Ford Fusion

goes 1,445.7 miles on a single tank of gas.



That's very cool.

That hypermiling along with the Ford reminded me of Charles Lindbergh, who was associated with Ford but went on to hypermile the P-38 in the Pacific and train others in his methods:

Lindberg was able to return from combat missions with his tanks half full when others returned empty. He was able to teach how to add 500 miles to the P-38's range. It had been considered to be 400 miles, Lindbergh's techniques let the Lightning appear hundreds of miles from where the Japanese expected to find them. He flew missions to Balikpapan, Mindanao, even led a 4 plane raid on Palau, considered out of range of land based fighters, a base defended by 200 enemy fighters.

(Some more WWII Lindbergh here. And here, via this chat.)

From The American Experience, Lindbergh, Ford, Nazis and Hypermiling:

With his hero status already greatly tarnished by his philosophical and political beliefs, Lindbergh delivered a speech in Des Moines that fully knocked him off his pedestal. Announcing that it was time to "name names," Lindbergh decided to identify what he saw as the pressure groups pushing the U.S. into war against Germany. "The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration." Of the Jews, he went on to say, "Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government." The speech was met with outrage from numerous quarters. Lindbergh was denounced as an anti-Semite. His mother-in-law and sister-in-law publicly opposed his views. Civic and corporate organizations cut all ties and affiliations with him. His name was even removed from the water tower in his hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota.

All debate surrounding U.S. war policy came to an end on December 8, 1941, the day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States was now at war on two fronts: in Europe and in the Pacific. Despite having resigned his military commission in 1939, Lindbergh was eager to fight for his country. FDR wouldn't hear of it. "You can't have an officer leading men who thinks we're licked before we start...,"said the President. Rejected by Roosevelt, Lindbergh worked as a private consultant to Henry Ford (a man who'd drawn fire for his own anti-Semitic views. Ford was manufacturing B-24 bombers in a Michigan plant. In 1943, Lindbergh convinced United Aircraft to send him to the Pacific as an observer. His work there involved a good deal more than observation though. Lindbergh flew more than 50 combat missions, including one in which he brought down an enemy fighter. The 42-year-old Lindbergh often bested men half his age in feats demanding intense physical ability. Drawing on his extraordinary piloting skills, Lindbergh instructed others on how to conserve fuel and extend their flying range by up to 500 miles.

George Washington

Some say that today is historic for whatever shallow claptrap and charlatanism which is being perpetrated upon us by the press, politicians and a cowed populace.

Tomorrow is the true historic day of note.

God Bless George Washington!!

He was inaugurated on April 30, 1789.



His first 100 words revealed more humility, strength, consideration and, ugh...the last 100 days...gibbets cannot be made and filled with our current political class and fourth estate fast enough.

Washington's first 100:

"Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years -- a retreat which was rendered..."

Martin Amis

I noticed Arma Virumque mention an interview which looks worth reading. They pull a quote which reminds me of the reaction of some to "Gran Torino":

I think people are too fragile now. Humour is . . . you don’t see much of it. You see it a lot on the sort of V C sub-surface, stand-up and TV and that. But the comic novel has more or less disappeared . . . Think of the range of what you can’t joke about now. It’s almost everything. I’m writing [in the new novel, The Pregnant Widow] about 1970, and I thought, well, I’ve got to be honest and put in the sort of jokes that people told. And I realised that it would just make everyone hate these characters so much—their jokes about Jews, about black people. It was actually a satire on prejudice and it was funny. But now the only political constituency of people you can sneer at are white South Africans, or white southerners in America, and up to a point, Israel. And Israel’s the unusual one, because they have slightly darker skin. But our whole kind of paralysis about Islam is to do with that.

His friend Ian Mcewan has been noted before. Also his friend Christopher Hitchens.

There may be other posts related, but I never labeled them. Thus the term "Mess" in the banner.

Antikythera Mechanism

Chicago Boyz reviews a book that looks very enjoyable.

The book has a companion website here.

