At 5:50 — the "actual" sunrise time — the lake began to stir...
One minute later — at 5:51 — there were long swooping waves, criss-crossed with tiny ripples...
In half a minute, as the sun peeked over the line, the effect was distinctly more dramatic...
And at 5:53, it looked like this...
Posts
151 comments:
Hello? Can you hear me now?
Check, 1, 2, 3.
Cool pix.
They are showing Space: 1999 now. I remember being a fan of the first run.
Watching it now, it looks so 70s. The people are so hairy.
I finished rereading Nevil Shute's Trustee From the toolroom last weekend. Although I've read it 15-20 times, it hsd been a while and was like meeting an old friend again.
Every time I read it I find something new. This time it was the realization that Trustee is very similar to Lord of the Rings and Kieth Stewart is Frodo Baggins.
Both kieth and Frodo, at the start of the novels are living simple, ordinary, uneventful lives. They both have a monstrous, unimaginably difficult quest thrown on them. Frodo has to go to Mordor and destroy the ring.
Kieth, arguably, has the tougher quest. He has to travel to the South Pacific and recover a box of jewels on a reef on an uninhabited atoll from his brother in laws wrecked sailboat. Kieth and his wife have been left with the niece, the diamonds belong to her, and he is the Trustee. Like Frodo, he feels he has no choice in the matter.
Like Frodo, he comes through many difficulties and returns home where he resumes his rather quiet, uneventful life.
If you happen to be in the tram from Southall or from Hanwell at about nine o’clock on a Friday morning, you may see a little man get in at West Ealing, dressed in a shabby raincoat over a blue suit. He is one of hundreds of thousands like him in industrial England, pale faced, running to fat a little, rather hard up. His hands show evidence of manual work, his eyes and forehead evidence of intellect. A fitter or a machinist probably, you think, perhaps out of the toolroom. If you follow him, you will find that he gets out at Ealing Broadway and takes the Underground to Victoria Station. He comes up to the surface and walks along Victoria Street a little way to an office block, where he climbs four flights of stone stairs to the dingy old-fashioned office of the Miniature Mechanic to deliver his copy.
He will come out presently and take a bus to Chancery Lane, to spend the remainder of the day in the Library of the Patent Office. He will be home at Somerset Road, Ealing, in time for tea. He will spend the evening in the workshop, working on the current model.
He has achieved the type of life that he desires; he wants no other. He is perfectly, supremely happy.
So what's everyone else reading?
John Henry
A somewhat quavery Mike Love just dropped a COVID-19 tune on youtube, This Too Shall Pass, borrowing a bit from his old friend George Harrison..
>So what's everyone else reading?
Optical Shop Testing. By Daniel Malacara.
Since you asked. :)
The ending of Trustee has always struck me as echoing the ending of Trollope's Barchester Towers. Another old favorite of mine.
The author now leaves him in the hands of his readers: not as a hero,not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should betoasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdityas a perfect divine, but as a good man, without guile, believinghumbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided bythe precepts which he has striven to learn.
John Henry
A lovely series of photos! I can’t decide which one I like the most, they’re all frame worthy.
It is the winter of 1911 and Billy Magee, a successful New York author, and the writer of many summer thrillers such as _The Lost Limousine_ is convinced he is made for better things. He believes that if he can ensconce himself in solitude, he has in him real books, serious novels that he can coax to the page.
A chance conversation with a friend at his club leads to the suggestion that he travel from the city to Upper Asquewan Falls to spend the winter alone at Baldpate Inn, a summer resort owned by the friend's father and now closed for the season.
Arriving by train he gets no further than the station platform before meeting a mysterious and beautiful young woman who is crying and has no good explanation for her tears or her presence in Upper Asquewan Falls. Shrugging off the incident, he rousts the inn's caretaker from his house an proceeds up the mountain to open the place with the key to the front door and take up residence in the cold and deserted halls.
Solitude, however, is the exact opposite of what he finds. Over the course of two days, every one of the six other keys to the inn is put to use and the place bustles with unlikely visitors with preposterous explanations for their presence. There is the lovelorn haberdasher come to forget his beautiful and jilting crush, the classics professor fleeing suffragettes, the girl from the station and her "mother" who have no plausible story at all, the disgraced railroad magnate, a third mysterious woman and finally the cheerfully corrupt mayor of Reuton NY and his enforcer.
Along the way to sorting this all out, shots are fired, a mysterious package of $200,000 changes hands several times, we learn the ways of hermits, the rules of the Admiral's game and how true love blossoms.
Earl Derr Biggers is remembered today, if at all, for his creation of Honolulu detective Charlie Chan, but _Seven Keys to Baldpate_ was his first big success, and is entertainingly and breezily written, not at all "Victorian" in tone or outlook.
The book works both as a parody and celebration of the kind of book Magee supposedly writes. And of course one of the meta jokes of the book is that Magee has sought solitude to write a book about real life, and his "real life" turns into something out of one of his books.
From our vantage point today, it is interesting to see the characters in this 1913 book concerned with Progressive politics and details of the pre-war social scene while unknown to them and their author, the end of Western civilization is fast approaching. From the vantage point of a New York winter, the stories told by some of the keyholders of the in-season scenes at the Inn with their casual summer romances and the gossip from front porch rockers already seem remote and to us now even moreso.
