degrees above normal! Most of Minnesota is at least 10 degrees above normal.

Now that we're back to normal-ish temperatures, those numbers will drop a bit. But I won't be surprised if this is one of the warmest Novembers on record in the Midwest.; 11/21/16, 2:59 PM
MadisonMan said...: How long until freeze-up?

I'd say later than normal for this year.; 11/21/16, 3:00 PM
wildswan said...: Someone said that the Canadians are creating an American reservation one hundred and fifty miles above the US Canadian border - a territory ten miles wide and a thousand miles long stretching from Sarnia to Vancouver. There will be humanitarian corridors from the US border to lakes like Mendota so that desperate celebs can walk, ski or snowshoe to the site of their new home. No one will want to use a snowmobile, of course, or a chain saw or a rifle or a heater - coal, electric or oil-fired. But there will be kind Canadians passing out bags of brown rice and maybe an axe. There's wood up there - God knows there's plenty of that - and water and ... space and ... Lena, The Little Lady Pioneer. Cher In The Way Too Little House in the Iconic Woods. Miley Cyrus On the Shores of a Dark Gray Lake.; 11/21/16, 3:32 PM
Clyde said...: We had an arctic blast come through southwest Florida yesterday. It was 42 degrees this morning when I left for work, and there was actually frost on my back window, from the north wind. It's the coldest weather we've seen since March. It did warm up nicely to around 74, and have one more cold night coming before it starts warming back up to something more seasonable.

I know that 42 degrees doesn't sound cold to you, but down here, that's cold. Like I've told my friend in Chicago, subtract thirty degrees and that's what would seem like to you.; 11/21/16, 3:33 PM
wildswan said...: PS
Forgot to mention that 98% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US-Canadian border. So there's room for many more in the true North strong and free. Paint Your Wagons, go along.; 11/21/16, 3:36 PM
Owen said...: Wildswan: "....reservation..." LOL. You are having WAY too much fun.; 11/21/16, 3:45 PM
Owen said...: Madison Man: what is the slope of a sine wave?; 11/21/16, 3:47 PM
Michael K said...: British red squirrels can also carry leprosy. Along with humans, these are the only known animals that can be carriers...

I believe there have been some concerns about elephants, which are suffering a tb epidemic now and may also be susceptible to Mycobacterium leprae.; 11/21/16, 4:14 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/21/16, 4:16 PM
khesanh0802 said...: There is currently WaPo headline that Trump, in essence, is planning to push the government workers off the gravy train.. My heart bleeds!

BTW nice framing of your photo w branches. I tried cropping it a bit tighter to focus on the far shore, but that didn't work any better.; 11/21/16, 4:17 PM
David said...: Yahoo news summary today derscribing Pence's reaction to the events at "Hamilton."

“I did hear what was said from the stage, and I can tell you I wasn’t offended by what was said,” Pence told “Fox News Sunday.” “I’ll leave to others whether that was the appropriate venue to say it.”

He also addressed the jeers from the audience.

“It was a real joy to be there,” Pence told Chris Wallace. “When we arrived, we heard a few boos and we heard some cheers, and I nudged my kids and reminded them, that’s what freedom sounds like.”

Sounds about right to me.; 11/21/16, 4:20 PM
eric said...: Tsunami warning in Japan after 7.3 earthquake.

Obama blames Trump.; 11/21/16, 4:23 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: I don't know. What's that thing that looks like a greyhound front and center?; 11/21/16, 4:46 PM
Unknown said...: Speaking of the weather, apparently those idiot protestors on the reservation or something set a bunch of fires. So the firemen showed up to put them out.

Lotta smoke or something, because those firefighters weren't all that accurate. Managed to hose down a whole bunch of protestors with freezing cold water... in a frigid climate... and probably none of them had waterproof cold gear.

Such a shame, really.

--Vance; 11/21/16, 5:07 PM
madAsHell said...: The Onion just got real!!; 11/21/16, 5:07 PM
madAsHell said...: What a fucking GENIUS!!!

Imagine the cascade of un-intended consequences on the road to Soylent Green!!; 11/21/16, 5:19 PM
mockturtle said...: eric reports: Tsunami warning in Japan after 7.3 earthquake.

Obama blames Trump.

Could be 'fake news', ya know!; 11/21/16, 5:26 PM
Quaestor said...: What's that thing that looks like a greyhound front and center?

