Chivalry, Not Dead but Destroyed

This makes sense to me.  Once chivalry becomes an obligation, it is no longer chivalry but slavery.

http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/chivalry-only-comes-from-a-position-of-strength/

You Can't Do This With a Digital Camera

Remember when you used to be able to find a roll of film lying around, with no idea what pictures it might contain.  Yup.  Me too.  I got to revisit those days.  I dug out my Contax 139 Quartz SLR camera (Google It if you are under twenty).  I wanted to take some close-up pictures of the birds on my feeder and my digital camera doesn't have a big enough zoom.

Hey, check it out.  There's a roll of film inside.  Costco develops film.

Sadness at the subject of the pictures.  Happiness at what nice pictures they are.  Here are the best of the bunch.

We adopted Buster when he was about three years old.  He had been an outdoor cat (Really? An outdoor Himalayan Persian?  Who thinks that is a good idea?), and was not very socialized, in addition to being covered in serious knots.  We spent about eight hours cutting out the knots (didn't help with the socialization) but then, over the next couple years he really mellowed out and became a very cool cat.  He was a flame point Himalayan and he developed a wasting disease (probably developed while he was roaming the woods of Bellingham).  We couldn't figure out what it was or how to treat it and eventually he was wasting away so badly that we had to have him put to sleep.  I cried and T. couldn't go with me as she was too upset.

T got Simone as a kitten in Iowa. When T and I met Simone was staying with friends in Iowa while T got settled in California. When Simone and I first met T flew to Iowa and brought her back to California to live with us.  She was a wonderful cat.  Very social, wanted to be on your lap at all times, slept on your feet so you couldn't roll over in the night. She was a seal point Himalayan and made me fall in love with the Himalayan Persian breed.

Simone went into a coma at age fifteen and I had her put to sleep.  I cried again.

Dark glasses help when you visit the vet in these situations.

Both cats are buried in my garden.  I miss them both.

Cho Oyu is a blue point Himalayan and was not born when these pictures were taken.  She is happily living in my home and will be two years old in about three months.  Maybe someday I'll find a roll of undeveloped film and blog about how wonderful she was.

I Have a Winter Hobby, Once Again

Winter really is a struggle for me.  My therapy is my motorcycles.  I love to ride and I ride a lot.  Western Washington in the winter is not conducive to this.  It's not that you can't ride, you just have to bundle up in so many clothes, either cold weather or rain, that you look like the Michelin man and it just isn't as fun, so I tend not to. 

When I was stationed in California we rode constantly.  I rode to work almost every day, rode when we went out in the evening, rode on the weekends.  Thursday and Friday were spent poring through Thunder Press, figuring out which ride looked the best.  If there was no ride, we went on one of our own.

During the summer I ride.  Last summer I rode to Albuquerque, then, because I was alone, decided to do a straight shot back.  You can ride from Albuquerque to Blaine in two days if you want to Almost 7,000 miles on that trip. 

A couple years ago my then wife, a friend, and I decided to go see Niagara Falls.  Camped the whole way there and the whole way back.  Can't remember how many miles we put on the bikes in fifteen days, but we rode.

Now I find myself sitting around doing nothing.  The weather is either too crappy for riding or I just don't feel like putting on all that gear.  So the other day I finally decided to go skiing again.  Been meaning to for quite some time but something always got in the way.  Usually it was just plain old lethargy.  Dragging myself out of bed on a cold winter morning in the pitch black to drive way up a mountain in the pitch black to be cold just didn't appeal.  Sometimes it was finances.  That is not a cheap sport. 

Last Friday it was just time.  Except my Koflach ski boots don't fit anymore. You heard me, I said Koflach.  Hey, they were great.  They went out of the ski equipment business in 2002 after almost fifty years in the business, but reformed in 2010.  None of the (very young) staff at the various ski stores had ever heard of them. 

But I digress.

I remember this from my last ski trip, Austria, some time ago.  Skied four times on that trip, my toes hurt the whole time.  Probably hurt before that but it really had been a while.  See, I joined the Navy.  Got stationed to Florida (no skiing), Rhode Island in the spring (no skiing), Idaho (went several times 1989), Virginia (no skiing), California (crap skiing unless you really want to drive a long way).  By that time I had been out of it so long I just never got back in.

So the boots don't fit, I have Fischer Airlite Carbon skis (called "straight" skis now) with Tyrolia 260/280D bindings.  What, two different types of bindings?  Yep.  280D rear broke, was swapping bindings to my Airlites from my Flexmasters and couldn't really think of a good reason to swap front and rear when it would be easier to swap rear only.

So there I am, old skis and bindings, mismatched ski clothes, ready to go but no boots.  Well, what's a guy to do?  Go shopping, I say.  Hang the expense, I am ready to go.

They cost how much?

Oh.

I'll have to think about it.

