Month: March 2006

Air Force Predator UAV Engages Insurgents Placing IED

Balad Air Base, Iraq — An MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle engaged three anti-Iraqi forces in the process of placing an improvised explosive device along a road near Balad Air Base yesterday evening. The Predator launched an AGM-114 Hellfire missile against the group.

Result: Three dead terrorists. A very good thing.

Even better? After the in-theater guys have launched the Predators in Iraq, control of the vehicles are handed off to teams of controllers based… at Nellis AFB, Nevada. So these terrorists were taken out from literally thousands of miles away, by remote control.

h.t. Chaos Manor Musings/Mail

Handing off to Adam’s Blog.

Yeh, yeh: I don’t have some kinda fancy name for this. It’s a variation of other dishes I make, but the twists make for enough of a difference that it’s a handy thing to have in my hip pocket for one of those “What the heck do I make for dinner tonight?” days. Fast, easy.

Ingredients:

• 2 LARGE (or three medium) baking potatoes
• 1/2 pound smoked (pre-cooked) sausage
• 2C shredded jack, cheddar colby cheese–or any mix of 2 or 3
• 6 medium or larger eggs
• up to 3/4 cups milk or cream
• 1/2 medium yellow onion
• 2 cloves garlic (or more if your taste is like mine)
• 1 or 2 carrots
• 1/8 tsp celery seed (the stuff has a really strong flavor, so while you can use more, start on this low side)
• olive oil
• your fav Italian seasoning. For this I like the McCormick’s Pizza “Grinder”—herbs n spices in a handy grinder container. Not bad & better than pre-ground stuff. You can crush/grind fresh or dried Italian-style herbs in your fav mix, though.
• 1-2 pinches of rubbed sage.

Continue reading “Egg-Potato-Sausage Whatchacallit”

I’ll work out just who I’m going to inflict with this a lil later, but for now, just a quick correction of the graphic Lady Diane tagged me with… seems she had the wrong name on the thing…

If I make the time (there’s always time to blog if I re-prioritize my life ya know :-)), I want to do a roundup of some interesting posts later, but for now a lil musical post and the question: What are you listening to these days?

This lil tune, Davenport Blues, is a Bix Beiderbecke number from 1927, the year Bix began playing a Vincent Bach Strad (Apollo model #660). This isn’t my fav style of music, although it’s among my favs of 20th Century musical styles, but the musicianship of this ensemble is really appealing. You hear the unique trombone stylings of Tommy Dorsey, for example, in this old 78 recording (in a highly-compressed mp3 format), only where they complement Bix’s play—just as good backup should do. Another of my fav brass players had this to say of Bix:

“All I’ve ever called the dear boy was Bix … just the name alone will make one stand up—also their ears. And when he played—why, the ears did the same thing …” –Louis Armstrong

Get more Bix here:

Indispensable Bix Beiderbecke (1925-1930)

BTW, if you want more Bix that includes Davenport Blues, try this CD:

Here’s Davenport Blues from a poor mp3 recording off an old 78:

DavenportBlues.mp3

Take a lil time, if you would, and review the Principles of Classicism. See how many of them apply to Davenport Blues as opposed to current Top 40 crap. Bix is surprisingly closer to “Classical” than some might think. DB is no Die Zauberflöte, but I think Mozart could relate to Bix (in more ways than just musical, alas!)

Sounding the trumpet call at Blue Star Chronicles, TMH’s Bacon Bits and The Real Ugly American.

This is an Open Trackback Alliance Open Post. Link to this post and trackback. And see the links at the foot of this post for more open post info.

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UPDATE:

“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American… There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1919

(Yeh, I added the emphasis, but I can imagine Teddy Roosevelt emphasizing those things… )

Is it just me or are there a few other folks who are dead tired of President Bush and our congrescritters spouting lies about illegal immigrants? Deporting them would be “impossible” according to words I heard dripping from Senator McCain’s fangs earlier today—oh! and our economy would be kneecapped too, apparently.

Bushwa.