London Slows Down

I noticed over at the Dull Men's Blog, and, in particular, Grover's Twitter Tweets.

He wonders if slower flossing may be in order but solicits thoughts. Likely so as not to make any rash alterations in his flossing tempo.

Wise, that.

John Howard

On "Uncommon Knowledge", a very nice show which deserves much more attention.

From Instapundit

Hebrides Kayaking

and single malts. This NatGeoAdventure story on kayaking Scotland's whisky coast led me via a question to this beta website: Forvo: all the words in the world, pronounced.

Neat.

Port Jefferson

Was a great time yesterday. When I get more of a chance I will add to the post. There were some photos to upload and I am going to look for links on the fine establishments. The weather was stupendous.

A couple of interim shots for the moment now, though. The Coasties performed admirably. Dave took a couple of shots that will go up also.

Montana's Schweitzer

I think I like him:

“It doesn’t cost us any money and I like guns,” Schweitzer said after signing the bill.

“I like big guns, I like little guns, I like pistols, I like rifles, and I would like to buy a gun that’s made in Montana,” Schweitzer said.

If you notice, however, the bill is about a lot more, so, so much more, than guns.

It may sound awkward or trite or thickheaded if you don't stop to think, but "guns are not about guns" in so many ways.

Can you believe I coined that one myself?

That link also via Murdoc

Pirate

I was wrong last week about the MSM.

They really hustled and had the sympathetic profile of the pirate up well before my conjecture.

Via Murdoc

Maxim Gun

Adam sent over this video of the "Devil's Paintbrush" in action:

Helicopter Friday

Happy Friday!

Best weather in a long spell. I stood in a river in sleet making a fool of myself the other day and tried to play it off as "fishing".

Kenny sent this video link of some F-18 material.


Helicopter Aerobatics 2 - Click here for the most popular videos


Helicopter Aerobatics 3 - Watch more funny videos here


Helicopter Aerobatics - The funniest videos clips are here

His name is Jerry Barber, he is a Piney (Tennessee) and he is a patriot and a genius. God Bless Him!!

His AA12 recoiless automatic shotgun is amazing.



In order to sell it to the American military he has gotten creative and married it to robots, including a remotely controlled helicopter...very cool:

"The 27 Mb video of the AutoCopter Gunship (with AA12 12-gauge Full-Auto Shotgun) is available for download from a specially set up FTP site. Click on this link - ftp://www.neural-robotics.com. Once you do that, a window will pop up that requests a login ID and a password. The login ID is autocopter and the password is gunship. If the FTP site doesn’t load correctly the first time then simply hit the "refresh" or "go" buttons on your browser and it should load without a problem. You can copy the AutoCopter_Gunship.mpg file from the FTP window site to your desktop (You can perform a "drag and drop" or "copy" and "paste"). Again, this video (link above) is of an AutoCopter Gunship Live-Fire Test (with AA-12 Full-Auto Shotgun attached, loaded with an 8-round box mag)."

I am no longer seeing the site set up in the above manner. I think this is the video here:

http://neural-robotics.com/Video/AC_air_shot_2.html

At the end of their video link.

Here is a New Yorker abstract of an article on this unique inventor.

More here.

Last but by no means least, God Bless those who serve, and in particular those who fly and deploy on Monday and their families.

Rome

Failure and corruption of the political class. Traitorous self-loathing of the intellectual class. The indoctrination of failure over generations.

Sound familiar?

via instapundit

He also links to this:

"A crewman from the Maersk Alabama says the sole surviving pirate -- who now faces charges in the U.S. -- seemed happy that he'd raided an American vessel.

The crewman -- "Zahid" Reza -- says Abdiwali Muse told him it was his dream to come to the USA. Reza stabbed Muse in the hand during a struggle on the ship and guarded him for several hours."

No doubt some MSM editor has sent out the orders for a sympathetic profile on this individual etc. etc.

Earlier post here.

Firematic Racing

A video via The Corner

4-Block World

This McMahon fellow is funny.

