tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32353263013137159242024-02-20T19:45:21.131-06:00FireBrand...to have done the best things in the worst times and to have hoped them in the most calamitousElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.comBlogger479125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-50058775271252540272014-05-14T09:19:00.000-05:002014-09-25T14:30:24.571-05:00The blog is closed [Updated] [Updated again September 25, 2014][Update again: My email address has changed. The new one has been updated to my profile.]
[Update: Okay, now my email address really is in my profile (View My Complete Profile). Thanks to DL Sly for letting me know it wasn't there before - and for figuring out how to let me know without the address being there.]
Perhaps permanently; I don’t know at this point. Comments are also closed but you Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-23632064564737873162014-05-13T15:57:00.000-05:002014-05-13T15:57:28.861-05:00Speedy chiliI have a chili recipe. It started life in the recipe book that came with my aunt’s CrockPot, lo these many years (really decades) ago, but has been modified extensively through contact with outside influences: roommates, old boyfriends, that kind of thing. In its current incarnation it calls for: garlic, onion, ground meat; canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste; kidney beans; mushrooms; andElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-23373045353110641252014-05-12T16:32:00.000-05:002014-05-12T16:32:05.433-05:00To hell in a handbasketI’m pretty much convinced that the country is going to hell in a handbasket. I’m self-aware enough and have enough of a sense of humor to realize this may be a result of getting older. I turned sixty in January and when someone at my birthday party asked me whether being sixty felt different than being fifty-nine, I said yes. I’m now old enough to officially be a curmudgeon; I can talk about Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-25613948267300360802014-05-09T17:03:00.000-05:002014-05-09T17:03:15.046-05:00The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.I got a truly lovely YouTube video of an Icelandic hymn from my husband who found it at John Scalzi’s website. Based on information in the comments at Scalzi’s site, the poem is from the 13th Century but the music was written in the 1970s.
At least a couple of the commenters at YouTube gave translations and one also gave some background information:
Hear creator of the heavens
what the poet Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-22299150241611727272014-05-06T09:28:00.000-05:002014-05-06T09:28:14.770-05:00Alumna?According to NRO:
Islamist militant group Boko Haram said they abducted more than 200 girls last month in northeast Nigeria, and they “will sell them in the market, by Allah.” [snip]
Protesters in Nigeria are angered over government inaction. Nigeria’s first lady Patience Jonathan allegedly ordered police to arrest two protest leaders, and publicly doubted that any girls were kidnapped.
I’d Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-18837570178112948022014-05-04T11:32:00.000-05:002014-05-04T11:32:41.644-05:00The Bandar-log "They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten.”
Baloo warning Mowgli about the Bandar-log in “Kaa’s Hunting” from The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Yesterday afternoon I saw a very short teaser ad for one of the network news programs. I’m 99 and 44/100ths Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-84184902354646703012014-05-03T16:29:00.000-05:002014-05-03T16:29:11.802-05:00Not so muchSomeone at The Wall Street Journal is writing about “The Coming Two-Tier Health System” being created under ObamaCare. Why is ObamaCare going to give us a two-tier system? Because:
- fewer doctors are willing to take Medicaid and Medicare patients;
- the “bloating coverage requirements” imposed by ObamaCare are increasing the cost of private insurance;
- reducing Medicaid and Medicare Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-91530780098510638062014-04-28T10:13:00.000-05:002014-04-28T10:13:29.957-05:00The Gosnell movie [Some of the links may contain graphic and disturbing images and descriptions.]
Someone wants to make a movie about Kermit Gosnell and has turned to crowd-funding to finance the film. You can read the fund-raising pitch here; the campaign closes on May 12, 2014. You can read some of the backstory on the movie and see a couple of PSAs supporting it at HotAir.
I don’t know anything about the Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-61453955968203572452014-04-24T17:13:00.000-05:002014-04-24T17:13:41.269-05:00Unknown unknownsI have from time to time read - or attempted to read - writings by modern atheists. My most notable attempt - and failure - involved reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I didn’t get very far into before giving up. I simply could not figure out what he was writing about; it certainly didn’t seem to be God or theology or religion as I understood it. I could only assume that Dawkins’ entireElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-26741510375412775612014-04-24T13:46:00.000-05:002014-04-24T13:46:05.851-05:00Enfant PerduBut war and justice have far different laws,
And worthless acts are often done quite well;
The rascal’s shots were better than his cause,
And I was hit - and hit again, and fell
[from Enfant Perdu by Heinrich Heine, Lord Houghton’s translation]
I yield to no one in my insistence that women (and girls) need to learn to ask for what they want rather than expecting the government (or anyone or Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-75554682714799127462014-04-19T14:26:00.000-05:002014-04-19T14:26:13.410-05:00Apples and orangesThere’s a brouhaha about the Census Bureau changing the questions, asked annually, about whether a respondent has health insurance. Since the change is occurring just as ObamaCare is implemented and since preliminary tests of the new questions show that fewer people end up counted as uninsured, many on the Right are making two claims:
1) The fact that the new questions show fewer people are Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-26770538176245351862014-04-17T11:25:00.000-05:002014-04-17T11:25:04.078-05:00The view from the other sideWhen I wrote about Brandeis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently, I ran across some bits and pieces I think are worth noting although they didn’t fit neatly into my post.