None of the characters are deep, but possibly the most interesting is the Mayor of Reuton, a corrupt man with his own integrity. Once bought, he stays bought, and if he awards a contract corruptly, it is to someone who can actually do the work. The story is on the side of the Progressives, but I can't but help think Der Biggers was not wholly convinced himself:
A shadow had fallen upon the train-the shadow of the huge Reuton station. In the half-light on the platform Mr. Magee encountered the mayor of Reuton. Above the lessening roar of the train there sounded ahead of them the voices of men in turmoil and riot. Mr. Cargan turned upon Magee a face as placid and dispassionate as that of one who enters an apple orchard in May.
"The boys," he smiled grimly, "welcoming me home."
Then the train came to a stop, and Mr. Magee looked down into a great array of faces, and heard for the first time the low unceasing rumble of an angry mob. Afterward he marveled at that constant guttural roar, how it went on and on, humming like a tune, never stopping, disconnected quite from the occasional shrill or heavy voices that rang out in distinguishable words. The mayor looked coolly down into those upturned faces, he listened a moment to the rumble of a thousand throats, then he took off his derby with satiric politeness.
"Glad to see one and all!" he cried.
And now above the mutterings angry words could be heard, "That's him," "That's two-hundred-thousand-dollar Cargan," "How's the weather on Baldpate?" and other sarcastic flings. Then a fashion of derisive cat-calls came and went. After which, here and there, voices spoke of ropes, of tar and feathers. And still the mayor smiled as one for whom the orchard gate swung open in May.
A squad of policemen, who had entered the car from the rear, forced their way put on to the platform.
"Want us to see you through the crowd, Mr. Cargan?" the lieutenant asked.
New hoots and cries ascended to the station rafters. "Who pays the police?" "We do." "Who owns 'em?" "Cargan." Thus question and answer were bandied back and forth. Again a voice demanded in strident tones the ignominious tar and feathers.
Jim Cargan had not risen from the slums to be master of his town without a keen sense of the theatric. He ordered the police back into the car. "And stay there," he demanded. The lieutenant demurred. One look from the mayor sent him scurrying. Mr. Cargan took from his pocket a big cigar, and calmly lighted it.
"Some of them guys out there," he remarked to Magee, "belong to the Sunday-school crowd. Pretty actions for them-pillars of the church howling like beasts."
And still, like that of beasts, the mutter of the mob went on, now in an undertone, now louder, and still that voice that first had plead for tar and feathers plead still-for feathers and tar. And here a group preferred the rope.
And toward them, with the bland smile of a child on his great face, his cigar tilted at one angle, his derby at another, the mayor of Reuton walked unflinchingly.
The roar became mad, defiant. But Cargan stepped forward boldly. Now he reached the leaders of the mob. He pushed his way in among them, smiling but determined. They closed in on him. A little man got firmly in his path. He took the little man by the shoulders and stood him aside with some friendly word. And now he was past ten rows or more of them on his way through, and the crowd began to scurry away. They scampered like ants, clawing at one another's backs to make a path.
And so finally, between two rows of them, the mayor of Reuton went his way triumphantly. Somewhere, on the edge of the crowd, an admiring voice spoke. "Hello, Jim!" The mayor waved his hand. The rumble of their voices ceased at last. Jim Cargan was still master of the city.
"Say what you will," remarked Mr. Magee to the professor as they stood together on the platform of the car, "there goes a man."
The book was so successful that it spawned a broadway play, and no fewer than six movie adaptations under its own name. It also spawned the whole "spending time in a spooky abandoned house" movie genre and formed the basis of the screenplay to "House of the Long Shadows", the only movie to star all of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine. Al that would probably make it tangentialy related enough to SF for me to not worry too much about posting a review here, but I also think that clearly _Seven Keys to Baldpate_ contributed some DNA to Stephen King's _The Shining_.
_Seven Keys To Baldpate_ is freely available from Project Gutenberg at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30836
"That would cause me great annoyance and displeasure."
I can't think of a single good episode of Space 1999. It always seemed wooden & unexciting to me, even all the pre-premiere buzz had been about the effects, not the cast or stories.
The worst one I can remember is an episode where they were trying to convince a killer robot, or something, that it didn't have to go kill Earth because its makers were long dead. To do that, they put up a series of slides, saying things like: This was you home galaxy [slide] This was your home solar system [slide] This was your home planet.. etc, but none of the slides were appropriate at all! Like the one for galaxy showed a gas-giant, and other mistakes just as bad.
And of course that sets aside the point that the folks from Moonbase Alpha could have no way of knowing this stuff in the first place: There wasn't any point in the show where they could have learned it.
One armadillo on safari tonight. Wasn't even dark yet...
Of course it was silly, i had the lander when i was six or seven.
Blogger DanTheMan said..."Optical Shop Testing. By Daniel Malacara."
What's your application?
Call me Ishmael.......
