Saturday Morning Open Thread

A new day dawns.

Comments

[Danube of Thought]

First?

[Danube of Thought]

Again: First?

[centralcal]

Finally, a new day dawns along with a new thread!

[Old Lurker]

YAY

[Try Hang Gliding]

I think some of the regulars should petition to guest blog.

[Janet the burpeephobe]

Or is it a gnu day dawns?

[Danube of Thought]

Minus 15 at Raz today.

[Jim Ryan]

The facts are consistent with this theory: Granted, Obama was a poor writer in college. But as any poor writer who will become a good writer must do, he wrote voluminously over many years, gradually improving his craft and finding his "voice." These writings he never submitted for publication. He never even acknowledged their existence to anyone. He finally destroyed them. Then, after years of reading maritime fiction and a few stints on a ship, he wrote his autobiographies, which were well written.

[Jack is Back!]

Noticed that Clarice mentioned zillow.com

It has proven to be very untrustworthy regarding market price of real estate. It is based more on property tax appraisal than market reality.

DoT,

What did he do to get a 2 pct. bounce from yesterday? Shoot below 100?

Also, that article written by Obama when at Columbia only proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is as dumb as a rock and couldn't have written "Dreams".

Isn't it weird how Bush was so dumb, so incompetent, such a hair trigger cowboy that he was smart enough and so brilliant to have planned, carried out and covered up the inside job of blowing up the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The more the Rinos and Dems come out against the "Ryan" plan the more publicity it will get. Hopefully, people will start to ask why these big spenders want to spend more and cut less. I guess those people down'east are ready to pay more taxes, pay more for gas, eat less and give more bennies to the unions.

[Captain Hate]

I run hot and cold on Beck but he's doing great work on this: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-beck-hits-back-accuses-huckabee-of-using-media-matters-and-msnbc-talking-points/

[Ranger]

Don't worry about Obama getting a slight up-tick in the polls right now. The next few weeks will be brutal for him. He needs the debt limit raised the way an addict needs his fix. The only problem is, some where between 65 to 75% of the country doesn't want the debt limit to go up.

Here's hoping the Republicans are smart enough to remind people that Obama promised "net spending cuts" when he ran, so there should be no need for him to ask for a debt limit increase. Deliver what you promised Mr. President, and cut spending back to the 2008 spending levels (just like th Ryan plan does).

[Gmax]

Concur on Zillow. Probably get just as accurate reading ( or just as inaccurate reading ) by going to the tax appraised values for the house and its surrounding neighbors.

[Gmax]

Yesterday it was all about not cutting these green energy investments. His writers should go see Conan. They have talent.

[clarice]

All that is true about zillow. OTOH there is no other free online appraisal system I am aware of.

[centralcal]

For daddy: The poor gal who took ill on the cruise and was dropped into the ocean during her rescue has died.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

Trulia and Redfin provide similar information. Redfin is the best, IMO.

[rse]

I will respond to Rick over here and get away from page 7.

I like irony but do not enjoy the absurd. Hubby though likes Monty Python and the 3 Stooges which I find grating.

The humor tends to be in taking something to its silly, inevitable conclusion, making a funny comment about that, and then using that to stop the movement in that direction in the 1st place. My kids' friends find that sarcasm funny so there is some hope if you can make teenagers laugh and want to talk to you.

There is also no question that the foundations for the quiet, but sharp, redefinitions of common terms, in the late 1980s to avoid detection takes us right back to 19th century Germany.

Legal training though is so handy in noticing unfounded and false assertions and redefinitions of key terms and what the implications of such redefinitions will be.

When it gets too much, I come click on this site and enjoy the company and a brief change of subject.

Thanks everyone for the relief from the darkness.

[Extraneus]

And it's cool how mint.com automatically queries zillow and updates the values of any real-estate assets you include in the accounts list. (Be even cooler if the values were going up.)

[PD]

Golly. I went to Amazon to see whether a band I listen to has anything new recently, and I find one of my CDs is now labeled [Explicit].

