"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.“–Inigo Montoya
With appreciation for the language adopted by the King James translators of the New Testament, I offer this use of the structure of I Corinthians 13:13,
“Now there abide these three: phonemes, syntax and semantics; and the greatest of these is semantics.”
I’m a fan of Wolfgang Puck’s kitchen wares. It started around seven years ago when I found a nice set of Puck-ish mixing bowls with lids. Mixing bowls are always an issue around here–having enough, appropriate sizes, etc. No more. That the set included some whisks and such and was at a “fell-off-the-truck” price was just lagniappe I couldn’t pass up.
Since then, various Puck-ish wares, such as his 10-cup rice cooker (ours is actually an older model, same essential features, though), have found their way into our kitchen and proved themselves useful, durable and versatile. The most recent addition came because of the ongoing deterioration of our once top o’ the line “waterless” cookware. Oh, the pots n pans are still in fine shape, but, over the past 30 years, the Bakelite handles have slowly gone the way of the dodo. Yes, I have tracked down a source for replacement handles (and lid knobs), but the total cost would’ve been around what it cost to buy this:
No, the set’s not “waterless” and only the bottoms of the pots n pans are multi-clad, but with very little adaptation of my cooking habits, the past six months’ use of them has been positive, without exception.
I saw a FB comment a while back panning *heh* the set because the user said the handles got too hot and the pans were not “no-stick”–even hard to clean. Bushwah. Someone didn’t RTM (“read the manual”–bowdlerized for those folks who’re too prissy for “RTFM” :-)). Instructions for the set say explicitly to use them on NO HIGHER than medium high heat. That and the old rule that any cook worth his salt knows for keeping pans “unsticky”–“hot pan, cold oil: food won’t stick”–has meant I have experienced neither of the issues the person who DIDN’T “READ THE MANUAL” had with the pans.
To be fair, after 30 years of using “waterless” cookware that was also designed for the same heat range as this set, that wasn’t an adjustment for me. But, no. Paying $100 for a bunch of pots n pans and then not even reading the little one-page instruction card that came with ’em is just stupid.
So, in a very, very (very) inexpensive set of pots n pans (with some nice lil tools as well–minimalist spats n spoons, useful meat fork, another nice whisk), I have found some surprisingly advanced features and decent build quality, and so I’m pleased. Heck, my cheapo set of six stock pots (found at another “fell-off-the-truck-pricing” store–six, admittedly cheap stock pots in graduated sizes for $25? Yeh, even for cheap stock pots, that’s really cheap) even has lids that can double up on some of the pots n pans when I do not want to use the glass lids, for whatever reason.
I have my eye out for more Puck-ish wares…
…but, just wait. I still say the Dhimmicrap liars, thieves and kleptocrats aren’t finished with this race. Sure, the Dhimmis will dodge seating Brown as long as they can and seek to “reconcile” the Obuma Healthscare & Enslavement Bill, but more, I still think the party of Christine Gregoire and Al Franken has some fraud up its sleeves. As soon as the “votes” can be manufactured…
Well, maybe the Dhimmicraps will save that for the coming Fall mid-term. Maybe, but it’s like the story of the scorpion and the frog. It’s just their nature.
Treehuggers may doom the environment:
Will Vegetarian Humans One Day ‘Emit’ More Carbon Dioxide & Methane Than Cows?
In a suppositional 2060,
“…the relative significance of direct human flatulence to the total carbon dioxide and methane loads was shown to have increased dramatically by a massive human shift to a highly legume- and cabbage-dependent diet. More vegetarian farts, in other words.”
At least folks’d have the wherewithall to perform CPR w/o having to get up close and personal with a stranger’s lips… well, in one sense at least. (OK, I’m linking the video, but I’m not posting it here. *heh*)
This video, OTOH, just begs to be posted with this topic:
(Of course, this all presupposes that CO2 is “bad” for the environment. Plants don’t seem to think so, though, and even if it were to cause “global warming” it’d just extend growing seasons, etc. Methane? Yeh, well, we could bottle that… )
Yesterday afternoon–about 26 hours ago, now, internet connectivity here at twc central went south again. *sigh* About 2.5 good weeks of decent service and… kablooey!
