Not any different from a lot of modern movies and books.
I thought the rooster’s concern was charming; that many animals sleep on their back can indeed raise such questions.
A post for huxley, the Francophile.
I hadn’t made the connection, since Catholic Feast Days are not part of my calendar, but I appreciate the irony.
I don’t think Joan would have liked Donald, but she certainly was in an analogous situation in re government chicanery, Deep State machinations, and just plain hatred.
It’s another beautiful day in Wyoming.
I hope everyone gets a chance to take a break from the news and watch some chickens or kittens today.
Just for the record, I turned 72 today.
Starting to be a bit creaky when I get out of bed in the morning, but otherwise holding up pretty well.
Despite the fact that we are Living in Interesting Times, there is still beauty in the world, most people try to do good and help others, children and grandchildren are the hope of the future, and friends are a bright spot in the darkness.
Best wishes to everyone here at the Best Blog on the Web!
Aesop Fan:
Sage Grouse and Pronghorn Antelope for you to view.
Happy birthday AesopFan, and keep on keeping (creaking) on!
Aesop Fan, seen any Jack-a-Lopes lately?
My Cat sat and watched most of the video with me.
This video reminds me of fifties-era French films. Just needs to be black and white. But to tell the truth, I didn’t watch it to the end.
Merely fulfilling the Biblical prophecy: “And the rooster shall lie down with the kittens…” (or something like that).
Happy Birthday AF…and many happy, happy more….
I just read this in an article posted on City Journal:
“The union representing line prosecutors endorsed Vasquez in January. . . Last week, the prosecutors’ union board members expressed deep concern…”
In other words, in the state of Oregon, there is a union expressly representing prosecuting attorneys! Which brings us to the question: how do the defense attorneys work around this union? It seems to me that if the ” union of prosecuting attorneys act as a group opposed to the defense attorney . . .wth kind of legal representation does the defendant have?
Happy birthday af
An animal version of clue
“Just for the record, I turned 72 today”
Happy Birthday!!!
Brother, just south of you (in CO), turned 72 yesterday (6/2). He was still ski racing, until this season. Having neck surgery in a week or so, so maybe he can race again. A girlfriend from college did so the day before. She’s down in AZ. We are trying to get together for lunch this week. She just lost her mother (102) a week or so ago, and still traumatized by it. It seems like a small world, but really isn’t.
The Happiest of Birthdays, AesopFan!!
Anne @ 10:55am,
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, proclaiming that “the right of federal employees to deal collectively with the federal departments and agencies in which they are employed should be protected.”
When will there be an Executive Order protecting the rights of the taxpayers who pay their salaries to collectively bargain against them?
My guess is it’s more effect than cause. Being a childless adult often leads to voting a certain way and being a married adult with children leads one to vote a certain way and being a single adult with children leads one to vote a certain way. And some states have more of those groups than others.
State data doesn’t seem particularly useful to me. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh almost certainly have different birth rates than Lancaster, but it’s all Pennsylvania in aggregate. Birth data by county may provide some insight; especially when comparing with other countries.
My guess is there is much more that is biological going on here than we tend to understand.
Claudia Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s first female president. She won in a landslide, with 58.6 per cent of the vote. That was 30 per cent more than her nearest challenger.
Sheinbaum is a close ally of Mexico’s most recent president, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Their ruling party and its allies are now close to the two-thirds majority needed to change the Mexican Constitution, and they’re targeting the country’s regulators, which are currently independent. Needless to say, this isn’t a libertarian deregulation movement. Instead, the ruling party wants to absorb and politicize the regulatory agencies.
In response to the election and the prospect of constitutional changes, nervous investors immediately sold off the peso, which dropped 2.8% against the dollar. How much further will it go? Maybe next winter would be a good time for traveling south. Have to keep an eye on the exchange rates.
@Rufus T. Firefly: Interesting article trying to tie birth-rates to political party…
In order for that to hold water, both party affiliation and family size have to be largely heritable, and that may seem plausible, but then how did we get to where we are now if it were? So there also has to be some explanation of why large family sizes and party affiliation were less heritable than before and why the change.
Anecdote but not data: three of my great-grandmothers had many children (what we’d call “many” today), one had nine, one had 7, and the other 16. Those 30-ish who lived went on to have 0 – 3 each, and then the next generation, 60 or so, went on to have 0-1 each, and that generation of 30 or also had 0-1 each. The large families didn’t seem that heritable.
So you split my still-living family roughly into generations: 60, 30, 15. Question 1 is where are the babies going to come from, and question 2 who is going to be paying Social Security and Medicare?
Happy Birthday, AesopFan!
@AesopFan: An accessible, fictionalized biography of Joan of Arc was written by Mark Twain, of all people, who said he based it largely on the court documents, which are extensive. There was not much written about her in English before him, and it’s not a book the public remembers (or appreciated all that much at the time, it being such a departure from what they expected from him).
OThere are too many people! When I moved to Seattle the metro area had about 1.5 million people. Now it is 3.5m. Yesterday, the highway back to Seattle was packed. I doubt many people in that backup thought “gee I wish there were more people on this road.”
Want to drive up to Paradise on Mt Rainier on the spur of the moment?
“A timed entry reservation is required from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm for two areas of the park: (1) Paradise Corridor entering through the Nisqually and Stevens Canyon Entrances, and (2) Sunrise Corridor entering through the White River Entrance. Each corridor requires a separate vehicle reservation. Timed entry reservations are good for a single day, per vehicle, and are required in addition to an entrance fee or park pass.”
“ On Tuesday, May 28, the 90-vehicle Sealth replaced the 124-vehicle Kitsap on the Mukilteo/Clinton route for approximately the next four weeks due to limited vessel availability.
This is a 34-car reduction in vessel capacity. Customers may experience vessel loading delays.”
Joan of Arc was, like Donald Trump, a nationalist hero. In her case, she fought for the Kings of France against the Normans-becoming-English who still claimed continental soil. I can’t say I’ve ever understood her Catholic sainthood, since the Normans and English at the time were also still Catholic.
well they want to replace the population, with newcomers as it were, which works up to a point, on balance married people vote more republican, and single people vote more democrat,
Claimed? Who was in the wrong here? My opinion is France.
Wikipedia
“The Angevin kings of England (the line of rulers to which Henry II belonged), were Philip’s most powerful and dangerous vassals as Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine and Counts of Anjou. Philip made it his life’s work to destroy Angevin’s power in France.[31] “
@Chases Eagles:There are too many people! When I moved to Seattle the metro area had about 1.5 million people. Now it is 3.5m.
