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Do ya wanna take a survey?

I’m just glad I don’t have to do this with Yacko, Wacko, and Dot…

OK, raise your hands, now. How many of y’all have taught one of your children how to drive a manual transmission car? I’m both fortunate… and not. My daughter’s been driving for most of eight or nine years now, but until now, all on automatic transmission cars.
Good, beause she’s a good driver and comfortable behind a steering wheel.
Bad, because all her habits are auto-transmission oriented.
Her car broke down yesterday (to the tune of enough more than the car’s worth to write it off—s’all right: we have another of that model, so it’ll make a great “parts car” until I’m ready to send the carcass to the salvage yard :-). The only one we could get into her hands—quickly!—for her to take off a couple of hundred miles for her first job after grad school is a five-speed stick shift. (And before you ask, no. Wonder Woman needs the other car that’s automatic transmission for physical reasons.)
Soooo… afternoon driving lessons. The first with Dad for… over eight years.
Fun!
The eight years+ maturity factor is a BIG plus. *whew!* Picking it up quickly, so we’ll feel pretty good when she takes off for the Great Adventure Monday or Tuesday. (Still have to get the car tagged, etc.)
But, it’s a lil strange getting back in a car as a driving coach with her. Confession? It’s kinda nice to be there, again.
UPDATE: She’s ready. Readier than I was with my first car, a column-shift 3-speed 1953 Chevy, when my dad set me loose on unsuspecting Texas motorists…
She’ll have a 200+ mile shake-down strip to her new job/residence Thursday (was supposed to start Monday, got that pushed back so i could do work on the “new” car and she could get some driving in on it). Been nice having her around. Longest visit for several years, now.
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A Guest Chef’s “Cranberry Streusel Muffins”

The buffet table’s spread and there’s more food than a Baptist covered dish supper at Michelle’s place (Meanderings). Check out this week’s Carnival of the Recipes.Y’all come and get it while it’s hot!

And now, let the drooling begin:

A great start on a morning…

I had another good suggestion of what I ought to post this week, but then I recieved this in an email from an old friend (how old? Don’t ask 😉 and just recieved permission to post it. I have to go pick up some cranberries—now!

Kimberlee’s Cranberry Streusel Muffins

Baking time: ~ 40 minutes

Prep time: ~ 40 minutes

Notes:

If cooking giant muffins in ramekins, be sure to let them cool prior to turning out so they won’t fall apart.

If using dried cranberries, soak them in lemon juice to plump them up. (Microwaving for ~ 30 seconds helps speed up the plumping process) Provides a good tart flavor. If you prefer, you can substitute raspberries…

If you like hazelnuts, you can substitute them instead of pecans.

Yield: 14 regular or 8 giant muffins

Ingredients for muffins:

2 C all-purpose flour

1 C sugar

2 t baking powder

½ t baking soda

¼ t salt

1 large egg

½ C sour cream

½ C milk

1/3 C melted butter

1 ½ C cranberries

Ingredients for streusel:

1/3 C pecans or hazelnuts

¼ C sugar

3 T all-purpose flour

2 T butter

¼ t ground nutmeg

Preparation:

1. If using pecans, eliminate this step. If using hazelnuts, toast them: place them in an 8″-9″ baking pan; bake at 350 degrees until golden beneath skins, ~15 minutes. Rub in a towel to remove loose skins.

2. Chop nuts. In a bowl, combine streusel ingredients and mix with fingers until the mixture is crumbly. Set streusel aside.

3. In another bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a third bowl, whisk the egg, milk sour cream and 1/3 C melted butter until smooth. Add flour mixture and stir until evenly moistened.

4. Fold in cranberries. If using raspberries, do this step gently…

5. Spoon batter into lined muffin pan or into 8 buttered ramekins (about 1 C size). Top evenly with streusel; press slightly into batter. Bake in 400 degree oven until deep golden, about 25 minutes.

6. Loosen muffins from containers (if using ramekins, let cool completely) and turn out onto a rack.

Per regular muffin: 253 cal. (99 cal., 39% from fat); 3.6 g protein; 11 g fat (5.8 g sat.); 35 g carbs; 238 mg sodium; 29 mg cholesterol

Kimberlee W.

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Gee, a theme already…

After this post, and this one, well, three in less than a 24-hour time period makes a theme, doesn’t it?

Just read Academic Boneyards, the current issue of Credenda Agenda.

A sample of typical satire:
“FoxNews Responsible for Global Warming
NEW YORK—New studies looking at warming oceans and melting Arctic ice find FoxNews broadcasts emit really hot television signals, Tim Moore of the Scripts Institution of Oceanography said.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Moore said, “I’m surprised people’s eyes haven’t melted inside their heads while watching FoxNews. Other network news programs emit waves that bring life and health and nutrition to the world’s ecosystems.” Moore said the pattern of evidence also suggests that FoxNews also contributes significantly to poverty, tsunamis, mad cow disease, low test scores, and the expansion of mean people…”
But there’s more speficially aimed at the central failures of academia. (That’s the thematic stuff I seem to have going right now.) Good read.
Oh, and while you’re at it, Doug Wilson, the guy who made possible my Credenda Agenda addiction before the “worldwide web” became a buzz phrase, has a blog now: Blog and Mablog. (See Ezekiel 38 and 39, and Revelation 20 for the joke, if you’re not already familiar with the reference to Gog and Magog.)
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Green Goo

Walter E. Wallis on Jerry Pournelle’s Current Mail page, commenting on typical Mass Media Podpeople misconduct at White house press conferences:

The latest “You are dethpicable” response to White House critics demonstrates the need for a change in that office to someone who can respond more in the language of today’s discourse.
Gulag/Nazi accusations need something more than prissy tsking.
I propose that the office be shared between Ann Coulter and John Bolton, with the occasional addition of a sock puppet to respond appropriately to the more idiotic, Helen Thompson type questions. If that does not bring the press conference back from the gotcha game it has become to a sincere machine to answer questions, we can borrow one more device, pouring green goo down from the ceiling on really inappropriate commenters.
(Hmmm… that’s a lot of green goo!)
And Jerry Pournelle’s addendum:
Maybe we can expand on this idea…
Anyone wanna have a go at it?
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Boiling mad? Well you oughta be.