Must be 'cause it intolerantly uses the phrase "March of the Damned."

[PD]

Interesting Earth Day message. (might disappear in a day or two)

[clarice]

Thanks for the tip, Rick. According to Redfin I'm richer than I thought. HEH

[PD]

richer than I thought.

Hand it over
-- smooches, Barack.

[Rocco]

If Bill Ayers is a "Distinguished Professor" as he's so commonly referred to, than so are these guys!

[Rick Ballard]

RSE,

Irony at the Mark Twain/Will Rogers level or the sharper Mencken/bgates level? You're fortunate to have teens around as test subjects. I keep trying to come up with a decent metaphor for the absurdity of historicism/scientism but I can't get beyond unnatural acts performed without consent...

[Captain Hate]

If Bill Ayers is a "Distinguished Professor" as he's so commonly referred to, than so are these guys!

All four of them cause people to laugh by doing buffoonish things; although the latter 3 haven't been complicit in the deaths of anybody that I know of.

[narciso]

Head Ewok has gone into a Proust length meditation, on why he was taken in by the media's 'water torture' demolishing of Fred, but rest assured that won't happen again,

[Frau Osterhase]

After looking at Mr.President's politically correct COLB again and seeing he is Barack Hussein Obama II, shouldn't he be called Obama Junior or simply Junior? The critics of Dubya called him "Junior," and he isn't.

[daddy]

Just stopped by my local Subway sandwich joint and was pleasantly surprised to see that their Tip Jar has been converted into a Fund jar for the victims of the Japanese Earthquake.

My local gal's said that it wasn't just a local store thing, but that it was Nationwide as far as they knew.

Good job Subway!

They always have the ugliest Tip Jars in the world; just a square plastic box, which they always tell me Management says they are not allowed to change. Today it had interesting pictures on it of Japan and thats what caught my eye.

[peter]

I finally got around to reading that long excerpt of the Janny Scott book about our Prevaricator-in-chief's hippie mother. As Steve Sailer points out, the article, although quite detailed about Stanley Ann Dunham's second marriage to Lolo, and her life in Indonesia, entirely omits the fact that it was a polygamous marriage. Reading the comments at the end of the article on the Slimes' website is rather amusing, in light of that omission.

[MaryD]

Polygamous? Huh? Peter, please explain.

[daddy]

CentralCal,

I am so sorry about that cruise lady dying. I was insensitively pushing for humor and I now see it has bitten me in the rear. Sincere apologies for that, and God bless the poor lady and her husband and family.

Captain,

I heard Glen Beck's first hour of radio yesterday and I thought he did a fine job going after Huckabee. I know the MSM is loving it that 2 FOX "Conservatives" are attacking each other, but I'm glad Beck fired back anyhow. I thought Beck's legitimate criticism's of Huck's Big Government and Prog tendencies were right on the money. Now the balls in Huckabee's court to see if he can honestly respond without ad-hominem talking points and smears of innuendo. This is a perfect time for critically examining Huckabee's record and I welcome it.

Try Hang Gliding,

Beautiful pic and stories at your link. Just for interest, how much better today is your kite technology than say 1982. I ask because I had an old Will's Wing Harrier which I really liked. I have been away from the sport since 1983, and I wonder if what I was using then is now an antique jalopy along the lines of the Model T. Do you ever even see such old kites still flying?

[Janet]

Yeah Peter..did Lolo have another wife too?

[Jim Ryan]

Daddy, I'm a hang glider pilot! I had no idea you flew hang gliders! I retired a couple of years ago because too busy.

Yes, the sport has improved a lot. My glider was a Wills Wing Sport, the first of the truly modern double-surface gliders (1992, I believe.) These gliders fly at 10:1 glide ratio and sink at only 225 fpm or so. Upon stall they don't get into a preciptious dive as easily as the old gliders (although I think your old glider wasn't too bad in that respect.) It's easy to thermal in the modern gliders. More recently in the expensive gliders they have eliminated the king post and top lines.