I'm not a Trollope fan, but I've read maybe a half dozen of his books. They're quite gentle and soothing. Also, if you're into time travel, you get the sense of being transported back to a past. All the cogs fit and the wheels, when they get up and running, turn smoothly. Trollope's world makes sense....I sometimes read John O'Hara books for that time travel feel. His world is dense with detail and you know how the furniture is arranged. I read a few O'Hara books in high school. I thought he was sophisticated and knew about the world I wanted to grow into. I don't know if he was an accurate reporter of his own time, but the world I joined as a grown up was not the world he described.
https://townhall.com/columnists/gavinwax/2020/05/01/meat-shortages-are-coming-unless-congress-breaks-up-the-highly-centralized-system-it-created-n2567996
I read somewhere that when Trollope finished with one of his five hundred page books, he would simply start the next novel without any further ado. The writing was in addition to his full time job. Several mathematicians have tried to count the number of books he wrote, but they were unable to hazard a guess. They think the number has to be less than infinite....I guess if you're a committed Trollope fan, you never have to worry about what to read next.
None of the characters are deep, but possibly the most interesting is the Mayor of Reuton, a corrupt man with his own integrity. Once bought, he stays bought, and if he awards a contract corruptly, it is to someone who can actually do the work.
I can't remember the book title at the moment but it is the autobiography of 1880s NYC Tammany Hall politician. George Washington Plunkett
Totally corrupt. His gravestone reads, at his request, "He saw his chance and he took it."
He went on at some length about how an "honest politician" is one who will stay bought and also one who will only take bribes from people who will do the work.
Sounds like Derr must have known of him.
Book sounds interesting and I found a 99cent copy on Amazon. The sample is now in my pile.
John Henry
I'm in the middle of The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco and enjoying it immensely. But it only has a 3.4 rating at Good-reads. I guess for most people its not in the same league as The Help or The Green Mile.
Goodreads has some odd reviewers. I posted a review of "King Rat" by Clavell about men in a WW 2 Japanese prison camp. And some SJW wrote she didn't like the novel because it was "racist" against the Japanese. LOL!
I'm starting to wonder if the Biden thing was just to kill off #MeToo. I mean there's just nothing...
Philistines like all of eco it demands attention
I like Trollope a lot and have never read a bad one.
He invented the red postal box. Before that you had to go to a post office to mail a letter.
An audio version of the Plunkitt book is available on librivox.org
It's wonderfully read by John Michael's who I used to lo e listening to on Books On Tape.
His day job is auctioneer
John Henry
Tl;dr
I live Trollope. Read everything he wrote.
Time to start over.
I started with the prime minister and worked backwards to barchester towers.
You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank.
NEAL Stephenson
Seriously, Trollope's post boxes, of really heavy duty cast iron are something to behold.
John Henry
Of course cementery concerns of the most infamous frauds the protocols of zion.
I guess for most people its not in the same league as The Help or The Green Mile.
Ka-Pow! Right in the kisser!
The book thorn in my side right now is all my mom friends gushing over Where the Crawdads Sing. It's atrocious!!
I am enjoying, immensely, Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (pen name of one Elizabeth Mackintosh). The narrative structure is a little hokey - a police detective is laid up in the hospital and, fascinated by a stray portrait of Richard III, grills every nurse and random passerby as to their theories of the fate of the royal nephews - but it's fun to read. The British Crime Writers Association voted it the best UK mystery of all time, and it's said to have a fantastic plot twist, so I look forward to finishing it up. Full of trademark midcentury crisp British wit and it's cleaner than anything I've read by Agatha Christie.
Then it'll be back to plowing through the rest of The Power of Positive Thinking. Which is a lot hokey, but there's something to be said for training your mind to work in productive ways, and it's a relic of its time (speaking of midcentury) so it's educational as sort of a time capsule.
Is anyone listening to Adams lately? I used to listen to all his Periscopes in podcast form, but found him to be quite blinkered in his views on the virus. I've been deleting without listening lately.
So what's everyone else reading?
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin. It's pretty much the anti-Herbert Spencer and shows how what would later be called "evolutionary psychology" is not particularly useful since it can essentially be used to justify any conclusion.
another that incorporates recent research
Farmer
Ha! The other day when you and someone were squabbling over Marxism I was tempted to make a sarcastic remark along the lines “maybe it’s Kropotkin not Marx”. Just for shits and giggles.
Not that I remember much about PK. Haven’t read that crap in almost 40 years.
But if someday I say something about “ maybe that was Bukharin not Lenin” ...
I'm reading tea leaves.
Carry on...
“ I'm reading tea leaves.”
Recently read The Lady Tasting Tea. A good history of statistics.
So what's everyone else reading?
Re-reading Nero Wolfe mysteries (by Rex Stout)- something I seem to do every 5-6 years.
I was intrigued by the a&e series, which was mercilessly cut short. The european chamnel had an italian version
. A good history of statistics.
Indeed.
When tortured, statistics will confess to anything.
Best Nero Wolfe: League of Frightened Men, Red Box.
Seen the TV series with Timothy Hutton as Archie? Weirdly stylized and uneven, but sometimes excellent.
Trollope's books also work well on screen. All 26 episodes of the Pallisers can be downloaded from YouTube. Masterpiece Theatre did The Warden and Barchester Towers combined in 6 hours as Barchester Chronicles. With Donald Pleasance and his daughter.
Also Dr Thorne with Ian McShane as an Amazon original.
And David Suchet as August Melmot in The Way we live now.
