Cold is coming in towards the end of the week, brutal cold.
Meanwhile, I not only had a branch down on my car, I had a tree come down in the back yard. We aren’t sure when. I feel like my yard is attacking me.
63 Thoughts to “Open Thread………………………………………………..January 1, 2014”
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Blogroll
- 9500Liberty
- Bacons' Rebellion Blogspot
- Bearing Drift
- Blue Virginia
- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA Blog
- New Dominion Project
- Nova Common Sense
- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
- Pete Candland's Blog
- Potomac Local
- Prince William Muckraker
- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
- Red NoVA
- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
Happy New Year! Hopefully this year will bring more peace, health and prosperity to all.
Happy New Year, Pat. I hope you will join us for our meet and greet in March. (providing Steve will play host.)
Happy New Year!
Winter is a good time to see the bald eagles at the landfill. They’ve got plenty of seagulls to munch and they’re visible in the trees that skirt the mound of trash. If you’re unsure of their location, the person collecting the fee at the entrance probably can show you. We were in my mother’s car with its Fairfax sticker and told the fee collector that we were just going to turn around to see the eagles when he asked if we wanted a guide. We declined because the birds are seen more easily when leaving and I didn’t think 89 year old mom was interested in climbing the trash heap. But people must do it.
Ewwwww…Well you know that Corey gets the blame for the eagle and seagull doo. Now I have blamed Corey for a lot in my life but bird waste? The man is completely innocent of that charge.
I am just impressed that father eagles help raise the kids. It makes you wonder why some human fathers are so sorry assed.
Happy New Year!
Have to brag!
STRAIGHT A’S!
I used to be an unabashed tree-lover. Then I acquired the current property that is well-populated with 60-foot+ trees. After Hurricanes Isabelle and Sandy, my view of these trees is more guarded. They can kill you. Because I have woodstoves, I have now transitioned to regarding these trees as crops.
I can no longer call my living room “treetops.” I have had a limb fall on the car and a huge maple snap in the past 2 weeks. I feel like the trees are trying to kill me.
The strange thing is, the trees weren’t even in the same part of the yard. I guess both were original trees. Maybe it was simply a case of old age. The maple could have done it’s thing the beginning of the month, before I put on a new roof and guttering. Not sure about damage at this point. I think minimal. It could have been much worse.
I have mixed feelings about my trees as well. They’re tall with few lower branches – having fought their way to the light against their other forest competitors. Tornadoes , hurricanes, ice storms, and ivy make living among them thrilling! They seem to wait until a day after a big rain when the soil is saturated and then fall. I’m hoping the winds don’t get too strong tonight.
SNOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!!
Get to the supermarkets! MUST GET MILK! BREAD! TOILET PAPER! Must get videos for the huge snowstorm!
Oh….wait…never mind…..its not snowing in Richmond! Its missing us by 30 miles…..
Also have lots of trees and have taken lots down–perhaps 75 or more but they were mostly loblolly pines which tump over in a heart beat because they have a very shallow root system. Have been in our home for 30 years and so the trees have grown over the years. One year I said to my wife, “There are a lot more leaves than there used to be here.” Her comment to me, “Duh!” Then it dawned on me how ridiculous my statement was. But we must remember, trees do many things for us–absorb CO2, create Oxygen, hold the soil in place, build and fertilize soil, help purify water, provide shelter for animals and birds, provide fuel, building material and feedstock for paper. And yes, they can kill you, smash your house and your car. But they add beauty like nothing else on the planet.
I guess I will be having a lot fewer leaves. The other problem, tree surgeons cost a fortune. Just some limb trimming breaks the bank. I can’t imagine what I would do if I were not doing ‘city living.’
So, how about all this global warming that we’re experiencing? The arctic sheets aren’t melting, and the temperatures haven’t been getting warmer for 15 years, and we’re seeing record cold spells in this country … but the global warming scam chugs happily along. Too many people have too much invested in it.
