January 21, 2018

At the Music Hour Café...

IMG_1842

... you're on.

(Remember the Althouse Portal to Amazon.)

42 comments:

madAsHell said...

Jim Rodford, the bass player for the Kinks has passed on.

madAsHell said...

Jim Rodford

Fernandinande said...

A few days ago we visited a guy who has 46 "rescue" dogs, almost all from Indian reservations, for which he privately provides all the day-to-day care and medical expenses. He used to have > 70 dogs.

There was one dog who'd recently had both his eyes removed and he cruised right over until he bumped into the fence...then he ran off playing with another dog.

YoungHegelian said...

I had the chance to see the Smithsonian Chamber Ensemble do Schubert's Die Winterreise last night, but I passed. Honestly, this winter, there just isn't enough Welbutrin available for me to sit through Die Winterreise

tcrosse said...

I got to see the great Hermann Prey do Die Winterreise in St Paul, not too long before he died. It was not the feel-good performance of the season.

YoungHegelian said...

@tcrosse,

Die Winterreise makes even the Debbie Downer Die Schone Mullerin seem like a half-time performance at the Super Bowl by comparison.

I have multiple recordings & have sat through a live performance score in hand. But not this winter.

tcrosse said...

Fritz Wunderlich lightens up Die schöne Müllerin and makes it much more enjoyable IMHO.

buwaya said...

I note the Chinese complaint this week about a US warship "intruding" on what the Chinese claim as their territorial waters, that is, near a Chinese-occupied South China Sea island that lies within UN guaranteed Philippine economic zone.

This argument is simply going to get worse as US military power erodes and Chinese power increases.

A consequence of this is already visible in that Asian countries are not automatically taking the US side, despite their worries about China - even the Philippine government, which has internationally recognized legal rights there, has explicitly said its staying out of the dispute. This is the result of valid doubts about the true balance of power.

Laws are just the ceremonial blessing on power relations, empty words otherwise. This matter of the South China Sea illustrates that in very raw terms. This business of freedom of navigation is critical, but the example concerning the nature of law itself is even more important than that.

tcrosse said...

@YoungHegelian
For laughs you could have a few drinks and sing the words of On Wisconsin to the tune of An Sylvia. Or the English words of O Canada to An die Musik.

buwaya said...

Philippine public opinion on this matter is of course strongly pro-US, anti-Chinese and pro-Philippine sovereignty. The Philippine government however sees that its responsibility to its people lies in the direction of realpolitik.

This too is a lesson. International relations are, at bottom, matters of power or perceptions of power. Emotions play a role but much less than people think.

rhhardin said...

The fake island problem is easily fixed by limiting sea rights distance to the square root of the island area, or 200 miles, whichever is less. Perhaps grandfather year 2000 islands.

Clyde said...

Everything is connected, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, this morning, I was online and on my news homepage, there was one of those click-bait listicles about "21 actors and actresses who started as models." I usually avoid those, but this time I clicked through. Among those listed was Andie MacDowell, who starred with Bill Murray in one of my all-time favorite movies, "Groundhog Day." Fast forward to this afternoon at work. I've been listening to music on Amazon Prime, and it provides recommendations based on what I've listened to. One of the albums it recommended was by a singer named Rainey Qualley. I'd never heard of her, but decided to give her a listen. So on about the third song, I was curious about her and tried Wikipedia. Nothing. Then a Google search, which brought up that she was an actress as well as a singer... And the daughter of Andie MacDowell.

Everything is connected.

Clyde said...

It's not the first time I've had that sort of thing happen. A few weeks back, I listened to a bunch of Beach Boys music on Amazon Prime on my phone, including the song "In My Room." The next day, I listened to some Zombies on my iPod, which isn't connected with Amazon Prime, and among the songs that played was "The Way I Feel Inside." The next day, I was back on Amazon Prime on the phone, and it recommended Aubrie Sellers' album New City Blues from 2016. I'd listened to it a few times before and liked it. Most of it was original material, but the album ends with a couple of acoustic covers. Which songs? "In My Room" and "The Way I Feel Inside."

Everything is connected.

Humperdink said...

It's not hard to determine who leaks in DC. The R's voted to release the FISA memo. The D's voted not to release it. It is clearly damaging to Mueller, Schiff (D-Pencil Neck), the FBI and the other intelligence agencies. And it has not been leaked. Hmm.

rhhardin said...

MFJ morse code reader/keyer ad

"Type-ahead buffer, message memories and adjustable speed lets you compete with the best high-speed CW operators - they won't even know you never passed a code test!"

buwaya said...

And everything is connected.
I am becoming one of those stereotypical nuts with corkboards layered with newspaper clippings connected with colored strings. No physical corkboards anymore, but simply notice connections.
And this goes back into history. An awful lot that is narratively discrete, in the usual schoolbook ways, are not.