It's that northern glacial lake thing — there's one in Champlain, another in Okanagan...; 11/21/16, 5:31 PM
Carol said...: Guess she's not my cup of tea, either.

The only thing I've read by Doris Lessing is the Golden Notebooks. I really liked it for its brutal depiction of London's postwar Stalinists and the dreary sexual scene for moderne single women in the 1950s.

A good (honest) writer reveals more than intended.; 11/21/16, 6:06 PM
Fritz said...: Good job of leveling the horizon.; 11/21/16, 6:28 PM
HT said...: No one actually recommended any of her books, saying she wasn't their cup of tea,

You say that, but I seem to recall saying something about the Golden Notebook.; 11/21/16, 7:47 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Sketchy Guy Who Works at the Adult Bookstore says:

I finished my shift at the Store and went to my neighborhood dive bar for a drink or five, just to shake off the existential dread of my last customer. The guy looked in his fifties, but a hard life can make people older quicker, and what was left of his voice didn't come from less than three packs of smokes a day...

He told me he was Having Problems Down There, which I really appreciated him sharing, because I am sincerely interested in the lives of the depressed and disheveled people coming in to buy porn. Please, tell me more about how That Bitch Was A Whore And Stole Your Money, Shoes, And Dental Bridge. Tell me more about The Tiny Snails You Are Now Finding In Your Freshly-Ejaculated Semen...

So the Guy Having Problems Down There sees the prison tattoos on my neck, and tells me he was in prison, too. He was Innocent, of course: that eight-year-old girl lied about him, and if he had known that she was going to lie about him he would've been better off strangling her in the woods when he had the chance, ha ha. Making this worse was that he looked at me like he believed I would totally sympathize with what he was saying: dude, I was in prison for NORMAL crimes, not THAT fucked-up shit...

He then asks me if we have any porn where there are legal-age eighteen-year-old girls who REALLY, REALLY look like they are seven or eight. I told him he can go check out the 'Lolitas and Lollipops' section, but I knew he was going to be disappointed: anything legal is NOT going to rub that spot he so wants rubbed...

Of course, he comes back empty-handed, and I knew what he was thinking: I was in prison, and now I work at a seedy Porn Shop -- of COURSE I must know where to score some real raw underage porn. So I told him that, shhhhh, I DO have some secret stash you'll really like, just follow me to the back, where I then pushed him out on his ass into the alley and kicked the living shit out of him by the dumpster.

Except I didn't do that: I just shook my head and he left the store with the same buzzing insects in his head that he came in with. A crime isn't a crime until it's a crime: that's something one of my defense attorneys had told me, right before I lost my case and went to prison. Maybe that's wisdom, maybe that's not: I think my defense attorney was drunk at the time...

I am Laslo.; 11/21/16, 8:02 PM
mockturtle said...: Another mini-masterpiece, Laslo. Somehow you manage to turn over the rocks we don't want turned over and see what we don't want to see. And you do it very, very well.; 11/21/16, 8:18 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I could be so so great, had I not watched "Citezan Kane " and determined they were accurate portraying Orson as Hearst only in certain mysterious conglomerates of time revealed.

https://cumulus.hillsdale.edu/Buckley/

"Buckley Online

This website contains the complete writings of William F. Buckley, Jr. Transcripts from his longrunning TV show, Firing Line are available at the Hoover Institution.

NOTE: This website also uses pop-ups. Please add it to your list of trusted websites in your browser's pop-up blocker settings.

"Well, thanks to Hillsdale College,it is all here, a lifetime's work. Necessarily, you will find infelicities here, and maybe a deviation or two, but it is all an earnest attempt to contribute to the patrimony, preserved here thanks to Hillsdale." W.F.B."

I have tried and failed but I could improve this so much, so easily.

To start, like the drugs do, I will offer it FOR FREES!

(Golem voice)

Buckley wrote when learning English, perhaps as a second language, so where are those writings you claim you have? Who determined what a squibble or doodad was, apart from in reality Dottie Parker, whence the chosing commenced?

Buckley was a spy, if you have all his written works you are exposing, even yes at this late date, American top secret spy-stuff.

Assholes.; 11/21/16, 8:51 PM
Owen said...: Laslo: I echo Mockturtle. Are you writing as the bastard grandson of Swift and Rabelais, with a little Dostoevsky thrown in?; 11/21/16, 9:04 PM
MadisonMan said...: Owen: I believe it's a cosine.

Why?; 11/21/16, 9:06 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Nothing could ever contain Buckley.