I love to see the old kites fly, though it is a rarity. I was a member of the USHGA in 1975 at age ten and flew a standard rogallo in high school. The old gliders were beautiful and I loved them

I'll get back into the sport when my kids move out of the house and I have more time. I will buy a beginner glider because it is easier for an old guy to launch (lower stall speed, lower aspect ratio, flies slower, easier handling). Nowadays everyone's towing for launch with ultralights, not my cup of tea. The modern gliders are a bit tougher to foot-launch in little or no wind, because they fly fast and you have to sprint faster to get off. But they fly great.

Folks, there's a reason Try Hang Gliding is called that. Try it! It's exactly as fantastic as it looks. Only fantasticker! Can you imagine thermaling up from about 300 ft to 5000 ft, just you and 70 lb glider? Or soaring up and down a ridge all day at 500 ft with birds flying below you?

[daddy]

Very cool Jim Ryan. Wow, old Rogallo's!

Those were antiques in 1980 when I first started on the sand dunes of Cantamar, Mexico.

And I didn't even know there were new tech double surface gliders. All of my flying was in Southern Cal (Lake Elsinore, Poway, Dead Horse Canyon out on the road towards El Centro, Riverside, and some cliff flying at Swami's just north of San Diego. A great sport for a young guy with no kids or family responsibilities.

[Jim Ryan]

Those "topless" gliders get about 12 or 13:1 glide ratio. Not too shabby. They are harder to fly, but if you're going to go 400 miles it will probably be in a topless glider. So you have: beginner, intermediate, and advanced types amongst the modern gliders, which is a matter of how fast they fly and at what glide ratio.

Anyway, Try Hang Gliding knows loads more than I do, so maybe he'll come back and chime in.

[Jim Ryan]

Wow! Lake Elsinore is famous. In high school I flew in the foothills of northern Cal. As an adult, I flew mainly in the Finger Lakes (nice eastern mountain flying), Salt Lake City (which is the place to go if you want to be able to fly every day for sure), and farm country in Minnesota (where we towed off of pickup trucks up to 2500 feet.) I chased a guy 120 miles from MN to Iowa (chased him in the chase vehicle with him going cross country.) My own record was a mere four miles.

[Jim Ryan]

Just google "wills wing sport" and click on images and you can see these gliders and their lower surface.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

My daughter is both a sky diving and hang gliding enthusiast and on every visit, she goes and does one or the other out of Perris. While she is busy being an idiot (and to keep myself from having multiple panic attacks watching her), I usually go and drool over the ultra-lights that line the perimeter of the diving facility.

If you were hang gliding out of Poway in the early '80s, I might have been there watching. We lived in Poway and if we weren't at somebody's ballgame, we were out watching the hang gliders and the kids were the ones drooling and begging for permission to do it too.

[daddy]

Thanks for the stories and link Jim R.

Cool Sara,

I took lessons from the little trailer that was set up 30 years back on the top of Torrey Pines. They started us on the Cantamar sand dunes, and then we graduated to the small hill there at Poway when we got less dangerous. After that it was on to the smooth cliff flying, and then finally off to the mountains for the big launches and longer flights. Very much fun.

It was interesting in that at the time there was a big bottleneck of many, many months duration in the pipeline for Military Flight Training, so a bunch of my Navy buddies and I decided to take up hang-gliding, what with us being young and stupid and adventurous, and having all that free time on our hands. Great memories.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Daddy: Have you heard anything more on that gov't contract requirement to provide lists of political contributions? I haven't seen a word.

[daddy]

I have not Sara.

I missed Rush on Friday but I thought he'd follow up on it. Will keep my eyes open.

[sbw]

I suppose I belong to the "try everything at least once club." That includes sky diving, hang gliding, getting married...

Sometimes once was enough. Sometimes once is still sweet.

[clarice]

I saw it Sara. Several places. Check out free republic and American thinker because I cannot remember precisely where I saw it.

[daddy]

Does anyone know if any results were ever published for the forensic exam of Tycho Brahe, to determine if he was Mercury poisoned to death by Kepler so that Kepler could steal his book with the observations of Mar's orbit?