Also I love the motto "The Strategy of Bingo. The Excitement of Chess!"

F@#*%k The Earth Day

The wise and classy Jack English posits a new holiday. Language NSFW, but notions spot on!

To quote Iowahawk "Mother Earth- the ultimate MILF!"

Remember, on April 23, "Poor oil on a duck!"

Quiet Sun

I used to pay a lot more attention to the sun's activity. I need to set up my shortwave antenna again.

Very quiet, the sun, lately.

I am not the least surprised that scientists are "baffled" by our natural surroundings. Paying attention to our surroundings necessarily induces bafflement. If you are not confounded you are not looking hard enough.

Nor am I worried. We have only been looking closely for a brief spell and the damn thing is billions of years old.

Very interesting though...I think that the sun's complexion is looking rather lovely:

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001
(l), but not this year (r)

Oh...My...What?

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/04/pirate-smiles-fabulous-smile-of.html

That is the crap eating grin of...certainty. Confidence. "I use you far more than you can use me..." The inverse of colonialism?

Update: Tears now. Life in American prison OR Somali Muslim pirate left for display in gibbet? Can anyone guess my choice?

The media is coaching him without doubt.

Update: I tend to give the media too much credit. They are the useful idiots of those who coach, and, as always, we are bankrolling our enemies:

"Where would the Somali Justice Advocacy Center get the money to send to New York to help defend the pirate? In part, at least, from Minnesota taxpayers:

House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, responding to "tons of e-mails" from people he said were outraged by Jamal's actions, said he will seek to block nonprofit status and state grants to any organization that helps foreign citizens accused of piracy or terrorism.

Seifert, who's planning to offer an amendment to the public safety finance bill this week, said he's trying to find out how much public money has gone to Jamal's center in the past three years. "I don't care if he gets $2 in subsidies, it's too much," he said. "Not one dime of taxpayer money if you jet off to New York to support a pirate."

At every level, our governments have spun out of control and have lost sight of the citizens whose interests they are supposed to be protecting."

A Touch More Fog

Some Fog...

Little Red Wagon

Andrew Klavan.

(never miss City Journal)

Worth the read for his perception of the Tea Party.

Please go and read all. Do not forget that our defeat is secured when we "Shut Up":

"I’m not sure—I’m no prophet—but I think I just saw something genuinely profound, genuinely amazing, and cool that could be the tidal wave of the future.

Here’s the setup. It was Tax Day. Thousands of self-organized protesters had gathered around the nation to protest the irresponsible, incredibly rapid expansion of government under the current administration. The Democratic Party and the elite media had done everything in their power to first ignore, then discourage, ridicule, and belittle this grassroots movement. Theoretically respectable journalists were reduced to making double-entendre sexual jokes about tea bags. These are the same people who rushed en masse to cover Cindy Sheehan and a dozen or so antiwar protesters in Crawford, Texas, rechristening that sad, emotionally unpredictable woman with two of the most cherished words in the English language: Peace Mom. But what was their attitude when thousands of ordinary people gathered in defense of their rights all over the country? “Just move on, folks, nothing to see here.”

Ah well, they’re nervous, and I don’t blame them. Because despite their claims that the Tea Party movement is without ideas, it was the people at those protests who represented the beliefs of our Founding Fathers. And it’s the government and the press that have betrayed them."

Everyone Poops

Some would poop on the office of the United State's Presidency and the history and struggle of Western Liberty and Enlightenment...Some would even use their own departing Grandmother as target practice for the drop zone...




It's only those very rare and successful Marxist coprophages, like decadent dogs, who achieve the pinnacle of wriggling excitement and feast in view of all at such expense.

There are indeed seeds in them there turds...they will reap...and the press will not tell.

Helicopter

Watching "In the Belly of the Beast: Helicopters" on Discovery Channel.

Wish I could embed or link to video.

It is fun and well produced.

