News Of Great Joy To Members Of My Family

Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer's disease, US scientists say. Modified rapture!

Is This Still Radical And Subversive?

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.


• That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.


• That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

And we are unanimous in that...

Ah well, I knew she was getting up there in years: Actress Mollie Sugden dies at 86: best known as Mrs. Slocombe on "Are You Being Served?" An excellent commentary on her impact may be found here.

Hurricane Preparedness: The Oddball Bits

[NB I was going to post this a few weeks ago but it's been so quiet until recently that I forgot about it. ]

Today's discussion centers around evacuation procedures. We're not talking about which route to take or when to get --that's for another time. This is the oddball "dang I shoulda thought of that!" discussion.

1. Gas in the vehicle really isn't about being ready to evacuate pre-storm, it's about being ready post-storm. Unless you live in N'awlins or Galveston or a similar low area, you generally don't consider evacuation unless 120+ winds are going to be coming to your immediate neighborhood. Well and good, you get to do triage to your property and get your pics for the adjuster (aside: wonder if you can pre-schedule one ahead of a storm...?), but if the power is out for a few days --or worse, the water pressure goes out and there's no drinking water --you're going to think about leaving, and then it hits you: you can't get gas because the stations are closed in your area. Or the refineries won't start deliveries for a few days. Whatever. Same problem: you don't have gas. Helpful hint: you have a boat that doesn't make you pre-mix the oil into the gas? Then you have a back-up gas source! Just make sure you have some kind of siphon hose and don't swallow!


2. Obviously the preferable option is to evacuate well in advance of a coming storm, but if you choose to ride it out (and can do so safely), you need to have your game plan laid out for post-storm evacuation. I can guarantee that every hotel, motel, guest lodge and bed/breakfast within 300 miles is going to be booked up solid. Make nice-nice with in-laws, old college roomies or third cousins (this may mean reciprocity agreements and/or barbeque dinners) and have your options all laid out.


3. Your animals are not going to evacuate themselves, nor do they know how to operate a can-opener if you are not present. Any evacuation plans should include dealing with family pets. I will point out (as a custodian of 30+ years experience) that cats with outdoors experience and access to an ant-free dry food dispenser and a large water supply may be left alone for a few days or even a week, but that's in extremis, and certainly you should never leave a cat behind to face a storm alone, even if they have indoor/outdoor capability (pet door). Dogs can't be trusted to conserve food, they will gorge on dry food until it runs out and then they will go hungry. The best option is to evacuate cats and dogs along with everyone else. Birds, too! Aquarium fish, alas, are generally out of luck.


4. Before you leave, make sure you're not setting up nasty surprises for yourself upon return. Shut off the electricity, or leave only the breaker for the refrigerator and the freezer. Ditto the natural gas, and if you don't know where your cut-off valve is, shame on you. Secure your outside --there have been lawsuits involving wind-blown items crashing into someone else's house from someone else's property (think "reasonable expectations" and you have the basis of a tort). Board or tape windows, and secure doors. Locate ahead of time the neighborhood diehard who will not evacuate unless the storm surge is over 15' in the immediate vicinity, and bring him (or her) beer, hard liquor and/or ammunition and make nice-nice. This is the person who will be standing tall until you get back.

Technorati Tags: hurricanes, puppy

Olderlescence (an Essay by Roy, with a further amendment by Yours Truly)

The following is an original essay by Roy, sent to his brother, Del, to mark his 40th birthday, July 2. There is wisdom herein...

Dear Del,

Happy Birthday!

Being older and ostensibly wiser than you, I would like to offer you a few insights into the age you are entering. While the change from being 29 to being 30 is significant only in a wow-it's-a-new-digit-in-the-tens-place way, turning 40 is a real milestone. It's like entering puberty: the body is rapidly changing to make you a very different person. I call it olderlescence. You enter adolescence a child and come out a young adult. You enter olderlescence a pretty-much-still-young adult, but you're going to come out of it an old guy.

In adolescence, you start sprouting hair in places you didn't used to have it. Same thing happens in olderlescence, only the locations are more arbitrary and pointless. Don't need hair on your earlobes? Well, you're going to get it. It's just one of the characteristics that says "old guy".

The hair on your scalp, which so far has probably just entertained a few gray or white fellows in the name of diversity, will suddenly decide that these newcomers have the right idea. Mass conversions. It's an unstoppable craze among follicles. If they don't just shut down entirely, that is.