It was all big news about November, but having scoured the Google and Bing sites of the web, I can't find anything on it since late November.

[clarice]

Here's one, Sara.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/04/obamas_executive_order_coming.html

I didn't see anything, daddy.

[narciso]

Well we have this daddy, revised in April,

http://www.atomic.physics.lu.se/education/mandatory_courses/fafa35_fysik_termodynamik_och_atomfysik/overheadbilder_och_laenkar/did_mercury_poisoning_cause_the_death_of_tycho_brahe/

[narciso]

This is beyond parody, right:

http://colloquy.law.northwestern.edu/main/2011/04/can-popular-constitutionalism-survive-the-tea-party-movement.html#more

[daddy]

Thanks Narciso for both of those links.

The Brahe one was well worth reading and the second one...oh well. What else is new from the Left?

[Porchlight]

What did he do to get a 2 pct. bounce from yesterday? Shoot below 100?

Holiday weekend would be my guess.

Speaking of, I hope everyone who celebrates it is enjoying Easter Triduum.

Governor Perry has asked Texans to pray for rain. If any non-Texans should like to chime in, we would really appreciate it. With the wildfires already raging and no rain it is going to be a very frightening summer.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Porch-

If I had a pump in my yard, I'd send you my overage.

All of it, and at 50 degrees.

[Porchlight]

Thanks, Mel. I wish we could trade you some warmth and sun.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Just waiting for winter to officially end.

Snowed an inch on Monday.

[Melinda Romanoff]

And on that note, I fade.

G'night all.

[Porchlight]

And on a lighter note, for the cooks out there, I had planned to make a Moroccan carrot salad for an Easter potluck picnic tomorrow. But I was dyeing eggs with the girls at the same time and failed to pay attention while rummaging in the pantry and ended up putting chili powder in the dressing instead of paprika. By the time I realized my mistake it was too late (out of oil and out of lemons).

So I chopped up a jalapeno and it is now Mexican carrot salad.

Probably more thematically correct, anyway.

[Porchlight]

'Night, Mel.

Time to toddle off and watch The Robe with Richard Burton (and secretly assemble some Easter baskets). See y'all on the happy morn.

[Try Hang Gliding]

Daddy, Jim,

The UP Comet was the first double surface glider; it came out somewhere near 1980. It revolutionized the sport. I started in 1984; the first glider I owned was the Comet. Jim, my second glider was the first generation Sport. Wills Wings' top of the line glider at that time was the HP (high performance). The first modern topless glider came out in 1996, by La Moutte (sp?), a french company. Jim I have to disagree with you, my glider, a Moyes Lightspeed S, is the easiest flying glider I have ever owned.

Daddy, go through the WW's site to see the exotic material used today.

[clarice]

I'm doing my special raindance for ya porch--and good creative move on the carrot salad.

[Try Hang Gliding]

While we're on the subject :-) In the western states in the summer it's not unheard of to get to our legal limit of 17,999 ft.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vnjagvet]

Happy Easter. The time to celebrate has begun. Easter and Passover have the celebration theme in common. They have so much more meaning than the watered down "Spring Celebrations" now politically correct. Just sayin'

[clarice]

Happy Easter all.

[Strawman Cometh]

porch,
your technique reminds me of me.

[Strawman Cometh]

And another thing. I've wondered for sometime, and have wanted to ask her, if ms. porch gets her screen name from my favorite in the LUN. Pay no attention to the video, close ur eyes.

[daddy]

Ha ha ha!

Box-office power of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ baffles insiders.

[Strawman Cometh]

daddy!
is it just us on a saturday nite??!!

[Caro]

Happy and blessed Easter to all.

[daddy]

Guess not Strawman.

Hi Caro. We have the cutest new yellow Lab puppy ever, so now I get to holler your name twice as much:)

And I'm shocked Porch is watching The Robe, when she could be watching the 24 hour continuous replay of the made for TV movie "William and Kate."