"Belly of the Beast
Helicopters
TV-PG, CC

Host Rossi Morreale explores what makes helicopters tick. He discovers how they work, and how to fly them. From the firepower of the Apache to the aerobatics of a stunt pilot, he finds out why this is the most versatile flying machine on Earth."

Helicopter Friday

George Will

I have admired Mr. Will's sanity since the early to mid 1980's. I say early to mid because I first watched him briefly debate "comparable worth" on the revamped ABC News with Peter Jennings. I remember missing Frank Reynolds, but loving Will's devastating employment of reason. I am somewhat less than inclined to narrow that date. I was young. So was George.

Anyhow:

Via Conservative Punk, a site we would not know of save for Adam, a clip of some brevity but enormous wisdom. Wisdom is like that, no?:

"An Unlikely Weapon"

Eddie Adams/Associated Press, via Morgan Cooper
Productions

A movie review over at Pinch's Dog's Breakfast.

Eddie Adams personally apologized to General Nguyen for that photo.

Oddly NPR has far higher standards of candor and complexity when speaking of this film and Eddie Adams:

But the Pulitzer Prize Adams won for this photograph left him pained and conflicted for the rest of his life.

Because of the draft, says Arnett, most journalists chronicling Vietnam had been in the military. They could relate to the troops and had a better understanding of what was going on. Adams, who had been a combat photographer with the U.S. Marine Corps in Korea, loved the Marines, and many of his best photographs are of Marine operations.

But his most famous and most disturbing photograph was shot on the streets of Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon. The incident took place on the second day of the Tet Offensive in 1968, a watershed battle that changed public perceptions of the war. Adams saw a soldier drag a man in a checkered shirt out of a building. In the documentary An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story, Adams describes what happened.

"They were taking him by the hand and pulled him out in the street," he said. "Now any photographer, when you grab a prisoner, in New York or something, you just follow him, and it's a picture. You follow until he is put into a wagon and driven away."

But walking into the frame of his camera was Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, raising a pistol. Normally, that was a method of interrogation — holding a weapon to a suspect's head and asking questions. As Buell tells it, "This man just raised the pistol and Eddie made a picture of an interrogation, but the man pulled the trigger."

One of Adams' frames was the very instant the bullet entered the man's head — the moment of death.

The picture went around the world. It was held up at demonstrations by members of the intensifying anti-war movement and became one of the two or three iconic photos that symbolized the war for many people. Ironically, there are films of that same execution. But Buell and Arnett both argue that the still photo had more of an impact.

"You can see the gun, you can see the expression on the man's face as the bullet enters his head, and you see the soldier on the left who is wincing at the thing that has happened," says Buell. "With the still picture, you have time to consider all these factors."

Arnett calls the picture a "brilliant piece of photography. He had the courage to stand a foot or two away from a murderous officer who had his pistol out and shot the man in front of him."

But Adams, who considered himself a patriot and a Marine, never came to terms with the fact that the anti-war movement saw that photograph as proof that the Vietnam War was unjustified. In fact, he believed to the end of his life that the picture only told part of the truth. The untold story was that on the day of the execution, an aid to Loan was killed by insurgents. After Loan pulled the trigger, he walked by Adams and said, "They killed many of our people and many of yours."

In An Unlikely Weapon, Adams said he found the attention given to this photo disturbing: "I still don't understand to this day why it was so important, because I have heard so many different versions of what this picture did, like it helped end the war in Vietnam."

More here:

"Except Eddie Adams wishes he never took the picture.

After the photo was seen around the world, the AP assigned Adams to hang out with General Loan. He discovered that Loan was a beloved hero in Vietnam, to his troops and the citizens. "He was fighting our war, not their war, our war, and every — all the blame is on this guy," Adams told NPR (in what may have been the most surprisingly courageous NPR interview I've ever heard). Adams learned that Loan fought for the construction of hospitals in South Vietnam and unlike the popular myths, demonstrated the fact that at least some South Vietnamese soldiers really did want to fight for their country and way of life.