What was lost in cheap labor could be made up easily on the back end from not having our social services, schools, law enforcement, etc., strained by millions of illegals who export much of their income SOUTH, where it does our economy no good, anyway. Run those numbers, Mr. McCain, before you spout your bullshit. Heck, the monies saved in the pubschool arena alone would be HUGE.

I guess U.S. citizenship doesn’t mean anything any more. How about alla us taxpayers simply declare ourselves citizens of the world and tell the IRS to take a hike. All it’d take would be 50 or 60 million truly fed up taxpayers declaring themselves illegal aliens, claiming all the social net benefits the other illegals do and refusing to play the political elite’s game any more.

Yeh, yeh. Never happen. 60% to 80% of Americans supposedly want real border control (depending on who takes the poll and how much the pollsters wanna lie for their clients). 75%-80% of congresscritters wanna give away the store.

Who do you think will carry the day? The sheeple or their masters?

Well, at least McCain and his lying cronies are hilarious liars. That way we can laugh our way into subjugation to the reconquistas or the muslims. Whichever ends up as our eventual rulers.

UPDATE: This from Jerry Pournelle, today:

If what we want is control of the border and deportation of illegal immigrants, the remedy is obvious. Close the borders with a wall, station several regiments of light cavalry along the southern border, and be serious about people showing up for immigration status hearings. Require local sheriffs to inform the federal authorities about illegal immigrants. Have the Border Patrol agents do sweeps in the obvious places. Change the Social Security laws to require the Social Security Administration to inform the Border Patrol when payments show up for non-existent social security accounts (at the moment they aren’t even allowed to make such reports, so it’s safe to make up a Social Security number). Make it a federal crime to assume the identity of a citizen.

And offer bounty hunters $2,000 a head for illegal immigrants delivered to a suitable internment camp. Deport those turned over if they don’t protest; if they do, intern them until their status is determined.

More at the link above, of course.

And even more at Right Wing News.

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Open all weekend long:

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at

Linkfest Haven.

…really!

This reminded me of this.

If you have to ask why, you need to read this (sadly, the old Blogger posts do not seem to have been inmported to Bou’s new blog, but this one’s still accessible).

Just chatterboxing. If you don’t wanna hear minutiae about America’s Third World Countyâ„¢, just click on by…

Signing off in a bit, here. My Wonder Woman e-ed me that she has a short day today, cos heavy winds already and a tornado watch has already begun for America’s Third World Countyâ„¢, so I’m making sure my day’s over before we hunker down. I fully expect to see some downed limbs off our sycamores—I had intended to take some down next week, anyway, just hope they don’t take out anything I don’t want gone… *sigh*

Lotsa tunder rumbling through, haven’t seen the lightning yet—a ways off over some hills is my guess. Raining now and wind’s growing pretty wild.

I love a good storm, and we do need rain.

The Boys (Son & Heir’s dogs) are all hunkered down in a sheltered area under the deck. water literally rolls off Leo’s back, and Buttons seems to thrive in rain, no matter how he begs to be let in (he always begs to be let in, rain or shine, cold or hot. It’s just him).

Begged off an easy gig. Meant a few miles travel to do a Linux boot and reset of admin password for a Win2K machine (WHY do people NOT manage their passwords? Guy’s locked out of his machine and all he needs is an admin PW to set things right. Doesn’t have it. AND has lost his Win2K CD… *sigh* He’ll just have to live w/o his computer for now, is all I can say.)

Another one’s jumped from the Blogger kettle into the WordPress frying pan *heh*. Check out Angel’s new site for Woman Honor Thyself. Leave her a note while you’re there, then hop on back to your own blog and update your blogrolls, eh>

If you grind your own beans (or even if, like Christine, you roast your own beans), this lil double-tip might help keep your coffee fresh before you brew it.

You probably already store your roasted beans in an opaque ceramic container. If not, DO IT. Moisture and light are the enemies of your beans’ flavor.