Fernandinande said...

"First American Novel" -

"The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature (1789) is an 18th-century American sentimental novel written in epistolary form by William Hill Brown, widely considered to be the first American novel.

The novel was published by Isaiah Thomas in Boston on January 21, 1789, and sold at the price of nine shillings.

The Power of Sympathy was Brown's first novel. The characters' struggles illustrate the dangers of seduction and the pitfalls of giving in to one's passions, while advocating the moral education of women and the use of rational thinking as ways to prevent the consequences of such actions."

++

H.T.

narciso said...

Oh snap:


http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/21/fbi-failed-preserve-anti-trump-texts

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gspencer said...

Pats v. Eagles,

rhhardin said...

The electric bill reports that I used the same amount of energy as efficient electrically-heated homes in my neighborhood.

Since I don't have a heat pump and they do, that means that a heat pump is no good at all in super-cold weather. As the theory says. It runs but doesn't do anything, so resistive heat kicks in to cover it.

A heat pump is infinitely efficient for the first degree below house temperature, but that doesn't amount to much money saved.

Somewhere in the middle there's a region where a heat pump pays off. Efficiency drops but it does enough work at a somewhat high efficiency to save worthwhile money over resistive heating.

tim in vermont said...

The nice thing about a heat pump is central air comes with it, but I burn oil mid December to early March.

tim in vermont said...

Somebody younger than me needs to write a phone app that connects to a couple maybe three or four, magnetic microphones that you can stick in the corners of the car, and which used PCA to isolate the exact source of rattles in the undercarriage.

I knew an engineer whose whole career was spent isolating vibrations in jet engines. It has to be a solved problem just waiting to be adapted to modern off the shelf hardware.

Humperdink said...

OK Bortles, 2 minutes left, down by 4, whaddya got?

Ken B said...

Jim Acosta is reporting that the WH vending machines are empty due to the shutdown.

I suspect they won’t be empty at my workplace tomorrow.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Humperdink said...
It is clearly damaging to Mueller, Schiff (D-Pencil Neck), the FBI and the other intelligence agencies.

Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, wrote
“The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,”

As Gomer was wont to say..Surprise surprise surprise!

BUMBLE BEE said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gspencer said...

We said, Go Pats,

and they went,

Humperdink said...

Hump asked earlier: "OK Bortles, 2 minutes left, down by 4, whaddya got?

Nuthin'

Humperdink said...

Becoming a big fan of Tony Romo as an NFL analyst. He is very good.

Etienne said...

... that means that a heat pump is no good at all in super-cold weather.

Correct. My heat pump only works down to 40 degrees, and then the relay kicks in, and it's pure natural gas at that point.

Ignorance is Bliss said...


... that means that a heat pump is no good at all in super-cold weather.

Unless you use a geothermal heat pump. We considered this when we bought our house, but didn't pull the trigger.

Grant said...

I went to New York a couple of years ago to hear Matthias Goerne sing Die Winterreise. Unfortunately it was souped up with William Kentridge’s animated cutouts. Those worked well with the Met productions of The Nose and Lulu, but they really sucked with Schubert. Goerne was great, though.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

gspencer said...

Pats v. Eagles,

Pats barely made it, while the Eagles are crushing the Vikings.

On the other hand, Boston doesn't have to crisco its light poles.

Humperdink said...

Ignorance is Bliss: The man being hauled away in your link appears to be thirsty.

tim in vermont said...

The Eagles look like the kind of physical and talented team it takes to beat the Patriots. On the other hand, I never had the feeling the Vikings were very good.

tim in vermont said...

As a Patriots fan, I can say that I am starting to get tired of the winning. On the other hand, I was at the edge of my barstool the whole second half.

tim in vermont said...

Additional text messages sent and received by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok have been handed over to Congress, reports the Associated Press.According to an exchange between Strzok and Bureau lawyer Lisa Page, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch reportedly knew former FBI Director James Comey would let Hillary Clinton off the hook in her email investigation when she announced the Justice Department would “defer” to the FBI’s conclusion.

This is in the texts. that they DIDN”T delete, imagine what was in the stuff the FBI destroyed from that time.

gspencer said...

Tired of the winning, eh?

From someone who's old enough to remember some of the losing years. Take for example,
1970, 2-12
1971, 6-8
1972, 3-11
1973, 5-9
1974, 7-7
1975, 3-11

tim in vermont said...

Could be worse, Imagine you are a Jets fan.

tim in vermont said...

If Gronk plays, it’s a far better Patriots team than the one we saw today after the helmet to helmet hit that took him out.

Humperdink said...

Early line, Brady et al favored by 5.5.