Yeh, yeh, I walked completely through the troubleshooting tree with the voice-prompt call-in (even though I had the process memorized long, long ago). No, that didn’t help. Yes, the first thing on calling in was a recorded message saying my ISP was experiencing an unusually large call volume from my area. No, according to the supposed customer service reps I eventually reached, there was no outage (then why the swamping with calls such that it took 7 hours before I could actually reach a live person?). No, going through the troubleshooting tree with a live person resulted in no different result than doing it with the automated process or on my own.
Nor did changing out the “modem” (cable “modems” are NOT modems; they are specialty routers–very, very different technology to a modem). Heck, in the process of many, many reboots of this computer as a part of the multiple efforts I made to comply with “support’s” requests, my primary hard drive scrambled Windows boot process to the point that the Win7 repair Environment wouldn’t. Repair it, that is. (S’all right, really. I had a spare hard drive I had really meant to install it on but because of a lapse of memory had failed to, so another easy-peasy quick fresh install from upgrade media onto a bare drive. *heh*)
Fresh install of Win7 (and yes, I had tried using Ubuntu and Puppy Linux to connect, as well–as well as attempting to connect directly to the cable “modem” with other computers) and still no connectivity. Went through yet another ineffective t-shooting process (which, BTW, included power cycling both the modem and the computer attached to it), called in again and got a sweet lil idjit who informed me that my modem had been “Online for the past 15 hours.” 15 hours during which I had power cycled it several times, had changed it out for another modem, etc.
Riiiight. Went through the t-shooting tree one more time and… magically, it worked this time. Not. While lying to me aboiut my modem having been active and online for the past 15 hours, the lil idjit reset on her end. At least, that’s the best I can figure from here, since I KNOW information I’ve received from my ISP over the past 24 hours (heck, the past 6 months) has been… suspect, at the very best.
It’d just be nice if–just once–instead of playing CYA even one person would say, “Oops! Our bad. We screwed you up. Sorry.”
Meanwhile, since Lovely Daughter and her fiance were going to be out “shopping for cake” (Gee, some sheet cake and a couple lil cakes, one for bride and one–if that–for groom. What’s the stinking big deal? Wedding cake all tastes like sugar-soaked cardboard, anyway… ), he let my Wonder Woman use his network/internet connection to take her mid-term for one of her grad school classes while I shoveled his drive and did some shopping of my own. 😉 (Yeh, didn’t have to shovel his drive, but since Lovely Daughter had borrowed my 35-year-old snow shovel–hey! another 65 years and it’ll be an antique!–I figured, why not?)
Aside from the uncharacteristic botched attribution (the line quoted is from “The Young British Soldier” not “Chant Pagan”–though both are Kipling) this comment by John Ringo, inserted into his translation of a (generally favorable!) French article on close association with American forces in Afghanistan, is telling:
Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: ‘If your officer’s dead and the sergeants look white/remember it’s ruin to run from a fight./So take open order, lie down, sit tight/And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. ‘In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.’ Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other ‘incident’, the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.
This is one of the great strengths of the American force in combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly surprising. No wonder is surprises the hell out of our enemies.
And in an afterward to his translation of the original article, Ringo goes on to say,
What is hard for most people to comprehend is that that attitude represented only the most elite units of the past. Current everyday conventional boring ‘leg infantry’ units exceed the PT levels and training levels of most Special Forces during the Vietnam War. They exceed both of those as well as IQ and educational levels of: Waffen SS, WWII Rangers, WWII Airborne and British ‘Commando’ units during WWII. Their per-unit combat-functionality is essentially unmeasurable because it has to be compared to something and there’s nothing comparable in industrial period combat history.
This group is so much better than ‘The Greatest Generation’ at war that WWII vets who really get a close look at how good these kids are stand in absolute awe.
My association with the current crop of American armed forces is second and third hand, but the boys (and they are largely still boys in many ways) I know from America’s Third World County who’ve “seen the bear” in Afghanistan and Iraq certainly fit the mold in upholding this standard. (Man, I’m getting old. I had some of these kids in children’s choirs… *heh*)
“Stolen” from G.H. who “borrowed” it from someone not named:
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
Perhaps too well. *heh* In the mail today, addressed to me: FM 21-76, Department of the Army Field Manual: Survival.
