By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
A sparkling work by the Leos Janacek. A bit longer than usual but worth the time. Enjoy the music and enjoy your Sunday!
More Posts by Jace
User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
A sparkling work by the Leos Janacek. A bit longer than usual but worth the time. Enjoy the music and enjoy your Sunday!
More Posts by Jace
from on this day in history:
1776 – The statue of King George III was pulled down in New York City.
and 2015 – In South Carolina, the Confederate flag was removed from the Capitol grounds and taken to a state military museum.
the new Yorker “A Week of Gun Violence Does Nothing to Change the N.R.A.’s Message”
The Dallas ambush has also exposed an uncomfortable fact for the gun-rights movement: for decades, even as it maintains its abstract tributes to law enforcement, it has embraced a strain of insurrectionist rhetoric, overtly anti-government activism that endorses the notion that civilians should have guns for use against American police and military. In a 1995 fund-raising letter, the executive vice-president of the N.R.A., Wayne LaPierre, called federal law-enforcement agents “jack-booted thugs,” and suggested that “in Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.” In Texas, where the police ambush occurred, an open-carry advocate last year urged the killing of state legislators if they do not approve a more relaxed policy. (“They better start giving us our rights or this peaceful non-cooperation stuff is gonna be gamed up . . . We should be demanding [Texas legislators] give us our rights back, or it’s punishable by death. Treason.”) At the annual N.R.A. convention last year, the board member Ted Nugent said, “Our government has turned on us.” Stopping short of calling for violence, he urged members to focus their ire on “the bad and the ugly.” He said, “It’s a target-rich environment. If it was duck season, there’d be so many ducks, you could just close your eyes and shoot ’em.”
Awaiting the morning glory here….we are in the middle of a heat wave. Bink = Nash??? I have enjoyed the comments. The good, old US of AA has downed a hefty cocktail of war, returning vets, climate change, population pressures, bigotry, easy weapons along with some bad food. We have tens of millions of homeless roaming the earth…stressed and sick. The pugs reaction to stress? Corpse trump. A foul mouthed, walking mental disorder who brags about shooting humans in the street. Entertainer in chief. And if I hear one more time that Celebrity Apprentice was a reality show? What a joke.
Sadly, even with a black President…crimes against blacks continue. I am sure if a woman makes it to the WH as President? Crimes against women will increase. Stupid humans needs to lash out…I remember when the Australian Croc man was killed by a stingray. Foolish men went out and killed innocent stingrays to get even. Must be the testosterone.
2016 seems to be one of those pivot years in my life…unsettling and scary for me. When I am scared? I really cling to humor and science. I am struggling with finding anything funny about this summer’s violence. So, I am heavily involved in science…from the dinosaurs to our solar system to artificial intelligence. I appreciate your post on Juno, Craig. Lately, hubby and I have been discussing how the dinosaurs must have lived and interacted. We have our modern day birds to watch as they interact with each other. The dinosaurs were here for 125 million years and I am sure their society was organized via pecking order and communication. Plus, those feathers! I remember when scientists claimed birds were not of the dinosaur family, that changed again recently. Too bad politics cannot claim the same evolution of thought. We punish humans for statements made tens of years ago, but we evolve as humans. I guess the problem starts with the fact that many humans can’t evolve under the republican platform because they reject science and evolution.
As for artificial intelligence? I really love to fantasize about the singularity. I believe we will eventually have living furniture…chairs that react to humans with heat, coolness, support, etc. Handicapped humans, sick humans will be recognized by the chair or sofa to add support, etc. Forget about the mechanical, hard plastic beings. Scientists continue to develop soft materials that react chemically without computer code to move all to help humans, not destroy them.
pogo, i have a feeling you’ll empathize with Hiaasen’s “Enjoy your vacation on Playa Guacamole”
They say a picture tells a thousand words.
If it’s a picture of an algae-covered beach, it can also cancel thousands of hotel reservations.
That’s the new dread in Florida, as photos and news videos of gunk-covered shorelines are making headlines all over the world. Why would anyone bring their families to vacation on Playa Guacamole?
