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Thanks to all who enjoy anything about this blog — the nanas of Kazakhstan, the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the geographically puzzling forest, the ripping into MSM propaganda, the live-feed of Trump in Poland, the history of the Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia (just to name this morning's topics).
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60 comments:
Is that the new VW model that finally meets pollution controls?
It looks like a Lada Niva, fine Soviet fun vehicle.
Marta Keen's beautiful choral work "Homeward Bound," arranged by one Jay Althouse -- for the "Other Althouses" tag.
I see he's been mentioned just once before. I gather this song is now a staple of high school choruses worldwide (this one is from New Zealand).
Jay Althouse seems to be very well known.
That wasn't the "Homeward Bound" I expected.
Yeah, I clicked on it thinking "I'm sittin' in a railway station".
It's a nice recording of a serious choir on a different song.
"Such a truck would be good for picking up girls in Minsk!"
Bonus quote:
John Winger: C'mon, it's Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick 'em up, we zip right out again. We're not going to Moscow. It's Czechoslovakia. It's like going into Wisconsin.
Russell Ziskey: Well I got the shit kicked out of me in Wisconsin once. Forget it!
"She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07vdtBMG4Kg
The Russians and much of Eastern Europe probably have the ugliest cars on Earth.
How depressing.
The car is cute compared to the building. It's the building that's really depressing.
The car is cute compared to the building. It's the building that's really depressing.
Yes. Things are relative :-)
My daughter spend a semester in college in Salzburg, Austria (a beautiful country!) and when she went to Eastern Europe, Poland I think, she said it was all depressing. Dark dreary buildings. People wearing dark dreary clothing. Dark dreary weather. Closed in buildings in the cities. Ugly dark and cramped was her impression.
Of course, coming from sunny open spaced California, that would be her impression.
It looks like a Lada Niva, fine Soviet fun vehicle.
Reminds me of my favorite Russian rapper, Timati's song about Tajiks in Moscow and an eggplant colored Lada car. Lada Sedan Baklazhan
funny video and actually OK rap style music and words.
CNN is on every tv in airports.
it doesn't concern me that much because i can ignore the tvs, but how did they get the monopoly. anybody know?
"My daughter spend a semester in college in Salzburg, Austria (a beautiful country!) and when she went to Eastern Europe, Poland I think, she said it was all depressing. Dark dreary buildings"
Warsaw is ugly because it was damn near leveled in WWII and what replaced it was ugly Communist blocks of concrete. The same is true of East Berlin.
Prague is stunningly beautiful.
@DBQ
Eastern Europe can be beautiful. The problem was communism and poverty. Der Spiegal did a great photo story about East Germany before and after communism.
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-east-germany-s-transformation-fotostrecke-59943.html
Don't you remember the paeans written in praise of the unspoiled architecture in Eastern Europe, and the lack of McDonalds there in the early '90s.
By the way, that particular car was driven by Bernie Sanders and his bride on their honeymoon in the Soviet Union. Makes you wonder if he has one at his Vermont dacha.
@ Exiled
Yes. I believe it was Warsaw that she had visited.
@Bill....amazing photos. What a difference from the crumbling ugly before to the after restored buildings. Almost like a reverse of Detroit....from beautiful to decayed.
BTW: It was in 1997 that my Daughter was in Europe. No wonder she was depressed by the buildings in Poland!!!
Our guide in Budapest apologized for the ugly Soviet-era apartment blocks in the outskirts. But Vienna, Paris, and London have some similar ones, so what's their excuse ?
Lileks has been doing the google-street thing for quite a while, usually about obscure mid-western towns; here is today's offering: Ely, MN.
Krakow is excellent & has one of, if not the largest, city squares in Europe. The city was spared the ravages of ww2, much like Prague. Wroclaw, also known as German fortess city Breslau was damaged substantially at the end of ww2 but still has a wonderful square and original architecture.
Prague, also spared from the destruction is simply magnificent.
Budapest was not spared from the destructions, but is also magnificent.
A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years “are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”
“Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming,” according to a study published June 27 by two scientists and a veteran statistician.
The peer-reviewed study tried to validate current surface temperature datasets managed by NASA, NOAA and the UK’s Met Office, all of which make adjustments to raw thermometer readings.
I guess this is what they mean by "the case gets stronger every week." Just like the case against Trump, I guess. By "stronger" they mean, has more mindless idiots repeating it.
