Zone Rouge

Patrick Renoult, Head minesweeper Civil Security of Versailles Demining Centre and head of the museum before a collection of bombs and shells of the First and Second World Wars.

I've written before about leftover bombs in Germany. Seems France has a similar problem. The area around Verdun is so bad that parts have been cordoned off. Via Detroit Steve.

Note: I originally posted this back in May of last year. Bayou Renaissance Man notes that today marks the 100th anniversary of the battle of Verdun, so I am reposting this.

Saturday Night

Muu Muu's Big World Diner
Restaurant & Bar

We started with dinner and drinks at Muu Muu's which is right next door to Cinema 21. Handy if you are going to the movies. The place was dark enough that I needed a flashlight to read the menu. Fortunately sweety-bert had her smart phone and a flashlight app. I got something called The Elmer, which was chicken, mashed potatoes, green gravy (!?!) and a fruit thing. Pickled apple slices in cranberry sauce maybe? Whatever, it was pretty tasty. I thought the chicken tasted like turkey, but then maybe it does. They are awfully similar and most of what we think is taste is texture and spices. Sweety was a little disappointed in her hamburger: there were french fries in it. Edible, but not what she was expecting.

The Meadow

    We had a little time to kill so we walked up to 23rd and wandered around for a bit. We stopped in The Meadow on account of sea-salt and chocolate are all the rage these days and that is their stock in trade. Very peculiar little shop, at least to my way of thinking. $10 chocolate bars from the far corners of the earth. $60 gift sets of various kinds of table salt, likewise from obscure locations. I'm kind of a Hershey's and Morton's guy, so this place just baffled me. They also stock a variety of bitters. Those look like they might be interesting, but I'm going to leave that to people with the time and inclination to investigate.

Dick's Kitchen

Back to 21st street where we stopped in at Dick's Kitchen for coffee and cheesecake, just a block down from Muu Muu's. Whereas Muu Muu's was just my glass of bourbon, quiet and dark, Dick's was bright and loud, which suited sweety. Coffee was $2, which I thought was pretty good for sit down service. The cheesecake was tasty, but cheesecake generally is. You know, I can't think of a single instance of bad cheesecake. Might be why I weigh 250 pounds. We split one piece this time.

Then it was time for the movie. We met a couple of friends at the door. They had passes to PIFF and have been watching four movies a day for weeks. Okay, days. Something else I just don't understand.

P.S. Dick's has huge double-hung windows with counterweights concealed in the frame and suspended from ropes. I didn't think they made windows like that anymore. When I was in junior high school our house in Bexley had double-hung windows. They were just regular size though, not ginormous, and certainly not double glazed.

Update April 2016 replaced missing pictures. I'm a little pissed about this. I learned a long time ago not to hot link pictures from other sites because they can disappear without any warning and then you are left with a dumb looking post. So I now I make a local copy and then upload it to Blogger, and since I'm not using Picasa or Google+ for pictures, Blogger should be able to keep track of them, right? So what happened here? Could be that I got lazy and forgot my golden rule and hot linked them, and that is probably what happened here, as following the links from the original post did not go to a Blogger url.

Update May 2018 replaced missing picture. How did this happen, again? I suspect Blogger of being too smart for it's own good.

600 Miles

600 Miles

It's an engrossing movie, there is a lot of 'what's going on' and 'what's going to happen'. There are some weak links like 'why doesn't Arnulfo just drive off at the critical time instead of wading in way till he's in way over his head?' This incident was weak but it set up the situation that made the bulk of the movie. How we got there wasn't really important. Arnulfo is also absolutely the wrong guy for this job. I dunno, maybe when your operation depends foremost on loyalty, competence comes second and when things go wrong you end up in the shit.
    At the beginning of the movie there is a scene in a gun store and another at a gun show. I like guns. I've been to gun shops and gun shows and it was always a little thrilling. I mean, like wow! Look at all the really cool guns! Didn't bother me in the least.
    But seeing them in this movie was a bit of a shock. The presentation might have had something to do with it. Everything looks pretty normal, everyday life, people going about their business and then we see a display of guns on the back wall of a store, and then the camera pans and more guns come into view, and then we pan some more and there's even more guns. It was a really big gun shop, bigger than any I've ever seen. The gun show, on the other hand, was small potatoes compared to the ones I've been to.
    The ending is kind of annoying. The last scene is a couple having breakfast in the kitchen. The picture goes away and is replaced by a black screen and the credits start rolling, but the sound track continues. You hear the sound of dishes and bits of inconsequential conversation. I'm wondering what the heck? Is this just a stupid pet trick, or are they going to pull a rabbit out of the hat? But nothing happens, life just goes on like normal until the credits end and I realize that the movie was over five minutes ago.
    We saw this at Cinema 21 on 21st Street in Portland. It is playing as part of the Portland International Film Festival.