And do they even make haz-mat suits in children’s sizes?
bw, great comment. love the living furniture concept. hope it will also have a self-cleaning and pet hair removal system.
my new brood of backyard chickens (buffy, betty, betsy and bert) could answer your musing on “how the dinosaurs must have lived and interacted. We have our modern day birds to watch as they interact with each other. The dinosaurs were here for 125 million years and I am sure their society was organized via pecking order and communication.” a veritable lillyputian jurassic park right here in my garden. this ted talk confirms it:
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He’s found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he’s taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a “Chickenosaurus”.
click in starting at 10 minutes in for the specific nitty gritty.
Ex ungue leonem
sturge, if you can tell a lion by his claws, wonder if you can tell a politician by his manicure? by his guns? or tweets?
I think one does best by following their spoor……
Probably why you don’t find many to take the gig……
Binknex?
Flagler Plants. Florida coastal algae.
This morning has been spent with the Tour de France on the television, it started at 6am EDT, while going through the various media sites. Science Sunday gave me a look at AI based on rat heart cells, gold and silicon to make a ray type thing that reacts to light by swimming. A robot that lays bricks, not cost effective to replace humans. All major human killing diseases have a declining rate, the totals are high, but so is the population, the percentage of humans dying is down.
AI will not be true artificial until it is not a silicon based computer. Look for the merging of brain cells with silicon, or similar, to create an organic computer. That is when AI will become more than ones and zeroes.
Science Sunday also gave me a crash course into Japanese beetles. Nasty little beasties. May the traps kill many of them. The reason I learned much about them is they are enjoying my banana plant. Not nice, I do not take kindly to things eating my plants.
No Transparencyin Washington: How Senate members get away with burying campaign finances
Senators are going through policy loopholes to hide finance reports, and Mitch McConnell is helping them do it
… In this, the 16th year of the 21st century, members and would-be members of the U.S. Congress’s upper chamber continue to send their campaign finance forms to the authorities on paper using the U.S. mail.
It’s egregiously inefficient, not to mention unecological, as the reports that have to be printed out generally run thousands of pages. It delays disclosure, and it costs taxpayers nearly $700,000 a year.
Yo Sturg. Enjoyed one of your anecdotes lately about meeting some famous musician, the identity of whom I’m embarrassed to admit I forget at the moment. Good post, though, thanks.
Yo’s and salutations to you,also, xrep. As you are aware, we live in a country where it’s legal to buy a gun but not legal to buy body armor, so if ever a reasonable solution is to be found, it will be at least a generation from now.
Jace… I listened to about 1/2 of it…. nice piece.
Craig… I wish I knew what was up with Nash… I really miss him.
Spent yesterday at an American Legion picnic… steamed clams and barbecued chicken…. YUM! The whole family was there because the Legion was giving a special award to Rick’s dad for being a member for 70 years.
I also wish that people would stop thinking that just because you say cops shouldn’t use deadly force on anyone except in extreme situations doesn’t mean you’re anti-police. I was on my town’s police force many moons ago. I did smaller detail work… crosswalk guard, school dances, sporting events, stuff in town that required traffic direction. I did get some training but wasn’t a full officer… didn’t carry a gun. The job did give me a real appreciation for what it takes to be a small town cop. My heart goes out to the families of those 5 officers in Dallas.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again- expand public education and ban private education (home school included, the dumbest educational trend, ever), or continue to watch society spiral down the drain.
Hullo, Bink. We’re making a start–Under Armor.
Bink, I went to an Eastern prep school and received a marvelous liberal education. Indeed, the Founders would have created sites such as this had they not died long before the Internets came into existence. I would agree if you argued in favor of bans against government sponsored scholarships for attendance at any “private” school.
I left for Cleveland Thursday morning, attended the funeral and commiserated with my uncle and other relatives, then left for a motel that i had booked near Akron. I was home late Friday afternoon. Rosie performed flawlessly and achieved about 24-mpg despite my lead foot. Traffic was horrendous. And I was in a state of total exhaustion upon my arrival home.
Jace, thank you for the Janáček. A thought just went through what’s left of my mind–did Handel ever do fanfares?
