Happy Anniversary..........................

David Kanigan has been blogging for a year now and the
Intertunnel is all the richer for it.   Do visit his blog regularly.

1963................................

The Village Stompers.............................Washington Square

Too right.....................

An important job, no doubt............

Eat like a man.....................?

Esquire not only posts a cool color map showing fast food restaurants across the U. S. of A., but they also show their bias.  Full post is here.   Bias is here:

"Oddly enough, the states where McDonald's and Burger King don't exactly saturate the market are also associated with higher obesity rates."

No surprise that McDonald's dominates.  What we might forget is the regional dominance of other chains.  One may quibble that Waffle House, without a drive-thru, is not fast food (although if you put a stop watch to a meal there, it's pretty fast), but I'm pretty sure they dominate the South.  Only a third of their restaurants show up on this map. Never had a bad Waffle House experience.

thanks craig

Not the originals.....................

.......but still, fun with dueling.............................

Call it a niche.......................

Our long-suffering daughter..............

.......has a stone-aged cell phone that only works when it feels like it.  She shares her stress with us. Smart move on her part.  We are off to the Apple Emporium this weekend to invest in one of their new (but not the newest) phones.  Be looking for one with an app like this:

A pretty good place to start.............

Who's he calling old.................?

Neil Young................................................Old Man

Maybe our science would be better................

......if scientists drank less coffee.  Scientists top the list of the fifteen professions that drink the most coffee.  Can that possibly be true?   Full post, plus Top 15 list, is here.  Excerpt is here:

"In no way is all of this to say that other professions do not beget similar (if not identical) negative side effects as science; you'll find workaholics in every field of employment on Earth. Nor is it to say that this list of coffee-dependent professions (the results of a small survey, conducted by Dunkin' Donuts, I remind you) corresponds to America's fifteen most demanding jobs. It is merely to say that the correlation between coffee consumption and scientists' tendency to overwork is striking, if not entirely surprising, and reflects a tendency within the scientific community to work oneself to the caffeine-addled bone"

Put that way, I almost feel sorry for them.  Way back in 1977, when I was first licensed to sell real estate by the State of Ohio, sales training seemed mostly theoretical.  I was assigned a mentor who would "show me the ropes."  His favorite method of prospecting for business was to visit about four different coffee shops/eateries/diners per day.  Invariably, while having a cup, or two, of coffee, he would see someone he knew.  A conversation would ensue that inevitably turned towards real estate.  I think he got most of his sales leads -and he was a pretty successful guy - out of those conversations.  After about four days, I figured out I couldn't drink that much coffee. Set my career way back.

Hate it when that happens.................

"I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher;  but I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in."
-Oliver Edwards


image via

Rules...............................

"Academism results when the reasons for the rule change, but not the rule."
-Igor Stravinsky  (attributed)

image courtesy of these delightful folks

My favorite catalogue arrived in the mail.......

"Would you be shocked if I changed into something more comfortable?
-Jean Harlow

     Said he would be back in a minute.
     Which gives you enough time to change into something that will set the mood.  Fire is blazing in more ways than one.
     More decolletage? Or less?
     Can be arranged.
     What if it, accidentally, opens here?
     Or tied like this?
     You'll give him five more minutes and then text him.
     How long does it take to find a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal Brut 2002, and a crudites platter with a dip made from a fat-free mixture of yogurt and cottage cheese?
     Vintage Tea Length Nightgown (No. 2801), with lace-trimmed long sleeves.  Lace and fabric rose trim below bodice, continues on hem and front seams.  Eyelets, nylon chiffon rosebuds, and ribbons all strategically placed.  Contrasting fabric ties.  It slips off as easily as it goes on.  100% cotton.


J. Peterman's philosophy includes the phrase, "I think that giant corporations should start asking themselves if the things they make are really, I mean really, better than ordinary."
J. Peterman's catalogue is way better than ordinary.

Worth remembering........................

“It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.” 
-William Ralph Inge


Ed. Note:  Yes, the picture doesn't match the quote; but you have to admit they posted a pretty cool picture

More fun with the language....................

Mental_Floss offers a quiz on ten of the lesser forms of punctuation - here.  I was very pleased by my score of 70%.  Not bragging, mind you, just a bunch of good guesses.  After taking the quiz, the McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader was consulted.  Lesser forms indeed.  McGuffey only listed two of the ten (got those right by the way).  Enjoy.

Voted yesterday.................

Took advantage of Ohio's month-long open season........

I'm a Phillies fan.........................

.............which means that most of the baseball season passed by with little notice from me.  There are times, however, when great achievement must be noted and applauded.  This is one of those times.  The Detroit Tigers' Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown, leading the league in home runs, runs batted in, and batting average.   The last time the feat was accomplished was in 1967 (Carl Yastrzemski).  As friend Rob would say, "Hail!"