Up to now, your body has been pretty cooperative about turning food into muscle and energy. Soon, it will get tired of that and want to try something different: turning it into a gut. When adolescence ended, your ability to eat quite so much and stay trim was reduced. There is another quantum drop coming. On the plus side, it saves on food bills. Just try to enjoy every bite, because six is a meal.

Your eyes, which have worked pretty much the same since you were two, are going to retire. They'll still function, but they're not going to work at it. Change focus? Not anymore, I'm retired! You want something in-focus, you move it.

The encouraging news is that you don't have to have an "old guy" brain. You know, the curmudgeonly types that complain about everything new, different, or fashionable. You can stay "hip" and "with-it" as long as you like, although God knows why you'd want to, with all the stupid things young people are wearing these days. And Twittering and Facebook! What kind of time-wasting, TMI nonsense is that? I swear, if that's the future of this country, it couldn't get more depressing. When we were their age, we knew how to dress, and how to treat people with respect!

And while that was quite complete, I felt that Roy had managed to leave out a rather important point, which I emailed thusly:

One other rather significant thing that you will very definitely notice is an alteration in libidinous intentions. (This is in no way related to female menopause, and even mentioning this in the presence of a woman within your age cohort can have disastrous consequences... ) Quite simply, you are going to start slowing down. You've had your fun (presumably), and now your higher-order brain has decided to start finally exerting control over the more deeply-rooted areas of your cerebellum and medulla oblongata. Fixing faulty appliances will begin to have more appeal than watching, say, Baywatch or Spike TV. Driving past coeds on campus wearing short skirts will no longer cause unnecessary deviation in vehicle speed and/or direction. Very significantly, you are now of an age such that someone who is not a teenager may well fit the statement, "Oh, for crying out loud, she's young enough to be your daughter!" and a certain amount of decorum kicks in. You are not, repeat, not dead; it's that on a certain level you realize that Something has had his own way for a good portion of your life since the age of thirteen or so, and that maybe other body parts would like a turn in the driver's seat for a change.

Yikes, Four Dead Celebs In One Week...

Ed, Farrah, Michael, and now Billy Mays. Wowzers.

Too bad most folks have already forgotten about Neda.

UPDATE: five now. Bye bye, Karl Malden.

Yippee, I'm Rich; Thank You, Uncle Luciano! (Or, The Scammers Get Even More Stupid II)

From:lucianopavarotti@Sify.com

Subject: !!! NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST!!!

Date: June 25, 2009 7:00:23 AM CDT

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Reply-To:lucianopavarotti@Sify.com

Notification of Bequest

On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the Estate of Late Mr. Luciano Pavarotti, I hereby attempt to reach you again. I wish to notify you that Late Mr Luciano Pavarotti made you a beneficiary to His WILL. He left the sum of Ten Million five Hundred Thousand US Dollars.($10,500,000.00) to you in the codicil land last testament to his WILL. This may sound strange and Unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Luciano Pavarotti was known for his humanitarian work.

Yippee, I'm Rich!!!

Unintended Consequences, Part II

Ozone Solution Poses a Growing Climate Threat : "A group of chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons, long hailed as a substitute for gases that can destroy the ozone layer, are now seen as a growing greenhouse threat given their outsize ability to warm the atmosphere." Really, someone ought to do a better job of predicting outcomes...

On Iran's Elections -UPDATED REPOST

UPDATE: links added; also see Cyberwar Guide To Helping The Iranian Protesters. There are now reports that the army is moving against the protesters in many cities. You can follow breaking news on Twitter here, with the caveat that not everything you read may be gospel-truth.

Five days of protests and still no signs of abating. (Full-time coverage of the highest rate found here). I visited my Farsi Friend the other day. He fled the Khomeini Revolution and has been living in the U.S. ever since, quite successfully. He has a very different take on a lot of accepted history about the Revolution. Some of it is things I have heard elsewhere (Khomeini imported Palestinian Arabs to do his dirty work --a pattern which seems to be repeating itself ). Some of it is downright scary (the American oil companies put Khomeini in charge because he would be far tougher on the Communists than the Shah --which proved to be correct in the end).

He said it was funny that I called him just at that moment, since he had just gotten off of an online chat with his nieces living in Teheran. They were all kinds of upset about just how badly the elections were rigged. My Friend consoled them by saying that they ought to have known that the elections were going to be rigged, and besides, how much of a moderate is Mousavi really, anyway? (All candidates are vetted by the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards, it should be noted.) But what really got me was his response to my question, "Well, are these protests going to do anything?"