Nobody wants to live in the Seattle metro area. It’s too crowded and the house prices are too high, lol.
As inconvenient as growth can be, I don’t think anyone who lived through Seattle’s decline in the 1970s wants to repeat it. If you get tired of growth you can sell up and move someplace cheaper. You can’t do that if you’re tired of decline…
@Kate:I can’t say I’ve ever understood her Catholic sainthood, since the Normans and English at the time were also still Catholic.
There’s multiple paths to sainthood… St Joan was canonized as a virgin, not as a martyr, because she was put to death in an entirely legal way by Catholics, and for her private revelations and not for being Catholic. She was not canonized until 1920.
Re Joan of Arc, Kate mentions her Sainthood. IIRC, she was only made a Saint by the Vatican in 1920! So…it was a long time coming.+Ah! Niketas beat me to the point.)
American historian Tom Woods hosts Robert Barnes for over 30 minutes on Sunday, to discuss the latter’s con law views of the Trump NYC conviction.
Chases Eagles, I agree. The Normans were deprived of their French lands unjustly, according to the rules of the times. On another note, people in the southern French areas of Languedoc still resent the Parisian French conquest of their area in the 1200s and the massacres that entailed. And they speak a French accent and dialect which Huxley might not quite understand, assuming he’s learning Parisian French.
We might be telescoping our time periods a bit.
Joan of Arc was put to death by English, not Normans. The king was Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, not an Angevin, whose family had usurped the rightful line of England as well as that of France (Henry V had forced the King of France to disinherit his heir in favor of Henry VI). The Angevin lands were mostly lost in the reign of King John, two hundred years previously. As for the feudal rights involved for the Angevin lands, the English kings hadn’t been holding up their end either…
It was a three-cornered war, with the (French) Duke of Burgundy on the English side against his countrymen, with Burgundians capturing Joan and handing her over to the English for execution.
Funny how all those nobodies are somehow coerced into moving where they don’t want to be. But don’t worry, the progressive governance of the Sound region is encouraging the smellies to leave; “cream rises to the top,” don’t you know.
So in response to the Trump conviction, 10 GOP senators have vowed to “slow down” Democratic bills and nominations. Ohhhh my! How scary! They are going to SLOW DOWN legislation! That will surely have The Democrats shaking in their boots!
OMG, can the GOP get any more spineless? No need to respond Niketas, I’ve read your analysis of why this happens. Still frustrates the hell out of me.
“Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it’s too crowded.” – Yogi Berra
Huxley might not quite understand, assuming he’s learning Parisian French.
Kate:
I am learning Parisian French. Yet I can only catch 20% of the words in a Parisian French film. 🙂 It’s quite frustrating.
There is nothing I can do about this except listen to more French and listen to more French. The fog is slowly lifting, but I didn’t expect to have so much trouble with this.
its a little simpler if you already understand a romance language, but not that easy as I discovered when I tried to learn portuguese,
John B Calhoun set about creating a series of experiments that would essentially cater to every need of rodents, and then track the effect on the population over time…
About every 55 days, the population doubled as the mice filled the most desirable space within the pen, where access to the food tunnels was of ease.
When the population hit 620, that slowed to doubling around every 145 days, as the mouse society began to hit problems…
The mice that found themself with no social role to fill – there are only so many head mouse roles… became isolated.
“Males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically; they became very inactive and aggregated in large pools near the center of the floor of the universe. From this point on they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates, nor did their behavior elicit attack by territorial males,” read the paper. “Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males.”
The withdrawn males would not respond during attacks, lying there immobile. Later on, they would attack others in the same pattern. The female counterparts of these isolated males withdrew as well. Some mice spent their days preening themselves, shunning mating, and never engaging in fighting. Due to this they had excellent fur coats, and were dubbed, somewhat disconcertingly, the “beautiful ones”.
The breakdown of usual mouse behavior wasn’t just limited to the outsiders. The “alpha male” mice became extremely aggressive, attacking others with no motivation or gain for themselves, and regularly raped both males and females. Violent encounters sometimes ended in mouse-on-mouse cannibalism.
Despite – or perhaps because – their every need was being catered for, mothers would abandon their young or merely just forget about them entirely, leaving them to fend for themselves. The mother mice also became aggressive towards trespassers to their nests, with males that would normally fill this role banished to other parts of the utopia. This aggression spilled over, and the mothers would regularly kill their young. Infant mortality in some territories of the utopia reached 90 percent…
The population peaked at 2,200 – short of the actual 3,000-mouse capacity of the “universe” – and from there came the decline. Many of the mice weren’t interested in breeding and retired to the upper decks of the enclosure, while the others formed into violent gangs below, which would regularly attack and cannibalize other groups as well as their own. The low birth rate and high infant mortality combined with the violence, and soon the entire colony was extinct. During the mousepocalypse, food remained ample, and their every need completely met.
Calhoun termed what he saw as the cause of the collapse “behavioral sink”.
“For an animal so simple as a mouse, the most complex behaviors involve the interrelated set of courtship, maternal care, territorial defence and hierarchical intragroup and intergroup social organization,” he concluded in his study.
“When behaviors related to these functions fail to mature, there is no development of social organization and no reproduction. As in the case of my study reported above, all members of the population will age and eventually die. The species will die out.”
He believed that the mouse experiment may also apply to humans, and warned of a day where – god forbid – all our needs are met.
“For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events should not also lead to species extinction. If opportunities for role fulfilment fall far short of the demand by those capable of filling roles, and having expectancies to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can follow.”
huxley @ 1:40pm,
If only someone, perhaps even a lowly commenter at neo’s place, had urged you to spend a lot of focus on conversational French, listening and speaking frequently.
🙂
Awfully convenient, seems to me, now that Gantz’ little gambit has been flushed out as utterly contemptible to the Israeli public writ large. Each step of the way Gantz demonstrates his tin ear where political “hearing” is needed. How, one must wonder, does such a fumble-fingered putz rise so high?
That’s a bit surprising, miguel, as I would have thought the transition from Spanish to Portuguese to be fairly easy.
The key here may be that some people learn to speak new languages easily, and some just don’t. Age may make a difference also, much as I dislike admitting that.
@Rufus: I’ve read about Calhoun’s experiments but I trust little that I see written online about them. There’s a bit of work involved in showing that an animal experiment applies to humans or even mammals generally and I don’t think that work was ever done, because the narrative was too good to check, with all the “population explosion” talk dominating the thought of educated people at that time.