John Henry
Finally finished Winchester's "Map That Changed the World." Was reminded that he has books on the Balkans and on Joseph Needham (the Man Who Loved China). The country and people, not the dishes. I liked Prof and Madman, but couldn't get into his sea and ocean books.
I still have to finish Chernow on Grant. Very tough--I admire Grant like few other figures, but Chernow just doesn't grab me.
I'd mention some books that have distracted me from these two, but they were rereads of things that would appeal to a vanishingly small number of readers here.
Not a hoot for Shute, or a dollop of Trollope!
Just kidding, I don't know their work at all and wish all readers pleasure where they find it.
Narr
Very polite tonight . . . I like it
In my younger days i was science fiction heavy, asimov clarke some heinlein harrison.
Indian actor Irrfan Khan died. He was a superb actor. Watching Qarib Qarib Singlle on Netflix tonight. Very likable movie.
Original Mike:
>> What's your application?
Proof plates for convex surfaces, and more specifically the radius tolerances for the rear face and the impact on fringe measurements. I suspect Zemax could model it, but I don't have a fortune to spend on a piece of software.
He was in jurassic world and inferno. Right
Yes.
Seen the TV series with Timothy Hutton as Archie?
I remember Ellery Queen with Jim Hutton.
He was barely 53,
Pants.
I still listen to Adams most nights falling asleep and you are right, he sounds like he's been bought off or scared off.
One of the wierd things is that he claims that the data on infections and deaths is crap (it is) but that we need to believe it anyway.
I get more suspicious of the death figures every day. Hospitals make 2 or 3times as much if they can claim Kung Flu, for example. Scott is pretty adamant that no hospital would misdiagnosed for money.
I just found out today, while catching up on back No Agenda podcasts that the death definition has changed about 2weeks ago.
Now, according to Dr Birx, any "flu like" symptoms which may have contributed to the death means the death should be counted as kung flu.
So if I have a sore throat and a cough and get run down by a truck, I get counted as a kung flu death.
She explains in this clip
http://adam.curry.com/enc/1587326192.919_birxinfluenzalikeilnessnetworkexplainer.mp3
John Henry
The link to filmento shows how to properly construct a thinking man thriller, like game of shadows and how not to write a film like the latest robin hood.
He was in jurassic world and inferno. Right
Also in The Life of Pi. Terribly sad his life was cut short.
In the latter film they make robins motivation against the sheriff of nottingham very weak.
Blogger Narr said..."Finally finished Winchester's "Map That Changed the World.""
Oh, that looks interesting. Just ordered it.
Like many a lad or lass, I went through a scifi phase--roughly 11th grade through college, when the genre made up about 50% of my pleasure reading. The usual suspects, but there are huge gaps -- big names I didn't read at all, and even with my favorites I wasn't comprehensive.
One writer I thought had real talent and imagination was JG Ballard (I think narciso and others have mentioned him here). His idea of slowglass has stuck with me for almost 50 years, and of course they made his memoir Empire of the Rising Sun into a movie.
Narr
Pretty good movie
I remember more of his short stories then novels,
I hope you enjoy it, Original Mike. That period, and European history in general, have always been of interest to me, and Winchester's presentation of a yeoman genius (eventually and belatedly honored) among the back-stabbing snobs, toffs, and swells, is fascinating--leave aside the geology!
Narr
I mean, don't leave aside the geology
Ballard was generally too surreal for me.
However, Slowglass wasn't his, that was Bob Shaw.
His idea of slowglass has stuck with me for almost 50 years, and of course they made his memoir Empire of the Rising Sun into a movie.
Slight correction. It was Empire of the Sun. "Empire of the Rising Sun" is a board game. I thought the movie was just okay, but Christian Bale really hit it out of the park.
Those are wonderful pictures. Living in Virginia, I miss the almost-glacial lakes of my youthful years further north, and the hint of pure coldness such lakes have even in the middle of summer.
Today, by the way, May 1 , is a feast day on which we commemorate the feast of St Joseph, the foster-father of God.
Just a thought - due to the QUARANTINE/CENSUS type government overreach that the evil (but poetry-loving) Roman Emperor had imposed on the good people of the day, there were no extended family members at the nativity scene - sisters, cousins, and so forth - to help the Blessed Virgin with a birthing that had to have been difficult ..... and so it is likely that St Joseph, unlike almost all fathers in that corner of the ancient world, saw his baby BEFORE the helper women who were usually present at almost all births back in the day (but not at this one)
which means, since we all know that Mary herself was not a sinner, was not born a sinner, did not live as a sinner, and did not enter into Heaven and Eternal life as a sinner or as a former sinner, that it is likely that St Joseph was the first sinner, since the early days of Adam and Eve, to look on the face of God and live.
True that, and if you are wondering why the celebration is on May First, well, there are several reasons.
"I mean, don't leave aside the geology."
I bought it for the geology; I have a great interest in geologic maps. Anything else will be gravy.
The Potomac is beautiful at sunrise, but I have spent thousands of hours near the Potomac and its tributaries, and every season of the year there is always a little bit of those semi-tropical near-microspocic or microscopic small creatures who, in their billions and billions in every few gallons of seawater or riverwater, make that water, even at a distance, look slightly alive with microbial sludge. Unless the light is just right, or it is a windy or really rainy day.