He said:

"No, because Iranian people don't have guns, Mojo. They don't have a Second Amendment, never did. Only the government had guns. When the students go into the streets, Basij militia beat them and Revolutionary Guards shoot them. They don't have a chance. That's why I get nervous every time the government here in U.S. talks about limiting guns. They thought in Iran, too, that nothing bad could ever happen."

Help the Iranian Protesters

The Jawa Report: Sandcralwer PSA: Cyberwar Guide To Helping The Iranian Protesters (sticky): read and execute.

A 'time bomb' for world wheat crop

A 'time bomb' for world wheat crop - Los Angeles Times: I have been keeping up with reports like this over the last 18 months or so. It had been confined to Central Asia, but now, I'm starting to get nervous. Between this and increasing amounts of corn acreage being converted to ethanol production, you might actually see food shortages in the United States. We haven't had anything resembling a true famine in our recorded history; this is no time for a first.

On Iran's Elections

While seeing reports like this coming out of Iran the last few days --and full-time coverage of the highest rate found here -- I thought it was a good time to talk to my Farsi Friend. He fled the Khomeini Revolution and has been living in the U.S. ever since, quite successfully. He has a very different take on a lot of accepted history about the Revolution. Some of it is things I have heard elsewhere (Khomeini imported Palestinian Arabs to do his dirty work --a pattern which seems to be repeating itself [links down; will provide later]. Some of it is downright scary (the American oil companies put Khomeini in charge because he would be far tougher on the Communists than the Shah --which proved to be correct in the end).

He said it was funny that I called him just at that moment, since he had just gotten off of an online chat with his nieces living in Teheran. They were all kinds of upset about just how badly the elections were rigged. My Friend consoled them by saying that they ought to have known that the elections were going to be rigged, and besides, how much of a moderate is Mousavi really, anyway? (All candidates are vetted by the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards, it should be noted.) But what really got me was his response to my question, "Well, are these protests going to do anything?"

He said:

"No, because Iranian people don't have guns, Mojo. They don't have a Second Amendment, never did. Only the government had guns. When the students go into the streets, Basij militia beat them and Revolutionary Guards shoot them. They don't have a chance. That's why I get nervous every time the government here in U.S. talks about limiting guns. They thought in Iran, too, that nothing bad could ever happen."

Tomato Season Winds Down

It is painfully obvious that our tomato growing season 'round here is ending. Temperatures in the mid-upper 90s by day and nighttime lows close to 80 mean the end of any further production. Those fruits that remain on the vine are struggling to break the 5 oz barrier while under assault from dry conditions, blazing temps and the Unholy Stink Bug Army.

I am disappointed somewhat by this year's results. I had out twenty-two transplants, plus two volunteers, and I was expecting to have enough left over to do some serious canning, even after generous giveaways to relatives and sundry. I think it just got too hot too quickly for good production. Perhaps I should've started my seeds a bit earlier so that they could've had a longer fruit-setting window. The plants themselves look good --I've got two that are 8' tall and still growing. But I estimate that I'm about one-third to one-half below what I ought to have picked. I've barely enough to make a few more jars of sauce.

I'm already thinking of the fall crop and if I can get away with putting out plants in mid-late July. Every plant that comes out now is replaced by an okra seedling, so I've got to keep at least a little room at some point. i won't be able to plant my longer varieties that did so well for this past spring, like Cherokee Purple and Black Krim; looks like I'll be putting out shorter ones like Early Girl.

Rough Recipe: Mojo's 'Mater Sauce

Juice about a dozen or so tomatoes using a citrus juicer (eliminates having to skin them by hand; seed removal prior to juicing optional); reserve some of the juice and drink the rest. Throw pulp into stew pot, add some decent red wine to increase volume by 33% or so, then add sliced onions, garlic, red pepper, black pepper, oregano, salt and sugar to taste. Simmer slowly but copiously, adding tomato juice if volume gets too low. Ready to eat in two hours, sooner if you like a more raw sauce.

Two Years Already?!?

Today is The Wee One's Second Birthday. All hail Daddy's Little Minion!

Unintended Consequences Part I

House plan seeks to pull car sales out of doldrums: "With auto sales in the doldrums, the House was considering a plan Tuesday to provide vouchers of up to $4,500 for consumers who turn in their gas-guzzling cars and trucks for more fuel-efficient vehicles." I see the cost of new vehicles "inexplicably" rising by about $4500 or so in the next 18 months, no doubt to cover the cost of proposed efficiency improvements... (On the other hand, this is far more than the estimated $1000 my old Explorer is probably worth on the open market.)