I saw a video of Reagan telling jokes yesterday. One of them went sort like this.
A man goes to buy a car in Russia. He is told, it'll be ready in 10 years. The man says, should I come back in the morning or the afternoon to pick it up? The seller says, what does it matter, it's ten years from now? The buyer says, because the plumber is coming in the morning.
The photo series from Der Spiegel reminded me of my only trip to the former East Germany, about this very time 20 years ago. I was in Heidelberg on a business trip and I drove with some co-workers from there to Jena, where we were visiting the home office of Zeiss, the great German optics manufacturer, which had recently relocated its headquarters from the West back to its original location from which it had fled after WWII. It was an interesting trip.
I can recall driving on he autobahn through the former border checkpoint and the road quality deteriorated so badly I had to slow down by about 40 kmh. Occasionally I'd come to a stretch where the autobahn had been replaced and brought up to Western standards, then after a few kilometers it would revert. When we got to Jena it was just as in the photos, run down older buildings and rows of Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks, all very run down and ugly. It was a shock as we pulled off the autobahn and there was a brand spanking new Shell station with a McDonald's, all bright white, red, and yellow. It really stuck out. And no one in the McD spoke English, all German, though I was told they could converse in Russian if necessary.
Our hotel was a Holiday Inn. It was very nice but was way back off the main road behind a block of apartments. It suddenly dawned on me after entering my room that I had the biggest hotel room I had ever seen, plus a large bathroom, and that what Holiday Inn had done was acquired one of these former apartment buildings and remodeled it into the hotel. Out my window were several blocks of the old apartments and parked along the street were several old tan or gray Trabants, the little people's car made in the East. A new shiny red VW was also parked along the curb and made the bleak surroundings look even worse.
Dr. Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann committed contempt of court in what is being dubbed the “climate science trial of the century”. Dr. Mann defied the judge presiding over the case and refused to surrender his data for “open court examination”.
Principia Scientific noted the following:
“Only possible outcome: Mann’s humiliation, defeat and likely criminal investigation in the U.S.”
79-year-old Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball is the defendant in the libel trial and is expected to tell his attorneys to “trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions, including a ruling that Mann did act with criminal intent when using public funds to commit climate data fraud”.
The defeat of Dr. Mann will only vindicate President Donald Trump in his claims that climate change is a hoax. The graph below from Principia Scientific shows “Mann’s cherry-picked version of science [that] makes the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) disappear and shows a pronounced upward ’tick’ in the late 20th century” – this is the blade of Mann’s now infamous “hockey stick”.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/scientist-michael-mann-commits-contempt-court-climate-science-trial-century/
"Warsaw is ugly.."
Yeah, but, talk about a "bad neighborhood" problem: Nazis to the West, Communists to the East.
It's kinda amazing that Poland has even survived as a country these past 80 years.
So, I'd give it a mulligan on the looks department.
MountainMan,
I had the exact same experience in 1995. My company had sent me to their research facility Germany for 3 months, so I spent most of my weekends traveling around the country including the former East Germany. I have wanted to go back to revisit it to see the changes since then.
FM thanks for posting that
So right now, Thursday afternoon, Rush Limbaugh is talking about an op-ed column by David Gelernter in the Wall Street Journal.
The thesis is, NeverTrump conservatives should get on board the Trump bandwagon and start to more actively fight the culture war.
I think it is a highly flawed column; I hope Althouse blogs it. It would be a big-response post.
The problem is that it is paywalled at the WSJ.com subscription pages:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-conservative-resistance-is-futile-1499296694
I have a subscription, but I don't know how to make it available to everybody else. (If I emailed it from my subscription account to Althouse, would that work?)
Another Iron Maiden. It must be the rich red color.
I find it interesting to click through on these photos and then look at a larger version where the background details come clearly into view. It's isn't too hard to identify the location of this one as some present or former Socialist Paradise. The dilapidated building in the back is a prime example of the genre.
I read the Gelernter column - he is basically right.
Conservative GOP types are, partly, responsible for the rise of Trump for 3 reasons.
1. They didn't really "resist" Obama hard enough.
2. They totally ignored the white working class who was greatly hurt by trade deals and Obamacare and globalization.
3. They splintered their GOP primary vote, and failed to coalesce around a solid Conservative Republican candidate (such as Cruz or Walker).