Gold in them hills.................

Marshall Tucker............................Fire on the Mountain

Fixing up....................

My Sweetie and I are hunting for our first house to buy together.  We found a "keeper" that needs a bit of fixing up.  So it was with great interest that I read the Furniture Guy's recent post on "people and their houses."  Full post here.  Rant about "maintenance free" renovation here:

"Everyone searches for a free lunch. But there is no free lunch in a house. Only a direction. Or, more to the point, there are only two directions, better or worse. You are never at rest. Most everything I see touted for installation in a house touts as its prime characteristic that it never need maintenance. That's the "tell." If you ever see the term "never needs maintenance" again, substitute the word "disposable," because that's what it is. It never needs maintenance right up until you throw it away in an angry fit, 100 years before things that need maintenance are getting warmed up."

cigars in the coal-scuttle.....................?

"An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.  Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself.  The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on top of natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man.  But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.  I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it."
-A. Conan Doyle, The Musgrave Ritual

The new Sherlock Holmes (Elementary) TV series is on again tonight.  The first episode was pretty good, although Lucy Liu as Watson takes some getting used to.  Maybe I'm just getting older and the ears don't work nearly as well as they used to, but I also miss the crisp elocution of Jeremy Brett.  Regardless, the game is afoot and we shall be watching.

Methinks he would have been a great blogger......

"There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind."
-G. K. Chesterton

All.......................................

A stonecutter may strike a rock ninety-nine times with no apparent effect, not even a crack on the surface.  Yet with the hundredth blow, the rock splits in two.  It was not the final blow that did the trick, but all that had gone before."
-Courage to Change    July 28

painting from Martin Driscoll

Wonder........................

William Sidney Mount          Boy Hoeing Corn            1840

                            Hoeing

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived
     of the pleasures of hoeing;
     there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing
     moist-dark loam -
     the pea-root's home,
a fertile wound perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!
     The blade chops the earth new.
     Ignorant the wise boy who
has never performed this simple, stupid, and useful wonder.

-John Updike

Ed. Note: Several versions of this poem found amid the intertunnel have the last line as "has never rendered thus the world fecunder."   I like my version, as found in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, better.  

Launch.......................

"There are no dangerous thoughts;  thinking itself is dangerous."
-Hannah Arendt

The great escape...............................

via

the beating of our one heart...................

Roy Orbison.............................I Drove All Night

Opening paragraphs....................

"When the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn - when instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect, we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism - we naturally blame anything but ourselves.  Have we not all striven according to our best lights, and have not many of our finest minds incessantly worked to make this a better world?  Have not all our efforts and hopes been directed toward greater freedom, justice, and prosperity?  If the outcome is so different from our aims - if, instead of freedom and prosperity, bondage and misery stare us in the face - is it not clear that sinister forces must have foiled our intentions, that we are the victims of some evil power which must be conquered before we can resume the road to better things?  However much we may differ when we name the culprit - whether it is the wicked capitalist or the vicious spirit of a particular nation, the stupidity of our elders, or a social system not yet, although we have struggled against it for half a century, fully overthrown - we are all, or at last until recently, certain of one thing:  that the leading ideas which during the last generation have become common to most people of good will and have determined the major changes in our social life cannot have been wrong.  We are ready to accept any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one:  that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected."
-F. A. Hayek,  The Road to Serfdom

The Execupundit.....................

Mentoring, edifying, and acting as a  force for good in the intertunnel since December 28, 2005.  Long may he blog!

When was the last time this was taught?

                        ARTICULATION

                 ______________________

                 ELEMENTARY SOUNDS

Articulation is the utterance of the elementary sounds of a language, and of their combinations.

     An Elementary Sound is a simple, distinct sound made by the organs of speech.
     The Elementary Sounds of the English language are divided into Vocals, Subvocals, and Aspirates.

     Vocals are those sounds which consist of pure tone only.  They are the most prominant elements of speech.  A diphthong is a union of two vocals, commencing with one and ending with the other.

     Subvocals are those sounds in which the vocalized breath is more or less obstructed.

     Aspirates consist of breath only, modified by the vocal organs.


So opens the McGuffy's Fourth Eclectic Reader, originally published in 1866.  The version sitting on my Sweetie's bookshelf  is considerably newer, referencing a 1920 copyright.  Still, I profess to not remembering any of this stuff.  My bad.  We will have to delve into this classic more deeply in the future.

They always said to write your goals out.......

Speaking of philosophy.................

"Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously."
-Bertrand Russell

image via

This should cover it....................