"However, Slowglass wasn't his, that was Bob Shaw."
I've never forgotten that story. I love the concept of Slow Glass.
In the more traditional thriller vein
https://www.amazon.com/Overkill-Paul-Richter-James-Barrington/dp/0330427504
more traditional fare
Has anyone seen the Loch Ness Monster in the land o lake Mendota?
I'm reading Matching the Hatch by Ernest G. Schwiebert Jr. copywrite 1955
I'd HEARD of the book, of course, but never read it.
I found a (kinda) beat up copy, that is a FIRST EDITION... Which i think is cool
It's weird the things that he introduces as unheard of heresy, that are now Cannonical Gospel
and then there's things he assumes are Obvious, that Now are considered heresy
examples:
Schwiebert takes it for granted, that Most trout fishers only fish dry flys
Schwiebert takes it for granted, that trout are for killing, and eating
here's a quote:
"most trout fishermen don't care about learning about insects...
They just want to catch a few trout...
And that's what they do: Catch a few trout"
Now, a serious Question
is a "Second Printing" STILL considered a "first edition" ???
BUGS (flamboyantly)
Oh Photoshop boys!
Ken B and Narcisso,
We rented DVD of the A&E Nero Wolfe. Haven't seen the Italian version. I belong to a Nero Wolfe FB group and apparently there are many version (including old radio) versions of the books.
Re: "League of Frightened Men" - I picked up a 1st edition copy at a garage sale almost 20 years ago. Apparently it's worth quite a bit today. It's one of my favorites. Currently reading "The Silent Speaker" - I'm pretty sure I remember who committed the murders but that's the thing about Rex Stout: even if I remember, I want to read the entire book to soak in the atmosphere of New York City circa 1940/1950.
Now, a serious Question
is a "Second Printing" STILL considered a "first edition" ???
If the text is unrevised, sure.
If a book is popular, it may well sell out and need reprinting. If it's some sort of reference, it may also need new editions. The two don't really have anything to do with each other.
Currently I have only read the first Wolfe, Fer de Lance. I enjoyed it and I will get back to the series eventually. I did find the bit where Wolfe had Archie set up a fake assault on a reluctant witness to shake her into speaking up hard to take. From her point of view, she would reasonably think she was about to be raped..
Generally don't care for Shute as I find him a bit too contrived and square-jawed, but I have to say Round the Bend is a great and strange book.
Mark said...
I remember Ellery Queen with Jim Hutton.
I remember as well. David Wayne was his father (Inspector Queen).
First saw Jim Hutton in "Where the Boys Are" - the movie that stands out in my "tween" days when it arrived on TV. Special guy.
I used to enjoy the Hutton Queen series quite a bit. If I recall, they tended to use the fair-play setup from the early EQ books with a "Challenge to the Reader" (Viewer) when all the clues were on the table.
Kathryn51
Yes, the sense of time and place is a big part of the appeal. Stout was never much at plotting, but the books usually work as novels. The best part is the Wolfe-Archie interplay. I have read everything up to Silent Speaker at least twice, but only a few of the later ones.
We are some of those "foreign people" who are potentially eligible for stimulus checks. However there is a taxable income cutoff and we are way, way over it, in spite of my retirement pay kicking in for part of 2019.
We do get the benefit of being able to delay filing tax returns till July 15.
H1b people tend to return as they get new gigs, they are high on the hire list by Indian agencies. So they may not be in the US just now, to get stimulus checks there, but it's very likely they will be.
Churchy LaFemme
I don't know much about first editions, second printings etc. All I know is that a glance on the internet shows my edition is worthy a lot - unfortunately I don't have the dust cover. Then it would be worth mucho dinera - enough to pay for a European vacation if I was allowed to travel.
In case anyone was still on the fence about the presidential election:
"Of the three candidates, I’m the only one not of white European ancestry." - Justin Amash
Whew. That's a relief.
i was LOOKING for an excuse not to vote for Justin! : )
I liked her for the first season of westworld before she went rabid
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/05/01/westworld-star-evan-rachel-wood-backs-rose-mcgowans-stand-against-democrats/
he [Adams] sounds like he's been bought off or scared off.
Don't think so. My impression was that he panicked around the end of January. I attributed it to his age and preexisting conditions, the virus probably looked like a death sentence.
I though the italian version of over the body some months ago
All those pictures. I can hardly restrain myself from telling you to go jump in a lake.
Humbug. Amash is as White and European as the other guys. So was Obama for that matter.
a podcast with an author i mentioned earlier
Humbug. Amash is as White and European as the other guys. So was Obama for that matter.
I'll give you white, but how can he possibly be as "European as the other guys"?
Amash is a Christian Arab, on both sides, so not European.
That may explain a lot about his positions actually. Not sympatico with the very European American volk. Blood tells.
Syrian/lebanese which depending where on the line its the same ethnicity.
So is it as bad as they paint the situation over here buwaya
Farmer: "Of the three candidates, I’m the only one not of white European ancestry." - Justin Amash"
Isn't it funny that Amash (I-China) proceeds as if we weren't going to have about a dozen other candidates in the Presidential election?
