Reader Tips

Reader Tips 34 Comments

In 1997 Long Island public television station WLIW debuted Visions, a unique documentary series featuring high definition aerial footage of various world destinations. The voice-over narration is occasionally cliché, or delivered in a cloying, fake-sounding accent, but it’s mostly intermittent and unobtrusive, and at least somewhat informative; the real pleasure, in any case, lies in the almost ethereal birds-eye perspective that provides a unique sense of the lay of the land and allows viewers to survey significant landmarks, churches, and ruins in their historic and geographical context. Tonight, for your viewing pleasure, here’s the visually gorgeous Visions Of Sicily.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

34 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. In So You Want To Be A Landlord Sippican Cottage describes some of the bizarre living conditions of the renters of some of the houses he renovates for a living. Dismissing suggestions that each instance is evidence of craziness, he posits instead a refreshingly straightforward and eminently more plausible explanation that sounds like something straight out of a BBC wildlife documentary:

    The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It’s the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we’re told we need to go back to that’s on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. She grazed, and discarded the hulls right where she stood, just like all our neolithic ancestors might. Slept in a nest. Pooped in one spot. When finally challenged for possession of her particular midden, located by the sylvan glade of Pizza Hut and the 7-11, by a member of a more prominent tribe — the landlords — she went off to make a nest somewhere else.

    Don’t know why I find that so funny.
    The whole thing here.
    h/t.

  2. Alinsky sez so far, so good:
    “The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.
    “The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were ‘traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.’
    “The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president…”
    h/t.

  9. The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says Greece is chasing its tail:
    “Prof Yannis Varoufakis told me this morning that PASOK [the party that currently holds a slim majority in the Greek Parliament] support has dropped to 8pc in the polls from 47pc when elected. New Democracy is down to 18pc.
    “Where are voters going? To parties that are not very friendly to Angela Merkel. The hard Left in various forms is running at around 35pc.
    “So what happens in the April elections? Does anybody think that the new government will comply with the Merkel-Troika Diktat, and continue complying until 2020 when the country will still be prostrate with a public debt of 120pc of GDP – if all goes perfectly?”

  10. Another appalling instance of shameless, logic-inverting, hypocritical projection:

    On Tuesday night’s Countdown, fiery host Keith Olbermann delivered one of his trademark Special Comment™ segments on the roiling controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity’s decision to de-fund, then maybe re-fund, Planned Parenthood‘s screening services. He compared the incident to McCarthy-era “witch hunts,” and said that Komen founder and CEO Nancy Brinker had “dishonored both her sister’s memory, and this essential cause.”

    Got it? Use de facto collectivist social fascism to force a woman to recant her position, and then, after she’s done so, accuse her of McCarthy-like tactics because she disagreed with you in the first place.
    I think I need to throw up.

  11. DIY Valentine’s Day gifts:
    Make a rainbow rose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq2YVoGNnZM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
    Howto for glow-in-the-dark carnations:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vhcHuaArdg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
    I learned today in the wind turbine thread that “windsickness” is a real thing. The Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society has devoted their current issue to this:
    http://bst.sagepub.com/content/current
    via: http://northgowerwindactiongroup.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/scientific-journal-publishes-special-issue-on-wind-turbine-health-effects/

  15. Regarding the ‘property bubble’ Vancouver is a special case, largely driven by Asian money.
    A close friend has just had his elderly Mother go into assisted living. His parents built a home in the Oakridge area 45 years ago, for $47,000. They just put the old house on the market for $1.7 million and had 13 competing bids – all Asian buyers. They sold it for $1.9 million and the house will be torn down.
    Meanwhile, on Vancouver Island I have two modern homes on a five acre view property, overlooking the Strait of Georgia (oops, thats Salish Sound now) all the way from Texada Island, across to Vancouver and all the way down to Delta.
    It’s been on the market at well less than half the price of that city lot in Oakridge.
    What’s that they say about location?

