October 18, 2014 archive

Oct 18 2014

Let me tell you about the very rich.

F. Scott–

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

Should bankers get bigger bonuses?

By Michael Corones, Reuters

October 17, 2014

Morgan Stanley reported strong third-quarter earnings today, up 12 percent to $8.91 billion in quarterly revenue, while rival Goldman Sachs yesterday reported an increase of 25 percent to $8.39 billion.

As this Reuters interactive shows, the share price for both investment banks healthily beat the S&P 500, with Morgan Stanley’s earnings per share coming in at $0.84 and Goldman’s boasting an EPS of $4.69.

If there’s any bad news-and bad is a relative term here-it’s for bankers at the two financial titans, as both credit restraint in compensation (aka, flat bonuses) for helping earnings growth. Reuters’ Lauren Tara LaCapra reports that similar changes to bonuses are taking place across Wall Street. Still, Goldman estimated its average compensation per employee at $320,000 or the first nine months of the year.

Somehow I don’t think Joe Sixpack-or F. Scott Fitzgerald, for that matter-are shedding any tears.

Oct 18 2014

The Breakfast Club (Chocolate and Flowers)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgSo, Romanticism.  I’m conflicted.

In some ways it’s like admitting you have a sick fascination for fascism (which is by the way the political movement most closely associated with the intellectual impulse).

Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was also a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and the natural sciences. Its effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant.

The movement validated intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe-especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities: both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to a noble status, made spontaneity a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu), and argued for a natural epistemology of human activities, as conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usage. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to raise a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism.

Enlightenment is too sterile and demanding.  The raw reductionism of rationality leads directly to a mundane Midlands mindset of grinding machination.  Creativity and animal passion replaced with cogwheels of clockwork conformity.  How is an artist to express themselves by appealing emotionally to the audience within the rigid formality of classical conventions?

Silly.  With more cowbells of course.

Yeah Romantic Music is the skull thumping big hair skinhead (part of it is ignoring the cacaphony of cognitive dissonance and instead succumbing to volume of environmental noise and pressure of your contemporaries) pierced tattoo sporting rebellious child of “art” that became instead the ironically normal bastard of spiritual sanctity until displaced by the truly nerdy in a snot sleeved glasses pushing tartan flannel shirt kind of way by the self-awareness of modernist (have I mentioned I’m in therapy?), post-modernist (therapy cures nothing and I need the eggs), and contemporary (without chemicals life itself would be impossible) environment.

Have I mentioned I’m into Techno?

I wanna tell you ’bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat

Comes out of the Virginia swamps

Cool and slow with plenty of precision

With a back beat narrow and hard to master

No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.

In addition to inspiring Hitler and Francis Ford Coppola Wagner’s Ring Cycle  embodies every bad thing you’ve ever heard about Opera.

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.  It smells like… victory.

Anyway, let the fat lady sing and get your sitz on for 15 hours of The Ring.

Das Rheingold

Die Walkure

Siegfried

Gotterdammerung

Oh, Opera not enough for you.  Well Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Oct 18 2014

On This Day In History October 18

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 18 is the 291st day of the year (292nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 74 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1767, Mason and Dixon Draw a line.

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon complete their survey of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as areas that would eventually become the states of Delaware and West Virginia. The Penn and Calvert families had hired Mason and Dixon, English surveyors, to settle their dispute over the boundary between their two proprietary colonies, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

In 1760, tired of border violence between the colonies’ settlers, the British crown demanded that the parties involved hold to an agreement reached in 1732. As part of Maryland and Pennsylvania’s adherence to this royal command, Mason and Dixon were asked to determine the exact whereabouts of the boundary between the two colonies. Though both colonies claimed the area between the 39th and 40th parallel, what is now referred to as the Mason-Dixon line finally settled the boundary at a northern latitude of 39 degrees and 43 minutes. The line was marked using stones, with Pennsylvania’s crest on one side and Maryland’s on the other.

Background

Maryland’s charter granted the land north of the entire length of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. A problem arose when Charles II  granted a charter for Pennsylvania. The grant defined Pennsylvania’s southern border as identical to Maryland’s northern border, the 40th parallel. But the terms of the grant clearly indicate that Charles II and William Penn assumed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle, Delaware when in fact it falls north of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony’s capital city. Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in 1681. A compromise proposed by Charles II in 1682, which might have resolved the issue, was undermined by Penn receiving the additional grant of the ‘Three Lower Counties’ along Delaware Bay, which later became the Delaware Colony, a satellite of Pennsylvania. These lands had been part of Maryland’s original grant.

