You can talk all night... with the social distancing of moderation. Don't expect the back-and-forth. Maybe something contemplative and solitary.....
The Star-of-Bethlehem is the Ornithogalum umbellatum. Above, you see its midday openness, but it looks like this at dawn:
All closed up. But the Café is open, in its way.
And please do remember to use the Althouse Portal to Amazon. The "portal" link is always there in the sidebar. So is the Paypal button, which lets you make a one-time donation to this blog or set up a monthly payment of any amount you like. I feel so encouraged by those who use that button, in essence, to subscribe to this blog. Earlier today, we talked about my problems moderating the comments section, and I received a generous Paypal donation from a reader who left me the message:
Whatever you decide to do with the blog, I appreciate the thought you're putting into it and your work on moderation in the meantime. I doubt the problem you're facing can be solved with money, but in case it can, here's a small contribution.
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52 comments:
Where is my f'in' sunrise photo?
I think "star of bethlehem" is not a natural name for that plant, I am thinking that some flunky in some seed company thought it up back a hundred years or so ago, and put it in a catalog.
But I don't care, it is a beautiful plant with a beautiful name.
ANYTHING that has to do with Christmas is, for me, almost INFINITELY more precious than it would be if it were not associated with Christmas, I am like a huge fan of Christmas.
There comes a point in almost all our lives - if we are married and have a family - where we realize that there were people, some of them people we had contempt for, who would have been better spouses to our husband or wife than we were, or would have been a better, kinder, and all around a more loving mother or father to our children than we would have been.
That, my friends, is why it is such a great sorrow in my life that EVERYONE I KNOW has always been so quick to TALK ABOUT THE JOY OF EASTER (nothing wrong with that) without saying --- well, though, one should feel a little guilty about putting such a happy holiday in the forefront of our hearts because we know what it is to be human and when you go from the FRIENDSHIP of early Thursday evening to the HORROR of the later hours of THURSDAY evening .... well, I don't care how good the news you get on Sunday morning is, you have to have a heart of stone not to still feel overwhelmed with the empathy and pain anyone who knew what was going on would have had, even after things turned out all right for OUR LORD. Easter commemorates something joyful but it is too close to the SORROW we all feel when we see suffering to actually be, in this world, a TRULY joyful day. Not yet, not in this world ..... maybe later, be patient
I plan to name my next cat either Otto or Colonel Pleasanton. I wrote a really long comment on that IN THE COMMENT THREAD of this blog an hour ago but I wrote it on a different browser, and my five hundred words (40 seconds to read, if you read at a normal pace) were lost. No big loss to anyone, not to me, not to you, but still ....
Btw, I love all my fellow commenters here, but it is nice to be able to write something without the thought that within 20 minutes some crabby person is gonna wanna start a "back and forth" by telling me that they understand my heart and that they want me to know that they think I should be insulted. I am sure I have done that more than once to other commenters here, and I wish I hadn't. Cor ad cor loquitur .....
No sunrise picture today. Too much rain. It’s still raining.
Ann Althouse said... [hush][hide comment]
No sunrise picture today. Too much rain. It’s still raining.
Rained here in Ca also. A viral rain.
a veritable constellation!
wanna see the Dem's "new rising star"?
old: "A star is born!"
new: A 'star' is fabricated
Listening to chamber music by Hummel. A very fine composer, he was Haydn's chosen successor, and a greater piano virtuoso than Beethoven.
It has been raining here in NoCal. Very unusual, but nice. Mostly at night, which is what makes it nice. Warm, breezy, sunny during the day; cool, windy and rainy at night. Ends tomorrow, though. Back to the typical.
Today's run-at-a-distance with friends was the highlight of my week. WE SAW BEARS!
I have run in several places where the threat of bears is so great that I have had to carry bear spray. And not once have I seen a bear. Not even from the car, perfectly safe.
Today, we saw two young grizzlies. OK. They were in the zoo. We ran by their outdoor accommodations--two very tall fences, one electrified. We stopped and observed for some time. They did not seem to take notice of us. One of them climbed a tree. Perhaps, if he were Super-Bear, he could have leapt from the tree toward us. He seemed perfectly content not to, to just remain high above the grass and observe. He had a great view. From the hill, one could see SF, Marin County, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate, the Richmond bridge...