It’s long since time that we had the ability to study and report climate in a scientific way and stop paying people with extraneous agendas. The idea that we’re in negotiations about how much money to pay to other countries because of supposedly projected “global warming” is BEYOND INSANE.
Actually global warming is a not a good word for the phenomena. It is about weather extremes globally, not about what’s happening in the United States.
Climate change globally is very real.
@Rick Bentley
And here’s where Rick and I agree.
Liz Cheney is out of the race. Health problems in the family.
When/where does the Downton chat start?! My favorite Dowager line was the one when she was talking to Isobel and Isobel didn’t want to “be an interfering Grandmother” and Violet replied that it is the job of a Grandmother to interfere…lol.
I need to put it up. Bad me. I have had all sorts of disruptions here. ARRGGHHH.
That was a grand one liner also…Its the job of a grandmother to interfere. I am sure all the grandmothers everywhere smiled on that one.
Why don’t we just use the open thread to do Downton Talk.
I thought it was perfectly grand. I am still going to watch it again, just to savor it.
testing
What are you testing, Wolve?
Funny thing. Yesterday, I either had some kind of tech glitch or got hacked. The only way I can post on any blog is by changing my blog handle. Everything else works as before. My computer guy ran remote tests last night and says that, so far, it looks like an outside factor rather than something wrong at my end. We’ll see.
Wolve, is that everywhere or just here?
How strange. I had a glitch here over Christmas.
NSA at work, no doubt.
Or maybe the Chinese.
Moon, let’s not let the climate alarmists of the world blithely move us towards aceptance of “climate change” to describe something that is caused by pollution.
These guys were very clear about what was happening. CO2 was trapping heat. The arctic ice caps were melting – Al Gore told us they would almost surely be COMPLETELY GONE by right about now.
This is not compatrible with what’s actually been happening for the last 15 years.
Let’s not presume that this vague term “climate change” should be tossed around to describe the quite normal variations is temperature that this planet has undergone for millions of years, and will experience for millions more. I submit to you that the term manages to be meaningless and biased at the same time.
There’s no known cause between human pollution and “climate change”. The alarmist rants of the recent past were about WARMING, not cooling.
@Moon-howler
Just a note about temperatures.
While it’s cold at the South Pole, the north is unseasonably warm. Today’s Metro:
Anchorage 30
Copenhagen 45
Oslo 39
Helsinki 41
Stockholm 45
Really strange is Moscow at 37
Wolve, I had something like that happen to me a long time ago. It was an issue with the cookies on my browser. Deleting them fixed it. You might give it a try or use a different browser. Chrome seems to work pretty good. (And with that I’ve just about exhausted my techie knowledge.)
So anybody have thoughts on Downton Abbey? Refresh my memory from the earlier episodes, have the pigs arrived yet? (That’s not a spoiler, right?)
Furby, no pigs yet.
Let’s see….Mary was a depressive, Edith was kind, adult and charming. Her slut stage seems to be over. Violet was her usual self, Mrs. Crawley was dejected. but found reason to live on. Robert wasd patriarchal and protective. Cora was a simp. Bronson was probably the one with the most sense.
Carlson was still stuffy. Barrow is still sneaky, manipulative and basically self-servingly evil. Mrs. Hughes seemed to step a little more between blurred lines as did Carlson.
Nothing much really happened. I think much was being set up for things to come.
I started watching “Orange is the New Black” on Netflix. Really good show. What i like about it is the characters. Good female characters that have complexity and realism are hard to come by in TV. But this show has a ton of them.
That is the female prison movie? @Rick
Well, Moon, back in business. Still don’t know what it was. The blog handle wouldn’t work on any blog, but every other function was still operating. The proverbial gremlins maybe?
Wolve, I never figured how what was wrong with this blog over Christmas. I was sick as a dog most of the time, hacking and coughing, so I just didn’tcare to the level I might have had I not been sick.
There it is. Forgot to change.