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Thanks Clarice for the link to the AT article. I was beginning to think I imagined the whole thing.

[daddy]

Yay,

Clarice's Pieces is up. Psst -- The Holder Tapes.

[daddy]

Clarice's excellent Pieces is on Obama stifling US Oil Drilling.

Well right on cue the ADN just posted a story that the proposed Wind Farm for Anchorage can't find any of the Electric Companies willing to sign up for the boondoggle project, and that's with the Fed's kicking in $44 Million to jump start the Project and the State kicking in $25 Million to bill the transmission line.

Why it's almost as if the local utility companies that have to make a profit think the project is a massive money loser.

Wind farm struggles to sign up energy utilities

"you might think local utilities would embrace a plan to use renewable energy like a proposed wind turbine farm on Fire Island...But they're not...Jim Posey, head of city-owned Municipal Light and Power, says ML&P can get a better deal elsewhere, even if it comes down to importing liquefied natural gas to spin its generator turbines."

[daddy]

$25 Million to BUILD the transmission line. grrrrrrrrrrr

[Extraneus]

Swiss flock to watch giant stinking flower bloom

GENEVA (AP) -- Thousands of plant lovers have flocked to the northern Swiss city of Basel to see a giant, stinky flower bloom for the first time.

The Basel Botanical Gardens expects 10,000 people to see its amorphophallus titanum, or corpse flower, in full glory before the bloom wilts late Saturday or Sunday. The plant is 17 years old and has never bloomed before.

Visitors haven't been deterred by the strong stench of rotting flesh the flower emits to attract insects for pollination.

The 6.6-feet (2-meter) tall flower is native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the last one to bloom in Switzerland was 75 years ago.

Worldwide, there have been only 134 recorded blooms from artificial cultivation.

webcam

[daddy]

This is interesting but not unexpected.

The UK Telegraph says that The British Lobbyists who cleared 'Climategate' academics were funded by taxpayers and the BBC. Quelle surprise.

Just last month we learned that the US Government (ie the US Taxpayer) will begin funding the BBC on 3 May (International Press Freedom Day). The Beeb can sure use US Taxpayer cash since it is experiencing a £46m reduction in its £236.7m budget over three years that will lead to about 650 job cuts.

Thank goodness we don't have any budget problems of our own so that we could gladly afford to help.

[Jack is Back!]

daddy,

Any professional electric generating operator will always avoid unreliable and sketchy available sources of production. No surprise there. As I have noted a number of times, for every MW of renewable (not including hydro) energy you need a MW of conventional energy such as oil, coal, NG or nuclear for backup.

[Gmax]

He is risen, indeed. Happy Easter to the faithful, the skeptics and the nonbelievers too. It is a joyous day!

[centralcal]

Extraneus: Years ago at another house in my old home town, I planted an Asisaema Dracunculus bulb. The emerging foliage was quite lovely - long, smooth stems, mottled with burgundy brown and green, lovely tropical leaves branching out. Then to my delight came the bloom. Dark burgundy interior began to open and expose a smooth ebony black central spathe. I was so excited. A few hours later I went out to photograph it, but couldn't stand to get near it. It stunk of rotting meat and was covered with flies. Mercifully, the bloom deteriorated rapidly within a day or two and left behind just the lovely, tropical leaves and no odor.

You too, can have a mini stinking flower in your own yard!

[centralcal]

Asisaema s/b Arisaema

[centralcal]

Oh and I am thread hopping this morning, so Happy Easter one and all!

[clarice]

Thanks, daddy. Interesting fn about wind power.

[Jane]

Happy Easter everyone!

[Extraneus]

Wonderful description, cc.

[bgates]

The Basel Botanical Gardens expects 10,000 people to see its amorphophallus titanum....The plant is 17 years old and has never bloomed before....strong stench of rotting flesh....The 6.6-feet (2-meter) tall flower is native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra

How about that. A tall Indonesian creature that hasn't done a thing in nearly two decades, and when it does do something it's guaranteed to stink like death, and its very name is synonymous with "giant deformed dick", yet it's apparently very popular in Europe.