We were all so happy and excited to have seen the bears. Close group that we are, with years and years of running together, it was still a lovely bonding experience. And there were turkeys, and baby turkeys. And a small snake. And a condor.
But the bears were the best.
@FullMoon, the sun will come out tomorrow.
I don't know whether this link will be behind a paywall, but Peggy Noonan has some useful things to say about the push from citizens to reopen. I got to this via RealClearPolitics.com. What she has to say bears reading.
it's the 70's, at the elite Oshkosh Horticultural Academy
the professor holds up a pic of some flowers, looks right
@Meade, and asks:
Meade-- what's the scientific name for the "Star of Bethlehem"?
"Ornithogalum......Ummm...bell-bottoms?
Very good! But a little weak on your Latin. Maybe someday you will find someone to help you with that!
Question for the group: Which grill should I buy? The grill I bought from Sears 2-3 years ago for around $200 disintegrated this past winter, with most of the innards collapsing from a combination of rusting and burning up. I'm not a big-time outdoor cook; I just slap on a few burgers or chicken parts a couple of times a week. It looks like my options are to spend another $200 on a cheap one and hope to get a couple of years out of it (maybe trying to take better care of it), or spend twice as much on a Weber and join a cult. :-)
So is a Weber worth the extra cost? Do they actually last that much longer? I see people online saying they've had theirs for 20 years, but I've also seen suggestions that the quality in the last few years has diminished. Weber owners clearly love their craft; I've read posts where they're rehabbing old units that their father owned or that the neighbors were throwing away. Am I too casual a griller to belong to this group? Where do you guys come down?
Heck of a job, peg things we figured out three months ago.
One is struck by how the landscape they have set before us looks like the deserted new york in i am legend
What I fear we may lose to the crazies like Inga and ARM.
Civilization is not the default state of society. I have made my last trip to Europe but I wonder what will follow?
Or what is better than this ?
They are all white people.
Menendez the former mayor from union city trying to torpedo a nominee for the voice of america who gets this believes in america.
@Anne-I-Am, here's a useful video about bear spray. Except his spray apparently has a useful range of about 30 feet. There are other sprays on the market that will reach out to 40 feet. I don't think I'd care to let a bear within the 12 feet he recommends! Thirty feet sounds better and forty sounds MUCH better.
Big Mike said...
@FullMoon, the sun will come out tomorrow.
Maybe. Has to get permission from Gov Newsome first.
Well hell. Tomorrow I'll send the Prof some $US by way of my wife's Paypal account-- if I remember, and she's agreeable.
Hummel's good.
Narr
I like Boccherini, among the second string
Noonan expresses things well, but I think even the list of simple things like masks are not all positive, I think they also have some unintended consequences and are somewhat symbolic. I started working just before the recession of 81 and have had no real loss of career opportunity due to any economic factor. I am very sad for the young people who were derailed by 2008 and now 2020. Few class of 20 grads will get good jobs, and when things get better the class of 2022 will get hired rather than than stale 2020 folks. People who live in government job land never missing a check don’t know what damage is being done to these poor young people. They will always be behind in experience and prestige.
I also feel sorry for the author of this blog, trying to create in the face of willful destruction. No comments is better that that kind of frustration.
Some of the novels i have referred have interesting details like a special vault in uffizi which is critical to the hero solving the plot in i pilgrim a certain tyrkish musical instrument another includes a rare flower that the an author david stone nee carsten stroud must have come across in his travels
I did see a deer on a back road about nine months ago.
Big Mike, thanks for the link. Classic Noonan, high brow, above the fray. Early on she explains to us deplorables that yes its time to get back to work. Advises that masks, hand washing and distancing will be the new normal.
All fine I suppose. But she is still reading the script handed to her. She won't mention exactly what the goal is. If its saving lives, protecting the vulnerable would be the real answer.