The system is broken….thats what ive been hearing about all of this……NO it is not. The system is working just like it was intended to work. We invented the concept of Race! We practice daily to identify people as Caucasian, Asian, Latin, etc etc……we never talk about the similarities of us al
A dying white, black, latin or any person at all that is in need of a blood transfusion…..will not ask any questions about where it came from….there is so such thing as being racist when it comes to organ replacements….all it has to do is to have it matched and excepted…..
There are 3 different types of blood identifiers…..four different types of blood that differentiates one person from another: they are Blood types O….which !is the oldest blood type….in evolution, coming out of Africa we were all type Os…all of our ancestors!!!!!
As we left africa…due to environment, food and climate…A and B types evolved as we apes evolved by conquering mother earth…it
is that simple…….The system is broken when we cant teach these facts in the proper way, our teachers (in some way) have failed us in this regards…and so did the government…big time
Type A and Bs also evolved (Os did too) into sub blood types….a positive, negative, etc, etc.
So…..how many people know this? this should be taught in pre-school and in in much more detail in all of the grades afterwards.
I also blame the GREEDY Police unions that are in place…..they are just as bad the few %age of rotten apples in the barrels as all of organized religions protecting the small %age of pedophile priest…….6%…..but that is a huge number!!!
In Boston when Cardinal Law got busted (and promoted by the vatican-sent to Rome) There were about 1,500 priest involved…..90 of them raping and hurting young children…..which many committed suicide,…
They system (the two party system) is broken when you think of how many cities, towns, villages are in the USA….how many churches and priest, pastors, etc are involved….6% is a mind boggling number to me….
So when people tell me that in both Religion and in the police force…there are only a few bad apples in the barrel……they haven’t really given this problem much thought…….
So my solution would be to start now…start teaching real life…..stop teaching REVISED HISTORY…..it only confuses.
The small %ge of bad cops know that the union have their backs….so they get away with Murder……….how to change all of this?????
Now im not blaming Obama….but he sure blew a big chance to start the ball rolling…….but when we have only a two party system…..what can we expect…….more of the same……..later
to ban or not to ban certain weapons seems a distraction to me from what a key point the 2nd amdt refers to: a WELL-REGULATED militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…
“regulated” (even putting aside the “well-” part) connotes regulations, rules, laws, licensing, certain curbs etc. and seems to me the pro-gunners, nra and the constitutional originalists conveniently overlook that word in their arguments. regulations can encompass not only which weaponry is allowable and which aren’t due to all sorts of reasonable reasons (think here unsafe automobiles on the road, unsafe medications, unsafe foodstuff being sold) but also who is competent (agewise, mentally, trained sufficiently) to use, store and sell them.
Oh yeah.
YO BLINK, where you been?
The names of people killed by the police used to never make the light of day and now only the ones that have social media do
There is a lot of talk about Tamir Rice but there was a child killed in the same circumstances in Sonoma County but it is never mentioned
This is not something that just happened and people of good intent have been working on the problem for years but until everyone is on a common ground of understanding — nothing will change. And of course the goopers believe inaction is always the solution
Solar… why don’t you tell us what you really think there, buddy….
hmmm…. let me guess… Lord Binkingham… I still love annoying orange…
Please leave nature alone. We have enough issues without trying to create a poor chickensaurus.
TX encourages home schooling. They have free K-12 online. I can understand not wanting to send your child to school to be exposed to lockdown/shooter drills. And I know an anti-vaxxer couple who home school. They were both public school teachers until about 10 years ago.
OOops, it bink now…..not blink….explain the bink please…….later going to get my motor home ready for a local 5 day camping, and hiking, bike, trip,
Renee, From personal experience with the Cops some good and some bad i had to make a comment, cant sugar coat this in any way….and I have 3 wonderful nephews that are cops….one is in gang homicide department…i can see how he is affected by it all…..he has a great heart, I worry about him the most….the other two are state troopers, and interact with people all of the time…..we talk often about how to stay in the right frame of mind…..they dont talk too much about these things…but i know that they respect “civilians” all of the time……..and all people…..this was taught to them since birth by my Sister Maria….XXX
We don’t have to confiscate firearms.
