Althouse: At the Saturday Café...

February 23, 2019

At the Saturday Café...

... it could keep you up all night.

55 comments:

narciso said...: Its time to fish or cut bait:
https://mobile.twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM; 2/23/19, 8:30 PM
heyboom said...: A popular local news anchor died of a suspected drug overdose in late December at a hotel with a male companion. He was married with a 9-year daughter. Immediately after the initial report, the news stations went radio silent on the story. My wife and I thought that was the last of it, but the lack of information made us think of some pretty nefarious scenarios. Well, the official autopsy reports came out today and it was actually far worse than even we could conjure up in any worst-case scenario.

I really feel sorry for his wife and daughter.; 2/23/19, 8:36 PM
Rob said...: Stanley Donen has died. His greatest claim to fame is as the director of "Singin' in the Rain," but among his other films was "Two for the Road," which is a wonderful and too little appreciated movie.; 2/23/19, 8:38 PM
Anonymous said...: Checking in from Doral, FL. I'm the unknown that drove down here from MD last week, I post only occasionally, usually as Rt1Rebel or Steven Davis, I can't manage that, my various browsers seem to make that decision. I've found a more permanent residence, at the Mutiny Hotel in Coconut Grove. Nice place, and apparently with quite a history.

ttps://www.npr.org/2017/10/22/559336268/hotel-scarface-the-hotel-at-the-center-of-miamis-cocaine-boom; 2/23/19, 8:40 PM
Anonymous said...: Anyway, it's somewhat disconcerting to say that in my younger and more stupid years to now be able to say "I helped to build that!"; 2/23/19, 8:46 PM
Big Mike said...: I don’t drink caffeine after 4:30 — otherwise I have too much trouble falling asleep.; 2/23/19, 8:51 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: I came across the phrase, “shooting trout in a demitasse cup” in the New York Times’ article by Maureen Dowd titled ""Coffee Cups in Hell"

oh-- "trout", not "Trump".; 2/23/19, 8:56 PM
Humperdink said...: I use an electric cup warmer for my 2-3 cups of morning coffee. Always the correct temperature.; 2/23/19, 9:01 PM
Mark said...: Seems that an awful lot of people are unconcerned over whether Virginia has a rapist for a lieutenant governor or not.

In any event, the people of Virginia have a right to know whether their lieutenant governor is a rapist or not. They have a right to have their elected representatives hear from the women who have accused him. And those women have a right to be heard.; 2/23/19, 9:03 PM
Anonymous said...: I drink alot less coffee than I used to. Never after lunch. The thing down here is what the guys call "Cuban Moonshine." Basically expresso served in little plastic shot cups. They brew it and pass it around at work. Quite a kick, but nothing I want to mess with later in the day.; 2/23/19, 9:04 PM
Big Mike said...: Dave Barry linked to a study that lists a full dozen cities in Wisconsin that rank among the top twenty cities for alcohol consumption:

1. Appleton, WI
2. Oshkosh-Neenah, WI
3. Green Bay, WI
4. Madison, WI
5. Fargo, ND
6. La Crosse – Onalaska, WI
7. Fond du Lac, WI
8. Ames, IA
9. Eau Claire, WI
10. Mankato-North Mankato, MN
11. Wausau, WI
12. Sheboygan, WI
13. Missoula, MT
14. Grand Forks, ND
15. Racine, WI
16. Janesville-Beloit, WI
17. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI
18. Lincoln, NE
19. Iowa City, IA
20. Corvallis, OR

Well done, Wisconsin!; 2/23/19, 9:04 PM
Anonymous said...: No surprise. When you have shitty weather for nine months of the year, what else can you do? On the other hand, unless you plan ahead and have a pantry well stocked with booze, you can't very well just go out and get it when you need it.; 2/23/19, 9:12 PM
wild chicken said...: Wisconsin sounds fun.

I'm already in Missoula tho.; 2/23/19, 9:14 PM
wild chicken said...: You'd think Buffalo NY would be up there.; 2/23/19, 9:16 PM
effinayright said...: Would someone please explain to Inga that the old IPCC prediction of a 1.5C degree increase in the Earth's atmospheric temperature is NOT alarming.

Inga, like many scientific illiterates, does not know the difference between Centigrade and Celsius. To her, it's just 0 to 100, which magnifies the supposed changes.

The Celsius scale starts at MINUS 273 degrees. Divide 274.5 by 273 and you will discover that a 1.5C increase is a change of 0.05 percent.

Do she really think such a minute temperature change, ESPECIALLY since the Earth has been both much cooler and much warmer in the past, will destroy the planet?