Since you already store your roasted beans in an opaque ceramic container *cough* take the next step: place a desiccant in the container with the beans. Here’s how: if you take nutritional supplements or any of a wide selection of medications in pill or capsule form, there’s probably a neat lil bag of desiccant in the bottle. (If you take nutritional supplements and there’s not a desiccant bag in the bottle, you’re probably taking lowball crap that’s not doing you any good).

Note: there are different kinds of desiccants out there, and some that are packed with electronics or mechanical equipment are not suitable for use in the way I describe below! Take care!

After finishing a bottle of whatever food or medical product has a desiccant bag in it, take the desiccant bag and bake it at about 250°F for 20-30 minutes or so to drive out any moisture it may have soaked up. Place it in your ceramic coffee container with your roasted beans. It’ll absorb at least some of the water in the air inside the sealed container and protect your beans’ flavor.

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Add-on tip: an oxygen absorber,different to a desiccant, is a Good Thing, too.

First, a taste of Kipling, then a less-than-vitriolic rant.

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art ?”

In an age when “expression” is a catchall for so-called “art” and non-speech grunts, groans squeals and inarticulate scribblings, I think Kipling’s Devil asks the right question to start talking about what is so very wrong about “art”—graphic, musical, literary, dramatic, etc.—today and a bit of what that says about our society in general.

In “The Conundrum of the Workshops, Kipling outlined a feel for creative endeavor… and how critics kill creativity. And he had his “Devil” ask the question so asked by critics of kipling’s day—often critics of his poetry—qho sought to belittle efforts of others with creativity the critics usually lacked themselves: It’s pretty, but is it art?

But Kipling’s devil can’t ask that of rap “music” (or much other popular music today) or of defacing of nature with great swaths of fabris and calling it “art” or of “serious” literature (or “serious” music for that matter) or darned near anything from Hollyweird, because almost none of it even passes the “pretty” test. Almost all of it is ugly, base, venal, stupid crap.

Holly Lisle’s disquisition (OK, rant) on How to Write Suckitudinous Fiction is enough to dispense with most pretentiously “artful” literature.

…the quest for good fiction is not the only way. There is … another path. A dark path. And it is a path rich in tradition and esteemed by many. It is the Path of Suckitude.

Not all bad fiction is Suckitudinous. Some of it is simply bad — written by people who are completely tone-deaf to the language, blind to character and motivation, and incompetent with conflict.

Unlike bad fiction, Suckitudinous Fiction takes a dedication to the fine art of sucking that, if pursued with sufficiently rabid fanaticism, can win Pulitzers. (Yes, I think an inordinate number of recent Pulitzer-prize-winning novels suck. Hugely.)

Yeh, Read The Whole Thing…

Some of what Holly Lisle says there can be directly applied to Hollyweird and other purveyors of fecal matter* in place of food for the soul. As for the rest, let me rearticulate: if it ain’t at least pretty and/or well-made, crafted with care and thought and heart, it ain’t art.

Most pop music fails in all of that. Sloppily-written, poorly-performed crap is fit only for sloppy-thinking people with lead-for-ears hearing.

Oh. What am I thinking? I just described most people I know.

If you can discern pitches and keep a steady beat (at the minimum), try this: go to a high school choir concert, listen to one (if you can stomach it) episode of American Idol. Try to count the number of people performing who have good pitch recognition and an ability to stay within an established tonality, who can actually make rythmic sense as well. You will probably not have to use all the fingers of even one hand.

Disheartening.

And that’s just performers. “Songwriters” who write lyrics that are nonsense, tuneheisters who, well, have no sense of musical teleology, arrangers who lack the ability to, well, write and instrumentalists who (apparently) have no idea there are human voices in the mix abound, as well.

Move from amateur venues (where it’s easy to hear why 10 40 crap isn’t heard by consumers for the crap it is) and listen (if you have the ability to actually hear) to top 40 crap for a while. If you can stand it. Some will be good. Scratch that. Very few will be good.

And that’s just accounting for basic musicality—the ability to reproduce harmonious and sensible sounds. What’s worse is the underlying ethos, or rather what the underlying ethos lacks.

Continue reading ““…but is it art?””