  16. Tweet:
    @LibbyDavies
    Libby Davies 1/5 Cdns live with mental illness- that’s why #NDP keeps raising it in Parliament- it should be a priority #fb #BellLetsTalk #MentalHealth
    16 hours ago via web
    Is it just the lack of coffee, or does this have real comedic potential?

  17. Neo-AGW Progress Report.
    …-
    “European freeze may last to end of February”
    “The worst February cold spell Europe has seen in decades may last until the end of the month, leading meteorologists said, raising the prospect of further deaths and an extended spike in European spot gas prices.
    “We do have higher confidence in a change by mid-February, but not to milder weather,” Leon Brown, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Britain, told Reuters. “February will probably remain a cold month right to the end.”
    The cold and heavy snowfall has killed hundreds of people across Europe. The temperature in some eastern countries has plummeted to nearly minus 40 degrees Celsius.”
    urlm.in/lbum

  18. The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.
    The discovery has stunned scientists,
    who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
    –
    I do believe in global warming,
    I do believe in global warming,
    I do believe in global warming,
    I do, I do, I do…

  19. “The best article on wind farms you will ever read”
    “Before I got sidetracked this morning by my sublime irritation at the Coalition’s latest ludicrous foray into Nanny Statism, what I’d meant to blog about was this.
    Some of you will have seen it already. It’s by the great Kevin Myers, it ran in yesterday’s Irish Independent (not the English one, for reasons which are bleeding obvious) and it’s the best piece anyone has written, EVER, about wind farms.
    Here’s a taste:”
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100136093/the-best-article-on-wind-farms-you-will-ever-read/
    …-
    “Kevin Myers: Energy policy based on renewables will win hearts but won’t protect their owners from frostbite and death due to exposure”
    “Russia’s main gas-company, Gazprom, was unable to meet demand last weekend as blizzards swept across Europe, and over three hundred people died. Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?
    Of course not.”
    http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-energy-policy-based-on-renewables-will-win-hearts-but-wont-protect-their-owners-from-frostbite-and-death-due-to-exposure-3012098.html

  20. O’everything goes better with …-
    …-
    “Davos
    PepsiCo’s Nooyi: Obama hits the spot!”
    “The head of one of the world’s largest soft drinks companies has praised U.S. President Barack Obama’s backing for big business throughout the global economic crisis.
    Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, said that although Obama had faced criticism from Republicans for his lack of action on industry, he had actually been a great support.
    “I think President Obama … has always been a friend of business. I think business didn’t feel that way because he had so many issues to address,” she said, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
    “He’s always had a dialogue with business, it’s just that his policy options were highly limited.”
    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/01/27/switzerland.davos.cocacola.pepsico/index.html
    …-
    “HUGE Job Cuts At Pepsi, As Firm Plans To Slash 3% Of Workforce (Obama’s favorite CEO FAIL alert)
    PepsiCo just announced earnings, and proposed a devastating strategy outlook for both the company and its employees.
    It announced that it will cut about 3% of its workforce, or 8,700 employees.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2844291/posts

  21. Not Our CBC’s survey.
    Snags vs Mao *Stlong’s pandas.
    Which one you wan? You wan prum sauce?
    …-
    “Euro Zone Meets On Greece Bailout After Athens Hits Savings Snag
    Wall Street Journal”
    “Stephen Harper secures pandas for Toronto, Calgary during China mission
    National Post”
    *Liberal leader Rae’s uncle Mo, c/o Red China.