So, I would argue that Conservative GOP types, in part, are in fact responsible for the rise of Trump.
Now, if one calls himself Conservative and objectively looks at what Trump as done these past 6 months (Gorsuch, reduced illegal immigration, withdraw from Paris Climate accords, House passage of repeal Obamacare) and is STILL attacking Trump, then they are not thinking clearly at all.
From the WSJ: Conservatives regret the collapse of authority, dignity and a certain due formality in the way Americans treat each other.
That's Vichy France talk, the equivalent of "French people regret the Germans occupying Paris do not all speak French".
Conservatives do not "regret the collapse of authority". Conservatives are enraged that authority beyond Constitutional limits has been taken and used against the American people to curtail their civil rights.
Chuck said...
So right now, Thursday afternoon, Rush Limbaugh is talking about an op-ed column by David Gelernter in the Wall Street Journal.
The thesis is, NeverTrump conservatives should get on board the Trump bandwagon and start to more actively fight the culture war.
I think it is a highly flawed column; I hope Althouse blogs it. It would be a big-response post.
It's an interesting article. He makes the strong point that the Left dominates the culture with papspeak so thoroughly that they retain a powerful political advantage. Another article today points out how Medicaid expansion in Red States under Obamacare is a major obstacle to the Republican reforms. They took the money drug and are now addicted.
Not "rich red", but rather dark red, as in necrotic.
You know, if you follow life long Republican advice, Congress and the Senate will remove Trump from office, pat themselves on the back for upholding Republican principles, then watch the Democrats crush them all in 2018.
Is that an alien in the window? The truth is out there!
Panther,
I saw that, too. That is likely a reflection of the Google camera pod.
It would appear that the WSJ would prefer that people pay before they receive the intellectual property it has created. Chuck does not approve, and he is hoping someone -- someone more technically skilled than himself -- will conspire with him to steal it and make it generally available. Any takers?
Who remembers Soviet fun? Those were the days!
Soviet Era Fun
She'll Have Fun Fun Fun 'til Her Daddy Takes Her Niva Away
In the Gelernter column, he writes: "I’d love for [Trump] to be a more eloquent, elegant speaker. But if I had to choose between deeds and delivery, it wouldn’t be hard."
Well since when is that choice forced on anyone? Why can't people who voted for Trump say to him and to the nation, Cut it out now, with these unhinged statements and the stupid Tweets! You are the President; something you seemingly forget on a regular basis. Act like it!
Just because I voted for Trump doesn't mean I can't criticize him.
A conservative Republican Michigan congressman, Dave Trott, said, "I wish the President would spend less time on Twitter and more time on Google."
Gelernter continues: "Many conservative intellectuals insist that Mr. Trump’s wrong policies are what they dislike. So what if he has restarted the large pipeline projects, scrapped many statist regulations, appointed a fine cabinet and a first-rate Supreme Court justice, asked NATO countries to pay what they owe, re-established solid relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, signaled an inclination to use troops in Afghanistan to win and not merely cover our retreat, led us out of the Paris climate accord, plans to increase military spending (granted, not enough), is trying to get rid of ObamaCare to the extent possible, proposed to lower taxes significantly and revamp immigration policy and enforcement? What has he done lately?"
I haven't complained about ANY of those things.
I am complaining that Trump made a whole auditorium full of hysterically grand promises about how "he" would replace Obamacare. With something great; covering everybody; with lowered premiums, and lowered deductibles, and better care. And now, Trump seems to not even understand what is in the pending reform bills that he alternately praises as "great" or rebukes as "mean."
I thought it was a photo that Althouse snapped herself.
So what's a Soviet piece of junk doing in the US?
Oh, she lives in Madison.
@Chuck,
Nobody denies your ability to criticize Trump.
The problem - I reckon - is that you ONLY criticize Trump regardless of thread topic.
It doesn't bother me - I'm easy.
But it does bother others who suspect that your obsession with Trump is not made in good faith.
Bay Area Guy:
This is a "Café" post. Where we are invited to post what interests each of us at the moment, and in which we might even think of a subject or thing that Althouse might want to blog.
The column I mentioned is flatly and proudly pro-Trump. I don't agree with it; others might agree with it.