Neville Shute Norway's autobiography "Slide Rule" is an interesting read. In the past I've read and enjoyed his "Pastoral", "Round The Bend" "Beyond The Black Stump" and "A Town Like Alice". In the last week (with lockdown you've got lots of time) I've polished off "No Highway" and "An Old Country".
Goodreads critics note that Shute is a man and writer of his time and place--born in Ealing London in 1899. He's got some stock sorts of characters--there is the brilliant if not terribly socially adept "boffin". There is the hard working pilot or engineer who can get things done and manages people or builds an empire. Shute's women are something else. They come from a time and place where they need to be courted; they learn to respect and admire one of Shute's heroes. They can be difficult--but mostly once brought around they stand by their man.
Shute's books are all good reads so long as you can accept the manners and mores of 1930s and 1940's Anglo Australian society. Shute can put you squarely in the scene--it's another time and another place.
I've also polished off Larry McMurtry's Thalia series. The first two of them "Horseman Pass By" and "Leaving Cheyenne" are set among cattle ranchers not top far outside Thalia Texas. Horseman was made into the movie "Hud" and was McMurtry's first novel. "Leaving Cheyenne" covers the intertwined lives of three people from 1925 until their respective deaths. I think it's probably the best of the lot.
McMurtry hit the Hollywood big time with his next Thalia novel, "The Last Picture Show". A prime character in that novel and movie was Duane Moore, a stud high school quarterback in the little town of Thalia. Over time McMurtry would write four more books in his Duane Moore series. The next two "Texasville" and "Duane's Depressed" are on a par with "The Last Picture Show". They are substantial novels describing the lives and interactions of a dozen or more characters in one small Texas town over a period of 40 years. All are good reads. (And I've read all of them in the last three weeks). The final two books in the Duane Moore series are "different"--not necessarily disappointing--but different. McMurtry by this time had spent years writing film scripts and television scripts. The two books "When The Light Goes" and "Rhino Ranch" read like a film script. Chapters are short--one or two pages at most--as though each chapter was a "scene" in a film or TV show.
I suppose you could call McMurtry's effort here an analog of Trollope's Palliser Chronicles (read a few years back, but worth rereading again) and his Barchester Towers series--you create a real world with real people and describe it over a substantial period of time. They all bear reading, and they all deliver enjoyment.
"Justin" is a European name, it comes from Justin the Martyr, who lived in the part of Greece across the Bosporus from the rest of Greece, and Greece has always been a European country.
Not sure why he wants to run for president, he seems stupid and ignorant, and he seems to lack basic empathy for his fellow human beings.
That was jeff bridges character right, its intriguing how far back he goes.
He seems contrarian for the sake of it.
If you are a Christian from Lebanon or Palestine or Syria how "non-European" are you really? Are you really that much more "non-European" than the Albanians or Azeris or Tatars? In any case, by US government definitions you are classified White or Caucasian. That may change if the Democrats get back in the White House.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for the Wayback Machine.
The censors among us will literally stop at nothing, they are now targeting the Wayback Machine in order to control the past. George Orwell was the greatest prophet of the 20th century.
you are right, stephen cooper, justin amash strikes me as lacking in compassion. and he has no experience that recommends him as an executive. just an ego.
I signed up for a virtual race to run across Tennessee--1000 km. I have from today until August 31. I will try to do across and back. It is an average of 10 miles/day. I think I can do it. It will give me a goal. Not that I usually need one to run; I run because that is what I do. But there is a nice medal at the end. And a shirt.
One of my friends is on facebook mocking Christians. He is a Jew, but an atheist, and I think he struggles with ... something. But he seems to pick Christians to mock, not Jews. Not sure why that is. I normally ignore, ignore, ignore, because there is no percentage in arguing. But tonight I engaged. Not sure why. His condescension angered me. A smug guy making fun of average people, probably of all races, wanting to gather together to worship their Lord. I wonder if he is envious.
Lurker21,
I attend an Antiochian Orthodox church. The arabs who worship there are decidedly NOT white/European. They see things far differently from me.
AND the women are beautiful and have great hair.
If you are a Christian from Lebanon or Palestine or Syria how "non-European" are you really?
The short answer is it's complicated. Amash's family is considered "Arab Christian," but a lot of such groups reject the label because they consider themselves descendants of Phoenicians and not ethnically Arab. Azeris and Tatars are Turkic in origin.
he seems to lack basic empathy for his fellow human beings
I haven't paid much attention to Amash, really, but I know he identifies as libertarian in his political philosophy. So, there's that.
Anne, I know a lot of people like that, and I do not think they were envious when they were young and healthy and full of the good things in life.
Good luck with your race!
Like when he opposed trumps withdrawalfrom syria even though he is ostensibly for withdrawal from syria.
Its like with vegetarianism, atheism becomes the greater dogma.
I'm sure Amash will get far fewer votes than Lebanese Christian Ralph Nader got when he ran for president.
Like when he opposed trumps withdrawalfrom syria even though he is ostensibly for withdrawal from syria.
Amash's muddled position on Syria reflects how muddled our entire position is vis-à-vis Syria. We certainly don't back the SDF's vision for Syria.
I'm sure Amash will get far fewer votes than Lebanese Christian Ralph Nader got when he ran for president.
Maybe. Gary Johnson got almost 2 million more votes than Nader.