But I’m wondering if what afflicts us today is as simple as those with full bellies having a hundred problems, and those with empty bellies having only one…
admittedly I tried to learn from tapes, you get a better notion with the written word,
but spoken word is tricky,
so a picture is worth a thousand words, in this case, sra sheinbaum, along with mayorkas and larry fink, so biden drone and blackrock empresario
Niketas C. @ 12:41
Who can forget the billboard- “Will the last one leaving Seattle, turn out the lights”!
I had to look up when the billboard was put up. It was 1971.
If you can extract any identifiably Romance syllables from Portuguese speech, you are a genius.
Part of the problem with Portuguese and French is the elision/glottalization/distortion of both vowels and syllables.
Portuguese is what speakers of other Romance languages sound like when gargling.
Similar issue with Dutch vs. other Germanic languages… the Eliza Doolittle approach to vowels – aaaaiiioooyeh
translated from Arabic,
The information and investigations of the Public Security Sector, headed by Major General Mahmoud Abu Amra, Assistant Minister of Interior, in coordination with the security services of the Giza Security Directorate, confirmed the intention of forming a gang that includes two people (one of whom holds the nationality of one of the countries) to smuggle a large amount of Captagon narcotic tablets to a country by hiding them inside the trunks of “manufactured” trees and placing them within a quantity of olive trees used in the charcoal industry “to be processed inside a warehouse in Cairo”, which they intended to export to that country as one of the innovative criminal methods.
this is only the most recent interceptions, with others in Riyadh and Amman,
I don’t want to seem unseemly harsh, portuguese seems more elegant than the Spanish tongue, but I figured since I was in the real estate business at the time, and there was demand for brazilian buyers, when in Rio (paraphrasing) give it a shot,
I don’t mean too many people in Seattle; I mean too many people on Planet Earth. There is a sweet spot and I believe we have gone by that. An ever-larger middle and working classes will continue to see a declining quality of life as they are priced out by scarcity by an ever-larger upper class.
Musk is talking Universal Basic Income. I presume he thinks there will not be productive work for all. I believe UBI will wreck society. There is already huge resentment from some young people over FICA.
Look at something like conscription which they are hinting at. There are about 4m 18-year-olds each year. My view is if conscription is not widespread there will huge resentment and resistance to be the “Chosen Ones”. US Military is 1.3m. How do you square those two numbers?
BenDavid, Arabic and Hebrew are related languages. To my American-English ear, Arabic speakers always sound like they’re angry. Does spoken Hebrew sound similar? Does it have the glottal and deep-throat sounds which English speakers struggle to produce?
Try learning Gaelic Irish if you want an encounter with an impenetrable impossible language. Even the Irish have trouble with it and don’t let them tell you otherwise. They’ll also tell you that’s all the fault of the English, “who took their native tongue along with everything else from them, sure.”
I was passably fluent in German but not anymore and not for a long time.
I’m going to devote myself to learning multiple languages when I get my “Do-Over.”
Dutch is hard to understand, speak, and learn if you’re non-Dutch and have had even just a smattering of German. But it’s remarkably possible for Anglophones to figure out written Dutch. Dutch is the bridge language between English and German.
I have been delving of late into Old English (the language of Beowulf). If you can speak German you can fairly easily learn at least the rudiments of Old English.
I always thought that family size was tied to economics, as in more hands in low energy societies raise the quality of life. The cost of feeding another child was less than the value of the work the child did for the family. In high energy societies, this is reversed. The cost of raising the child is far more than the value of the work the child does for the family. Which, in my experience is often zero. Lowering infant mortality and less and less people needed to sustain the family it’s no wonder the population is declining.
Happy birthday Aesop! It’s wonderful to live in a place where natural beauty overwhelms you every day. Too bad you live in the second most beautiful state. We who live in Alaska often wonder how other people can stand it. ??
Just checking in on the open thread, and . . . lo . . . happy birthday, AesopFan!
Oh, no, AesopFan, on reading the news about the Hunter Biden trial I learned that you share a birthday with Jill Biden, although she’s a year older.
AesopFan:
Happy Birthday!
IrishOtter49,
I agree, regarding written Dutch. If one knows English and German written Dutch is decipherable.
In a similar vein, along with German, I know Latin and have had some Spanish and Italian. I find this correlates to being able to read a lot of French. But spoken French, like spoken Dutch, is unintelligible noise. I was surprised that even at a Catholic Mass given in French, where I know the English and much of the Latin translations for the words the Priest almost assuredly was speaking, I still had no idea what he was saying.
JFM @ 3:51pm, how do you explain the propensity of large families in America after WWII? And although America had an equal or better standard of living than other western nations our birthrate stayed above replacement rate longer than all the rest.
Niketas,
I too have read descriptions of Calhoun’s mouse utopia experiment for years, and, as you wrote, most analysts seemed to tie it to Ehrlich’s population bomb theories.
But that’s not what happened in the experiment. The mice never even grew their population to equal what was sustainable. They collapsed before they reached that point. I hate to anthropomorphize, but it seems like they ran out of “useful” roles for large members of their mischief,* and those members devolved into malaise and/or degenerate behavior.
*https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-is-a-group-of-mice-called/ “A group of mice is commonly called a mischief or a nest.”
If you have a prosecuting attorney who is a member of a union–what “leverage” (Muscle) will he have in addition to the law? Will he be able to force a defense attorney into a lesser quality defense than what might be expected because he “wants”, or “needs” to “collaborate with the union”?
I believe this is a horrible situation! Thanks for explaining how it came about.
Not having looked at specific data about family size after WWII I based my opinion, idea, WAG on my Catholic family and those of my friends. My Father, b. 1934, had only one sibling and my Mother, b. 1930, had only one sib as well. The largest family I knew growing up had 6 kids, 5 girls and one boy. As an aside, the eldest daughter was Miss New York one year-all the girls were beautiful and Kenny was good looking too.
Anyway, the majority of the families I knew had 2-3 kids. This was in a mostly Catholic area of suburban Long Island. Didn’t know a family with only one kid either. My Mother’s cousin had 4 kids and my aunt had 4, but my aunt’s family weren’t Catholic-something we never talked about.
And now Harry Logan the RINO ex Governor of Maryland discovers that he will never be Senator Harry Logan (MD).
Did anybody watch the Champions League final? Real Madrid wins trophy… sun rises in east… sigh. It wasn’t a bad game, just that Dortmund absolutely had to put something on the board before halftime and they had three good chances to do so, all of which went wasted.
