... you can talk all you want.
I took the photo from my desk. A hawk swooped in and landed on the branch right in front of me and hung out for quite a while. I could see he was getting ready to fly off and used my best instinct to react at the instant of takeoff. This is all I could do:
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Perhaps your phone has a video mode, or a burst photo mode, that could have captured a sequence of shots, one of which may have been the one you wanted.
I sat next to Tom Brokaw at dinner. He’s waaay old...
previews
RESTRICTED
under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian
SEQUENCES OF BLOODY VIOLENCE,
SOME DISTURBING IMAGES AND BRIEF NUDITY
Likely was in a rush to go meet T Waits at the diner.
I don't trust large birds. Obviously I got a bit of mammal-based bias I got to work on in my struggle sessions but for whatever reason, hawks and eagles come below wolves and cats. Pure irrationality obviously. But there it is: canine-feline-ursine-bovine-bird-fish-octopus.
One day I was looking out my window at a Chickadee sitting on a branch...there was a woosh from a fast flying bird across the branch...the Chickadee was gone in a flash.
Encourage him, you'll have less trouble with chipmunks and squirrels. I kind of feel sorry for the rabbits though, I can hear them scream. We had an eagle last year as we're near the Susquehanna River and Yellow Breeches Creek, but he/she didn't stay about. If you like fly fishing, the Yellow Breeches is where you want to be. Great trout fishing in the morning, and if you spin fish then you can move the river for bass.
I should add, that my idea of fishing is tossing a hand grenade and scooping them out. I did once, with my cousin in South Carolina, hunt fish with a .22 rifle and a few slices of bread.
The old Red-tailed Hawk.
One bird name I like is "nightjar" --
nightjar (n.) nocturnal bird, goatsucker, 1620s, from night + jar (v.). So called for the "jarring" sounds made by the male when the female is brooding, which have been described as a "churring trill that seems to change direction as it rises and falls." An Old English word for it was nihthræfn "night raven."
I guess we are the nighthawks. The evening hawk is done hunting.
I try to set in sport mode to catch animals. Got a great shot of a squirrel try to rob a bird feeder. He's been trying all summer and as the crab apple shoots that hang down brushing the top of the feeder get longer and longer, his chances get better. However he fell once at the beginning of the summer and now he is quite cautious. The shot captures him sitting there wondering - how much do I dare? He knows about the seeds in the feeder because the birds drop a few and he seems to know there's a lot more in the feeder. But this little Dillinger wonders - and recollects that fall - I heard it and it was quite a thud. I saw him limp off but he was fine by the time he reached a tree but he remembers.
Also tonight I hear crickets for the first time this summer.
I saw a freshly dead rabbit on the sidewalk as I was walking to my Pilates class today.
It was lying stretched out on its side in the running position and had a wide-open, sparkling clear eye.
The camera had been set in burst mode for weeks, to my annoyance. I finally got the turned off. Still think I’d have missed the shot. When that bird decided to be gone, it was.
You heard of the quick and the dead? Hawks are quick or they starve.
More on TheReviewOfTheWeek
In January of 2013, I had just started doing food reviews of different items, and this video of mine where I reviewed the pan pizza from Domino’s, someone posted it on Reddit. I guess one of the few people who watched it at the time said, you know, “This guy, he sits there. He does these food reviews in a suit. I’ve never seen anything like it.” It started out with maybe 300 views at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day it had 300,000 views.
But here's the real Nighthawks cafe
An eagle once flew about 10 feet over my head, its wings making a wop-wop sound like a muted helicopter. I was half asleep and wasn't wearing my glasses, so I didn't really see it, but it freaked me out.
Ten years ago, while still living in NJ, Tank and Mrs. Tank spotted a red tailed hawk laying down on our concrete patio. Tank went outside to investigate, and found that the hawk had a sort of crushed head and was dead. Very dead. Our best guess: he was diving for one of our many chipmonks, misjudged, and committed suicide by crashing head first into the patio. Tank called the police and had this conversation:
Police: _____________ Police.
Tank: [described situation] … then: is there a department that would want to see this or take care of it.
Police: No.
Tank: What do you suggest?
Police: If it were me, I'd double bag it.
And that is what Tank did.
We won in court against the sleazy Jesus freak, although with a partial amount
:-(
but caught her in a bunch of lies, which was fun.
:-)
Scroll down for a bald eagle swimming with its wings.