"What is mind?  No matter.  What is matter?  Never mind."
-Bishop Berkeley

Meanwhile......................

          Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver


image via

No grudge of that sort...................

Christopher Hitchens............................Free Speech




thanks ambiance

An amazing letter

Robert Heinlein to Theodore Sturgeon.  A commitment to both creativity and friendship.  Full letter here.  Back story here:

"I went into a horrible dry spell one time. It was a desperate dry spell and an awful lot depended on me getting writing again. Finally, I wrote to Bob Heinlein. I told him my troubles; that I couldn't write—perhaps it was that I had no ideas in my head that would strike a story. By return airmail—I don't know how he did it—I got back 26 story ideas."


thanks Glenn

A helping hand.......................

image via

Progress.................................?

image via

Music..................

“The only truth is music.” 
-Jack Kerouac

“Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy” 
- Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” 
-Plato

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” 
-Aldous Huxley

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” 
-Albert Einstein

“Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.” 
-Leonard Bernstein

“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” 
-Robert Fripp

“Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.” 
-Maria von Trapp

“Life is one grand sweet song so start the music” 
-Ronald Reagan


image courtesy of

Well, I remember when..................

image via

Ring the bells......................

Bon Jovi..........................................Bells of Freedom

Evolution or devolution, that is the question......

Shhhhhhhh..........................

"In 1969, UNESCO passed a resolution outlining a human right that doesn't get talked about much - the right to silence.  I think they're referring to what happens if a noisy factory gets built beside your house, or a shooting range, or if a disco opens downstairs.  They don't mean you can demand that a restaurant turn off the classic rock tunes it's playing or that you can muzzle the guy next to you on the train yelling into his cellphone.  It's a nice thought though.....despite our innate dread of absolute silence, we should have the right to take an occasional aural break, to experience, however briefly, a moment or two of sonic air.  To have meditative moment, a head clearing space, is a nice idea for a human right."
-David Byrne, as quoted in the October Smithsonian

Ed. Note:  Wasted time on Searched the Oracle Google for ten minutes but could not find said resolution.  Sorry.

image via

Ouch..................

Walter Russell Mead scratches a sarcastic itch:

"As everybody knows, there is no such thing as a global war on terror anymore. Instead we live in a harmonious world of interfaith comity with only the occasional criminal act that is quickly and competently handled by law enforcement officials. As a result we can cut our defense budgets and get on with the real business of life, which is to say watching TV, going to the mall and voting to re-elect the strategic geniuses whose wise decisions and firm but thoughtful leadership gave us this tranquil world order."

Full interesting essay about this tranquil world order is here.

Consequences, intended or otherwise.............

"Today's empty-nesters have more debt and less savings than
previous generations."
-Irvin Schorsch, as quoted in Money

Hoffer.................................

Eric Hoffer, son of a cabinet maker, went blind at age 7.  His sight returned at age 15.  Fearing he might lose it again, he became a voracious reader and a collector of library cards.  He earned his keep as a migrant worker, a dock worker, and a writer.  Can we all agree he became a better than average philosopher?    A few of his sayings:

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."

"Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden."

"We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength."

"Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us."

"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves."

"No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart."

"The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power."

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

"One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive — it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men."

Ours too......................................

"There are two problems in my life:  The political ones are insoluble, and the economic ones are incomprehensible."
-Alec Douglas-Home

More than I can say.................

Firefall......................................Just Remember I Love You

Implication.......................

"There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement, without any thing capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose; means suitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to use, imply the preference of intelligence and mind."
-William Paley

Watched over.......................

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky. 

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms. 

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

-Richard Brautigan

Decent........................

"Man's capacity for sacrifice, for devotion and compassion and that most miraculous of all virtues - simple decency - can forever hearten and surprise us."
-Leo Rosten

image via

Stirs...........................

If we have become a people incapable
of thought, then the brute-thought
of mere power and mere greed
will think for us.

If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us.

If we have no compassion,
we will suffer alone, we will suffer
alone the destruction of ourselves.

These are merely the laws of this world
as known to Shakespeare, as known to Milton.

When we cease from human thought,
a low and effective cunning
stirs in the most inhuman minds.

-Wendell Berry

Added.........................

.........Project Gutenberg to my blog roll.  An impressive collection of really good books available for free downloading.  Do go visit - here

image via

thanks todd

Ready for a third party...................?

image via

Infinite...............................

"The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."
-Karl Popper

image via

OK, people...............................

It is time to buy.  Interest rates can hardly get much lower.  Home builders are starting to get busy.  And, have I told you lately, we have some beautiful wooded building lots for sale.

as always, thanks Bill for the chart