Why, one asks, have we survived the warming since the last Little Ice Age if the next fractional increase will kill us?; 2/23/19, 9:17 PM
Andrew said...: @heyboom,
I wasn't aware of that story. I did a Google search. That's really horrifying. As you said, it must be very sad for the family. It's bad enough to lose someone you love, but then to find out they have a secret life, and to have all the humiliating details released, must really be devastating.

But I still can't get over how idiotic you have to be to engage in such behavior.; 2/23/19, 9:34 PM
Mark said...: So I finished The Americans.

Now I see this show called, The Optimists. Another spy drama. This one produced by the Russians, in Russian with English subtitles. Even if the stories are lousy, the contrast should be interesting.; 2/23/19, 9:46 PM
iowan2 said...: The post about alcohol use is interesting...from the old adage 'figures don't lie, and liars figure.

I just take note of Ames IA, and Iowa City IA make the top 20. My guess, without googling populations, is that both the Iowa towns are university towns where the university student population over whelms the non student population. So the statistic has less to do with the use of alcohol of the population, rather than the ratio of students to non students. Thus the statistic, without context, is less than meaningless, it is actually deceptive.

Just a real life example of arithmetic being used to skew reality.; 2/23/19, 9:53 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: Hey wholelottabs, are you one of the world’s top climate scientists? No? Then I’m not impressed by your bs.; 2/23/19, 9:55 PM
Big Mike said...: Perhaps MadisonMan will confirm that it has been warmer in the past than present temperature + 1.5 degrees Celsius. For instance a thousand years ago, when the Medieval Warm Period left it warm enough to survive for hundreds of years using only subsistence farming with ordinary Medieval technology?; 2/23/19, 9:59 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: I just realized.. Hillary really *has* gone away!

(Not the FL Unknown).; 2/23/19, 10:00 PM
narciso said...: Its known as rocket fuel, if you wonder how I stitch together so many connections there you go.

Yes the mutiny was quite a place, where triple snitch (CIA FBI DEA) Ricardo Morales hung out, where the real life scarface medardo Cruz who owned hair salons and was running drugs for Fidel, he dropped a lot of cash in Spain, and tabraue who also smuggled and owned a pet store and was a relative of Marco Rubio got all that.; 2/23/19, 10:00 PM
wildswan said...: When you're properly soaked in caffeine then coffee drunk late at night puts you to sleep. I had myself nicely pickled but then had the flu and drank plenty of fluids thus washing out all the caffeine. Now I can't sleep at night and coffee doesn't help. I lie there and think about cinnamon rolls, donuts, pie. I'm gluten sensitive so they would all make me slightly sick. I think of that and then think how very unfair practically everything is, the Venezuelans, me, the Guatemalans, me, Pine Ridge, me, me when I was less gluten sensitive and could eat Cinnabons without real consequences, me when I could eat Hostess donuts, me now, me. Am I now caffeine sensitive? Will I later be alcohol sensitive? Will it be water and carrots by 2020? Then death? This year's flu lasts and lasts, morphing in different ways and its final days are so tiresome. Just alerting those of you who (very unfairly) haven't had the flu - yet. It's coming around a second time.; 2/23/19, 10:06 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I drank afternoon coffee yesterday and was up until 2:30 am. Some of that time was spent here commenting on threads that were hours dead. I had finished my book (And Then There Were None; Agatha Christie) and didn't want to start another one. Made for a crummy day today when I got up at my normal 5:30 am. From now on, only decaf past noon.; 2/23/19, 10:08 PM
narciso said...: Carrying over from the other thread the fellow who resigned from ghcq Robert hannigan who was running intercepts on the trump campaign, apparently suddenly resigned because he was running interference for an abuser in the Church.; 2/23/19, 10:11 PM
reader said...: If you are gluten sensitive you should research sourdough bread (artisan not commercial). You might be able to enjoy an occasional treat.; 2/23/19, 10:14 PM
Seeing Red said...: President George W. Bush’s presidential center and other business groups are denouncing a pending regulation by President Donald Trump that would open tens of thousands of U.S. jobs to young American graduates. Trump’s reform will hurt “employers that have benefited … for the last few years,” complained Laura Collins, the director of the economic growth program at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Trump’s pending regulation reportedly would end the policy of giving bonus work permits to wives of foreign workers who have H-1B visas, and would, therefore, shift jobs and salaries from foreign temporary workers to American graduates.; 2/23/19, 10:20 PM
narciso said...: Shes sharp isnt she:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/23/shamima-begam-says-uk-government-making-example-abandoned-fate/; 2/23/19, 10:21 PM
Michael McNeil said...: The warmest period since the end of the last ice age (known as the Pleistocene epoch) in the present Holocene “interglacial” epoch is known as the “Holocene Climatic Optimum” and took place during about 9,000 to 5,000 years before the present, a time when temperatures averaged warmer than in recent decades by 0.5 degree C or so.; 2/23/19, 10:23 PM
narciso said...: Must have been that fleet of SUVs,; 2/23/19, 10:27 PM
Fritz said...: wholelottasplainin' said...
Would someone please explain to Inga that the old IPCC prediction of a 1.5C degree increase in the Earth's atmospheric temperature is NOT alarming.

Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting tarpon and bonefish in Chesapeake Bay.; 2/23/19, 10:27 PM
Hagar said...: That is the peaks on the 1000+/- year cycle within the present ice age.; 2/23/19, 10:33 PM
narciso said...: Morales was also fmr?? G2, he seems to charm Esquire taylor branch and harpers John Rothschild in the late 70s and early 80s, before his untimely death he admitted having perpetrated an infamous bombing attributed to others,; 2/23/19, 10:36 PM
Hagar said...: Per past experience each 1000 year peak will slightly cooler than the preceding until about 140,000 years from now when the ice again will be a mile thick over Chicago and then there will be a sudden break again to warmer climes like there was 15-20,000 years ago.
Unless something else happens in the meantime.; 2/23/19, 10:39 PM
narciso said...: The late Posada carriles, who passed away last may and dr. Orlando Bosch, the fmr had worked with Morales in Venezuelan secret police hunting guerillas like Chavezs associate the late Ali rodriguez, future OPEC chief.; 2/23/19, 10:39 PM
narciso said...: Now why would agencies like those three, keep someone on staff who betrayed sources who committed the occasional murder and even more frequent trafficking operations, is that sounding familiar?; 2/23/19, 10:41 PM
Michael McNeil said...: Way beyond the last “ice age,” however — even prior to the recent “Pleistocene” epoch of recurring periods of glacial advance, beginning some 2.5 million years ago — for the great bulk of the last quarter of a billion years, the Earth has in general subsisted much warmer than at present, to such an extent indeed that for most of that vast interval of time no permanent ice existed on this planet: not near the poles, not on top of the highest mountains — yet, for the most part, life thrived.

For instance, here is a look perhaps 50 million years back (during the Eocene epoch), when Antarctica (then as now located in the vicinity of the geographic south pole) experienced a climate similar to modern coastal California and Florida — a time when our planet overall baked at a temperature perhaps 12 degrees C (22 degrees F.!) above today's average — yet life survived.; 2/23/19, 10:50 PM
FullMoon said...: Finally watched the Jussie Smollett Robin Roberts interview. Hope they show it to the jury. He actually tears up and has a snot coming out of his nose. Paints himself as a badass, fighting these two MAGA's off, and taking on Trump and "those who would divide us".

If you watch First48 reruns, you will see the same kind of liars being interrogated. 100% believable until the cops begin to take the story apart. Fucking guy who begins by claiming he not only did not know the victim, he was a hundred miles away when it happened ends up confessing.
Jussie hasn't reached that point, yet.

What a punk.; 2/23/19, 10:59 PM
FullMoon said...: For instance, here is a look perhaps 50 million years back (during the Eocene epoch), when Antarctica (then as now located in the vicinity of the geographic south pole) experienced a climate similar to modern coastal California and Florida — a time when our planet overall baked at a temperature perhaps 12 degrees C (22 degrees F.!) above today's average — yet life survived.

As if my life is not hard enough already, now I have to decide who to believe, well informed constant commenter Inga, or M McN who occasionally shows up to school resident scientist Ritmo, (PPPT etc)

Guess I will sleep on it; 2/23/19, 11:04 PM
effinayright said...: Ask your average warmista to rank the relative prevalence of gases in our atmosphere, and they will invariably say, "Oxygen"

BZZZZT

I have yet to find a warmista who can tell me where CO2 ranks in the atmosphere among the other gases.

The best guess I got was, "Lots". NOT a trace gas at 400 parsa per million.

Finally, ask a warmista to rank CO2 vs. fellow "greenhouse gas" H20, and you will get crickets.

It's dumbasses, all the way down.; 2/23/19, 11:12 PM
effinayright said...: Just today some green weenies were warning that the Arctic would see palm trees and crocodiles---ignoring the fact that the Arctic had a tropical climate 55 million years ago.

Thing is, the Earth was very, very different then, and the CO2 concentrations were MUCH, MUCH higher than today.

No humans, no SUVs, no jets....

Yet life didn't just survive, it thrived.; 2/23/19, 11:16 PM
Michael McNeil said...: There's about 7 times as much H2O as CO2 in the air — but water condenses out when there's too much of it (for a given temperature and pressure) — while carbon dioxide does not.; 2/23/19, 11:19 PM
virgil xenophon said...: Some wise Owl has said that someday "climate Science" will advance from its present position as being the greatest hoax since Piltdown Man to being on a "scientific"
par with the "science" of "economics" but that day is not now.; 2/23/19, 11:44 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “I'm already in Missoula tho.”