Star of Bethlehem, pretty as it is, is a noxious plant that can not be eradicated. Trust me on this one. A woman gave my wife a few about 20 years ago and they have taken over the entire property. My lawn greens up early in the spring with them which I mow and slip and slide in the slimy cuttings which stick to my shoes and my mower. It’s terrible. Fortunately, by May they kind of go dormant and the bluegrass takes the stage.
They move underground, bulbing their way across driveways, borders, and everywhere ... with an assist from the squirrels, I think. My neighbors now are digging them out, hopelessly, and I play dumb.
Pretty, yes, like a closet of the coronavirus.
Ann: Don’t change a thing about the blog UNLESS it makes moderation easier.
Why mess with success?
Note Evers' Clenched Sphincter Collective desires 12k tests per day.
TESTS
well, isn't THAT special?
Central Valley community declares itself a sanctuary city where businesses, churches can reopen
Dunno,
As much as I despise MEG's clearly personal attacks, is it really cruelly neutral to force the majority of commenters through sluggish moderation and potential format change?
Is that not surrendering to MEG's asshole-ness at the expense of the greater good?
I've been thinking about all those BIG issues we were discussing just a few months ago, and wondering where they are, and if they were really that important. For example: Where is BREXIT? I found this: https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/11/brexit-draft-deal-first-of-many-hurdles-to-a-smooth-exit Maybe others have better info. Or remind me of other BIG issues from pre-CV days: Asians at Harvard? Net Neutrality?
“I have run in several places where the threat of bears is so great that I have had to carry bear spray. And not once have I seen a bear. Not even from the car, perfectly safe.”
We have a couple cans of the stuff, probably expired by now, but... I carry my bear gun instead when I go tromping around the subdivision I bought a couple months ago, like I did today. Haven’t seen any bear sign yet this year, but we do have black bear in the neighbor hood every year. Did see remnants of a pre-venison (deer) today. Stripped leg to the bone. Could have been a bear. Or maybe coyotes. One of the advantages of living in a place like MT is that no one blinks when they see someone carrying a gun.
Talking guns, stopped at the local mercantile today for the first time since we got back here. They had maybe a dozen handguns, and a dozen long guns when we left down to go south last year. Now, they have maybe 200 guns, and planning on bringing in maybe another two hundred. More long guns than handguns, but they went from one display case for them, to four. Last month, customers were apparently stacked a couple deep most of the day. Now, the guy working just in guns had enough time to BS or 15-20 minutes. Given that this is MT, it wasn’t new buyers driving this, but mostly people buying guns now that they had been thinking about for awhile. In with the long guns were three short barreled AR-15s. Two were .300 Blackout. The one I am seriously considering has a 7” barrel. Can’t decide between 7” and 9”. Thinking more and more that the 7” is what I want. And they take my MagPul how scary can they be? PMAG 30 magazines. For those keeping track, these are legally considered handguns, even though the gun grabbers would surely consider them “assault weapons”. They did have a couple of pink ARs, and even a white one. How scary can pink and white AR-15s be?
Lovely day in the sun and flowers and doggie and beloved hubby.
So, why back to moderation? I must have missed something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Looks similar to our fragrant stephanotis climbing our fence, gate if will.
Beautiful day in So Ca, as mentioned above, only a viral rain, especially in LA.
I’m in shock the la county health director, the one way over her Head, makes $450k a year, and her PhD is in Social Welfare. But, she’s the first Latina in the position!
Something contemplative, solitary..to be revealed at a later date..
Because feewings.
Do have a look at our blog: beingfrivolous.blogpost.com
Do have a look at our blog: beingfrivolous.blogpost.com
Neurosurgeon Says Face Masks Pose Serious Risk to Healthy People
"...In one such study, researchers surveyed 212 healthcare workers (47 males and 165 females) asking about the presence of headaches with N95 mask use, duration of the headaches, type of headaches and if the person had preexisting headaches.
They found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask-wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause.
That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia). It is known that the N95 mask, if worn for hours, can reduce blood oxygenation as much as 20%, which can lead to a loss of consciousness, as happened to the hapless fellow driving around alone in his car wearing an N95 mask, causing him to pass out, and to crash his car and sustain injuries.