I just finished a fantastic book, "Season of the Witch" by David Talbot (some liberal journo from Salon). I think Buwaya may have mentioned it in prior threads.
In summary, San Francisco was a cosmo city mostly run by middle class Irish & Italian Catholics, mostly Dems, many of whom formed their bonds at St. Ignatius High. They were the cops, lawyers, and judges of the City.
And, then, in a 15-year span (1965 -1980), the Left took over (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Charles Manson, Willie Brown, John Burton, Harvey Milk et al) and wrecked the fuck out of it:
1. Jim Jones -People's Temple, Guyana massacre
2. Dan White murder of Moscone & Milk
3. AIDS epidemic in the bathhouses
SF went full Leftist. Never go full Leftist.
Where’s the Pilates tag? Have you done the jump board? I just did today. I was certain I was going to be launched off the reformer. It ended up being a blast.
I used to go to San Francisco all the time before about 1987.
We would often go to Finocchio's and see the show which was female impersonators.
SF was full of gays then and they had no problem of being harassed.
Finocchio's closed in 1999.
I even remember the naked girl swimming in the fishbowl behind the bar in Bimbo's Club. She was actually in the basement.
It was a great illusion.
I haven't been there in years, maybe 20. I have no desire to go again.
Song lyrics by Ned Washington (1901 - 1976)
-----
My Foolish Heart
The scene is set for dreaming.
Love's knocking at the door.
But, oh, my heart,
I'm reluctant to start,
For we've been fooled before.
The night is like a lovely tune.
Beware, my foolish heart!
How white the ever constant moon!
Take care, my foolish heart!
There's a line between love and fascination
That's hard to see on an evening such as this.
They both give the very same sensation
When you're lost in the magic of a kiss.
Her lips are much too close to mine.
Beware, my foolish heart!
But should our eager lips combine,
Then let the fire start.
This time, it isn't fascination
Or a dream that will fade and fall apart.
It's love! This time it's love,
My foolish heart!
-----
Sung by Nat King Cole
There are dogs in the dark
Waiting to attack
And cat hawks
Looking for a late night snack
Cat, you'd better come home
@Althouse, in previous posts you've asked the question, and just tonight I came across the answer:
Why 95.8% of Female Newscasters Have the Same Hair.
Note that the study was performed by the University of Texas. The scientists at UW-Mad just cannot be bothered to research the really important questions.
My house is next to a stream, and that stream runs from near Sunset Park in Vegas which has a lake to the large wetlands park at the low point in the valley. All day long water birds fly by following the stream and making a turn right at my house toward the lake. Ducks, geese, heron and egrets, etc. I built a koi pond (over 2000 gallon) in my back yard. Mostly the birds just fly by, but occasionally herds of ducks will land in my swimming pool. They avoid the pond, probably because of all the stuff I have there to scare off the Heron, and the Egrets, which are just vicious mini dinosaurs, and are huge. I built the pond around a 40 foot pine tree and hang all kinds of tchotchkes from the tree, as well as a fake alligator head floating around. It all works, mostly. Sometimes I catch a Heron or Egret standing next to the pond watching the fish, but before all the defenses, they would walk right in and help themselves. Some of those Koi I've had for 20 years, and moved them all the way from L.A.. I defend them like my children...well better than that. I also have one of those anti-pidgeon plastic owls with the solar cell that turns it head - useless. The pigeons completely ignore it.
Anyway, after watching heron hunting and killing virtually anything that moves, I imagine that a predatory dinosaur would be like that, and that it would be the most horrible animal that ever existed. Being hunted by them would be terrifying.
Hopper never lived in Gotham..
This evening the Daily Caller website published an article titled Pentagon Whistleblower Questioned FBI Informant Stefan Halper's "Outrageous" Contracts, written by Chuck Ross.
The article includes the following passages.
-------
Over a year before Stefan Halper was revealed as an FBI informant who spied on the Trump campaign, a Pentagon analyst complained to his bosses about “astronomically outrageous” contracts given to Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor.
That analyst, Adam Lovinger, has since been stripped of his security clearance; he says because he blew the whistle on the Pentagon contracts with Halper and Long Term Strategic Group (LTSG), a firm owned by a childhood friend of Chelsea Clinton’s named Jacqueline Newmyer Deal.