@ Kate > “you share a birthday with Jill Biden, although she’s a year older.”
When I was growing up in the Texas panhandle (1950s), the “free” calendars from the local businesses still showed the birthday of Jefferson Davis on June 3.
I thought it was pretty cool to have a famous co-celebrant, until I learned who he was.
Seems to be a trend here….glad I got out of the club!
@ om > “Sage Grouse and Pronghorn Antelope for you to view.”
We see the prongs all the time, even nosing around our housing. A couple of days ago, a fox ran across the highway in front of us (speedy!), but we haven’t seen any grouse yet (there may be a correlation here..). Lots of hawks, sea gulls (Believe it or Not), many smaller birds (I saw my first robin with a worm actually in its beak on Sunday!), snakes of the benign and malevolent variety, rabbits, and prairie dogs.
Soon to be joined by mosquitoes and other noxious insects, alas.
Thanks to everyone for the kind wishes.
One of our neighbors even brought me balloons!
@ Niketas > “An accessible, fictionalized biography of Joan of Arc was written by Mark Twain, of all people”
That was one of the first books I read about The Maid; Twain was very serious about his biography of her, and he was actually very accurate, given the date and sources available at the time. I did some fairly extensive research on her life and death, and there is no doubt she was sold out by her “own” people — both in government and in the church — because of her dangerous demonstrations that non-clergy could get direct communications from God, and popular war heroes can out-shine even kings.
IIRC (it’s been over 30 years since I did all the reading):
One of the bright spots of her trial (for relative values of “bright”) was the clerk recording the testimony, who refused to alter the records to suit the judges, who were dismayed that she was able to answer all their questions much more ably than they thought possible for an unlearned girl. Hah.
She was ultimately convicted, not for those obvious reasons, but for the trivial charge (to us) of putting her male clothes back on after vowing that she would dress properly as a woman while in prison. Her reasoning was that she wanted to discourage the guards from raping her (not that fabric is a bar to that, but there were some psychological issues involved).
Corrupt judges are not a new thing.
@ Shirehome > “seen any Jack-a-Lopes lately?”
Those are more of a Texas thing 😉 – I’ve only seen the jacks and the ‘lopes separately so far.
Among other indicators, one reason I knew we were losing the education battle was when a self-selected board of censors forced our children’s library to remove a western-themed alphabet book because it featured J-for Jackalope (and there were really cute pictures and interesting text in the book).
Because “children can’t distinguish reality from fiction” donchaknow.
And now we have drag queen story hours!
@ Rufus in re public sector unions > “When will there be an Executive Order protecting the rights of the taxpayers who pay their salaries to collectively bargain against them?”
In theory, the government agencies they are “bargaining” with are supposed to do that. In practice, the unions buy them off. Mostly Democrats, but Republicans too.
I’m kinda with Niketas in his view of the Real Purpose of our Public Servants being to feather their own nests, rather than to protect ours.
@ BenDavid > “Portuguese is what speakers of other Romance languages sound like when gargling.”
That made me laugh, but I have to speak up for the language.
We had a couple from Brazil in the visitors’ center last week, who were speaking together in Portuguese, and it sounded lovely to us.
Of course, we could be biased, since one of our sons went to Brazil on his mission, so we already knew and loved the sound. Sadly, his delightful Portuguese accent faded after a few months back in the States.
AesopFan, you’ve also got Ramon Urias to share bdays with. He turned 30 today, and homered against Toronto tonight, having come off the bench as a late inning defensive substitute (and made a spectacular play on a bullet grounder too!). So there’s that, better’n Jill or Jeff.
@ IrishOtter > “Try learning Gaelic Irish if you want an encounter with an impenetrable impossible language. Even the Irish have trouble with it and don’t let them tell you otherwise.”
“Is there a place in the world for Yu Ming? He’s a clerk at a convenience store in China, bored with his life. At a library, he spins a globe and stops it with his finger, which turns out to be touching Ireland. He reads about the country and teaches himself Irish, flies to Dublin, and finds to his chagrin that no one understands him. He assumes that his Irish is at fault, that is, until he walks into a bar looking for work.”
Watch the film before you read the summary, which, although it is accurate, is full of spoilers and mangles the punchline.
@ sdferr – thanks for the reminder of a more positive connection.
I got curious and looked up one of those lists-sites the internet is so useful for. https://www.onthisday.com/birthdays/june/3
Lots of people of all different nationalities and professions, many names I recognized, and some people I even like!
Sharing a birthday with Flinders Petrie, Tony Curtis, and King George V is okay by me.
Nifty AesopFan: Larry McMurtry, Josephine Baker, Diamond Jim Gentile, quite a few worthies mingled in.
My day off has come to a close, alas — back to work tomorrow!
We had to take AesopSpouse to the dentist for some fixes we couldn’t get done before leaving home, and it was only coincidentally my birthday.
However, I did do a little shopping while he was tied down!
Maybe things will be a little less hectic on the internet in this interval between Trump’s first trial and sentencing.
But who am I kidding?
Somebody is always doing something!
However, I did do a little shopping while he was tied down!” – AesopFan
A happy birthday indeed. 🙂 And wishing you many more.
AesopFan:
Another wish for a Happy Birthday!
Have the wildflowers already come and gone? I don’t recall them from my winter, spring, and summer in Wyoming 42 years ago.
Shopping was in Casper?
@ om – the wildflowers at our location are sparse, but I got pix of a few nice yellow ones along the roadside; they are past their peak now, but still pretty.
Casper has all the modern stores, so we aren’t hurting for supplies.
However, driving an hour each way is the pits, so we only go every other week.
I’m familiar with the problem in theory, because of having so many school friends riding the bus in from the farm (every day!), but in practice it’s very boring.
The scenery is spectacular, but you can only be awed a limited number of times by the same view.
The clouds are usually different enough to remain interesting.
If only someone, perhaps even a lowly commenter at neo’s place, had urged you to spend a lot of focus on conversational French, listening and speaking frequently.
Rufus:
I don’t listen to much conversational French, but I listen/repeat/shadow the French to the novels I read for 1-2 hours per day. I’ve made good progress. I can tell it’s coming along.
Sure, I could have spent my whole 4-5 hours/day listening to conversational French and I would be further along in listening comprehension, but I wouldn’t be able to read French novels — one of the most robust challenges in a language — nearly so well. I can read a French novel in 3-4 weeks now and I find that pretty satisfying.