Cora is really underused this season. She basically does nothing. They need to come up with something for her to do. Her children are grown up, she pays no attention to the running of the estate and she doesn’t have a cause. The dowager is more active than she is. Mrs. Crawley is underused but not as bad as Cora. And at least it’s understandable for Mrs. Crawley since she doesn’t really belong there anymore except as the grandmother of George.
A couple of the minor characters to watch this season are Moseley and Carson. There is a lot of character development on Carson, and you even get a hint that there might be a heart beating somewhere inside of him.
They get Mary out of mourning pretty quick and she and her suitors take up a good part of the season. (That plot line didn’t really interest me because its just a rehash of her and Matthew)
Edith gets a lot more screen time this season with her romance and how it develops.
They do a fair amount with Rose as well. I’m not a big fan of Rose. She just doesn’t add anything to the show for me, but I understand they need a younger woman on the show as Edith and Mary are getting a little too old to be young debutantes. (It’s hard to remember that the timeline of the show has moved 10 years since season 1, so if Mary was around 20 then, she is around 30 now.)
I forget how old they are also. Rose seems a little silly but also, up to this point, not as pretentious. She doesn’t seem to be letting her title rule her.
Being a ‘lady’ is rather restrictive.
Orange is the New Black is a series, 13 episodes in the first season, available on Netflix.
I probably won’t watch it. Prison stuff gives me the creeps.
Oh sorry – yes it’s about a women’s prison. it’s comedic drama.
I really don’t understand any time being focused on Mosely. I simply do not care about him, but I do like Carson. I have a feeling that the woman he now thinks is dead isn’t really dead at all and that the guy just wanted to meet Carson to tell him she was dead.
That’s an interesting theory. Why else would that sliver of story line even have been in there though. There’s more to that than meets the eye.
My other favorite TV shows :
“Girls” – just great; different and unabashedly female, and fearless. Best way to describe it is just to say that Lena Dunham is the NC-17 version of Tina Fey’s PG-13 personna, smart and funny.
“Mad Men” – surreal, dreamlike expoloration of a time and of some characters in it.
“The Walking Dead” – continually interesting and atmospheric.
And “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”. For anyone else who wishes for more of that type of smart satirical take on politics, I highly recommend “The Bugle” podcast.
Did you watch Rectify last year?
@Rick Bentley
heh……the Walking Dead: A documentary on what to NOT do during the Zombie Apocalypse.
What do you think they do wrong?
@Rick Bentley For one thing, they sit around and wait to get eaten, or they stand around arguing while the “walkers” surround them. The “walkers” are kind of slow moving, but the main characters are even slower-witted sometimes. Reminds me of this film, which MST3K skewered brilliantly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyAfEhZO974
People were literally crawling into the monster’s mouth in some scenes, if you have the patience for the full-length movie.
But I love the Walking Dead, and I love to hate some of the characters.
“Mad Men” is absolutely superb, and visually authentic. I binge-watched all the episodes that were available over the last month.
And “Orange is the New Black” is excellent, but I’ll be seriously disappointed if they go hokey and turn the last episode into some kind of fantasy or dream.
Someone let me know when Mad Men starts back up again.
Here we go – more than half of Congress members are millionaires – https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/01/millionaires-club-for-first-time-most-lawmakers-are-worth-1-million-plus.html?utm_source=CRP+Mail+List&utm_campaign=c4ee622519-PFD_press_email_1_9_20141_9_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9df8578d78-c4ee622519-210774933 and they have an average net worth of $1 Million. This is even after the reporting rules have changed so that they have to report less information on their wealth. Funny how Congress wants transparency until it comes to themselves. Their wealth increased over the past year – I do wonder how much of that increase is related to the insider trading rules that they relaxed for themselves.
I would have thought more than half.
I don’t see how any of them afford to run for office.
@Pat.Herve
Great – Finally out of the TV morass! Well abt TV / I’ll be watching the Caps tonight.
Hope to heck they win.
Why? do you think the everyday good guy can’t run for Congress?
@Rick Bentley
They don’t learn.