Lovinger flagged the contracts in 2016 to his boss James Baker, the director of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), a small Defense Department unit known as the Pentagon’s think tank. Shortly after joining the National Security Council, Lovinger’s security clearance was revoked on May 1, 2017.
Baker, an Obama appointee, made four specific allegations against Lovinger. He claims that Lovinger made an unauthorized trip to Israel, that he took home unclassified academic papers, that he read classified documents on an airplane and that he had unauthorized contacts with the Indian government.
Lovinger has disputed the claims. He filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint in May with the Pentagon’s inspector general. On July 18, he filed an ethics complaint about Baker with the Pentagon’s senior ethics official. ...
Lovinger was unaware of Halper’s contact with Papadopoulos when he emailed Baker in October 2016 about ONA’s contracts with Halper.
The 12-year Pentagon veteran complained to Baker of “the moral hazard associated with the Washington Headquarters Services contracting with Stefan Halper,” The Times reported.
Sean Bigley, a lawyer for Lovinger, says Halper’s contracts were a mystery to ONA staff. In an interview with TheDCNF on Thursday, he said Lovinger and others on staff questioned how Halper was “getting these astronomically outrageous contracts to do very little.”
Bigley also told TheDCNF that Halper’s work for ONA could easily have provided him cover for his secret FBI and CIA activity. ....
Also, it's normal for a security clearance to terminate with your job, unless you are moving directly from one clearance-requiring job to another.
It would have been a lot easier for me to find a job after the last time I was laid off if I could have kept my clearance during the job hunt. (Knowing that you have been cleared before helps, but you still have to reundergo the whole process if you have lapsed..)
Watched a couple episodes of Sasha Baron Cohens show. Some stuff pretty funny.
Politician from Georgia will not be re-elected, if he has not resigned already. Guy is amazingly stupid, no two ways about it.
I like Lily James. She's not Audrey Hepburn but as close as you can hope for in this debauched era. She's starring in a movie currently playing on Netflix called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Club. The movie features a ruggedly handsome pig farmer in Guernsey and his pig sty. There are scenes of the pig sty. The pigs are mostly cute piglets, and the sty is lined with clean straw. It's the cleanest, nicest pig sty that has ever existed. If Snow White maintained a pig sty, it would look like this. The little pigs even grunt melodically......Spoiler: In the movie she chooses the pig farmer over a rich American who wants to marry her and take her to his Fifth Ave apartment overlooking Central Park. Talk about hogwash.
I'm glad it rained tonight. I'm also glad it waited to rain until after I had walked home.
I was n San Fran a few months ago. Regardless of its politics it is a beautiful area. Rented a bike. Rode through Golden Gate park, along the coast, over the bridge and took the ferry back. Lots of fun. Next time I'll get the e-bike.
Pretty decent Mr. Boffo yesterday, but I'll bet he gets letters he wouldn't have 20 years ago.
This got me to watch some videos of raptors hunting and killing. My God, we are lucky they are smaller than us, but they do take down some animals much larger than themselves. Four stilettos on each foot, and a cleaver. Beautiful, fearless, and deadly. As a man, I find them especially scary.
Visited San Fran for the first time two years ago. Loved it but the homeless freaked me. I hadn’t noticed any for the first day or so then we were driving, turned a corner and, voila: Homeless Central. Four wide on every square inch of pavement, it seemed ... for a couple blocks.
Turned another corner and we were at the back end of our very nice hotel.
“Nights on Broadway” is a gggggreat Bee Gees song.
Yes, but it's like camembert routine, and no one was fired over that,
This story is horrible, while also reinforcing every stereotype of the brainless liberal. How could you be educated, watch the news, and not know how stupid this was? I understand the sentiment, but stubborn stupidity is the stupidest kind. This reminds me of kind of stupid that thinks socialism is a good idea.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/16/couple-bikes-isis-territory/
Speaking of stupid: Recent directors of the CIA. WTF? Do you have to be evil and retarded to get that job?
Another day, another, well, Muslim outrage:
"He asked her to take out the trash and when he asked if she heard him, she shook her head.
“He looked at me, goes ‘Hey you f***ing hear me … and then he looked at me, he goes ‘Bitch, get the f*** out of my house,’ and he started to try to drag me off the bed,” Monahan said. “That’s when I put my camera on to video him" . . .