Snowbirding right now in AZ, but will be through there in a month or so on the way back, down river from you a bit. Will honk on the way through. We are always in such a hurry that we inevitably come across to Missoula on I-90, either from I-15 up through UT and ID, or I-25 up from CO through WY. Always spend a night either way in Missoula. Last year, on the way up, spent an extra day in Dillon, MT, thanks to the last snowstorm of the year. What I want to do some day is to take the route up from either Blackfoot, ID on US 26 or Idaho Falls on US 20, and thence up through Salmon, ID, and Hamilton up to Missoula on US 93. Salmon, of course, is the home of Buffalo Bore ammunition. My 4th brother took his last road trip with my father about 4 months before he died two years ago, and they got as far as Salmon. Can’t believe that they got that close, and didn’t at least get up to Missoula, or even better, another two hours to see us. Turns out the trip to Salmon was retracing one my father had made with his father in the 1930s. My grandfather had spent most of the 1930s and 1940s on the road throughout the west selling a woman’s college in Denver, and traveling with him was the highlight of my father’s summers during junior high and high school. My father retraced many of those routes with my mother, and then with that brother after she died. Always a bit jeleous of him for that opportunity.; 2/24/19, 1:41 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “Per past experience each 1000 year peak will slightly cooler than the preceding until about 140,000 years from now when the ice again will be a mile thick over Chicago and then there will be a sudden break again to warmer climes like there was 15-20,000 years ago”

Tying into my previous comment, one of the interesting facets of the last Ice age is that Missoula was at the bottom a huge lake, bigger I think than most of the Great Lakes. It was dammed by a glacier pushing down the top of Idaho panhandle from Canada and blocking the Clark Fork river at what is now Clark Fork, ID, right as it hit what is now Pend O’Rielle. A lake, Glacial Lake Missoula, was formed that filled the valleys back some 200+ miles. At the MT/ID border there, the lake was better than 2,000 feet deep, and at least half that over present day Missoula. And then the ice forming the dam would get rotten, and pop like a cork and all that water would drain out in under a day, taking a short cut through present day Spokane to reach the Columbia hundreds of miles earlier than it usually does, devastating much of eastern WA and OR. Rinse and repeat, maybe 100 times.; 2/24/19, 2:01 AM
heyboom said...: @andrew:

The saddest part was when they showed his wife, daughter and other friends and family at his memorial talking about what a great husband and devoted father he was.; 2/24/19, 2:42 AM
Michael McNeil said...: Glacial Lake Missoula — at its fullest — contained some 500 cubic miles of water; this was a bit larger than (e.g.) modern Lake Ontario, or about half the size of Lake Michigan. The lake according to geologists took perhaps 2-3 days to empty once its ice dam had been swept away.; 2/24/19, 6:15 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Hey.. maybe Inga is one of AOC's advisors!; 2/24/19, 6:49 AM
Jaq said...: I really enjoyed the Discovery special on the formation of the Grand Canyon. It turns out that there was a huge lake that emptied into a river with a waterfall, just like Lake Erie and Niagara Falls, and just like Niagara Falls, the falls crept closer and closer to the lake until one day it reached the lake and the dam burst and the lake emptied carving out our the Grand Canyon. Look out Toronto and Montreal just sayin'; 2/24/19, 7:54 AM
tcrosse said...: the falls crept closer and closer to the lake until one day it reached the lake and the dam burst and the lake emptied carving out our the Grand Canyon

It has been theorized that something similar caused the Black Sea to fill.; 2/24/19, 8:10 AM
Jaq said...: It has been theorized that something similar caused the Black Sea to fill.

Yes, but as Bishop Usher explains so clearly, six thousand years ago the planet as we know it was created and it would stay exactly as it was if it weren’t for us humans eating the apple of technology and so falling from the garden God created for us such a short time ago.; 2/24/19, 8:15 AM
Jaq said...: I am resigning this "tim in vermont” character, tags and all. Taking a break from commenting on the web. To quote Gary Shandling’s routine about suicide notes: “I’m not mad at anybody, this is just something I’m doing for me."; 2/24/19, 10:17 AM
Andrew said...: @tim in vermont,
In response, inserting gif here:
https://giphy.com/gifs/8vUEXZA2me7vnuUvrs; 2/24/19, 1:44 PM
FullMoon said...: tim in vermont said...

I am resigning this "tim in vermont” character, tags and all. Taking a break from commenting on the web.

Twenty eight days for the cure.
See ya in a month.; 2/24/19, 3:37 PM
Nichevo said...: Well, Tim, will miss you, but will welcome your reappearance under a new handle, and never wonder about the guy who seems to know about both Florida and Vermont. Hope it's nothing I said or did. Godspeed!; 2/25/19, 4:59 PM