Who ever heard of such a thing?

[Gmax]

Hey Daddy was T Boone Pickens lurking somewhere close enough to be seen? Remember when he was all about wind power? I said then and I will say it again. When T Boone is talking up something, there is something in it for T Boone. And this one is incredibly easy to decipher for any except the terminally dull. Windpower is notoriously unreliable ( thus the reason we went away from it use starting in the 20th century ) and you must have a totally redundant system for the calm no wind days. Natural Gas! And who owns lots and lots of nat gas leases? Bingo.

[pagar]

Happy Easter to All!

[Captain Hate]

Windpower is notoriously unreliable ( thus the reason we went away from it use starting in the 20th century ) and you must have a totally redundant system for the calm no wind days.

Of all the witless sins of teh left, the one that bothers me the most is their senseless hubris in not learning from the past while assuming the false mantle of smartest people evarrrrrrr. Do they really think that people were just too dumb to try and get something for free in the past or that there's been some amazing breakthrough in bearing technology that all of a sudden will make the failed sources of the past fertile. Or rationalizing it as some eeeeeevil cabal keeping this brilliant technology from the market? Idiots.

[Extraneus]

To be fair, there are ways to even out the peaks and troughs of intermittent energy generators like wind or solar. For example, with pumped energy storage, water is pumped from a low elevation to a reservoir at a higher elevation, using the wind or solar power generated during times of peak wind or sunlight. Then, when the wind or sun aren't able to continue to power the generator, water is released through a turbine back to the lower-elevation point. This would obviously be a problem in Alaska in the winter.

[clarice]

bgates. How do you do it?!?!?!

[peter]

Happy Easter, everyone!

[Captain Hate]

The third rate electric utility where I squandered 19.5 years of my existence had a pumped energy storage place: Seneca lake in Allegheny National Forest which I drove past more than once while camping. The water was pumped up during offpeak hours and released to supplement peak supplies. Make no doubt about it, though; it takes more power to pump it up than gets produced.

[Porchlight]

Happy Easter! It is a joyous day indeed.

Thanks all for the encouragement - the salad actually tastes half decent and not too weird, I hope. It had cumin in it anyway.

Strawman, no, it's not from the Neko Case song - it's actually much more mundane than that. I was sitting at my laptop at the dining room table reading JOM one night and was commenting for the first time and needed a name, and the back porch light was shining in my eyes. At least that's how I remember it!

Clarice, thanks for the Pieces! Will be back in a few hours to read and enjoy...

[Extraneus]

That giant stinky deformed phallus flower pic keeps changing.

[clarice]

Yes, it does, Ext..Interesting.

[Captain Hate]

Reading an article by Fred Barnes from a couple months ago, an important source of insight into the development of Paul Ryan was, of all people, Barney Frank, who told him to become an expert on two or three issues, one of which of course was the budget.

[Danube of Thought]

Minus 16 at Raz today.

[Rocco]

hit

I'm glad you're In Laws are OK and Happy Easter to all

[Ignatz]

bgates, you possess a rare, a very rare, genius.

Praying for you and your wife on this Easter.

[Jane]

If you guys are inclined to pray, pray for Amy's F-I-L who died yesterday.

They were on vacation in VA when he had a massive stroke. They drove all night Friday to be there before they pulled the plug.

I went to RI yesterday to pick up the kids, and we had a wonderful day. At around 2:00 her 5 year old declared that Grampa had died. I got the call a few minutes later.

He was a young guy and a great father who raised 4 daughters. He recently had a stint put in his heart. At that time Amy said he was "one foxtrot away from death". (He loved to dance.)

Today his dance is complete.

[Captain Hate]

Sorry to read that, Jane.

[MayBee]

So sorry, Jane.

[clarice]

Sorry , Jane. Amazing how sometimes even the young know somehow that a loved one has passed.

[Gmax]

Jane

They told us today "Why are you looking for the living among the dead." Assuming he was a believer, he is truly in a better place.