A followup to “Nearly speechless” below

When you’ve finished the homework assigned below, read this ironic essay. It’s written by this man. Then, read the first few chapters of this book, beginning here.
A sample:
“… I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I’ve come to see that truth and teaching are incompatible.”
And,
“…We’ve had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.”
There will be a test. What? you say. Life’s the test, my friend, life.
MQ from my fav piece (so far) by that man:
“Somehow out of the industrial confusion which followed the Civil War, powerful men and dreamers became certain what kind of social order America needed, one very like the British system we had escaped a hundred years earlier. This realization didn’t arise as a product of public debate as it should have in a democracy, but as a distillation of private discussion. Their ideas contradicted the original American charter but that didn’t disturb them. They had a stupendous goal in mind—the rationalization of everything. The end of unpredictable history; its transformation into dependable order
“From mid-century onwards certain utopian schemes to retard maturity in the interests of a greater good were put into play, following roughly the blueprint Rousseau laid down in the book Emile. At least rhetorically. The first goal, to be reached in stages, was an orderly, scientifically managed society, one in which the best people would make the decisions, unhampered by democratic tradition. After that, human breeding, the evolutionary destiny of the species, would be in reach. Universal institutionalized formal forced schooling was the prescription, extending the dependency of the young well into what had traditionally been early adult life. Individuals would be prevented from taking up important work until a relatively advanced age. Maturity was to be retarded.”.–The Underground History of American Education
And it was so…
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And the day was going soooo well… *sigh*

So there I was, perfectly set for another curmudgeonly day…

…and Harvey had to screw it all up with his ode “by” Howard (the Duck) Dean. *sigh*
I mean, perfect setup to another perfect day:
Woman walking her dog… right down the smackin’ middle of a narrow street. “Get outa the road, broadbeam! And take your frizzy rat with you!”
Another one: decides that pulling up into the far left half of a two-way street to wait for a left hand turn (blocking my forward progress) is a Good Idea. Waves at me sweetly as though to say Ain’t I cute? “Not you are NOT!!! Get your driver’s license at a Wacker’s lady?!?!?”
You get the idea: a perfect start on a perfect day. heh-heh…
And then… this. *sigh* Way to ruin a perfect day Harvey.
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Nearly speechless

It’s been a long time since I was really stunned speechless

But this came close. The post that started this monumental thread over at The Nation of Riflemen?
“I Don’t DO Math” by Jay C. Odaffer
Stunning. A brief sample to start you out:
It happened again. This happens every semester. It’s become a sort of sick game for me, trying to guess which of my students it will be. Sometimes after the first test, most likely after the mid-term, at least one student will walk into my office to find out why he or she did so poorly on the exam for one of my science classes and inevitably declare, “Well, I skipped THOSE questions because I don’t DO math.”
Right. Neither do dogs. Parrots can. So can apes. But dogs, cats, and apparently assorted products of America’s secondary education system who’ve gone on to college, just don DO math.
It’s a looooooong thread, and a bit rough and tumble at times, but worth the read.
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STOP the ACLU: The Law Offices of the American Taliban

Driving Christianity off the public square

Hmmm… do you think once the ACLU drives Christians “underground” it’ll ease off?
“Ruling limiting prayers at public meetings causes stir in Bible Belt.” And of course, the ACLU’s paws are all over this one.
Christians (well, and practicing Jews, too) are semi-OK with the ACLU if they keep their heads down and mouths shut, it seems. Kinda like the “official” policy in Saudi Arabia, where the House of Saud has proclaimed that as long as Christians worship privately at home, they can keep life and limb.
Oops! That’s just the “official” policy. For foreign media consumption only.
Hmmm… don’t let the ACLU hear about this.
BTW, this post at lgf links to a more extensive read linking some of the primary movers and shakers in the War on The War on Terrorism. The so-called “Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and the American Criminal Liberties Union: fighting to keep America safe for the Islamic jihadists who want to murder you.
MQ from the creep who was a founding member and prime mover in the CCR:

“I stay in this profession only because I want to be a double agent, to destroy the whole f***ing [U.S.] system.”—William Kunstler

A real charmer, eh?
Yeh, the disingenuously named communist front, CCR, is just a lesser-known ACLU clone. But they both have the same agenda: tear down the walls of civilization that protect us from the murderous svages without and the barbarians within.

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No more Blogger Comments….

Haloscancommenting and trackback only.

Just got tired of the old “both and” thing. (Thanks, Rich, for spurring me to get off TDC and just do it.) Yeh, that means past Blogger comments aren’t visible right now, but they aren’t gone, and if I wanna I can put ’em back.

But I don’t think I wanna. 😉 It also means I’ll be checking comments only once or twice a day, so no quick replies via email as I have sporadically done. If you really need to get my attention, drop me an e- cos that’s checked automatically umpteen times a day. Or call me at my Minneapolis phone number. Oh! You don’t have that one? heh (Well, I do… 🙂