Just moments before that photo had been taken, several of his men had been gunned down. One of his soldiers had been at home, along with the man's wife and children. The Vietcong had attacked during the holiday of Tet, which had been agreed upon as a time for a truce. As it turned out, many of the victims of the NC and North Vietnamese were defenseless. Some three thousand of them were discovered in a mass grave outside of Hue after the Americans reoccupied the area. The surprise invasion, turned out to be a military disaster for the Vietcong, but a huge strategic victory because of its effect on American resolve.

But at the time, all of this was irrelevant to people like Loan. It was an ugly, shocking assault. The execution of the prisoner was a reprisal. It was an ugly thing to be sure, but wars, civil wars especially, are profoundly ugly things.

Adams wrote in Time magazine, "The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?'"

The picture that Adams took, the picture that CNN thinks is such an atrocious and ignoble deed, ruined Loan's life. More to the point, it didn't expand on "our right to know." It didn't answer questions, or give us the story. It deceived. It gave no context. It confirmed the biases of the anti-war journalists, and they used it to further their agenda.

Loan fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon for the US. He eventually moved to Burke, Virginia. He tried to open a restaurant in Northern Virginia, but when the identity of its owner became known, it closed down. Protestors circled the establishment venting their fashionable, safe, outrage.

The two men stayed in touch, and Adams tried to apologize many times.

"He was very sick, you know, he had cancer for a while," he told NPR. "And I talked to him on the phone and I wanted to try to do something, explaining everything and how the photograph destroyed his life and he just wanted to try to forget it. He said let it go. And I just didn't want him to go out this way."

General Loan died a year and a month ago. He left a wife and five kids. Most of the obituaries were, like the photograph that ruined his life, two dimensional and unforgiving. Adams sent flowers with a card that read, "I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes."

Such a compelling and complicated story so rich in everything involving conflict, influence, power, duty, brotherhood, justice, honor...and on...and on.

The Times does not want to dwell. Compare the above with their consideration of that iconic image and it's profound entanglements:

"Directed by Susan Morgan Cooper, the movie abounds with striking pictures from Mr. Adams’s long career (he died in 2004), but it keeps coming back to the one he snapped on Feb. 1, 1968, in Saigon: a photograph of a Vietcong prisoner being executed on the street, immortalized during the split second before the bullet exited his skull. One of the most famous images of the 20th century, it was a photo that changed Mr. Adams’s life and possibly the course of the Vietnam War. The strongest material in “An Unlikely Weapon” contemplates the import of that shot, and of photojournalism itself, on the events of its time. The rest charts Mr. Adams’s subsequent career, from duck hunting with Fidel Castro to oceanfront sessions with Penthouse centerfolds, with perfunctory admiration. "

The New York Times needs to heed it's own simple narrative at all times. It needs even more for us to be unaware of any other narratives. This perfectly encapsulates their technique. Mention little, so little you encourage your very customer to continue onward without consideration. Leave enough, however, for you to argue that the notion was in the text if confronted.

Don't trust their coverage of Mexico, nor anything connected. Not that any sane person would trust any of their coverage.

By the way, what was that weapon General Nguyen used? Was that a J frame?

Bill Whittle

On the press's Tea Party Coverage. In particular CNN.

8 minutes well worth watching.

Helicopter Friday

Rats!!!

I missed that last thirty seconds!

more in a few...

Another Crude Hartford Tea Party vid

Tea Party

Video tomorrow.

Update:

Some very crude video here now:

Tea Party Connecticut Media

So a large group of prostesters are gathered on the other side of the capital building. I then notice that the media HAVE THEIR OWN RESERVED SPACES FOR CAPITAL ACCESS.

WHY?

Well there is a known collusion between the media and the political elite.

But WHERE ARE THEY?

Staying as far away as possible, the cowards.

TAR. FEATHERS.

IT IS APPROACHING...








Hmmm...

The media...

Are they predictable?

Tea Party

Tea Party

Some Tea Party photos:

Hartford Tea Party

Connecticut has a beautiful capital building. There were fears late in it's construction that the dome was near collapse. I have looked a bit for a link but I have read that the cracks during construction had the architect on the train racing north from New York on a Sunday...Tak that for what it's worth without me searching on the link...

