Video: Sen. Pat Roberts Stands Up To Harry Reid on the Senate Floor

"Kansas Senator Pat Roberts recently performed something like an intervention (as the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross called it) addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “Koch addiction.” The Kochs are of course among Roberts’s constituents."

WSJ Essay: Too many Americans assume that troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan must be traumatized.

"A couple of years ago, I spoke at a storytelling competition about some Marines I'd known during our deployment in Iraq and my feelings on getting out of the Corps. After I left the stage, an older woman in the crowd came up to me and, without asking, started rubbing my back. Startled, I looked over at her. "It was very brave of you to tell that story," she said."

"Oh, thank you," I said, a little confused by what was happening. "I'm OK."

She smiled sympathetically but didn't stop. I wasn't sure what to do, so I turned to watch the next performer—and she remained behind me, rubbing me down as if I was a startled horse in a thunderstorm.

It was my first really jarring experience with an increasingly common reaction to my war stories: pity. I never thought anyone would pity me because of my time in the Marine Corps. I'd grown up in the era of the Persian Gulf War, when the U.S. military shook off its post-Vietnam malaise with a startlingly decisive victory and Americans eagerly consumed stories about the Greatest Generation and the Good War through books like "Citizen Soldiers" by Stephen Ambrose and movies like "Saving Private Ryan." Joining the military was an admirable decision that earned you respect. (read more)

Western Engineer

The Fort Cookbook pg 10.

The Fort's nine dining rooms are built around a central courtyard. In Summer months a typical Plains Indian tipi stands in the courtyard and may be booked for special private dinners. It can accommodate up to twelve people , and shoes must be removed within. Since servers must work on theri knees, they get an extra twenty-five dollars. (Is that all?)

Oddly both spelling tipi and teepee are used.

Photo from Roadfood.

Bent's Quarters, a private dining room recreates much of the feel of the 1840's.  A collection of medical herbs of New Mexico and various items of the fur trade period line the shelves; knives, beads, buckles, musket caps, tobacco twists and "segars," tea bricks, loaf sugar, Florida water, lucifers, and much more.

Bent is the name of the original fort in southern Colorado from which The Fort restaurant is modeled.

Tobacco twists

Tea brick

Florida Water is an American version of Eau de Cologne, or Cologne Water. It has the same citrus basis as Cologne Water, but shifts the emphasis to sweet orange (rather than the lemon and neroli of the original Cologne Water), and adds spicy notes including lavender and clove. The name refers to the fabled Fountain of Youth, which was said to be located in Florida, as well as the "flowery" nature of the scent.

Ha! Wikipedia, always so reliable. (neroli is oil from bitter orange tree)

Florida water bottles

Cologne or

Medicine 

(guess which on steamboat exploring Missouri River, first doesn't count)

photos nicked from ebay

In 1829, Scots inventor Sir Isaac Holden invented an improved version of Walker's match and demonstrated it to his class at Castle Academy in Reading, Berkshire. Holden did not patent his invention and claimed that one of his pupils wrote to his father Samuel Jones, a chemist in London who commercialised his process.[16] A version of Holden's match was patented by Samuel Jones, and these were sold as lucifer matches. These early matches had a number of problems- an initial violent reaction, an unsteady flame and unpleasant odor and fumes. Lucifers could ignite explosively, sometimes throwing sparks a considerable distance. Lucifers were manufactured in the United States by Ezekial Byam.[6] The term "lucifer" persisted as slang in the 20th century (for example in the First World War song Pack Up Your Troubles) and in the Netherlands and Belgium today matches are still called lucifers (in Dutch).

Lucifers

Back to The Fort.

On the east wall of "Bent's" hangs a wonderful oil painting of the Western Engineer, the 1819 flagship of Major Stephen Long and his army on their reconnaissance expedition up the Missouri River. The primitive steamboat had a sea serpent head that belched steam and a serpentlike waterline to throw fear into the Indians observing from the riverbank. The painting was done for The Fort's thiritieth anniversary by Gary Lucie, an artist well known for his intricately detailed and accurate renderings of steamboats and historic American waterways.

Western Engineer

This steamboat is the impetus of this post on account of the sea serpent. I have never heard of such a thing.

[A letter dated June 19, 1819, from St. Louis, ten days after the boats arrival there, further describes this unusual craft: 

"The bow of this vessel exhibits the form of a huge serpent, black and scaly, rising out of the water from under the boat, his head as high as the deck,darted forward, his mouth open, vomiting smoke, and apparently carrying the boat on his back. From under the boat at its stern issues a stream of foaming water, dashing violently along. All the machinery is hid. Three small brass field pieces mounted on wheel carriages stand on the deck. The boat is ascending the rapid stream at the rate of three miles an hour. Neither wind nor human hands are seen to help her, and, to the eye of ignorance, the illusion is complete, that a monster of the deep carries her on his back, smoking with fatigue, and lashing the waves with violent exertion. Her equipments are at once calculated to attract and to awe the savages. Objects pleasing and terrifying are at once placed before him--artillery, the flag of the Republic, portraits of the white man and the Indian shaking hands, the calumet of peace, a sword, then the apparent monster with a painted vessel on his back, the sides gaping with portholes and bristling with guns. Taken altogether, and without intelligence of her composition and design, it would require a daring savage to approach and accost her."]

Terrified indians. 