Wiki-Wander 1814

Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron by Margaret Sarah Carpenter
because we need a picture and I like Ada much more than his Lordship

Jonathan Strange (a character in the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) has become acquainted with Lord Byron in Venice, Italy. They both enjoyed playing billiards. Lord Byron, as you may know, was a real life poet and cad. I was never much for poetry, but some people seem to think the world of this guy.
    People originally got titles in England by doing something great, or at least good, for the King and country (at least I think that's how it worked). Their descendants inherit the titles, which is how most of the existing lords and such got their titles, but back in the 1800's it might still have been possible to get one on merit. So I'm wondering how this effete, intellectual, metro-sexual get his title? Wikipedia knows:

When Byron's great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, the 10-year-old boy became the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire.

Okay, he got his title the old fashioned way, he inherited it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch .  .  .

Phineus & The Harpies by Russell Marks

Marcel puts up a post about Phineas today. I think he's making a comment on some current event, but I don't really know what he is talking about. Shoot, I'm not even sure who Phineas is, so a-wandering I go. First thing I find is that it's spelled Phineus. Then the article confirms Marcel's story about the Harpies. The story mentions a couple of locations in the Eastern Mediterranean, so I look them up.

Symplegades
Strofades

And then I find this:

Lord Byron refers to the Symplegades in the concluding stanzas of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

And from the Alban Mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we

Beheld it last by Calp's rock unfold

Those waves, we follow on till the dark Euxine roll'd

Upon the blue Symplegades …

That Lord Byron guy sure gets around.

Update March 2026 replaced missing picture.

The Big Short

The Big Short - Inside The Doomsday Machine

I haven't read this book nor have I seen the movie. It is mentioned in a story* I am reading, I started following links and I found some interesting stuff. I've read other things about the financial crisis of 2008, but it didn't speak to me the way these lines do:

The Big Short describes several of the key players in the creation of the credit default swap market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–10. - Wikipedia's article about the book.

The two discover that the impending market collapse is being further perpetuated by the sale of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), groups of poor loans that are packaged together and incorrectly given AAA ratings due to the conflicts of interest and dishonesty of the rating agencies. - Wikipedia's article about the film.

Why has it taken so long for a clear explanation to reach me? Perhaps because earlier stories were too full of complicated economic analysis, too full of hype from people promoting their own particular view of what happened, and the normal legal fears of calling people criminals before they have been convicted.

* Newsonomics by Ken Doctor, sent to me by Indiana Thomas

Update five days later: another post on this subject.

Don't Blame The Economy, Blame The Drugs

The Drug Lords: America's Pharmaceutical Cartel

Newsletter from Senator Jeff Merkley (D - Oregon) got me stirred up enough to respond. Here's a copy of what I wrote:

The biggest problem with drugs is that they are illegal. Suicides are tragic, but sometimes it is the best option available. If accidental overdoses are a concern, perhaps labeling the drugs with a 'do not exceed' message might help.
I don't know, but I suspect that the worsening economic situation is behind the increased suicide rate. A negative income tax might help with that. Making vacant houses available to the homeless might help. Promoting primitive farming, ala the Amish, might help more people become self sufficient, which might help.
Drug addiction is not necessarily a medical problem. Many people think it is, but there are reasonable people who disagree. Now I wonder if there is any correlation between being a drug addict and committing suicide by deliberately taking an overdose of drugs.
The DEA is an abomination and should be dissolved. Anyone who wants to keep drugs illegal is either a moron or they are they are part of the American Drug Cartel.
The media talks about the drug cartels in South America, but they are small fry compared to the American one. I do not recommend picking a fight with them, they are vicious and would not think twice about killing anyone who opposes them if it would help maintain their grip on the drug market.
Don't support them with feeble minded legislation that add new restrictions to drug distribution.
Do not forget that the pharmaceutical industry is part of the American Drug Cartel.

Update March 2020 replaced image that disappeared when I added a new label, which led to Blogger complaining about some html construct, so I clicked Fix it and Blogger fixed it but good.

Amy Goodman

Older son recommended Amy Goodman to my attention. He listens to her on KBOO. She runs Democracy Now! I haven't read any of her stuff, but I was going through my notes and I figured I ought to record it somewhere where I can find it, and not just leave it on a scrap of paper that will get buried with all the other paper.
We have a drawing because she is not a hot looking 20 year old, and I didn't want to prejudice people against her with an unflattering photo. We should judge her on her values. I suspect she's a left wing troublemaker, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing anymore since the right wing seems to be the cause of most of our problems.