They don’t improve defense, lure walkers away, develop better hand weapons. I mean, really? KNIVES? for defeating walkers? When they have an entire prison to build weapons out of….ie….there are still riot shields around.
They go looking for walkers when just banging on wall will attract them all. It took 3 seasons for that to happen.
They let the zombie horde build up. When they have trucks that can run them over.
Etc…..
And the show has them more intelligent than the books. I’m interested in how the characters differ between the books and the show. I wish the Andrea character from the book had been in the show.
And I hope a cameo walker with an eye patch shows up in the background of one of the shows.
At least, “where’s Carl?” isn’t a running joke anymore.
@Rick Bentley
Did you know that Toy Story and The Walking Dead have the same plotlines?
http://imgur.com/a/qIIsm#0
Just hit “next” on the images to the right at that link.
And here’s some reading material
http://zombiehunters.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=58215
just 395 pages…currently, of the thread on Walking Dead.
Ok, here’s a tech question. Why do the Daily Show clips always start automatically playing when the other videos don’t? It’s really annoying when there are two or more of them on the main page and I get this barrage of Jon Stewart talking over himself.
Is it my browser (Chrome)? Is it just me or does this happen to everybody? (I’m guessing it’s not everybody or somebody else would have complained already.)
Chrome has a bad habit of doing that. It does it to me also and I totally agree, its very annoying.
“And “Orange is the New Black” is excellent, but I’ll be seriously disappointed if they go hokey and turn the last episode into some kind of fantasy or dream.”
Oh, I wouldn’t think that would happen. OITNB actually has a precursor – “Oz”. I loved “Oz”. Though “Oz” is a much harsher show, OITNB is taking a lot of elements from it. Piper’s journey resembles Tobias Beecher’s on “Oz”; she’s becoming more of animal. (Not as much of one as Beecher, though).
I have more respect for the intelligence and perseverance of Rick’s Group than Cargo and Emma do!
Piper = Tobias Beecher, a lawyer who ended up in Oz after DWI and killing a kid
Alex = Keller, a same-sex partner in Oz who Beecher fell in and out of love with, even though Keller was a sadist who would cause him pain
The Crazy Jesus girl is a little like Schillinger, a White Seperatist in Oz who hated Beecher and would try to kill him, rape him, kill his father, etc. etc.
By Season 2 Beecher was up to knocking Schillinger unconscious and defecating on him.
The darkest comedy element in Oz was the operatic hatred between Schillinger and Beecher, which started when Schillinger raped him. They soon ended up managing to kill the other’s family members, or get them hooked on drugs. And every so often something that they did would come to the attention of authorities … at which point Sister Pete (Rita Moreno) would get them to shake hands and agree to a truce while saying things like “I’m sorry I raped you” and “I’m sorry I had your father killed” and “I’m sorry that I seduced your son and got him hooked on drugs”. And she would say that this was a good start, and they would walk away with the pretence that this was a fresh start.
@Furby McPhee
It does that to me and I’m using Firefox.
Sorry for sporadic responses. I am dealing with a funeral.
@Moon-howler
My condolences.
Thanks Cargo. My aunt died. Last of my grandparents’ children.
Here’s a bit of happy news amidst the gray and gloomy weather. Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, 25, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, will make her Broadway debut later this month in the lead role of the play “Antigone” by the ancient Greek author Sophocles. She is a Stanford grad, where she participated in drama, and has already appeared in a few television shows. She will be the first Kennedy to go on the stage. Very pretty young woman. I hope she makes it. As they say: “Kick, break a leg!”
Make that her “off-Broadway debut.” What the heck, as a young fellow in New York long ago, off-Broadway was about all I could afford.
Moon – Mad Men is available on Netflix. All seasons. Trying to catch up on house of cards too. I watched the british version.
Regarding Orange is the New Black, I can’t tell if it’s about a woman who went to Smith and sunk to a low or it’s about a woman that went to Smith and can’t believe she was punished.