1. We could simply ban the manufacture, purchase/sale, and import.
2. We could draft all firearms for use in the well-ordered militia.
3. Alternatively, we could all buy firearms and kill the officers of the nra and weapons manufacturers.
Numbers 1 & 2 seem more humane. I’m nothing if not humane.
Solar, I think I’d be more concerned about your nephews in the Hwy Patrol. The way people drive, yikes.
XR,
U think?….next month we are going to have our annual family picnic…..get to know new just born kiddys, ….my nephews will be there…..they are going to be surprised when i tell them that i have applied for a foid card. and will have a license to carry…..none of these shootings have swayed me to this….but now that im traveling around a little…..i will protect Judy and My self…and if stopped….will keep my hand where an police officer can see them at all times……..
Maybe will say….officer i have a weapon and licenses to carry in my wallet…..also five hidden cameras around my motor home taking pics as we talk……Smile for me will you….see you when i get back…..later….say hello to The Tony Baloney for me….and to all of the other trail mixers…….
PS….Chloe, I thought about you when all of this Dallas thing Happened….as i always think about you and the others on Carols blog…
I’d like to single out Jeanine Piro for the Ann Coulter Award Best inappropriate dress and comments
SC,
“1 Maybe will say….officer i have a weapon and licenses to carry in my wallet”
When I was stopped I removed my DL and CWP from my billfold with the billfold elevated so the officer could see what I was doing through the rear window. By the time he got to the car, I had the window down and doors unlocked. As he was eyeballing things, i said “Officer, I have a loaded weapon in the vehicle. Here is my DL and CWP.” He thanked and went back to his vehicle and did whatever. When he came back he asked if I knew what I had done to which I said yes saying I was unfamiliar with the terrain. He asked me if I was okay? I replied in the affirmative. He said, “Okay, you can go.” I thanked him and apologized for my mistake while driving.
flatus, wonder what he would have done had you answered when he asked if you were okay “well, officer, I do have a touch of Alzheimer’s now and then” 🙂
It has been a very long time since I purchased a product which had outrageous claims, and it worked. Think of a beer, any beer, it may have made the end of the night date seem, eh, more interesting. Or your bath soap, you still look the same in the mirror. But, Japanese beetle traps. Wow. The label said by the pound. Yeah sure. I checked the traps. The damned bugs are dive bombing into the bags. Now that is something better than expected.
Following DT’s progress on a VP. It seems yesterday the campaign leaked it was ‘looking at’ a retired U.S. general, who happens to strongly disagree with Obama on national defense issues. Good stuff for the loon, right? The general is a Democrat, who this morning strongly supports a woman’s choice. Oh well, the carny may or may not care, his stance varies from jailing the woman to pro-choice (sort of). I would love to sit in with the RNC talking about this one.
Mr Cracker and I were stopped and let go for something wrong which we were doing. I think he let us go because we are old white people
Pat I’m sure that is what he was asking. He was a kind man. I suspect he would have asked for my weapon then asked if there is someone he could call to help in getting me home.
a bit of carl Bernstein in an interview update of his bio of Hillary:
In “A Woman in Charge,” you wrote about three pillars that describe the life of Hillary Clinton. What are they?
Big surprise. Family, religion, and public service. And those commitments are real. There is nothing fake about them. And they inform everything she does and has done.
cnn editors note: As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump kick off their general election showdown, CNN went beyond the headlines and spoke with the authors of their most comprehensive biographies.
interesting stuff worth reading about her father as she was growing up. might explain a few things for folks.
flatus, yep, not a good idea to joke with them. hard to come by a law man prone to frivolity.
For transgender people interaction with police is not pleasant, especially early on in transition. We call it DWT, driving while trans. My first traffic stop resulted in seven violations, including no registration or insurance, even though I handed the office the registration and insurance. The total number of violations was reduced to three by the judge. None were valid, but I would rather pay and get the hell away from them and jail than fight. I was lucky, other trans people, usually male to female, have been jailed, in the mens side. Or attacked by the cop and then jailed. Or just killed outright. Traffic stops are to be feared, especially if you do not have your gender marker match your presentation. After a few years the stops ended, I guess I look like who I am now.
