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Post by kungfuzu on May 22, 2022 14:43:21 GMT -8
My first and continuing impression of drinking Scotch is that it is like biting into the bark of a tree. Drinking peat might also cover it.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 22, 2022 15:03:07 GMT -8
You know that Louis Rossman blowhard guy of the right-to-repair movement? I've posted a couple of his videos. Well, whatever you think of him, I was watching this video of his the other day (I think on why businesses are moving out of New York) and he was paraphrasing Thomas Sowell and recommending his book, "Basic Economics." Put him in the "on our side" category.
And I thought of this because Sowell is noted (at least to me) for pointing out the libtards (who hold "the unconstrained view") don't believe in making tradeoffs. You and me can note that there are some dirty aspects to coal and oil (nuclear as well now) but, god, look what it has brought us. It has brought us the type of abundant comfortable world that makes it possible for libtards to dream of their utopia.
Some on the Left do want to go back to 1790...or earlier. This is not disputed. But many would send us backward merely as a result of unintended consequences.
Solar and wind will only ever be small drops in the bucket. Useful for some things but not the energy system upon which you can base modern civilization. And I seriously doubt that the idiot yutes (and their parents) who keep voting for this environmental utopia will ever even acknowledge the downside of their beliefs. They will not acknowledge the trade-offs they are making (such as higher prices and/or driving us back to 1790).
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 22, 2022 16:16:15 GMT -8
That was my father's whiskey of choice. I think he drank it just to irritate my mother. One of the first things she did when he died (and with more satisfaction than I thought was healthy) was to pour his jug of Crown Royal down the drain. My uncle actually later inquired about the bottle. (It was his brand too.) He got a chuckle out of that. And missed his chance of whiskey inheritance from his brother, of course. In the documentary, David Hayman makes no secret that the proper way to drink whiskey is to drink it neat. But whiskey of any type is a strong substance. For a few years it was the tradition to join my father at his house (a literal stone's throw from the office) after work for a shot or two of Crown Royal over the rocks. Wow. Sometimes I know I drank a little too much. I need to check my genealogy chart again and see how much Scot I have in me. But it was good and one of the better memories of time spent with my father. |
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Post by kungfuzu on May 22, 2022 18:51:20 GMT -8
If things continue the way they are going, we might reach 1790 sooner than we think. Retailers badly hit The stock market is just the most obvious sign of decline. Much worse is going on which most don't readily see. Small and medium businesses are getting killed. Somewhere in the above article it says that Walmart and Target "were caught flat-footed when oil prices surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine." This is nonsense. Gas and diesel have been going up for almost two years now and the Ukraine war just continued a trend. In November of 2020, the price of crude oil was $41/barrel. By December of 2021/January of 2022 i.e. well before Putin invaded the Ukraine, it was over $90/barrel. Figure it out. Today, I filled up my car and it would have cost $110.00. The cost for regular was $4.399/gallon. Due to discounts I collect, for purchasing groceries and such from my local Tom Thumb, I generally get a $1/gallon discount (for up to 25 gallons) every month so it only cost me $85, damn it. In the months before the November 2020 election the lowest I paid was something like $1.719/gallon. After my $1/gallon discount, I was paying $0.72/gallon and I thought I was back in the 1990s. I assure everyone, worse is coming and we should try to prepare for it. I am not saying people will starve in the USA, but many will not be able to afford much more than the absolute basics. It will be different in many countries around the world. There will be starvation. |
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Post by kungfuzu on May 22, 2022 18:55:09 GMT -8
Clearly, a man of taste.  Nothing wrong with alcohol in moderation. In fact, it can often help create a positive mood. It certainly did that for me in Goettlesbruenn. There is a reason people have a drink together. I think I will now go have a small brandy. I will offer some to Mrs. Flu and if she declines I will have one by myself. |
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Post by artraveler on May 22, 2022 20:07:09 GMT -8
Crown Royal My mother and brother were both great fans of CR. Both thought it was one of the very best. My brother drove F105 thunderchief (AKA Thud) in Nam. he brought home an entire case of CR that he had purchased at the BX for pennies on the dollar. That was 1964/65. That was his first tour. He was there again in 1968 driving a brand new F-111 and dodging missiles in the North. We were thankful he came home in one piece. By then prices of things like CR were more competitive in CONUS. |
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Post by artraveler on May 22, 2022 20:15:00 GMT -8
Target Target for reasons passing understanding is popular in most markets. I personally fide Target nothing more than a well dressed K-Mart of the 1970s and refuse to spend time or money in the store. I don't like the narrow aisles, I don't like the staff, I don't like the check out stations, and most of all I don't like the overall ambience of the stores. Frankly if I want to spend time and money in a discount store I'll go to Dollar General. At least they are honest about what they do. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 23, 2022 6:27:29 GMT -8
The amazing things people do (and I'm not talking about the case of CR). Tell him to give my best to Kelly McGillis. Top Gun: Maverick is out, or soon out. It will be interesting to see if it's any good. Certainly from what I remember of Crown Royal, it was a nice-tasking whiskey. I'm not sure any whiskey is really "smooth." I think you get used to it. But certainly I don't remember CR being like chewing on peat. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 23, 2022 6:30:28 GMT -8
It's really difficult to shop at non-woke stories. So the choice is usually between woke, hard-woke, and woke-light. Target went hard-woke and it started when these Vandals got rid of the Salvation Army Santa. I haven't been in the store in a long while.