You know what?  I've been telling myself I was going to go skiing again for years now.  I'm not letting a little thing like heinously expensive equipment stop me.  (Sir, if you need to have your bindings moved you will have to buy new skis because none of the shops will work on your 27 year old skis.  Thanks, I think they'll be fine.)

Huh.  Turns out that whoever mounted my bindings originally put the mounting plates as far forward as they would go, so I can't move them backwards to make room for slightly bigger boots.

Drill, screwdriver, here we go.  What the heck, I'm a Harley mechanic, I should be able to work on skis.  So Saturday night I'm re-mounting my ski bindings.  Seems to be OK so off we go.

Sunday morning, Grouse Mountain. (Sir, we have high wind warnings and if they have to shut the Gondola it could take up to seven hours to get back down.  Fine, I don't care, I'm going skiing.)

What a blast!  Only three runs and one chair open by halfway through the morning, but I didn't care.  I was getting used to skiing again and it was great.  I have a new winter hobby!

BTW, the new boots (Salomon Quest 10) are more comfortable than anything I've ever skied in, the 195 Fischer skis are a conversation piece and a blast to ski, the remounted bindings held beautifully, the Barrecrafter poles with the cool racing bend (thanks to a crash years ago) worked as advertised, and the mismatched ski clothing not only fit in but kept me dry and warm the whole time.

Can't wait til next time.

What to do when a cellphone rings during your violin concert.

Thanks to David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy for the link.

The Rule of Law, not just for me but also for thee

If you lived in one state continuously from 1960 til today,except for a few years in another state in the middle, but gave a lecture in a third state, would you reasonably claim that you are a resident of the third state?  That is the case with Peter Diamond.  He has lived in Massachusetts since 1960 except for a few years that he lived in Berkeley, CA while he attended UCB.  Over the past few years he has given a few lectures at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.  The Obama Administration is claiming that he is being nominated to represent the Chicago Federal Reserve District based on those lectures.  This is not a minor point or "Republican obstructionism", this is the law.  He is ineligible to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, by law.  Does anyone care?  Probably not. Should they?  I think so. At a minimum, shouldn't the law apply equally to the President?

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12581

(Is this an isolated incident? Google "Recess Appointments" to find out how, in Obama's world, he can make recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess.)  Or here, Let Me Google That For You.

Soda or Pop?

Travel a lot?  Worried about walking into that convenience store in East Nowhere, Wayoutsville, ordering the wrong thing, and having the clerk look at you as though you were a space alien? Fear no more. 

To set the stage, a brief true story (The kind that in the military started with "No sh&t, this really happened" and were therefore called "No sh&tters".)  I moved to California after my first year of college.  Just needed a change and my aunt and uncle were kind enough to offer me a place to stay for a while.  First week there, walk into a little convenience store and ask where they keep the pop.  The guy has no idea what I'm talking about.  Seriously.  None whatsoever.  I don't know what to do.  Where does this conversation even go next since I have no way to make it more clear what I am looking for?  Finally I settle on "Coke" as the stand in word.  Ahah.  "Soda" is kept in the cooler at the back of the store.  Wow.

So to keep you from having the same traumatizing cross-cultural experience that I had, here is a link to a map that will tell you what to call soft drinks.  No more embarrassment, no more standing out as "the tourist", and no chance of not getting that Coke that you desperately need for your mid morning caffeine fix.

Oh, by the way, in much of the south if you ask for a Coke they will ask what flavor.  It's all Coke down there.

Why Don't Birds Hibernate

The school district doesn't think it's safe to go out so school is cancelled.   Yet I'm going to have to brave the freezing temperatures and driving snow to go out and fill the bird feeder, which is almost empty.  Why aren't those chickadees hibernating like bears?  After all, you don't see me having to go out and fill the bear feeder today, do you?

Wisdom of the Day

* Wisdom of the Day from M:

If you take the word “spatula” out of the dictionary it’s just a list of things that aren’t spatulas.

Thanks for the tip Frank.

Freedom of the Internet?

You know the drill.  The usual suspects are gathering to protest something the federal government is doing.  In this case "SOPA", a law that will supposedly prevent online piracy by restricting the internet.  In this case, I happen to be a part of the usual suspects.  Not only is there little evidence that online piracy has much economic impact, there's even less evidence that the government's crackdown will do much more than shift the burden to the taxpayers.  Imagine a situation where large retailers such as Sears, Walmart, and Home Depot asked the federal government for a $50 billion program to crack down on shoplifting.  Shoplifting is arguably more damaging to our economy than online piracy, but they'd rightfully be laughed out of Congress.  Laws already exist to prosecute piracy, it just isn't worth the time and effort of the companies affected to deal with them so they are asking Congress to step in. 

Well, as we know, the law of unintended consequences is alive and well in everything government does and this one will be no exception.  SOPA will allow the government to shut down domain name addresses for violations of the law, regardless of how it affects legitimate users, but will do nothing to stop the actual IP address from continuing to operate, just making it harder for users to find the website.  How many of you know the IP address of your personal or business website?