Theres a whole lot of dystopia directed at the young isnt there, not only the hunger games but divergent, the maze runner,
What a rewarding thread this has been for me.
First, the "7 Keys" post sent me to Amazon where I found a collected works of his with this novel and 10 others, including five Charlie Chan. 1200 pages for $2.99
Then the free Ian McShane series from the great Julian Fellowes.
Laughed at the assumption that Trollope (who I didn't know) wrote infinite pages, then went to Amazon where they had "Delphi Complete Works of Anthony Trollope" for $2.99. I thought, "Ha...not so infinite, I guess!" Then I looked at the number of pages...36,742!
Yikes thats a lot of pages if you only addressed the phineas and other series.
For the conspiracy theorists here (thanks to Q): EXCLUSIVE: A Look Inside The Chat Room The Deep State Uses To Fight Trump
(https://web.archive.org/web/20170606113542/http://thirdestatenewsgroup.com/exclusive-a-look-inside-the-chat-room-the-deep-state-uses-to-fight-trump/)
As a note, this may be part of why the Wayback Machine is under attack right now. This was captured (5/18/17) the day after Mueller was appointed Special Counsel (5/17/17), and appears to discuss his upcoming appointment as Special Counsel, as well as a renewed attack on Gen Flynn.
I like Trollope a lot and have never read a bad one.
I read two novels (An Eye for an Eye) I didn't care for and a late short story (Two Heroines of Plumpington) that was decidedly inferior. His Christmas short stories are good, but I think Phineas Redux is my favorite.
It has been quite as bad here as you may have heard.
The death rate is at least double the US (so far), and the Basques haven't been spared. Curiously though the Andalucians have had barely a touch of this. Its very much a city-country, north-south, cold vs hot thing. It is New York vs California. We had a choice, an opportunity, to stay in Malaga, but the temporary move would have been troublesome. Anyway Malaga seems to be as locked down as we are, though they are apparently much more lax down there (about everything).
The lockdown is very strict even in provincial cities like ours. You cannot just take a walk and indulge in photography, much as I would like to. You cannot (and this has been deliberately, publicly enforced) move to your country house, which a great number of people here have, and we do as well, though ours is in a coastal village.
It does seem to be nearly over. The best actionable statistics are the overall population mortality, and they keep excellent, timely track of it here, unlike the US CDC. We are down to the "normal" death rate band as of last week.
That is intriguing its around 6 am over there.
I am still waking up very early. Like Althouse I suppose. An old people thing?
It illustrates much hasnt changed in 160 years re political mores
But they arent cooking the stats over there. Are they.
Certainly the popular front podemos socialists havent helped things
The thing about foyles war, referred diwn thread is it written by anthony horowitz whose father was some kind of fixer for harold wilson in the 60s, so he drew up foyle as the incorruptable man in a world that was anything but. His alex rider seeies is junior james bond complete with a modern version of spectre called scorpia.
No, I am confident of their stats, at least those that derive from the civil registry.
And the rest are inaccurate, to the degree they are, out of circumstance or honest errors.
Corruption here is of a different quality than in the US. There is a sort of social license to be corrupt in certain spheres and ways, and not in others. Building permits and government contracts? Viva la Pepa.
Certainly the popular front podemos socialists havent helped things.
What modern political party does have anything useful to say about inequality or what to do about it?
Good to know
Hes also done two bond adaotations where the villains are driven by revenge over korean war atrocities and wars in general
Perhaps the difference in corruption, or the potential for it, is simply the smaller scale of everything, and the less-cosmic rewards available.
There is no question, for instance, of the local equivalent of the FDA putting its thumb on the scale concerning approval of use of certain drugs because of the influence of outside actors hoping to manipulate global markets.
How about in your native phillipines it doesnt seem duterte has had a light touch with these matters.
Duterte is a curious phenomenon, but he did not redefine Philippine culture or government practice. Its the same old place as it ever was, just with a rather odd duck on top of the pile.
The lockdown there is extremely tight in Greater Manila and a couple of other cities. No taking walks either. But that is not the doing of Duterte, or not especially his. This is a consensus government policy.
But the plague is next to nonexistent there outside the ranks of the elite. There or four Senators (out of 24) have been infected, and some Department Secretaries, and its killed several emeritii - ex-Senators, etc. But all the deaths there, so far, amount to one middling day in Spain.
That seems surprising considering the greater density of the phillipines certainly in places like manila maybe mimdanao too.
Koko is the son on nene pimentel.
"That seems surprising considering the greater density of the phillipines "
Yes it is very curious. The same thing can be seen wordwide, and between regions in countries.
This is a tremendously important situation. Why Madrid and not Sevilla? There has been more than enough time for these places to equalize. Why is absolutely none of the tropical world suffering within an order of magnitude of the developed world? Why not Eastern Europe? Why is Austria so different from Belgium?
None of the experts can explain these differences that, in terms of numbers, are more significant than anything their models produced. The experts simply aren't experts, they have no answers to these, and can therefore provide no useful guidance.
Perhaps weather and exposure to China/Chinese
(and Metro reliance)
Yancy... That is the spookiest link I've seen in quite some time. She completely disregards all of the manipulations of the statistics WRT the virus.