I had no idea about how many skill sets go into learning a language to how many degrees of skill. The time one spends working on X is time one doesn’t spend on Y.
There are many ways up that mountain
AesopFan:
Happy 72nd Birthday!
I’m about 4 months ahead of you.
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@ Neo > “The plot is a bit hard to follow:”
Not any different from a lot of modern movies and books.
I thought the rooster’s concern was charming; that many animals sleep on their back can indeed raise such questions.
A post for huxley, the Francophile.
I hadn’t made the connection, since Catholic Feast Days are not part of my calendar, but I appreciate the irony.
I don’t think Joan would have liked Donald, but she certainly was in an analogous situation in re government chicanery, Deep State machinations, and just plain hatred.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/05/30/trump-found-guilty-on-feast-day-of-joan-of-arc-patron-saint-of-prisoners-and-hero-of-patriots/
It’s another beautiful day in Wyoming.
I hope everyone gets a chance to take a break from the news and watch some chickens or kittens today.
Just for the record, I turned 72 today.
Starting to be a bit creaky when I get out of bed in the morning, but otherwise holding up pretty well.
Despite the fact that we are Living in Interesting Times, there is still beauty in the world, most people try to do good and help others, children and grandchildren are the hope of the future, and friends are a bright spot in the darkness.
Best wishes to everyone here at the Best Blog on the Web!
Aesop Fan:
Sage Grouse and Pronghorn Antelope for you to view.
You scooped the WSJ neo, congrats.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-the-devil-and-thomas-more-justice-rule-of-law-trial-election-f729c40e?st=bd3np6l4926u449&reflink=article_copyURL_share
Happy birthday AesopFan, and keep on keeping (creaking) on!
Aesop Fan, seen any Jack-a-Lopes lately?
My Cat sat and watched most of the video with me.
This video reminds me of fifties-era French films. Just needs to be black and white. But to tell the truth, I didn’t watch it to the end.
Merely fulfilling the Biblical prophecy: “And the rooster shall lie down with the kittens…” (or something like that).
Happy Birthday AF…and many happy, happy more….
I just read this in an article posted on City Journal:
“The union representing line prosecutors endorsed Vasquez in January. . . Last week, the prosecutors’ union board members expressed deep concern…”
In other words, in the state of Oregon, there is a union expressly representing prosecuting attorneys! Which brings us to the question: how do the defense attorneys work around this union? It seems to me that if the ” union of prosecuting attorneys act as a group opposed to the defense attorney . . .wth kind of legal representation does the defendant have?
Happy birthday af
An animal version of clue
“Just for the record, I turned 72 today”
Happy Birthday!!!
Brother, just south of you (in CO), turned 72 yesterday (6/2). He was still ski racing, until this season. Having neck surgery in a week or so, so maybe he can race again. A girlfriend from college did so the day before. She’s down in AZ. We are trying to get together for lunch this week. She just lost her mother (102) a week or so ago, and still traumatized by it. It seems like a small world, but really isn’t.
The Happiest of Birthdays, AesopFan!!
Anne @ 10:55am,
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, proclaiming that “the right of federal employees to deal collectively with the federal departments and agencies in which they are employed should be protected.”
When will there be an Executive Order protecting the rights of the taxpayers who pay their salaries to collectively bargain against them?
Speaking of City Journal,
Interesting article trying to tie birth-rates to political party: https://www.city-journal.org/article/baby-blues
My guess is it’s more effect than cause. Being a childless adult often leads to voting a certain way and being a married adult with children leads one to vote a certain way and being a single adult with children leads one to vote a certain way. And some states have more of those groups than others.
State data doesn’t seem particularly useful to me. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh almost certainly have different birth rates than Lancaster, but it’s all Pennsylvania in aggregate. Birth data by county may provide some insight; especially when comparing with other countries.
My guess is there is much more that is biological going on here than we tend to understand.
Just another open-thread comment.
Big news from south of the border (https://tinyurl.com/cpcjj7kc).
Claudia Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s first female president. She won in a landslide, with 58.6 per cent of the vote. That was 30 per cent more than her nearest challenger.
Sheinbaum is a close ally of Mexico’s most recent president, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Their ruling party and its allies are now close to the two-thirds majority needed to change the Mexican Constitution, and they’re targeting the country’s regulators, which are currently independent. Needless to say, this isn’t a libertarian deregulation movement. Instead, the ruling party wants to absorb and politicize the regulatory agencies.
In response to the election and the prospect of constitutional changes, nervous investors immediately sold off the peso, which dropped 2.8% against the dollar. How much further will it go? Maybe next winter would be a good time for traveling south. Have to keep an eye on the exchange rates.
@Rufus T. Firefly: Interesting article trying to tie birth-rates to political party…
In order for that to hold water, both party affiliation and family size have to be largely heritable, and that may seem plausible, but then how did we get to where we are now if it were? So there also has to be some explanation of why large family sizes and party affiliation were less heritable than before and why the change.
Anecdote but not data: three of my great-grandmothers had many children (what we’d call “many” today), one had nine, one had 7, and the other 16. Those 30-ish who lived went on to have 0 – 3 each, and then the next generation, 60 or so, went on to have 0-1 each, and that generation of 30 or also had 0-1 each. The large families didn’t seem that heritable.
So you split my still-living family roughly into generations: 60, 30, 15. Question 1 is where are the babies going to come from, and question 2 who is going to be paying Social Security and Medicare?
Happy Birthday, AesopFan!
@AesopFan: An accessible, fictionalized biography of Joan of Arc was written by Mark Twain, of all people, who said he based it largely on the court documents, which are extensive. There was not much written about her in English before him, and it’s not a book the public remembers (or appreciated all that much at the time, it being such a departure from what they expected from him).
OThere are too many people! When I moved to Seattle the metro area had about 1.5 million people. Now it is 3.5m. Yesterday, the highway back to Seattle was packed. I doubt many people in that backup thought “gee I wish there were more people on this road.”
Want to drive up to Paradise on Mt Rainier on the spur of the moment?
“A timed entry reservation is required from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm for two areas of the park: (1) Paradise Corridor entering through the Nisqually and Stevens Canyon Entrances, and (2) Sunrise Corridor entering through the White River Entrance. Each corridor requires a separate vehicle reservation. Timed entry reservations are good for a single day, per vehicle, and are required in addition to an entrance fee or park pass.”
“ On Tuesday, May 28, the 90-vehicle Sealth replaced the 124-vehicle Kitsap on the Mukilteo/Clinton route for approximately the next four weeks due to limited vessel availability.