That building has collapsed if you have any sentiment towards liberty or self determination.

And, yet, hope. Breath slowly on this ember...

Please...

A Tea Party, and perhaps real "hope-an-change"

Bullet Holes and Zombies

They assist and expedite the dreary commute.

Tea Party

Anyone who has looked at this blog likely knows that I love tea. They also likely know that I would be stubborn and recalcitrant enough to throw it in the harbor to make a statement.

I will be posting video/photos of the Hartford tea party.

Any other regional tea parties are of interest to this blog, so please participate with any knowledge or input...

What could account for any discomfort between those who would question staggering impossible legislation signed by the corrupt thugs who felt no need to read the entire bills and the fourth estate?

That media class...courageous, tenacious heroes who have struggled to bring raw facts to the populous in their honorable fulfillment of the constitution and the founding father's greatest aspirations so that we may arrive at informed opinions.



Remember Iraq

Head Hunters

or, rather, their descendants. They have nice hats, those poor hornbills. via Jungletrader

"The Nishis gather as we prepare our vessels at the water's edge. "Is it elephant skin?" asks a boy, poking our raft. A Nishi unsheathes his sword from a monkey-fur scabbard, and waves it over his head, dancing. In broken Hindi, he calls out: "Hey! Next time, you bring me a foreign woman!" The Nishi has been impressed by the posters of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera in a tea shop up on the road, and believes they may be worth a few wild cattle in trade. As we head into the current, a few younger Nishi gather on a bamboo suspension bridge above us, snapping photos on cell phones pulled from their monkey-fur pouches; in our wetsuits and helmets we are just as much an oddity to the Nishi as they are for us."

Sounds like an exciting river journey.

Happy Easter

Peep science here.

The Second annual Peeps diorama contest at the WaPo here.

Robbers

This is fairly amusing. A man is home when some burglars break in so he sneaks around and drives their getaway van off.

What galls me is listening to the sanctimonious bitch of a dispatcher get genuinely angry and threatening with the burglary victim. There are words for people like her.

What???

via NotNSFW a site that likely is not SFW.

What the heck are those Dinosaurs doing to those robots?

Dear Lord...

I'm speechless.

"Quite Understandably"

Woody Harrelson defends self from Zombie.

"With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie," he said.

Zombies...danged zombies...

The Dominican Republic

The fine Mr. Kelly has just returned from the Dominican Republic!

Welcome back sir!

I must go with him next time, it sounds like a huge amount of fun.

Here are a couple of photos he took with his phone.

The second is of a construction or renovation. I am not entirely convinced that OSHA has signed off on the project.

The first is of a beautiful gazebo in a lovely public square.

Thank you Dave, I think I may begin calling you Doctor Kelly--as in D.R. Kelly--

Glass Honey Bear

I have always been fascinated by glass.

I'm simple like that.

Magnets have always fascinated me.

I find them thrilling.

Perhaps I should acquire some of the apparel and certification of the Dull Men's Club ("A place -- in cyberspace -- where Dull Men can share thoughts and experiences, free from pressures to be in and trendy, free instead to enjoy the simple, ordinary things of everyday life.")

In addition I regret not having kept bees.

I know that sounds odd but it's true. When I lived on a property with space and a pond the state was offering to set people up with bees and necessary training and accoutrement's for free if they agreed to keep a log of the hive conditions. That was an effort to better understand the bee deaths. I hesitated and lost.

Here via the great DB (Bobonickers as Brian might say) is the best of glass and bees. His son is skilled. I would expect nothing less knowing Donnie.

I don't smoke but I am pro liberty, so I make no apologies regarding the device.

Kurt at work, I think this was nicely produced:

Girls Win!!

"All-girl robotics team takes high honors

aldrich m. tan
aldrich.tan@indiosun.com

An all-girls team has broken ground in a male-dominated robotics competition.