I’ve been sitting here listening to Dir Comey’s inquisition by the House Committee on Why Didn’t You Follow Our Agenda compliments of c-span. Absolutely fascinating. Gaining much respect for the former Republican Mr Comey.
Another day with 104-deg temps and heat indexes above 110. This makes 8-days in a row tying the post-Colombian record.
I was stopped shortly after I moved to TX; still had out of state plates on the car. No light over the license plate. He let me go.
My boyfriend’s bro-in-law was a cop in that town. He told me that I was stopped for driving a crappy, old car through a nice neighborhood at night.
I was stopped by a cop one day in the ’70s. I rolled down the window and waited patiently with my hands on the steering wheel. I could see that policeman approaching in rear view mirror. My mind wandered; I reviewed my driving, wondering what the hell I’d done wrong. A loud double click behind my left ear yanked me from my reverie. Turning my head, I looked into the barrel of the cop’s revolver. It was all too quick for me to respond. He jerked the weapon up, un-cocked it, and put it into his holster. “It ain’t him !”he yelled at his partner, turned, and walked away.
There is already precedent for illegal weaponry….machine guns, so to speak, Thompson sub-machine guns to pinpoint a bit……get caught with one of them and oooooh you’re in for it……but the pushing is not only against certain weaponry, the push from the other side is to ALLOW machine guns……so, as usual, it’s a cross-roads.
Lordy, X, that’s scary.
The bottom half page of today’s Dallas Morning News is an editorial.
The top half is a crying eye.
By the way, that moo-jicians feller was the Lone Wolf absolute Monarch of 70’s Nashville music, Hank Williams, Jr.
and I got to to watch him pee.
Ok, I didn’t see it, but I could see his back, and I HEARD it……
Bink has passed thru……..my heart soars like a hawk……….
sometimes effusive is just a state of mind.
One thing that irritates me more than a mosquito in my bedroom are bogus arrests by cops (a mild example, better than saying a nuke in the countdown step). You see and hear of it all the time. No problem except someone is using their First Amendment rights to protest and the cops or political power mongers do not like it. So there are arrests and many dumped into jail for some bogus reason. Impeding traffic. Resisting arrest. Inciting a riot. You get the idea.
This last week has had many bogus arrests of protesters. They are being held in jail and often cannot make bail. Also, as someone who performed paralegal work for the National Lawyers Guild I do trust the local Louisiana Lawyers Guild for doing the work necessary to help these people out of jail and have their legal fees covered. I have just contributed to help a person make bail out of Baton Rouge jail.
There is rage and hate out there. But there is also a lot of care and compassion. I always try to be on the good side and try to help someone who is in a bad place just for being who they are. I hope you see what I believe in and will do what you know is needed too.
We will then have to address Ryder trucks, pressure cookers, fertilizer, nails, etc.
It’s time to address the root problems (and there are many). Mental health care for starters.
One of these days I gotta tell ya about the time I cheated death on O-My-God Road between Evergreen, Color-raydo and the interstate.
not only cheated that bastard, but had him check my tires…….
Sturge
You are the best
There is a saying in Colorado “pray for me, I drive Colorado 119”. Which could be almost any road, street or highway which goes into the foothills and mountains. That means you also come down them.
I coulda been a contendah…….I coulda BEEN somebody……instead of just a palooka, which is all I am, Charlie, a palooka from palookaville…….
( from memory)
Ms Graham Cracker….I find it hard to sustain the notion of being “best” when I hold a hard and fast opinion that that accolade belongs totally to you……
ill work it out of course, so that we both may reign, but remember: you….are the best.
and if I’m in the neighborhood ill drop by and we’ll compare notes…….me and you and mr cracker and perhaps we’ll cut the cards for who might rule the roost of cool…..
I fancy tHat it will wind up as a joint sharing kind of thing……
We totally can do this together
You can get a tommy gun or other fully automatic sub machine gun or machine gun. You just need the Federal license, which is pricey. One could once get a disabled smg or mg, and then separately buy the necessary part that’d make it work. These purchases could be made simultaneously from the same source. I don’t know if this dodge is still possible.
One of my favorite words, ever, aside from hearing an Englishman say garage, it
Palooka
Remember it from the fifties…….Such a woid!