This is a 34-car reduction in vessel capacity. Customers may experience vessel loading delays.”
Joan of Arc was, like Donald Trump, a nationalist hero. In her case, she fought for the Kings of France against the Normans-becoming-English who still claimed continental soil. I can’t say I’ve ever understood her Catholic sainthood, since the Normans and English at the time were also still Catholic.
well they want to replace the population, with newcomers as it were, which works up to a point, on balance married people vote more republican, and single people vote more democrat,
Claimed? Who was in the wrong here? My opinion is France.
Wikipedia
“The Angevin kings of England (the line of rulers to which Henry II belonged), were Philip’s most powerful and dangerous vassals as Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine and Counts of Anjou. Philip made it his life’s work to destroy Angevin’s power in France.[31] “
@Chases Eagles:There are too many people! When I moved to Seattle the metro area had about 1.5 million people. Now it is 3.5m.
Nobody wants to live in the Seattle metro area. It’s too crowded and the house prices are too high, lol.
As inconvenient as growth can be, I don’t think anyone who lived through Seattle’s decline in the 1970s wants to repeat it. If you get tired of growth you can sell up and move someplace cheaper. You can’t do that if you’re tired of decline…
@Kate:I can’t say I’ve ever understood her Catholic sainthood, since the Normans and English at the time were also still Catholic.
There’s multiple paths to sainthood… St Joan was canonized as a virgin, not as a martyr, because she was put to death in an entirely legal way by Catholics, and for her private revelations and not for being Catholic. She was not canonized until 1920.
Re Joan of Arc, Kate mentions her Sainthood. IIRC, she was only made a Saint by the Vatican in 1920! So…it was a long time coming.+Ah! Niketas beat me to the point.)
American historian Tom Woods hosts Robert Barnes for over 30 minutes on Sunday, to discuss the latter’s con law views of the Trump NYC conviction.
It’s almost a feel-good interview.
https://youtu.be/rB0UtOpoq8A?si=nsnqyAdrESI9IUXx
Chases Eagles, I agree. The Normans were deprived of their French lands unjustly, according to the rules of the times. On another note, people in the southern French areas of Languedoc still resent the Parisian French conquest of their area in the 1200s and the massacres that entailed. And they speak a French accent and dialect which Huxley might not quite understand, assuming he’s learning Parisian French.
We might be telescoping our time periods a bit.
Joan of Arc was put to death by English, not Normans. The king was Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, not an Angevin, whose family had usurped the rightful line of England as well as that of France (Henry V had forced the King of France to disinherit his heir in favor of Henry VI). The Angevin lands were mostly lost in the reign of King John, two hundred years previously. As for the feudal rights involved for the Angevin lands, the English kings hadn’t been holding up their end either…
It was a three-cornered war, with the (French) Duke of Burgundy on the English side against his countrymen, with Burgundians capturing Joan and handing her over to the English for execution.
Funny how all those nobodies are somehow coerced into moving where they don’t want to be. But don’t worry, the progressive governance of the Sound region is encouraging the smellies to leave; “cream rises to the top,” don’t you know.
So in response to the Trump conviction, 10 GOP senators have vowed to “slow down” Democratic bills and nominations. Ohhhh my! How scary! They are going to SLOW DOWN legislation! That will surely have The Democrats shaking in their boots!
OMG, can the GOP get any more spineless? No need to respond Niketas, I’ve read your analysis of why this happens. Still frustrates the hell out of me.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2024/06/03/senate-conservatives-trump-verdict-protest-n2639900
Niketas @ 12:41,
“Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it’s too crowded.” – Yogi Berra
Huxley might not quite understand, assuming he’s learning Parisian French.
Kate:
I am learning Parisian French. Yet I can only catch 20% of the words in a Parisian French film. 🙂 It’s quite frustrating.
There is nothing I can do about this except listen to more French and listen to more French. The fog is slowly lifting, but I didn’t expect to have so much trouble with this.
its a little simpler if you already understand a romance language, but not that easy as I discovered when I tried to learn portuguese,
Niketas @ 11:58am,
https://www.iflscience.com/universe-25-the-mouse-utopia-experiment-that-turned-into-an-apocalypse-60407
huxley @ 1:40pm,
If only someone, perhaps even a lowly commenter at neo’s place, had urged you to spend a lot of focus on conversational French, listening and speaking frequently.
🙂
The plot is indeed more than a bit hard to follow: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-gantz-reconsidering-quitting-coalition-amid-talk-of-hostage-deal/
Awfully convenient, seems to me, now that Gantz’ little gambit has been flushed out as utterly contemptible to the Israeli public writ large. Each step of the way Gantz demonstrates his tin ear where political “hearing” is needed. How, one must wonder, does such a fumble-fingered putz rise so high?
That’s a bit surprising, miguel, as I would have thought the transition from Spanish to Portuguese to be fairly easy.
The key here may be that some people learn to speak new languages easily, and some just don’t. Age may make a difference also, much as I dislike admitting that.
@Rufus: I’ve read about Calhoun’s experiments but I trust little that I see written online about them. There’s a bit of work involved in showing that an animal experiment applies to humans or even mammals generally and I don’t think that work was ever done, because the narrative was too good to check, with all the “population explosion” talk dominating the thought of educated people at that time.
But I’m wondering if what afflicts us today is as simple as those with full bellies having a hundred problems, and those with empty bellies having only one…
admittedly I tried to learn from tapes, you get a better notion with the written word,
but spoken word is tricky,
so a picture is worth a thousand words, in this case, sra sheinbaum, along with mayorkas and larry fink, so biden drone and blackrock empresario
Niketas C. @ 12:41
Who can forget the billboard- “Will the last one leaving Seattle, turn out the lights”!
I had to look up when the billboard was put up. It was 1971.
If you can extract any identifiably Romance syllables from Portuguese speech, you are a genius.
Part of the problem with Portuguese and French is the elision/glottalization/distortion of both vowels and syllables.
Portuguese is what speakers of other Romance languages sound like when gargling.