The Star Tribune says they haven’t been able to locate that complainant, Amy Alexander. They also refer to an odd-sounding legal proceeding where Ellison apparently prevailed. But the record of the 911 call is now in the public domain:
There is no ambiguity here: “CLR RPT’G SHE WAS ASLT’D BY ELLISON/KEITH/BM/41/WRG SUIT LS LEAVING APT…CLR WANTS TO SEE SQD.”"
But what membership in the Nation of Islam and support for cop killers could not achieve, NOW and #MeToo may yet accomplish: kick Ellison to the curb. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Let's call it the #MeToo Boomerang Effect--aiming at Trump, progs keep hitting progs.
It certainly is a resume enhancing category
That was like 12 years ago, bookem danno.
Pearl Jam shares a poster depicting Trump's corpse and a burning White House, and conservatives, in their outrage, spread it from coast-to-coast.
The Crack Emcee shares two songs depicting Democrats as a cult and Republicans as an option but all the conservatives do, upon listening, is curse him for being black and not towing their ideological line 100%.
If conservatives lose the midterms, don't look at me.
Yes, Crack, it's all about you.
Darrell said...
"Yes, Crack, it's all about you."
You guys are so into fucking with me, you lose sight of reality:
Politics FOLLOWS culture.
- Andrew Breitbart
Oh - and fuck you.
Right back at you.
Made enough money yet on your comeback?
The Crack Emcee: "The Crack Emcee shares two songs depicting Democrats as a cult and Republicans as an option but all the conservatives do, upon listening, is curse him for being black and not towing their ideological line 100%."
Alright buddy. Look, I like you, so here's what I'm gonna do, and this is my final offer: I'll try and get the rest of these knaves to cease cursing you but its gonna cost you at least a 63.7% Tow the Ideological Line rating.
Whaddya say fella, is that a deal, or is that a deal?
So, I'm thinking about Crack's thinking about looking in the rear-view mirror as opposed to the looking forward.
Let's consider AFDC and the "Man in the House Rule," or AFDC and the "Unemployed Person" in the house rule. The argument made by Patrick Moynihan and Crack is that the former installed a matriarchy in black communities, so bad for blacks.
AFDC was welfare. What Welfare means is some are forced to give to others. So, bad for whites.
Repair that.
Spotted a bird right behind the house recently, late morning,that would alternate between slow-motion lowering of head onto the patio block..then suddenly reviving into a head on a swivel alertness..repeatedly.
I thought it was dying..but when I looked around 20 minutes later, no sign of it.
Joo week coming up next, Goodbye Crack, Hello J. Farmer.
Hey r/v, remember Kris Paronto?
He was one of those American heroes attempting to protect the American ambassador in Libya when Hillary and Brennan and the gang decided not only was it no big deal so no rescue, but then Brennan punished the security guys who survived for not going with the Hillary/obama/Rice/Brennan/dems/MSM big lie about what happened.
Yeah, no lefties like r/v were wringing their hands about these combat heroes getting raked over the coals for the "crime" of not dying on the spot and then not keeping their mouths shut so obama could lie.
Great job r/v!
Kris Paronto
@KrisParonto
My principles are greater than clearances too John, especially when you and the @CIA kool-aid drinkers punished us for not going along with the Benghazi cover-up story in order to protect you, @HillaryClinton ‘s & @BarackObama ‘s failures. You put your politics before us.
"I mean, that’s some scary stuff" - Scott Adams
“Now, if you’ve got a guy (John Brennan) who’s willing to put the entire stability at risk because he can’t tell the difference between a joke and a serious statement, then that guy has got to lose his security clearance at least, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near a decision. Would you? After seeing how Brennan responded to a public joke would you want him to make any important decisions about anything?
Retired four-star Admiral William McRaven said he stands with former CIA Director John Brennan.
Good, take his clearance too, and reduce his retired rank to O-5.
To be honest, I could have my initiatives mixed up time wise.
I could only read, without notes or electronic aids.
The Nighthawk viewed from below in flight has very distinctive white wing bars. I myself am a nighthawk, and I, like the bird in the picture, don't have any wing bars. When nighthawks are flying around in the evening, those wing bars are visible even when there is little light. In the U.P. there were always lots of nighthawks flying around eating insects on summer evenings. They let out a loud periodic chirp, and when they dive for insects their wings make a pretty intense fluttering sound.
It's all bullshit.
Birdshit. Whatever.