X…..I was meaning that the precedent exists for banning “certain firearms”
its not a foreign concept
The sturgeon and the kat cut cards to see which reigns supreme. There has to be a beast fable in this,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvu3xiFmfDU
me and mike, the currently stroked-out bass player used to do this all the time…..I’d be Flo and he’d be Eddie.
We were both good……but mike was GOOD……
Kickstart a gun buy-back (then destroy the guns, obv)
Speaking of cards:
I’ve been called a “palooka” in the last decade. Remember it like it was yesterday, however.
Sturgeone, I agree.
We don’t allow felons to have firearms. We don’t allow people to have grenades, landmines, bombs, or poison gas, which are also armaments. We can certainly prevent mentally ill people from buying firearms, just as we prevent sane people from buying grenades, and felons from buying .17 pistols.
To hear Brando say Palooka is to experience the heights of any entertainment medium since Euripides Pants, Eumenides Pants circa way back there, or there a ’bouts…..
Palooka was popular from the 30s to the 50s. One-legged Al Capp beat Joe Palooka to a bloody pulp, to become the cartoon champion of the world.
And that includes Chico and Groucho in ” I give up….Why a duck?”
I coodaben a contedah.
Capp really pissed me absolutely the eff off when he went after “Joanie Phonie”
he and I parted ways.
Should have brought my grease gun home with me.
I’ve heard interesting tidbits about how Trudeau was, shall we say, instrumental in capping off Capp……
Could use contributor posts going forward
My girlfriend’s grandmother,in 66 or so, in Hendersonville, NC was a half Mexican who escaped some sort of Mexican purge in her youth……and when I visited their house she would play all of Joan,s folk albums…….
and this jerk-off cartoonist is going to run over Joan?
Nahhhh. Not today.
I’m afraid Al had gone ’round the bend and down to live in Skunk Holler in the mid-late ’60s. It was a terrible loss to the world of fun and humor. sigh. Hank Ketchum also went all right wing and moved to Switzerland.
But, we still had Walt Kelly, Hal Foster, and Charles Schultz.
I’m supposed to feel sorry for the bullfighter who died? No. He had a choice, the bull did not. I always root for the bulls when the idiots run in Pamplona, too. (It took 3 tries for autocorrect not to assume I meant the Chicago Bulls.)
To channel some Hemingway from death in the afternoon the corrida del toros is not a sport, it is a tragedy…..as ancient as humans……
everybody knows the score……except the bull, of course, he finds out as it goes along…….
It sucks to die.
Smile- you’re alive!
Smile I got would dim the lights
In the first chapter of the first volume of the Fran Merriwell adventure series, we find that Bink was the name of one of Frank Merriwell’s pals at Yale. Bink is ‘head-over-heals in love at first sight’ over the tall and stately Stella Stanley. ‘…little Bink voted her a “peach”, a “stunner,” a “queen.” When a Yale man calls a girl a queen, he is giving her the highest possible compliment.’
Are you, by any chance, a relative or descendant of said Bink ?
I have a fairly extensive collection of Frank Merriwell, Dick Merriwell, and Frank Merriwell Jr. dime novels.
Wonder how I missed those guys……..I read a bunch of Bomba the jungle boy, the Wlaltons, trixie Belden, and the Bobbsey Twins…..
the govt was channelling my reading, little did I suspect at the time……
why govt? It was GEX……….government employees exchange…..
had a lot of fun reading.
And of course……….Walter Brooks author of all the Freddie the Pig Books which had nothing at all to do with the govt as I found him on my own out of sheer boredom down at the old un-airconditioned Charleston Library, used to be on Rutledge Ave. across the street from my aunt’s apartment where my mother would go see her sometimes and if she was little too drunk I’d be shunted to the library……
Got your post Flatus, thanks
Yo crete, wino, kgc, renee; yo’s around.
I composed a response to your earlier post, Flatus, and then my device ran out of power right as I was about to submit it. I took that as a sign that it wasn’t worthy of posting, even though I thought it was. Far be it from me to contest the forum Gods!
Blue,
+1 here on the neccessity of developing a new national mental health paradigm, to echo your earlier sentiment.
Peace.