How to get 1 minute of bike track on 1/6 acre of backyard garden.

Meade has optimized a small space. It's not as easy as it may look, and it's a fun place for me to build some confidence.

ADDED: Here's the same backyard in 2013 (in late July):



Meade is demonstrating lawn-mowing there (and we're talking about landscape design that makes lawn-mowing an amusing activity), but I'm showing you this mostly so you can see how much has happened to the garden in the last 4 years.

"There are probably few forces as capable of driving the meme space as stock photography..."

"... a source of endless, just-generic-enough, just-specific-enough photos the viewers can imprint their own values onto. The latest in this series of stock-photography memes is a photo... titled 'Disloyal Man Walking With His Girlfriend and Looking Amazed at Another Seductive Girl,' which features a scuzzy dude looking back at a woman as his girlfriend looks at him shocked and betrayed. And it’s a metaphor for … everything?"

From "The Hot New Meme Is Giving in to Your Worst Impulses" (NY Magazine).

"Might it be that non-Southerners, for cultural reasons, simply cannot understand why it’s difficult for Southerners to execrate their ancestors, even if their ancestors did bad things?"

"That thought came back to me after listening to this amazing episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. It’s about country music, and what sets it apart from other American musical genres. Malcolm Gladwell is not the first person I would go to for insight into how country music works, but boy, was this great."

Writes Rod Dreher at The American Conservative in "Sad Songs." I haven't listened to Gladwell's podcast yet, but Dreher ends his column with an invitation to listen to The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”:

Listen especially to the third verse — the land, family, death, defeat — and know that for very many of us, that is the South. It’s not the whole South. “Strange Fruit” is also the South. But it’s one true story of the South, and if you can’t feel the tragedy and the heartbreak of a poor, proud Southern man laid low in this song, friend, I cannot help you:

I can't embed that without thinking of something I read in The New Yorker this week: "Who Owns the Internet?/What Big Tech’s monopoly powers mean for our culture," by Elizabeth Kolbert:

Consider the case of Levon Helm. He was the drummer for the Band, and, though he never got rich off his music, well into middle age he was supported by royalties. In 1999, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. That same year, Napster came along, followed by YouTube, in 2005. Helm’s royalty income, which had run to about a hundred thousand dollars a year... dropped “to almost nothing.” When Helm died, in 2012, millions of people were still listening to the Band’s music, but hardly any of them were paying for it. (In the years between the founding of Napster and Helm’s death, total consumer spending on recorded music in the United States dropped by roughly seventy per cent.) Friends had to stage a benefit for Helm’s widow so that she could hold on to their house....

Here's the album. You can still buy it.

By the way, the 3rd verse that Dreher talks about is the one with the lines: "Like my father before me, I will work the land/And like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand/He was just eighteen, proud and brave/But a Yankee laid him in his grave...." It made me think of the 140 Confederate soldiers whose nearby graves I visited the other day, after Madison's mayor, Paul Soglin, got a memorial removed. I took photographs...



... but only later did I learn that the headstones do not mark individual graves. What's under the ground is, in fact, a mass grave. The individual stones are a later effort at imposing dignity — an effort that corresponds to the effort we are experiencing today, the withdrawal of dignity.

Trump is Sarah Palin.

A phrase I've been thinking lately. I Googled it and got a column by Jane Coaston published 5 days ago in WaPo: "Trump is Sarah Palin but better at it."

From the moment Palin entered the national scene, the praise for her on the right was heavily tied to her image.... And Palin said what the base was thinking. She accused Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” She praised those willing to “screw the political correctness.”...

Trump campaigned on the Palin model. In fact, he improved upon it. His identity was his trademark, rendering the constant shifts in policy goals and promises almost meaningless. His base saw in Trump what they wanted to see. Some saw a fighter who would stand up for them, others saw a vaunted truth-teller, and a few, truth be told, likely saw a potential white-nationalist hero. And he gave it to them: the image, the veneer, the blank slate upon which their deeply held dreams — for themselves as much as their country — could be written...

Well, that's not exactly what I was thinking. It's too dismissive of Palin and of Trump, too disrespectful to begin to figure out what happened. There isn't even any discussion of how the elite's disrespect for Palin/Trump fired their popularity with the people who love them.

"Those who didn't evacuate and remained in the storm's path, such as Corpus Christi, were told to write their names or social security numbers on their arms so that their bodies can be later identified."

Says The Daily Mail, without revealing the source of the morbid advice. I doubt that any American political figure would say that. The British newspaper may not grasp how touchy we Americans are about identification numbers.

ADDED: ABC News identifies Rockport Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Rios as the one who said: "We’re suggesting if people are going to stay here, mark their arm with a Sharpie pen with their name and Social Security number... We hate to talk about things like that. It's not something we like to do but it’s the reality, people don’t listen."

"The chief architect of the Pacific Crest Trail, Clinton Clarke, saw the project in explicitly racial and religious terms."