"Of the three candidates, I’m the only one not of white European ancestry. - Justin Amash"
Among the population to which that sort of feature matters, how many do you suppose have any idea who Amash is?
I'm reading a Clive Cussler book, on a recommendation, for some light, entertainment. Nearing the end I'm finding that I just don't care about the characters, the story, etc. Yet I'm finding it difficult to abandon. Do you stop reading books that no longer hold your interest?
More lovely photos. Upon first seeing the opening photo reminds me of a cartoon. The colors are great.
stevew said...Do you stop reading books that no longer hold your interest?
A book has to be nearly unreadable for me to stop once I’ve started. Partly the sunk cost fallacy, partly the thought that maybe it will get better or the payoff will be worth it.
With all of us stuck at home, cut off from friends, I thought I’d do more reading with this time, but instead I’ve basically stopped. My nights have become totally regimented. Dinner at 5:30 or 6:00, board games until 7:30, when everyone on my street with kids and even most without come out on their front porches to bang pots and play instruments. No beautiful songs like the Italians, it’s a dreadful cacophony, and I thought it was really stupid when it started (bang pots to support our front-line workers!), but I’ve come to look forward to it as a bizarre block party. After 5 minutes, we go back inside, watch 2 episodes of The Goldbergs (because it’s the only show everyone in the family enjoys) until it gets dark, then turn out the lights and read a couple stories from The Brothers Grimm by candlelight. Finally, walk the dog and go to bed.
No room for In Search of Lost Time, which is far more readable than I expected when I picked it up.
"A book has to be nearly unreadable for me to stop once I’ve started. Partly the sunk cost fallacy, partly the thought that maybe it will get better or the payoff will be worth it."
Exactly. That's it, I'm going to do it this time. I really am. Really.
"Do you stop reading books that no longer hold your interest?"
I'll sometimes skip to the end, read that, and if it's better go back and finish or occasionally just read the chapters in reverse order until anything of interest has been resolved.
stevew said...Exactly. That's it, I'm going to do it this time. I really am. Really.
How easily we delude ourselves when properly motivated.
I am glad to be hereThanks
A smug guy making fun of average people, probably of all races, wanting to gather together to worship their Lord. I wonder if he is envious.
Only one god? Anyone could do that.
I'm envious of the Hindus who can worship a different god every day for 900,000 years, which they do by being reincarnated thousands of times. The hard part is keeping track of where you left off.
I'm reading the "Churchill series." It starts with the Empire and War section - The Malakand Field Force, The River War, From London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March. Then comes Liberalism and the Social Problem section. Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill: Young Statesman 1901-1914 (A biography of those years by Winston Churchill's son - In the years 1900 to 1914 Churchill defected to the Liberal party and as an MP worked with David Lloyd George on first foundations of the welfare state. The two books explain this mysterious interlude.) and My African Journey. Then comes The World Crisis section: 4 books on World War I, one called Aftermath and one on the Eastern Front. Empires collapse, the British empire survives but is seriously weakened and Communism begins its dread progress. In one sense, Churchill is defending his Gallipoli plan in his whole account of World War I, but in another sense he is explaining the terrible consequences of the way the war was fought - the death toll from the frontal attacks on trenches manned by men with machine guns - and the way the war was prolonged.
One of the liberating things about reading this is that various slogans, cliches, policies, accusations which are being flung about now, all come into existence in these pages and you see them forming and being flung about in almost the same way as they are now though we are in another country and all own computers. That was the beginning, this is the end - of an era. The other is that Churchill is an interesting writer always at the center of events.
I’m reading Miguel de Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life. Not something I’d ordinarily read but it’s very readable and most of it makes sense to me.
Gorgeous
'So what's everyone else reading?"
Seeing Like a State by Scott and The Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. My husband is reading The Lord of the Rings aloud to the family. (I joined in to listen because I'd never read it.) I'm reading a Landmark version of Anabasis aloud to the kids.
"Do you stop reading books that no longer hold your interest?"
Unless it is an established classic, in which case I initially err on the side of the problem being with me, yes. Life is short, and there are a lot of books.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for the Wayback Machine."
What a hysterical totalitarian control freak Joan Donovan is.
"Throughout the last decade of researching platform politics, I have never witnessed such collateral damage to society caused by unchecked abusive content spread across the web and social media. Everyone interested in fostering the health of the population should strive to hold social-media companies to account in this moment. As well, social-media companies should create a protocol for strategic amplification that defines successful recommendations and healthy news feeds as those maximizing respect, dignity, and productive social values..."
Do you stop reading books that no longer hold your interest?
Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. A highfalutin stinker. Only book I just couldn't finish.
Bullshit, Mark. Penile insertion is not required
“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape
I cited this the other dsy in another comment thread.
From 10 USC section 920 article 120:
(a)Rape.—Any person subject to this chapter who commits a sexual act upon another person by—
(snip)
CFR defines "sexual act" as:
sexual act(1) Sexual act .— The term “sexual act” means— (A) the penetration, however slight, of the penis into the vulva or anus or mouth; (B) contact between the mouth and the penis, vulva, scrotum, or anus; or (C) the penetration, however slight, of the vulva or penis or anus of another by any part of the body or any object, with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade any person or to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.
Perhaps you can cite some different law?
John Henry
Post a Comment