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Post by kungfuzu on May 23, 2022 11:55:12 GMT -8
Two more people with superior taste. Your brother must have been some pilot to fly an F-111. I always loved that plane, regardless of what many said. |
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Post by kungfuzu on May 23, 2022 12:03:06 GMT -8
I grew up in the garment business, my father being a manufacturer's rep. I would travel with him during the summer from the time I was 12 or 13 years old, until I was 18. I saw all sorts of stores, from the mom-and-pop store which was still common before Jimmy Carter became president and killed them with inflation and high interest rates, to those like TG&Y and Walmart. Many of the salesmen I knew would make fun of Target by calling it Targe', dropping the t, like the French. They would also sometimes make fun of J.C. Penny by calling it Jacques Penne'. I even worked at Target for some months, but it was in their cafe'. Believe it or not, I was the short order cook.
So true. I also left them when they got rid of the Salvation Army.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 23, 2022 16:02:50 GMT -8
 I believe it. Out of the blue the topic of Target came up with my brothers who I had lunch with today. The older brother said that Target was where you can find the hottest chicks. (That's been my experience as well.) And at Walmart is where you go to lose your sense of hope for humanity. Or something like that. Why not dress in your pajamas to go shopping? Many apparently do. |
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Post by artraveler on May 23, 2022 16:47:58 GMT -8
My brother drove the 111 until he retired from the AF in 1980. He made LC and squadron command. He had a great AF career. Commissioned in 1950, just in time for Korea he drove saber and super sabers. He was actually my half brother and 15 years older then I. He passed in 2005 at 72 in San Antonio and his wife in 2015. As I have said we are a military family.
McClellan AFB was the primary repair depot for the F-111 during the Vietnam years. The facility was run by an E-8 Senior Master Sargent who had been offered commissioning as a Major in 1968 and turned it down because he loved to work on planes. He had degrees in engineering both aeronautical and chemical. He kept turning down commission because it would have made him a desk jockey.
In about 1985 I took a Soviet visitor on a tour of the base. He was amazed at the number of NCOs that had what in the USSR would be command authority. Running a major repair facility would be a generals job in the USSR and, I suspect, it still is in today's Russia and China. The further away we get from the expertise of our NCOs the less we are a quality fighting force.
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Post by artraveler on May 23, 2022 16:58:54 GMT -8
Believe it or not, I was the short order cook. Ahh, the joys of youth. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 23, 2022 18:11:02 GMT -8
 The Sabre was one of the best looking aircraft ever made. I have lots of memories from childhood. This is the plane I had as a gleaming-silver metal toy and (I think) a plastic Revell model as well. These were featured in nearly any sci-fi movie on TV worth its salt when the Air Force had to be called upon to repel an alien invasion. The Super Sabre isn't chopped liver either, but a little modern for my taste.  I believe that is a central theme for Tom Cruise in the upcoming Top Gun movie |
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Post by kungfuzu on May 24, 2022 14:42:34 GMT -8
This is my favorite livery for the F-86.  |
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 25, 2022 5:38:21 GMT -8
Magnificent
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 25, 2022 6:42:03 GMT -8
I'm through five of the six episodes (plus there is a season two Christmas Special) of Tudor Monastery Farm.