At least one other reader here also saw it in today's Wall Street Journal (which has a lot of good content that Althouse frequently overlooks because she is a devoted reader of the Times), and he also thought the column was interesting.
"Guildofcannonballs said...
Trump.
Correlation and causation and Coen Reagan (aka Gabriel Byrne).
Look, Gawker has had it out for our Donnie for awhile, and somebody has got to send a message, okay, somehow, nothing illegal, nothing, nothing illegal, but somebody has got to put a stop this hooliganism.
It's hooligans. And we, it's gotta stop. It's just, we have to put a stop to this okay, and Hillary is weak.
3/19/16, 1:13 AM"
"Guildofcannonballs said...
Nancy Reagan held John McCain in the least respect you could imagine, and most likely much worse.
You've seen this website before:
https://cumulus.hillsdale.edu/Buckley/
There is too much class all around to mention it, but the internet has all kinds of stories, okay, all kinds of stories. Alright, all kinds, and, you just, you know not all of it's true, not all of it's true, but, you know, you look around and click the little buttons and, of course you understand, the stories just kind of pop out at you. Weird.
3/19/16, 1:51 AM"
"rhhardin said...
You'd think sex tape would be a contraceptive of some kind.
3/19/16, 6:57 AM"
Ha.
"Guildofcannonballs said...
Buckley might have thought-before-self-edit "you" happened (to the pride question).
Giving the benefit, elevated Gestalt impressions could be the adjective's result of knowing an organization can logically conclude fact-checking with, no I'm sorry to say not astrology, but instead crowd-sourcing, at greatly reduced costs, although admittedly full steam ahead toward the costs of needing to develop and maintain a narcissist's disposition, previously known to be high, but more recently known moreso for lottery-like counteractions of media "buzz'" and hence as likely logical as Texas Hold 'Em.
8/11/16, 10:32 PM"
"Guildofcannonballs said...
Comedy is a fuckin' phony ass phony phoning it up up in here. - Holden Caulkfeld
5/19/17, 7:20 PM"
"Guildofcannonballs said...
Hitler helped close the Iowa abortion clinics, just like Trump, cause they both hated that moldy mint tasting Mexican green leafy spice that starts with a c, whatever that word is.
5/19/17, 10:48 PM"
"Guildofcannonballs said...
Gorsuch is a Hitler's judge but if not Hitler judgetoy then it's because like Hitler Trump gave away the power to nominate a Supreme Court seat because that what Hitler did in Germany in the 1930's is let others do the power wielding while Hitler farted a lot from his veggies laden diet.
Trump probably doesn't even fart because he eats so much meat but that is to hide he is like Hitler, total camouflage sabotage.
5/19/17, 10:51 PM"
That car looks compressed somehow--a little too short-coupled.
That car looks compressed somehow--a little too short-coupled.
It is. Notice that the rear wheel is out-of-round.
Drove by a Madison YWCA building the other day and they had a big banner outside that reads Eliminating Racism. Empowering women.
I keep seeing that car as I scroll by and every single time all I can think of is Bubba Smith in Police Academy ripping the front seat out of a Honda CVCC (or was it the Civic by then?) and driving from the back seat. There's more than one car I've wanted to do that in...
To share a WSJ article:
1. Go to the WSJ twitter feed or the WSJ editorial page twitter feed.
2. Find the tweet promoting the article.
3. Share that link to the tweet.
If you go to a WSJ article directly from its tweet, you bypass the paywall.
The tweet for the Gelernter piece is here.
Jupiter said...
It would appear that the WSJ would prefer that people pay before they receive the intellectual property it has created. Chuck does not approve, and he is hoping someone -- someone more technically skilled than himself -- will conspire with him to steal it and make it generally available. Any takers?
Jupiter, I'd like you to meet jaed:
jaed said...
To share a WSJ article:
1. Go to the WSJ twitter feed or the WSJ editorial page twitter feed.
2. Find the tweet promoting the article.
3. Share that link to the tweet.
If you go to a WSJ article directly from its tweet, you bypass the paywall.
The tweet for the Gelernter piece is here.
Talk amongst yourselves.
And thanks, jaed. I think that is one of about 3 or 4 ways to do that; naturally, the Journal doesn't mind or it wouldn't set things up that way. I did not know about your way, which is nice and easy and I am grateful.
Jupiter's response is just typical of the reactive unhinged hostility to me among the Trumpies.
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