Similar issue with Dutch vs. other Germanic languages… the Eliza Doolittle approach to vowels – aaaaiiioooyeh
translated from Arabic,
The information and investigations of the Public Security Sector, headed by Major General Mahmoud Abu Amra, Assistant Minister of Interior, in coordination with the security services of the Giza Security Directorate, confirmed the intention of forming a gang that includes two people (one of whom holds the nationality of one of the countries) to smuggle a large amount of Captagon narcotic tablets to a country by hiding them inside the trunks of “manufactured” trees and placing them within a quantity of olive trees used in the charcoal industry “to be processed inside a warehouse in Cairo”, which they intended to export to that country as one of the innovative criminal methods.
this is only the most recent interceptions, with others in Riyadh and Amman,
I don’t want to seem unseemly harsh, portuguese seems more elegant than the Spanish tongue, but I figured since I was in the real estate business at the time, and there was demand for brazilian buyers, when in Rio (paraphrasing) give it a shot,
I don’t mean too many people in Seattle; I mean too many people on Planet Earth. There is a sweet spot and I believe we have gone by that. An ever-larger middle and working classes will continue to see a declining quality of life as they are priced out by scarcity by an ever-larger upper class.
Musk is talking Universal Basic Income. I presume he thinks there will not be productive work for all. I believe UBI will wreck society. There is already huge resentment from some young people over FICA.
Look at something like conscription which they are hinting at. There are about 4m 18-year-olds each year. My view is if conscription is not widespread there will huge resentment and resistance to be the “Chosen Ones”. US Military is 1.3m. How do you square those two numbers?
BenDavid, Arabic and Hebrew are related languages. To my American-English ear, Arabic speakers always sound like they’re angry. Does spoken Hebrew sound similar? Does it have the glottal and deep-throat sounds which English speakers struggle to produce?
Try learning Gaelic Irish if you want an encounter with an impenetrable impossible language. Even the Irish have trouble with it and don’t let them tell you otherwise. They’ll also tell you that’s all the fault of the English, “who took their native tongue along with everything else from them, sure.”
I was passably fluent in German but not anymore and not for a long time.
I’m going to devote myself to learning multiple languages when I get my “Do-Over.”
what do we have here:
https://twitter.com/America1stLegal/status/1797689352279200208
Irish were you able to fix your booksite,
Dutch is hard to understand, speak, and learn if you’re non-Dutch and have had even just a smattering of German. But it’s remarkably possible for Anglophones to figure out written Dutch. Dutch is the bridge language between English and German.
I have been delving of late into Old English (the language of Beowulf). If you can speak German you can fairly easily learn at least the rudiments of Old English.
I always thought that family size was tied to economics, as in more hands in low energy societies raise the quality of life. The cost of feeding another child was less than the value of the work the child did for the family. In high energy societies, this is reversed. The cost of raising the child is far more than the value of the work the child does for the family. Which, in my experience is often zero. Lowering infant mortality and less and less people needed to sustain the family it’s no wonder the population is declining.
Happy birthday Aesop! It’s wonderful to live in a place where natural beauty overwhelms you every day. Too bad you live in the second most beautiful state. We who live in Alaska often wonder how other people can stand it. ??
Just checking in on the open thread, and . . . lo . . . happy birthday, AesopFan!
Oh, no, AesopFan, on reading the news about the Hunter Biden trial I learned that you share a birthday with Jill Biden, although she’s a year older.
AesopFan:
Happy Birthday!
IrishOtter49,
I agree, regarding written Dutch. If one knows English and German written Dutch is decipherable.
In a similar vein, along with German, I know Latin and have had some Spanish and Italian. I find this correlates to being able to read a lot of French. But spoken French, like spoken Dutch, is unintelligible noise. I was surprised that even at a Catholic Mass given in French, where I know the English and much of the Latin translations for the words the Priest almost assuredly was speaking, I still had no idea what he was saying.
JFM @ 3:51pm, how do you explain the propensity of large families in America after WWII? And although America had an equal or better standard of living than other western nations our birthrate stayed above replacement rate longer than all the rest.
Niketas,
I too have read descriptions of Calhoun’s mouse utopia experiment for years, and, as you wrote, most analysts seemed to tie it to Ehrlich’s population bomb theories.
But that’s not what happened in the experiment. The mice never even grew their population to equal what was sustainable. They collapsed before they reached that point. I hate to anthropomorphize, but it seems like they ran out of “useful” roles for large members of their mischief,* and those members devolved into malaise and/or degenerate behavior.
*https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-is-a-group-of-mice-called/ “A group of mice is commonly called a mischief or a nest.”
If you have a prosecuting attorney who is a member of a union–what “leverage” (Muscle) will he have in addition to the law? Will he be able to force a defense attorney into a lesser quality defense than what might be expected because he “wants”, or “needs” to “collaborate with the union”?
I believe this is a horrible situation! Thanks for explaining how it came about.
Not having looked at specific data about family size after WWII I based my opinion, idea, WAG on my Catholic family and those of my friends. My Father, b. 1934, had only one sibling and my Mother, b. 1930, had only one sib as well. The largest family I knew growing up had 6 kids, 5 girls and one boy. As an aside, the eldest daughter was Miss New York one year-all the girls were beautiful and Kenny was good looking too.
Anyway, the majority of the families I knew had 2-3 kids. This was in a mostly Catholic area of suburban Long Island. Didn’t know a family with only one kid either. My Mother’s cousin had 4 kids and my aunt had 4, but my aunt’s family weren’t Catholic-something we never talked about.
And now Harry Logan the RINO ex Governor of Maryland discovers that he will never be Senator Harry Logan (MD).
https://redstate.com/streiff/2024/06/03/trump-campaign-tells-larry-hogan-his-lack-of-support-for-trump-after-his-conviction-ended-your-campaign-n2175016
Happy birthday, AesopFan!
Did anybody watch the Champions League final? Real Madrid wins trophy… sun rises in east… sigh. It wasn’t a bad game, just that Dortmund absolutely had to put something on the board before halftime and they had three good chances to do so, all of which went wasted.
@ Kate > “you share a birthday with Jill Biden, although she’s a year older.”
When I was growing up in the Texas panhandle (1950s), the “free” calendars from the local businesses still showed the birthday of Jefferson Davis on June 3.
I thought it was pretty cool to have a famous co-celebrant, until I learned who he was.
Seems to be a trend here….glad I got out of the club!
@ om > “Sage Grouse and Pronghorn Antelope for you to view.”
We see the prongs all the time, even nosing around our housing. A couple of days ago, a fox ran across the highway in front of us (speedy!), but we haven’t seen any grouse yet (there may be a correlation here..). Lots of hawks, sea gulls (Believe it or Not), many smaller birds (I saw my first robin with a worm actually in its beak on Sunday!), snakes of the benign and malevolent variety, rabbits, and prairie dogs.
Soon to be joined by mosquitoes and other noxious insects, alas.