Ruth claims that hygiene was becoming a big thing even though people didn't know precisely about bacteria and such. But certainly (as Ruth demonstrates) dairy farmers had to have an emphasis on cleanliness or else the products would quickly go bad.
And, surprisingly, not a bit of soap is involved in cleaning the butter churn and other instruments. There are four primary ingredients (and in this order): Scrub with salt. Scrub with ash (the alkali nature of it is good for cutting through grease and fat). Finish with a boiling-water rinse. Then, on the next sunny day, lay everything out to bake in the cleansing UV rays even though they apparently did not specifically know about UV rays.
Before the coming of potatoes, peas were a staple crop. These peas are a little different from the ones we grow today. And their technique was to let them dry out in the fields and then harvest the whole plant with a scythe. The vegetation would then be "thrashed" (just like it sounds) and the dried peas would be separated. The dried stalks and such could then be fed to the animals.
They do a segment on printing and book binding that was very interesting and included the kinds of details often missing from these series. I may go back and watch that again. They had moved on from using parchment (mostly sheepskin) to "linen." And "linen" is interesting because it was basically taking old rags and other material (and presumably bleaching them) and grinding them up and throwing in a tub of water. You'd put a mesh screen in the water to catch a layer of the stuff and you'd then have a sheet of paper after it dried out.
They do some lead mining. What I found particularly interesting is that, at least in this mine, the lead ore would often comprise 85% or so of the material. Contrast that with other types of mining where, I think, if you have just a few percent that is considered good. So you knew if you had a piece of lead ore because it was substantially heavier.
But with all things smelting, I'm surprised with how much wood they needed to use to extract the ore. And with lead it was a two-stage process. The initial burn would get you your basic lead (with all kinds of impurities in it, including sulfur). You'd then refine it (that is, get lots and lots of wood and heat it again) one more time and then you'd have proper heaps of lead. The church used oodles of lead for roofing and stained glass windows so it could be a profitable sideline. But I couldn't help thinking that the forests must have been vanishing rather quickly.
The running theme in this series is the centrality of the church, which owned much of the land. If you wanted to do damn near anything, it required the permission of the local abbey. And if permission was granted, they would get their cut.
You were expected to eat fish two or three times a week. But the fish that normal folks had was salted fish or whatever. Not fresh fish. The fresh fish (at least in the area of this series) had to come out of a river. And you needed the monastery's permission to catch those fish. And the major "fish" they caught, and that seemed to be highly prized by all, were the eels. Looking at them, I would hardly consider them a fish. But apparently they were very good eating and were the staple fish of a monk's table.
All in all, there are a lot of vignettes of life in Tudor England on the farm in this series. And this is almost entirely farm life, not village life or city life. Those things would probably be an entirely different reality.
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Post by kungfuzu on May 25, 2022 8:43:48 GMT -8
One of the books I am presently reading is titled The Cloister and the Hearth. It is set in 15th century Europe, i.e. shortly before the Tudor's grabbed the English Crown. The novel is known for its fidelity to historical detail as opposed to much of the nonsense one generally encounters today. Perhaps this is because it was written in 1861 before the insanity of "progressivism" had taken hold of the West. Arthur Conan Doyle considered it the best historical novel ever written. It sounds like the Tudor Farm is also true to history. At least as regards the tools and methods available to the people of those days. |
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 25, 2022 9:02:57 GMT -8
After I finish my latest Murderbot story, I may move on to that if I can find it.
It doesn't look like a lot of sleight-of-hand and other nonsense is included. But not being an expert in the period, who knows? And although they sometimes make light of praying for their crops, they surprisingly don't do a hatchet job on religion.
Instead of having to caution us every step of the way so that we know who and what to hate, they simply present the church as a fact of life at the time. Much like today's anti-religious, environmental wackos who center their life around Leftism (but not in the same obnoxious way), the church was central to most aspects of life. And not necessarily devotional aspects. People did obviously go to church. But it was pretty much the way you told time. There was a saint's day almost every day. So instead of saying "I'll see you next Thursday" they might say "I'll see you the day after Saint Philip's day." Stuff like that.
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