FFS.

You don't think Satan tried? You don't believe the devil exists?

Keep on noticing how Christian'S don't murder you then, is all I ask of you and yours.; 11/21/16, 9:10 PM
MadisonMan said...: This is the time of year, btw, when it sucks to walk home after work. I feel like I should have a 1000 watt circulating light beacon on my head, just so cars can see me.

Would it be wrong to blind drivers just so they can see where I am?; 11/21/16, 9:10 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Only the universal and the entirety of personal is contained by those seeking evermore to define shit like the Latins did "contain."; 11/21/16, 9:11 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Fact is I ain't ever been mortified by my drunk ramblin's, it's the early morning hate I contain I hate myself for feeling and acknowledging and whatnot.

Change is coming if ya got me the money, I will re open the theater, you know. You know. Now pay up.; 11/21/16, 9:14 PM
Owen said...: Madison Man: that's technically correct (if memory serves) but the answer I had in mind is, "it depends." You can get any slope you want off a sine curve, depending where you are.

That was my way to tee-up the idea that, in the context of global warming, we don't know enough about the temperature record, its movements, what causes them. Much of what we end up doing is just curve-fitting. And with a record as messy as that for temperature, you can fit just about whatever you want.

My guess is, temperature is a composite; a Fourier series with quasi-periodic bits that come and go over days, weeks, decades, millennia. Until we've gotten much better at sampling and signal analysis, we really aren't in a position to say what's going on. Let alone determine what factors contribute to it, in what proportion, with what feedbacks. And what our contribution is. And what we can do about it.

Bottom line, I think some humility is in order here. But I'm an amateur, so if anybody here has some strong knowledge and wants to put it on us all, that's fine with me.; 11/21/16, 9:31 PM
Gahrie said...: The Earth is currently in the middle of an ice age, called the Quaternary that began 2.6 million years ago. We are in the middle of an interglacial of this ice age, called the Holocene that began 12,000 years ago.

Modern humans evolved around 200,000 years ago. For the vast majority of that time we wandered around in small tribes living in caves and picking each other's lice. then suddenly 10,000 years ago, humans developed agriculture, surplus, specialization, civilization and finally history.

All of human civilization and history has occurred during this warming period of the current ice age.

During times of increased warming, such as the MWP, human civilization and population has flourished. During periods of cooling, human society and population has regressed, such as during the mini ice age.; 11/21/16, 10:55 PM
Gahrie said...: The current PIXAR movie is apparently Hawaiian in nature. The male lead is rendered fairly accurately as a rather large Polynesian. However the female lead is rendered as a skinny White girl.

Where is the outrage directed at PIXAR?; 11/21/16, 11:29 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Hey, forget Pixar: King Triton was so desperate for a *son* that he killed The Little Mermaid's mother trying to get one. Really, think about it: youngest child, umpteen older sisters, no mother..; 11/22/16, 12:38 AM
Curious George said...: "MadisonMan said...
This is the time of year, btw, when it sucks to walk home after work. I feel like I should have a 1000 watt circulating light beacon on my head, just so cars can see me.

Would it be wrong to blind drivers just so they can see where I am?"

Maybe stay on the sidewalks, or wear something reflective.; 11/22/16, 7:23 AM
Owen said...: Walking on roads at night? Definitely wear reflective gear. And a strobe. Cheap and effective. Do you want to spend $20 on a safety vest or strobe armbands, or the rest of your life in pain trying to learn to feed yourself? And motorists will be grateful.; 11/22/16, 7:36 AM
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Curious George said...: "Owen said...
Walking on roads at night? Definitely wear reflective gear. And a strobe. Cheap and effective. Do you want to spend $20 on a safety vest or strobe armbands, or the rest of your life in pain trying to learn to feed yourself? And motorists will be grateful."

That sounds great until you realize that now you are as safe as the decision of a motorist to not text...where in Madison do you not have sidewalks? No where I can think...; 11/22/16, 8:05 AM
Owen said...: Texting is the new DWI. Worse, even. Presumably most drunks are looking at the road and trying to solve the driving problem, albeit very badly. But texters are in another world entirely.; 11/22/16, 8:16 AM
mockturtle said...: Owen, I was chagrined to hear a commercial for a car that 'senses' everything [so you don't have to] and finished with: "For today's driver". I guess that means for today's driver who has better things to do than pay attention to the road. :-\; 11/22/16, 9:27 AM