Thanks to everyone for the kind wishes.
One of our neighbors even brought me balloons!
@ Niketas > “An accessible, fictionalized biography of Joan of Arc was written by Mark Twain, of all people”
That was one of the first books I read about The Maid; Twain was very serious about his biography of her, and he was actually very accurate, given the date and sources available at the time. I did some fairly extensive research on her life and death, and there is no doubt she was sold out by her “own” people — both in government and in the church — because of her dangerous demonstrations that non-clergy could get direct communications from God, and popular war heroes can out-shine even kings.
IIRC (it’s been over 30 years since I did all the reading):
One of the bright spots of her trial (for relative values of “bright”) was the clerk recording the testimony, who refused to alter the records to suit the judges, who were dismayed that she was able to answer all their questions much more ably than they thought possible for an unlearned girl. Hah.
She was ultimately convicted, not for those obvious reasons, but for the trivial charge (to us) of putting her male clothes back on after vowing that she would dress properly as a woman while in prison. Her reasoning was that she wanted to discourage the guards from raping her (not that fabric is a bar to that, but there were some psychological issues involved).
Corrupt judges are not a new thing.
@ Shirehome > “seen any Jack-a-Lopes lately?”
Those are more of a Texas thing 😉 – I’ve only seen the jacks and the ‘lopes separately so far.
Among other indicators, one reason I knew we were losing the education battle was when a self-selected board of censors forced our children’s library to remove a western-themed alphabet book because it featured J-for Jackalope (and there were really cute pictures and interesting text in the book).
Because “children can’t distinguish reality from fiction” donchaknow.
And now we have drag queen story hours!
@ Rufus in re public sector unions > “When will there be an Executive Order protecting the rights of the taxpayers who pay their salaries to collectively bargain against them?”
In theory, the government agencies they are “bargaining” with are supposed to do that. In practice, the unions buy them off. Mostly Democrats, but Republicans too.
I’m kinda with Niketas in his view of the Real Purpose of our Public Servants being to feather their own nests, rather than to protect ours.
@ BenDavid > “Portuguese is what speakers of other Romance languages sound like when gargling.”
That made me laugh, but I have to speak up for the language.
We had a couple from Brazil in the visitors’ center last week, who were speaking together in Portuguese, and it sounded lovely to us.
Of course, we could be biased, since one of our sons went to Brazil on his mission, so we already knew and loved the sound. Sadly, his delightful Portuguese accent faded after a few months back in the States.
AesopFan, you’ve also got Ramon Urias to share bdays with. He turned 30 today, and homered against Toronto tonight, having come off the bench as a late inning defensive substitute (and made a spectacular play on a bullet grounder too!). So there’s that, better’n Jill or Jeff.
@ IrishOtter > “Try learning Gaelic Irish if you want an encounter with an impenetrable impossible language. Even the Irish have trouble with it and don’t let them tell you otherwise.”
One of my favorite short films (viewed during a plane flight many years ago) is this one: Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410939/plotsummary/
“Is there a place in the world for Yu Ming? He’s a clerk at a convenience store in China, bored with his life. At a library, he spins a globe and stops it with his finger, which turns out to be touching Ireland. He reads about the country and teaches himself Irish, flies to Dublin, and finds to his chagrin that no one understands him. He assumes that his Irish is at fault, that is, until he walks into a bar looking for work.”
Watch the film before you read the summary, which, although it is accurate, is full of spoilers and mangles the punchline.
@ sdferr – thanks for the reminder of a more positive connection.
I got curious and looked up one of those lists-sites the internet is so useful for.
https://www.onthisday.com/birthdays/june/3
Lots of people of all different nationalities and professions, many names I recognized, and some people I even like!
Sharing a birthday with Flinders Petrie, Tony Curtis, and King George V is okay by me.
Nifty AesopFan: Larry McMurtry, Josephine Baker, Diamond Jim Gentile, quite a few worthies mingled in.
My day off has come to a close, alas — back to work tomorrow!
We had to take AesopSpouse to the dentist for some fixes we couldn’t get done before leaving home, and it was only coincidentally my birthday.
However, I did do a little shopping while he was tied down!
Maybe things will be a little less hectic on the internet in this interval between Trump’s first trial and sentencing.
But who am I kidding?
Somebody is always doing something!
However, I did do a little shopping while he was tied down!” – AesopFan
A happy birthday indeed. 🙂 And wishing you many more.
AesopFan:
Another wish for a Happy Birthday!
Have the wildflowers already come and gone? I don’t recall them from my winter, spring, and summer in Wyoming 42 years ago.
Shopping was in Casper?
@ om – the wildflowers at our location are sparse, but I got pix of a few nice yellow ones along the roadside; they are past their peak now, but still pretty.
Casper has all the modern stores, so we aren’t hurting for supplies.
However, driving an hour each way is the pits, so we only go every other week.
I’m familiar with the problem in theory, because of having so many school friends riding the bus in from the farm (every day!), but in practice it’s very boring.
The scenery is spectacular, but you can only be awed a limited number of times by the same view.
The clouds are usually different enough to remain interesting.
Tom Cotton (R-Dardanelle):
What the Democrats have done in New York is like something that would happen in Pakistan or Brazil. It’s something that America would sanction another country for for engaging in election interference.
…if New York was a foreign country, America would sanction them for the weaponization of the legal system, their political opponents, and rigging election outcomes.
NYC is a hostile internal enemy of America.
Yes the same lawfirm that employee judge chutkin that worked with fusion gps why do you ask
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/hunter-bidens-law-firm-secretly-laid-out-58-page-plan-help-burisma?utm_medium=social_media&utm_source=twitter_social_icon&utm_campaign=social_icons
If only someone, perhaps even a lowly commenter at neo’s place, had urged you to spend a lot of focus on conversational French, listening and speaking frequently.
Rufus:
I don’t listen to much conversational French, but I listen/repeat/shadow the French to the novels I read for 1-2 hours per day. I’ve made good progress. I can tell it’s coming along.
Sure, I could have spent my whole 4-5 hours/day listening to conversational French and I would be further along in listening comprehension, but I wouldn’t be able to read French novels — one of the most robust challenges in a language — nearly so well. I can read a French novel in 3-4 weeks now and I find that pretty satisfying.
I had no idea about how many skill sets go into learning a language to how many degrees of skill. The time one spends working on X is time one doesn’t spend on Y.
There are many ways up that mountain
AesopFan:
Happy 72nd Birthday!
I’m about 4 months ahead of you.