"The 'negro boys”' of America, he complained in 1937, had remained 'closer to the soil' and so were taking 'all the athletic prizes,' while whites suffered from 'too much sitting on soft seats in motors, too much sitting in soft seats in movies, and too much lounging in easy chairs before radios.' Only a long trip in the woods by 'clean, strong young Christians,' Clarke’s assistant wrote, could 'preserve our Christian civilization,' while eradicating communism as well. The great attraction of the new trail, according to a young man who blazed a section, was 'the fact that I was one of the first fellows to participate in such a conquest of this kind.' Back east the founder of the Appalachian Trail, Benton MacKaye, was a rather different figure, a supporter of the Soviet Union and a friend of Sinclair Lewis, John Reed, and Lewis Mumford. MacKaye believed his trail would provide a solution to the labor unrest of the period—much of which was led by Wobbly lumberjacks and miners—by offering land and work in government-owned towns, newly built along the trail in the forest; no less a man of his time than Clarke, MacKaye termed his scheme 'colonization.'"

From "Take a Hike!" in The New York Review of Books, by Charles Petersen, discussing 2 new books about hiking. 

"Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again’..."

"... have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan this week… The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost… Just as worrying, when discussing our future actions in the region, the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously disturb any national security professional, and any American who is unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory."

The resignation letter of Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Trump, quoted at a Federalist piece that ends with an update quoting a White House statement: "Sebastian Gorka did not resign, but I can confirm he no longer works at the White House."

"DoggoLingo, sometimes referred to as doggo-speak, 'seems to be quite lexical, there are a lot of distinctive words that are used'..."

"... says Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch. "It's cutesier than others, too. Doggo, woofer, pupper, pupperino, fluffer — those have all got an extra suffix on the end to make them cuter.' McCulloch also notes DoggoLingo is uniquely heavy on onomatopoeias like bork, blep, mlem and blop.... The origin of "bork" itself is less clear, but it's clearly onomatopoeic. It's perhaps most well-known thanks to Gabe the Dog, a tiny floof of a Miniature American Eskimo/Pomeranian whose borks have been remixed into countless classic tunes. Jurassic Bork, The Bork Files, Doggos of the Borkribbean, Imperial Borks — the list goes on and on."

I'm reading "Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love For The Puppers" at NPR.com. It's from last April, but NPR.org is featuring it on its front page today. Why? I can think of 2 reasons: 1. NPR thinks people are stressed from all the scary news — hurricane, race-focused protest, Trump — and need something reliably nice nice nice, or 2. The new story "What's Making These Dogs In Mumbai Turn Blue?" is getting a lot of clicks so they went digging back in the archive for something else about dogs.

Speaking of 2 reasons, I was interested in the "doggo-speak" story for 2 reasons, both relating to the infusion of a fun new life into a heretofore negative word:

1. "Bork" — based on the defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork — has meant "To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office." That's an OED definition. The verb "to Bork" is actually in the OED. Interestingly enough, the oldest usage plays up the dog-related similarity to "bark": "I think this time the local minorities are ‘Borking’ up the wrong." That's the L.A. Times in 1987. But the usage really got going when Clarence Thomas came along: "'We're going to Bork him,’ the National Organization for Women has promised. But if they succeed, liberals may discover that they have Borked themselves." (1991 New Republic).

2. "Doggo" — this has been slang — in the phrase "lying doggo," meaning to lie low and keep hidden — since the 19th century, where the first usage, according to the OED, was "He had been a guest, after lying doggoh for some time, at one of Blobbs' quiet little suppers." I'm most familiar with the word as it comes up in the Samuel Beckett play "Endgame." Clov has a flea and shakes a lot of insecticide powder into his pants. Hamm asks "Did you get him?" and Clov says "Looks like it. Unless he’s laying doggo." There's then some byplay about "laying" versus "lying," with the punchline "If he was laying we'd be bitched."

IN THE COMMENTS: Earnest Prole said:

Reason 3 for why NPR is featuring it today: It's National Dog Day.

Never heard of it before, but it checks out in Google News. National Dog Day.

"A class action that seeks only worthless benefits for the class and yields only fees for class counsel is no better than a racket and should be dismissed out of hand."

Wrote 7th Circuit Judge Diane Sykes for the 3-judge panel that threw out the case against Subway that was premised on the restaurant's promotion of "footlong" subs that were not always actually a foot long.

The litigation began after Australian teenager Matt Corby in January 2013 posted a Facebook photo showing a Footlong sandwich he bought was only 11 inches long, not 12....

By the way, Sykes "is considered to be near the top of Trump’s short list" of potential Supreme Court nominees, according to a Politico article from last January. She used to be a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and "was part of a legal movement that helped set in motion a conservative transformation of the judiciary in her home state."

The solution that's a problem: the roundabout.

I'll have to look up how much money was spent on this thing and how it was promoted as a wonderful solution to something, but "Roundabout on Madison's Far West Side has become a crash magnet":

Last year, there were 47 crashes at the huge, multi-lane roundabout, which was 12 more than in 2015. One of the busiest of the five roundabouts in the city, it has averaged 38.4 crashes per year in the five full years that it has been open.