[My first boss at the FRB was a troll of an old man who smoked a pipe and stank of it. He was very close to retirement and completely old school nose-to-the-grindstone type and his speech pattern was unique involving a lot of "ohs" and a mouthful of saliva. Near the end of each shift all workers would gather in a mad rush to get out the checks processed that evening behind a wall of bins representing each bank. His voice was easy to imitate so in his absence I copied it, a fairly food rendition, from the other side of the bins and put words in his mouth he would never speak in his life involving swears. Then show myself to the workers on the other side and have a good laugh. Within days everyone there had their own version of his voice some much better than my own and saying imaginative and ridiculous things as boys do and thereafter none of us could listen to him with any seriousness at all. It was hopeless. We could hardly contain our laughter with serious matters. He carried these kind of wooden matches in his pocket and told us one time he brushed against a bumper of a truck and they ignited inside his pants. Naturally that became incorporated in our routine.]

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban: "If I see a black kid in a hoodie at night ... "

"Mark Cuban strongly rejected suggestions he's a racist, and accused critics of taking his controversial comments on race out of context. He did, however, apologize for one of the examples he used when admitting he has prejudices."

"In an on-stage interview for the GrowCo conference in Nashville, the Dallas Mavericks owner said: "If I see a black kid in a hoodie at night ... on the same side of the street, I'm probably going to walk to the other side of the street." He added that he would also cross the street to avoid "a white guy with a shaved head and lots of tattoos."

Video at the link

Esquire Interview: Jerry Seinfeld Doesn't Buy the 'Burden of Celebrity'

Scott Raab: Who do you have on the new season of Comedians in Cars?

Jerry Seinfeld: Jon Stewart, Robert Klein, Aziz Ansari, Sarah Jessica Parker, George Wallace. And I've done three of the five. Have two more to go. And it's gone very well. The whole thing is leading me around now. It was really just an experiment. But I love the potential that a technology like the Internet gives a guy like me. I thought, What if I just put something out and didn't say anything about it? People would probably start moving it around for me. It's very self-promoting. Unlike traditional network or movies, where you got to hustle your butt off to get people to notice something, I said, This thing, it'll do it itself. The one thing we are deprived of now is "Have you seen this?" or "Do you know?"

Scott Raab: Everyone knows everything.

Jerry Seinfeld: And they want to know. "Did you hear who died?" Of course I know who died. Everybody knows who died. This is what a good idea does. Here's how a good idea works. Same thing happened with the series. You make it. Then it's like you're in a rodeo and you can't get your hand out from under the rope, and now this thing is still going and it's dragging you around in the dirt.

NYT: Bloomberg, in Israel, Wins a $1 Million Prize, and Then Gives It Back

"Instead of pocketing what to him might be considered pocket change, Mr. Bloomberg and the Genesis organization announced a global competition with 10 prizes of $100,000 available to entrepreneurs ages 20 to 36 with big ideas, also based on Jewish values, to better the world."

“I wanted to pay it forward, so to speak,” Mr. Bloomberg told an audience in Jerusalem that included Israel’s black-hatted chief rabbi, a rumpled venture capitalist, graying former Soviet dissidents and Zionist war heroes. “To help others with the same sense of optimism and obligation, which is such an important part of Jewish tradition.”

Mike Hudack: It's hard to tell who's to blame.

"Mike Hudack works at Facebook. He's apparently pretty important there. His title is "director of product management." And he has had it with the news media, especially online outlets with their salacious gossip and click-baity listicles. So he vented his frustrations today on his Facebook page."

Excerpt...

Evening newscasts are jokes, and copycat television newsmagazines have turned into tabloids -- "OK" rather than Time. 60 Minutes lives on, suffering only the occasional scandal. More young Americans get their news from The Daily Show than from Brokaw's replacement. Can you even name Brokaw's replacement? I don't think I can.

Meet the Press has become a joke since David Gregory took over. We'll probably never get another Tim Russert. And of course Fox News and msnbc care more about telling their viewers what they want to hear than informing the national conversation in any meaningful way. (read the whole thing)

The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal had a response.

Adm. Bill McRaven: If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed

"Students at the University of Texas at Austin got a rare treat last weekend (May 17) when Naval Adm. William H. McRaven delivered their commencement speech. McRaven, a 1977 UT grad, riffed on the school’s motto (“What starts here changes the world.”) to deliver the 10 lessons he learned during his SEAL training. Among them: If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed."

The University of Texas at Austin, May 17, 2014.

 

transcript

clever birds

9-11 Memorial gift shop

Offensive or not, some gift shop toys seem just plain tacky.

KLEM FM: Charlie Watts' Golden

The key to Led Zeppelin is that somebody is always playing a counter point. You can hear that. ~Jimmy Page

I know that Page was talking musically and about his band, but the observation popped into my head as I began write a tribute to Charlie Watts who will celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary in October.

Through all those years of temptation, one guy stays true and faithful to his wife in the context of The Rolling Stones. That's sort of a "counter point" isn't it?

***

hailstorm

Hail is the best of all precipitations. This storm had four rounds of increasing size hail. It all melted away rather quickly and flooded off down the channels then the sun shone before the storm finished. Car alarms sounded, people appeared in doorways and at windows, ran for cover, concerned for exposed automobiles, gardens, roofs, pets, their belongings and their own heads. The air chilled. Bracing all around. Then the tornado sirens screamed in the distance again as they did yesterday.

Most of the hail bounced out of the baskets. Too bad, or else they'd be full.

Have you ever wondered how to evaluate a book or movie?

(Shamelessly borrowed from this post from John C. Wright.  Who does not have to wonder if the book he is reviewing is Awesome or not.)