The Desert Robotics all-girls team based at John Glenn Middle School was the first all-girls team to make it to the final round during the Southern California Botball Regionals on March 14 in San Diego.

The team placed fourth overall, won Best Middle School team, and landed the highest rank that an all-girls team has ever placed in that regional competition, said Sheri Gundlach, who teaches seventh grade math and is a team adviser.

The team was thrilled and honored to have placed so high, said team member Alison Sexson, 13, from La Quinta.

“We broke the sexual barrier,” she said."

This lass, Alison, was born in...1996? What on Earth manner of hurdle did "they" convince her of?...

Once again I say usurp the fourth estate!!

With Tar and Feathers!

Duck Hawk

I had noticed the term Duck Hawk on a poster and thought about what an incredible animal it must be, it attained speeds of 180 miles per hour. That's about all the info on the poster.

Yesterday I finally looked up the critter. Wow, I thought, that's almost as fast as a Peregrine Falcon, and from a stupid "Duck Hawk"! What a dumb name!

Who's the dummy?

Duck Hawk:

"American sportsmen best know how unerring is the marksmanship of this marauder. The teal, one of the swiftest travellers on wings, will be whistling its way above the sloughs, when, quicker than thought, its throat is seized by an unseen, unsuspected foe dropped from the clouds. It is choked to death even while both birds are falling to the ground ; and in less time than its takes to tell, the " noble" falcon will have torn the feathers from the duck's warm breast, and begun a bloody orgy. Only the fortunate duck attacked above water, into which it may plunge and swim below the surface, stands a reasonable chance of escape."



Whatch the Briloon Peregrine cam live!

The Briloon Eagle cam is here, turn the sound up. I like to listen even when they are out working it sounds so nice up in Maine.



There are some live Eagle chicks you can monitor here, but in daylight.

Hallelujah

I'm a Bum.

A classic song I had never heard with some interesting background which leads to an Al Jolson movie scored by Rogers and Hart to Netflix. That all from a Boingboing post involving a man on a home made uke:

Penguine Insanity?

Clearly something is wrong...conjecture runs the gamut. Metaphors darken the sky in their abundance:



via Althouse a Herzog piece labeled "But Why?"

Suicide inducing parasites?

Or just a desire for some time alone?

That tuxedoed enigma leaves us wondering as he wanders...

"tuxedo

man's evening dress for semiformal occasions, 1889, named for Tuxedo Park, N.Y., site of a country club where it first was worn in 1886.

"The Wolf tribe in New York was called in scorn by other Algonquians tuksit: round foot, implying that they easily fell down in surrender. In their region thus came the names Tuxedo and Tuxedo Lake, which were acquired by the Griswold family in payment of a debt. There the family established the exclusive Tuxedo Club, and there in the late 1880s Griswold Lorillard first appeared in a dinner jacket without tails, a tuxedo. By a twist of slang, one may now refer to a man in a tuxedo as a 'wolf." [Shipley]

But in another version of the story, p'tuksit was the Algonquian word for "wolf," the animal, perhaps from the shape of its paws. The more authoritative Bright, however, says the tribe's name probably is originally a place name, perhaps Munsee Delaware (Algonquian) p'tuck-sepo "crooked river." Short form tux is attested from 1922."

Perhaps they ought to test it.

Speaking of Zombies

The undead cortex of the former Bob Dylan, now some manner of reduced paste of a Zimmerman, waxes large on Obama.

Pride and Prejudice

with Zombies?

“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” book cover

Hmm...

and Tokyo Zombie? Has anyone seen this film?

This review seems to have a spoiler.

James Wolcott

I'm guessing that silly ninny never traversed the Darien gap...

I mean the real one. I'll grant it's entirely likely he's disembarked the train in Darien.

Wolcott seems to feel that Scipio has been overcome with the vapors while ample men of responsibility and clarity such as himself will have to hold down the fort.

Ugh.

(Scipio has a notably arcane and erudite link mixed in with that post! God Bless him!)

Sunday Shadow

Sunday Cascade