And the city traffic engineer blames us: “Too many drivers still don’t know what they are doing in a roundabout.”

We were talking about roundabouts here on the blog just last June. I quoted The New Yorker:

"When ["Yes" frontman Jon] Anderson sang, 'I’ll be the roundabout,' most American listeners surely had no idea that he was referring to the kind of intersection known less euphoniously, in the U.S., as a traffic circle..."

"I think the tearing down of Confederate statues is something people are doing because they can't tear down Trump."

"It's like kicking the dog after a hard day working for a boss you hate," I said a few days ago.

And now here's a column in The Washington Post by Anne Applebaum:

Polish and Ukrainian statues [of Lenin] came down as the result of a revolutionary moment, a sudden break in the political situation. In the United States in 2017, we are living through what feels to many like a similar, though not entirely analogous, revolutionary moment. The election of Trump, the first American president in decades to use unapologetically racist language — starting with his insidious slur that Barack Obama was not American, moving on to his reference to Mexican “rapists” and continuing with his refusal to condemn neo-Nazis — has smashed the ordinary rhythms of American political life. Suddenly, in Trump’s America, a statue honoring a Confederate leader looks like not just a boring monument to the distant past but a living political statement about the present.

Suddenly!

Suddenly I see just how much that damned dog looks like that bastard I have to work for.

"If it’s an antagonistic fight between two blacks, it’s one thing. But if it’s an antagonistic fight between a white and a black, then you can play the race card tremendously and get an overwhelming return."

Said Don King, quoted in "Mayweather Sees a Racial Double Standard in Megafight vs. McGregor" (NYT).

Both fighters have flung racially tinged barbs at each other — McGregor told Mayweather to “dance for me, boy” and said he himself was half black “from the bellybutton down”; Mayweather said he was fighting “for all the blacks around the world.”...

McGregor has been criticized for some of his racial remarks during the promotion of the fight. He gyrated on stage during a promotional event, calling it “a little present for my beautiful, black female fans.” In an interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” McGregor seemed to refer to black boxers in a scene from “Rocky III” as “dancing monkeys.”...

Well, that's all awfully crude. I guess people have a hankering to escape from the bonds of political correctness (which is what Trump perceived and exploited).

(I've been ignoring this thing all week and am just now seeing that it's a boxer boxing a mixed martial arts guy, and the mixed martial arts guy is boxing for the first time.)

The 3 top-rated comments at the NYT are:

1. Why is this even an article? As the article points out, "But one important difference between Mayweather and McGregor, Boyd noted, is that Mayweather has been in serious trouble with the law related to domestic violence and has served jail time." Mayweather says there is a racial double standard, but he has repeatedly beaten and battered women. It doesn't matter what race you are -- if you beat women, and especially when you are a champion boxer, you lose all respect of any decent person. End. Of. Story.

2. Mayweather is the greatest boxer of all time, with a 50-0 record when you include the time he beat the mother of his children in front of his children, leaving her bloody and screaming.

3. Mayweather, lets discuss a real issue. Your tendency to beat down women.

At the Questionable Artwork Café...

... it's a café, so you can talk about anything. There's the Category 4 hurricane, Harvey, that's about to hit Texas and stay there for days. There's whatever else you may want to discuss. I did just put up a new post for the Arpaio pardon, so please go one post down if that's your topic. Other than that, feel free. But I needed a picture, so I'm giving you this painting which is surely politically deplorable for any number of reasons. I'll just assume 5 reasons.

And please use The Althouse Amazon Portal.  You can buy a hat with feathers, a white cape, and a walking stick.

ADDED: Here's the wall card for the painting, which is — as I showed you here — hanging next to a Tiffany window depicting the angel Gabriel:

"Thank you @realdonaldtrump for seeing my conviction for what it is: a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department!"

"I am humbled and incredibly grateful to President Trump. I look fwd to putting this chapter behind me and helping to #MAGA."

Tweeted Joe Arpaio, quoted at Politico article, which reports:

The White House broke the news just after 8 p.m. and laid out the case for why the 85-year-old Arpaio — to some a symbol of animosity toward immigrants and Hispanics — deserved the president’s first such reprieve. The announcement highlighted Arpaio’s military service and “his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration.”

Are you watching the TV news about Hurricane Harvey hitting Texas?

I haven't yet, but I'm just guessing that the newsfolk are talking about how much Hurricane Katrina hurt President George W. Bush and are hoping — and trying not to be too unseemly about it — that Harvey will screw President Trump even worse. Check it out for me, and let me know. Please give me credit if I've said it first: They're less worried about Harvey hurting Texas than they are delighted that at the prospect of Harvey hurting Trump.

"Not a lot of guys call. Men my age will text you and want to meet at a dive bar. So I was really surprised when he called..."

"... and when I picked up he was really polite. He asked me how I was doing, how my day was. So it was just pleasant."

From a NYT "Weddings" article, "The Bride, the Groom and the Elephant in the Room," about a 27-year-old woman marrying a 72-year-old man.