A little data dropout
It’s instructive to note the difference between how the New York Times reports Ms. Hirsi Ali’s background and how the Brandies student newspaper does so. The New York Times:
Even some of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s critics Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-7094501024868412282014-04-15T15:16:00.000-05:002014-04-15T15:16:44.345-05:00Just another obscure non-contextualized allegationHere is an excerpt from the Brandeis University student newspaper’s April 8 article about the outcry over the decision to grant Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree:
Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG) [snip] wrote that she was “astonished to find out that this choice, to honor Ms. Hirsi Ali for her contributions to ‘women’s rights,’ had been made without consulting the [Women and Gender Studies] CoreElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-58064320186666233052014-04-15T12:51:00.000-05:002014-04-15T12:51:07.524-05:00Fewer pleaseHaving discovered shortly before Opening Day that MLB.com would allow us to watch one free baseball game per day via Roku, my husband and I have watched far too much baseball over the last couple of weeks. As we’ve done so, I’ve noticed that most baseball announcers seem unfamiliar with the word “fewer”. Thus we hear that “Team A has less hits than any other in the majors” and that “Pitcher B hasElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-74002137013936247402014-04-14T11:18:00.000-05:002014-04-14T11:18:49.772-05:00A list of one's ownDear Miss Manners:
Those of us working for women’s rights have been advised to take a “ladylike” approach. We tried emulating the behavior of our opposition, but this hardly seemed ladylike. Could you provide a precise definition of “ladylike”?
Gentle Reader:
A lady is, above all, someone who is passionately concerned that others be treated with dignity, fairness, and justice. It has always been Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-34514322778796085672014-04-08T10:52:00.000-05:002014-04-08T10:52:56.929-05:00House of Congressmen[Spoiler Alert: I don’t tell you anything that actually happened in the first season of the US version of House of Cards but I do give you a general sense of how things went.]
I watched the first season of House of Cards but almost certainly won’t watch the second season. I love revenge movies, TV shows, books, and I enjoyed House of Cards through most of the season. By the last few episodes, Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-35870628096172666222014-02-18T18:01:00.003-06:002014-02-18T18:02:19.433-06:00While I'm awayI changed the sub-title; the old one seems far too smug. The new one is a piece of a quote from a four-year old post of mine called "The best things".
Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-61978378756677891132014-02-18T12:04:00.001-06:002014-02-18T12:04:43.864-06:00And... disappearing again (sorry for the whiplash)I’m stepping away from the Internet for the next six weeks. I hope everyone survives the rest of Winter and that Spring is well on its way by the time I check back in.
Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-28163197747892794852014-02-13T15:08:00.000-06:002014-02-13T15:08:30.221-06:00Home againWe drove home last week, coming up from Lower Alabama where it was supposed to be warm (hah!) to New Jersey, where it was not supposed to be exactly warm but was supposed to be warmer than it has been. Despite the miserable weather that swept through much of the Southeast during January, we didn’t see any significant snow cover until we drove into Pennsylvania. Who knew snowstorms - or perhaps Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-35040757585647418912013-12-28T06:19:00.000-06:002013-12-28T06:19:19.097-06:00Off the gridI’m going to have very limited access to the Internet for the next six weeks so I won’t be blogging and comments are shut down.
I thought I’d leave you with a video (Via Ace of Spades). Someone set a camera up in front of his fireplace and let it run for about three hours. Every so often he pokes the fire or puts a new long on it. The fire burns nicely and the snaps and crackles are almost Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-50809073055935332722013-12-27T19:30:00.000-06:002013-12-28T07:22:39.484-06:00A meandering manifestoOne line of argument (loosely speaking) that I’ve seen popping up around the Internet consists of supporters of ObamaCare accusing those who are currently insured in the individual market and are complaining about ObamaCare making their situations worse, of being selfish. Or, as one commenter at that recent Megan Mcardle post put it, we’re “hard hearted” for ignoring the “thousands - maybe Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-67976177223696376892013-12-26T13:32:00.002-06:002013-12-26T13:32:54.959-06:00As a favour{When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour. - Jane Welsh Carlyle}
In an earlier post, I wrote about the lack of out-of-network coverage in many ObamaCare policies. Recently, I posted something about it as a comment to a Megan McArdle piece:
At least in my State (NJ) most ObamaCare plans have no out-of-network coverage other than covering an EmergencyElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-25960648169942803822013-12-24T15:29:00.003-06:002013-12-24T15:30:42.554-06:00Christmas light showI enjoy and am amazed by Christmas light shows and this one from 2010 is wonderful:
Holdman Christmas Lights
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-28016568876136640032013-12-22T12:13:00.000-06:002013-12-22T12:13:21.339-06:00Slow Cooker Bourbon Breast of ChickenThis is not a Christmas or New Year or holiday recipe in any traditional sense; the only holiday-ish thing about it is the bourbon. However, it is a wonderful recipe to put together before heading out to lunch and a day of shopping or gift returning - or any afternoon activity. I only found a couple of references to it on the Internet (a little different from my version) which really surprised meElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3235326301313715924.post-10771783212592458472013-12-19T17:11:00.000-06:002013-12-19T17:11:11.056-06:00Define "overpaid" - or "underpaid" for that matterThis is an about an old proposal to let consumers buy health insurance directly from insurers and let the insurers estimate the appropriate subsidies. Whether something like this is still on the table, I don’t know but I suspect some variant of it is probably in the mix somewhere, ready to be re-considered if January 1 arrives with millions of formerly insured still left uninsured.
Here’s how Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06594477709835944165noreply@blogger.com0