In 1732 the proprietary governor of Maryland, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, signed a provisional agreement with William Penn’s sons which drew a line somewhere in between, and also renounced the Calvert claim to Delaware. But later Lord Baltimore claimed that the document he signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect. Beginning in the mid-1730s, violence erupted between settlers claiming various loyalties to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The border conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland would be known as Cresap’s War.

The issue was unresolved until the Crown intervened in 1760, ordering Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore to accept the 1732 agreement. Maryland’s border with Delaware was to be based on the Transpeninsular Line and the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle. The Pennsylvania-Maryland border was defined as the line of latitude 15 miles south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.

As part of the settlement, the Penns and Calverts commissioned the English team of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the newly established boundaries between the Province of Pennsylvania, the Province of Maryland, Delaware Colony, and parts of Colony and Old Dominion of Virginia.

After Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1781, the western part of this line and the Ohio River became a border between free and slave states, although Delaware remained a slave state.

Oct 18 2014

Late Night Karaoke

Oct 18 2014

Random Japan

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The ultimate guide to Kyoto ice-cream

    Hayashi ‘Fang’ Hougi

While the weather is gradually getting chillier as many parts of the world meander into autumn, we know we’ll never be able to give up the sweetest bit of summer – ice cream. You can never be too full, nor the weather too cold, for a bowl of that delicious, frozen goodness, and if you happen to be heading to Kyoto to catch the beautiful autumn leaves, you’ll be pleased to know that Japan’s most traditional city is positively brimming with ice cream at this time of year, and today we have a guide to some of the best out there.

Whether you’re into fruity flavors or traditional Kyoto desserts, or simply wanting to satisfy your sweet tooth, the ancient capital is bound to have something for you.

Oct 18 2014

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

How to Make Pickles Without Canning

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The idea for this week’s recipes began during a week and a half I spent in Boston and New York in early September, when I kept noticing that pickled peaches were on many restaurant menus. Chefs were throwing them into salads and using the sweet and sour peaches to accompany meat and fish. I came back to Los Angeles and went right to the farmers’ market, intent on storing some of that summer bounty myself.

I then looked at the New York City Greenmarket website to see if the fruits and vegetables I wanted to pickle would still be available at the end of September in the Northeast. I was in luck; according to the site, peaches are available through September, and beans, corn and squash through October. I also wanted to make a pickle with green tomatoes, because this is the time of year when the last of your summer tomato crop may be on the vine, but it won’t necessarily ripen. When I went to my own farmers’ market in Los Angeles one grower had a huge supply of green tomatoes, right next to his ripe red ones. I bought a few pounds and made a cross between a relish and a pickle (the tomatoes and onions are sliced but the other ingredients are chopped).

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Pickled Peaches With Sweet Spices

A balance of sweet, sour and spice makes for an irresistible combination.

Pickled Green Tomatoes

A delicious cross between a pickle and a relish.

Refrigerator Corn Relish

A colorful relish that is both mildly spicy and sweet.

Summer Squash Refrigerator Pickles

Pickled squash that can go in salads or complement a variety of grains, meat or fish.

Pickled Green Beans

Serve these beans as an aperitif, garnish or side, or cut them up and add them to salads.

Oct 18 2014

NCIS: Olongapo City

photo Jennifer_Laude_t250_zpsb56ca96d.jpgClosed Circuit TV cameras show  PFC Joseph Scott Pemberton, 19, and three other  Marines  were drunk when they entered a Ambyanz Disco in Olongapo City around 11pm  on Saturday, October 11.  They show Pemberton leaving the bar a few minutes later with Jennifer Laude and three friends.  Pemberton is seen holding hands with Jennifer’s friend Barbie as they left Ambyanz for Celzone Lodge.

At around 11:35 Pemberton’s buddies were seen returning to the bar, looking for him.  They asked the bar employees if they might know where he was.  They had midnight curfew and had to get back to the ship.

One witness identified Pemberton from a photo line-up by Philippine National Police.  That witness also identified the 26-year-old Barbie as a witness of interest.  Both witnesses have asked for government protection.  Barbie also identified Pemberton.

Barbie has told investigators that she was sent away by Jennifer, who sensed there might be danger because they were transgender, so she and another friend went to another room in the lodge.  Barbie said that a room attendant (Elias Gallamos) knocked on their door around 11:45 to tell them that Pemberton had left, leaving the door ajar and Jennifer “passed out” in the bathroom of her room.

Jennifer was, in fact, dead.  She had been strangled and drowned in the toilet.  Autopsy listed the cause of death as asphyxiation by drowning.