I am not condoning piracy but many of the arguments in the articles below ring true and many bands are starting to release a certain amount of their content on the internet to help build a fan base or to excite their current fan base about new content.  There is a way to deal with internet piracy and it isn't another huge and intrusive federal program.

Here are some links that detail the issues surrounding SOPA.


http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/internet-regulation-the-economics-of-piracy/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-internet-is-not-govs-to-regulate/

On a related note, there has been an issue in the news about something called Net Neutrality.  Net Neutrality would require all providers of internet services to allow free access to any service or website without blocking, slowing, or any other interference.  The government has debated and argued a variety of methods, but most of them seem to fall under stringent regulations promulgated and enforced by the FCC. Basically, Net Neutrality would throw private property rights out and give the FCC full control over high speed internet providers. So who is supporting FCC enforcement of Net Neutrality?  Well, many of the people who are up in arms over SOPA.

Here are some Network Neutrality links.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9775
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/more-net-neutrality-violations-that-arent/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-phantom-menaces-in-the-aclus-case-for-net-neutrality/

Come on guys, let's have some consistency.  If government regulation to enforce copyright law is destructive, why is government regulation to prevent internet service providers from acting in their own best interests not equally destructive.  The market will resolve both issues.  Copyright holders will figure out ways to benefit from readily available downloads (point of interest, illegal downloads have dropped dramatically since the advent of online movie services such as Netflix, suggesting that many pirates of movies did it because there was no readily available legal alternative), and consumers will gravitate towards service providers who provide the best service in the manner that the consumer wants.  No government need apply to fix these particular problems.

Epic Cooking Fail

Picked up a few new cookbooks at the Friends of the Library book sale so last night thought I'd make a nice dinner.  Wishing I had a wife, girlfriend, or roommate with whom to share this work of culinary art.  Butternut Squash Soup with Pumpkin Seed Pesto and Tuscan Pork Loin Roast.

Blah! Butternut Soup is not nearly as sweet as most squash soups I've had plus I think maybe I put too much cumin in when I scaled down the recipe.  Really not very good.

Oh well, there's still the pork loin for the main course.  Rats. Overcooked.  I was aiming for an internal temperature of 155º but missed as I overestimated the time it would take before I checked the temp. Contrary to popular opinion, if you cook pork until all the red is gone, it is drier than dust.

Thankfully, there was no one to share it with.

Birds Galore

Happened to glance out my window while pouring a cup of coffee this morning.  I have an old apple tree just outside and a bird feeder full of mixed seed hanging in view of the window.  I rarely watch it and infrequently fill it but this morning there were suddenly about forty birds.  Black capped chickadees were eating from the feeder, a whole flock of some sort of roundish black bird with a yellow beak were eating apples from the ground under the tree, five or six robins were perched in the tree, and a young gull was walking around doing something on the ground.  It was just amazing.  Suddenly the gull took off, a few seconds later the whole flock of black birds (not blackbirds) launched into the air, and a few minutes after that the robins decided to go do something more interesting.

Five minutes later, nothing but the chickadees.

Made me realize that I need to remove the kitchen window screens and wash the windows so that I can see these birds better, maybe get some pictures to aid identification.  Does anyone still shoot in film?  I have a fairly expensive camera with big zoom lenses.  Maybe I'll dig it out.

What if Star Wars had a Hawaii 5-0 Intro

Freedom of Association for Churches, Great. Now How About for the Rest of Us

Well, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that churches have a right to decide who they hire and fire, independent of the federal government.  Well done.  It was the right decision.  Now when do the rest of us get the same right back?

The fact is that laws that mandate any sorts of restrictions on hiring or membership violate the same First Amendment.  Decisions on who to hire, who to serve, and who to admit to your club should be made by the business owners or the membership.  Period.  The federal government has no business making those decisions for us.  It's time for the Supreme Court or Congress to recognize that and extend to us a recognition of the same rights that they recognized for the Hosanna-Tabor Church.

And You Thought Mathematically Modeling Zombie Attacks Was Fun

Now you can find out, with a little bit of scientific reading, whether your aluminum foil helmet is actually preventing the government from controlling you with radio waves.  Or not.

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study 

And if you missed the zombie one, here's the link to my original post.

Keep checking back for the information you need to survive the One World Order or the collapse of civilization, whichever comes first.

What Exactly is Their Point?

The National Federation for the Blind claims that putting some e-readers (ie Nook) in public school libraries would violate the Americans With Disabilities Act.  What?  Even more than books?  What? Do they really think that having e-book readers available will somehow reduce the availability of Braille and audio books or are they just making a play to get their name in the news?  Seems a little opportunistic to me.

Story at Marketwatch.com

Great Doritos Ad That You'll Never See on TV

Shamelessly stolen from an invisible rabbit because I have no creative ideas of my own recently.  And it's just too good not to see.