Though it was addressed to me, I didn’t order it. I can only assume it to be a gift from someone who knows me well. Now, who could that be…
Whoever it is/was, thanks! 🙂 (Was Lovely Daughter)
(Of course, apropos of the Senate vote to enslave generations of Americans, the first thing my eye fell on when I opened the books was… a focus on escaping capture by the enemy. Of course.)
Hmm, looks like a rubric for post-Obama Americans seeking to escape the enemy and survive as free Americans…
Micro-mini-update: Because of weather/road conditions, Lovely Daughter (why did I typo that as “Lobely Daughter”? :-))and SiL-to-Be did not spend Xmas Eve with us as planned. So, last night was our “make up Xmas Eve”. Re-read Random Yak’s “Lest We Forget”, shared Xmas Chili, Xmas music, etc., and then went on the Xmas Plunder from the Kids Down South. SiL-to-Be demonstrated his awareness of relationship between Sil-to-Be and FiL-to-Be with a wise gift: a Bodum French press coffee maker. Wise beyond your years, Grasshopper.
Merry Second Day of Christmas, folks!
Yesterday was our first “White Christmas” since moving to America’s Third World County some years ago (we’re well into our second decade here), and old timers tell me such things haven’t been all that common for some time, now.
White Januarys? Yes, that’s a common occurrence. White Christmases, notsomuch.
4″ of snow descended the evening of the 24th and morning of the 25th. As this is America’s Third World County, getting up the hill and out of our lil neighborhood here in town was… not quite possible earlier this a.m. Sheet ice from packed snow resulting from folks leaving very early in the a.m., a little sun, some more cold, etc. No scraping, sanding or salting, of course. The only scraped and sanded areas of town are: the two highways going through town (State responsibility) and the area leading out of the AM/PM clinic that also houses the ambulance service (paid for by the ambulance service, of course). I bought a 40# bag of road salt, after leaving by the only other route out of the neighborhood, and salted the short hill and intersection leading out (and in) on the most direct route to our street. The kids are coming in (and leaving in the a.m. for either work or other activities), and I wanted them at least to have better traction. That others may benefit is incidental. 😉
Only one dog, now, to see to in inclement weather. The 13-year-old “youngster” (a Lab/Shepherd mix) passed away some months ago, so only one “outdoor” dog–the old guy, a 17(?)-year-old medium sized Heinz 57. For the first time since he’s been with us–about 14 years, now–he’s slept inside every night since cold weather hit. *heh* In fact, he seems to want to stay inside most of the time, now. Can’t blame him. Need to find his harness and take him for some walks, though.
Little things, good:
Letting the second fermentation of the hard apple cider go an extra five days: good. Very good, as it turns out. Now for some bottle conditioning… Used some “unconditioned” raw product in some hot “mulled” (OK, microwaved) cider w/cinnamon. Nice. ‘Tis a small thing, but my own. 🙂 Nice lil kick, too. Only 8oz, so not too much on top of my “one or two beers/day” rule (that was one 16oz beer today).
Little things, bad:
Re-reading a book by a fav novelist and being gigged once again by his unusual vocabulary lapse in this book (very weirdly, strangely and uncharacteristically–wrongly–using “temporal” to stand in place of “sacred”–very, very strange vocab lapse in an author who’s usually very accurate in word usage.. Not just once, but three times, so far in this book. Petty of me, I know, but it almost ruins the story. Almost. [Edit: *argh!* I just ran across another weird word use, a malapropism that the author should KNOW is wrong, and if not the author, any number of proof readers or an editor: “Here, here” for “Hear, hear.” *sigh* Sure, on the vast subliterate web, “Here, here” out polls the correct “Hear, hear” but NO author with as firm a grounding in history and as large a vocabulary as this one should EVER make such an egregious error of usage.]
Little things, good:
Called up my ins agent today. I’d cleaned out my glove box and had “cleaned out” the current ins verification form I’m required to keep there (bad). Didn’t really want to call him and have him fax me another one. Faxes are just… so 20th century–and poor quality reproductions of documents at that. And his agency had never “been able” to scan (a much higher resolution image) and email me a copy before. Have a fax machine; I just hate the thing for faxing. But, surprise! surprise! I got him (not another agent working under him or a secretary or his office manager) on the first ring and… he’s muuuuch more tech savvy than the folks he has had working for him in the past. Simply made a pdf and emailed it to me. A Good Thing.
So, one bad little thing, two good little things today. Not bad.