I am sure that we have several cases of elderly individuals or any person with poor lung function passing out, hitting their head. This, of course, can lead to death.
A more recent study involving 159 healthcare workers aged 21 to 35 years of age found that 81% developed headaches from wearing a face mask. Some had pre-existing headaches that were precipitated by the masks. All felt like the headaches affected their work performance.
Blaylock says studies have also shown that face masks impair oxygen intake dramatically, potentially leading to serious problems.
The importance of these findings is that a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity. Studies have shown that hypoxia can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+ T-lymphocyte.
This occurs because the hypoxia increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs. . This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infections and if so, having a much worse outcome..."
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/05/14/neurosurgeon-says-face-masks-pose-serious-risk-to-healthy-people-n392431
The C02 problem can easily be overcome by using a mask with an exhaust valve. Which presents a new problem:
A Certain Type of N95 Mask [the ones with exhaust valves] May [actually, WILL] Do More Harm Than Good [But only if you're infected with COVID-19]
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/certain-type-n95-mask-harm-covid19-spread
No more social distancing.
The Hooterville Phone Company wants to be your next blog platform. Shouting Thomas can assign the personalized ring notes so you know when to pick up. It is a party line so anything you overhear will be considered accidental and not copyrighted. The company pay phone at the end of Picnic Point should cover the costs.
Sometimes it’s what you want the most that holds you back. What if you started fresh? Didn’t drag the archives along. Are there user friendly platforms that start from scratch?
I'd like to shout out to the music references made on this blog. Diverse tastes with great referrals. Thanks folks. Same for the book readers' suggestions.
Not quite sure about the purpose of a moderated overnight cafe. Seems like a big waste of effort all around.
"Star of Bethlehem, pretty as it is, is a noxious plant that can not be eradicated. Trust me on this one. A woman gave my wife a few about 20 years ago and they have taken over the entire property. My lawn greens up early in the spring with them which I mow and slip and slide in the slimy cuttings which stick to my shoes and my mower. It’s terrible. Fortunately, by May they kind of go dormant and the bluegrass takes the stage. They move underground, bulbing their way across driveways, borders, and everywhere ... with an assist from the squirrels, I think. My neighbors now are digging them out, hopelessly, and I play dumb."
That's how people are around here about scilla — Siberian squill. Beautiful little blue flowers drifting through the neighborhood. Some people love them and some people furiously dig them out and moan about how they're "choking" out other, presumably better things.
"makes $450k a year"
That salary seems like it's assumed that the employee will be an MD. It looks like LA Country has at least five people outearning the President.
If 2,4 D doesn't kill them, try Triclopyr (Crossbow). It won't kill non-bermuda grasses if you don't overdose (which of course I did last month). It burned back my English Ivy (which was unfazed by Roundup), when applied on new leaves. Most herbicides work best on young weeds.
No sunrise picture today. Too much rain. It’s still raining.
Type zero.
Bruce Hayden, wannabe slumlord.
"Type zero."
Ha ha. But it was Type #1, and I could tell without looking at it.
May 18, the 40th anniversary of Mt. St. Helens. I was living in South Everett Washington at the time.
So you're voicing the possibility of eliminating comments was just a con to increase financial contributions? Is there any institution we can trust?
Just kidding. Make sure you put this technique in your book, Making Money By Blogging.
How scary can pink and white AR-15s be?
Pink reduces the lethality of the 5.56 round. Just ask any Democrat. ;-)
‘Blogger Michael K said...
What I fear we may lose to the crazies like Inga and ARM.
Civilization is not the default state of society. I have made my last trip to Europe but I wonder what will follow?
Or what is better than this ?
They are all white people.
5/17/20, 9:41 PM’
Your comment makes absolutely no sense. Tell me how and why one would lose a flash mob doing Ode to Joy because of people like ARM and Inga?You are obsessed by people on this blog that you think don’t agree with you 100% of the time. Life is too short, old man, for constant hostility. You have NO joy, all I see in you in constant hostility.
Maybe the Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a star at all?
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