🚢
Little Toot
On Tuesday, I went to Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve in Fort Myers, Florida. It's one of my favorite local places for a nice walk through the natural environment. Interestingly, I also took a couple of pictures of some red-shouldered hawks and also some lily pads with yellow flowers in one of the ponds; Althouse has used similar pictures of hawks and lily pads in recent days for the café posts, taken in a completely different part of the country.
The local hawks were shrieking noisily and chasing other birds out of the area. I found out why when one of them landed on a tree branch overhead. It was then that I noticed their nest in the fork of the trees branches, high above the boardwalk. The other one swooped in and landed in the next a moment later.
So 70+ newspapers are going to viciously attack Trump in the exact same manner for criticizing their inaccurate and intemperate comments by unprofessional and biased demagogues.
(This is how editorial slant works)
Does anyone actually believe that Ezra Klein's 'Journolist' ever actually folded shop?
Nah, Google gave them a much more secure server is all.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has one-upped socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She proposes to nationalize every major business in the United States of America. If successful, it would constitute the largest seizure of private property in human history. Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.”
She has gone full Mussolini style fascism. Hillary only just invaded North Africa, Warren wants to go the whole nine yards.
"@Althouse, in previous posts you've asked the question, and just tonight I came across the answer: Why 95.8% of Female Newscasters Have the Same Hair..."
But the "same hair" they're talking about is not the "same hair" I have a problem with. I think they're looking at local newswomen and I'm talking about cable news network people. They're talking about a medium length smooth bob, just a very conventional way to try to look professional. I'm talking about long hanging wavy hair, the type of hair that was called "bedroom hair" in the 1950s. I consider it retrograde and just ugly. It's usually fake hair too. It's just all over the place on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. It's not what has conventionally been seen as professional, so it's the opposite of what they're talking about at the article you linked. The women forced into the smooth bob are, in fact, cutting off long hair that they like, which is sad.
I'd just like to see more variety and skillfully done haircuts that suit the particular woman's face.
I'm not against long hair, and I wore long hair most of my life and really liked it. I just don't like fake hair and the sameness of the "messy" approach that's been around for many years. And I don't like too much hair on the face when it's a TV talking head. I want to see the face that's talking to me, not an inert mass of hair.
A couple of years ago I came home to a very dead rabbit and a hawk in my back yard. The hawk was just standing near the rabbit. It flew off to a tree, joining its parent. One large, one small hawk, watching that we don’t go near their catch. Apparently one teaching the other. They were there all evening. In the morning, there were no signs of the hawks nor their prey.
It's hard to believe someone on Glenn Reynolds' blog wrote this:
"The failure to give American citizens a reasonable opportunity to prove their citizenship was criminal....Congress passed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, meant to prop up union wages, in part by preventing itinerant African-American workers from getting jobs on federal construction projects. When a southern Congressman noted with amusement that his northern colleagues were enthusiastically discriminating against blacks, a supporter of the bill from the north responded that it wasn’t about blacks, he’d also support the bill if it were “Mexicans” taking the jobs!"
It's "criminal" and nothing was done to remedy the wrong, or other BS like it, but reparations aren't called for, nooooooooooo. Them white people - north and south - didn't do nothin'.
I think y'all need to get a new flag because no one's going to salute this one after you're done screwing with it.
Congress passed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, meant to prop up union wages, in part by preventing itinerant African-American workers from getting jobs on federal construction projects."
Black people, leaving the south for the first time. screwed by our own government. To help hostile whites. They were hostile whites then, and they're hostile whites now. Ready to fight any claim to anything by anybody who doesn't look like them. (They sure didn't turn down the government's goodies, did they? No fear of communism and socialism when it comes to themselves. No bootstrap lectures, either.)
Just disgusting levels of white's hypocrisy.
@Althouse, so I don’t know anything about hair styles. Wife is right. As usual.
One Dusk after rush minute in Chippewa Falls and my Linies, now corrupted. Heading back to work as I bumped over RR tracks, there was a flash. And a Huge Great Gray standing on its kill, staring me down, never blinking. Taking my measure daring me to get out of the car. No way was I going to take his family dinner, I crawled forward, and he did that magic with his neck, Where I swear he came up to the sill. I do miss Homaid ice-cream downtown where you could barely eat one scoop for pennies, would put a pound on you. Now Olson’s. Still have Seymour’s Golden Eagle jacket. Was a block from home. Sigh.
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