  23. This article will not be news to anyone who is disturbed by the anti-human, anti-development nature of modern environmentalists but it is a well written blog post. (via Delingpole)
    “There is nothing rational about this mystical progressivism, a techno-luddite elite that believes unpaid cooperative efforts by degree holders can provide for a society better than the industrial and agricultural mechanisms that made the society whose cliff’s edge they are approaching possible.
    […]
    We do not need more sociologists, ethicists, workplace psychologists, politicians, human resources staff, chief experts on how to make people interact appropriately with each other. What we need to do is put all the experts back in the closet and let the engineers, farmers, workers and businessmen try to make the society work again.
    http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/02/economic-sabotage-of-west.html

  24. so much for knee-jerk reactions to mollify overeducated but underintelligent moonbats…Germany doesn’t get too many tsunamis.
    Freeze forces Germany to restart nuclear reactors: Report
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Freeze-forces-Germany-to-restart-nuclear-reactors-Report/articleshow/11814685.cms
    via: http://www.theospark.net
    BERLIN: The cold snap gripping Europe has forced Germany, which last year decided to abandon nuclear power, to restart several reactors taken off line, the daily Handelsblatt reports in its Thursday issue.
    The cold related surge in electricity demand prompted Germany’s network operators to call upon nuclear power plants that had been taken off line but left in reserve as a “preventative measure”, a spokeswoman for Tennet, one of the operators, told the newspaper.
    In the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March, which prompted radiation to leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022.
    Eight of Germany’s 17 reactors have already been switched off and the nine reactors currently on line are due to be turned off between 2015 and 2022.
    Five of the eight reactors shut down are serving as reserve generators in case electricity demand cannot be met from other sources.
    In December, Germany imported power from neighbouring Austria to stabilise its network.

  25. N-AGW PR’s Music Room: Turn off AGW’s bubble ice machine*.
    Here’s the amazing fact: “The river, frozen by the frigid temperatures,”.
    …-
    “Skaters’ Waltz / Ballet’s beauty blends with athletic skill on ice
    04/01/1998 · On ice, athletics and aesthetics come together in ways that both puzzle and attract dance lovers and sports fans. The two camps do not always agree, of course.”
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1998/01/04/​PK68514.DTL
    …-
    “Europe freeze: Danube river shut in six countries”
    “A Catholic church reflects on water when drift ice floats in the water of the River Danube in Budapest on February 8, 2012. The river, frozen by the frigid temperatures, has essentially been closed in six countries.”
    http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Europe+freeze+Danube+river+shut+countries/6125934/story.html
    *Stan Freberg

  26. Excerpt from Nick Cohen’s Bound & Gagged:
    “Although it is impossible to count the books authors have abandoned, radical Islam is probably the greatest cause of self-censorship in the West today. When Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, censorship took the form of outright bans. Frightened publishers would not touch David Caute’s novel satirising the Islamist reaction to The Satanic Verses, for instance. They ran away from histories and plays about the crisis as well because they did not want a repeat of the terror Rushdie and his publishers at Penguin had experienced.
    “Such overt censorship continues. In 2008, Random House in New York pulled The Jewel of Medina – a slightly syrupy and wholly inoffensive historical romance about Muhammad’s child bride Aisha – after a neurotic professor claimed that it was ‘explosive stuff … a national security issue’.”

  28. Ms Spoke here with Miss Spoke for Hour CBC.
    EU socialism. Over to you, Peter.
    …-
    “Greek bailout deal reached
    Last updated two minutes ago”
    …-
    “Live Coalition leaders agree new austerity measures needed for second bailout
    Latest
    “4.22pm: The finance chiefs of Germany and Ireland have both cast doubt on claims that Greece has reached a credible agreement. In the last couple of…”
    Eurozone crisis talks – live updates”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/

  29. Kate…. I can not find any links on the Web in English. However, the Net is more then just what one can see in the browser. This is what I know:
    Apparently, the Portuguese Army officers sent an open letter/ultimatum to Ministry of Defense that has been published in Diario de Noticias. If the goverment follow with army budget reduction they are not going to stand and be subordinated.
    On top of this, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho is expressing his opinion that situation is even more ripe for a coup d’etat then in 1974.

  30. At Toronto’s York University right now they have some kind of a multicultural event, which involves the display of many national flags. The university is known for its lefty and pro-terrorist views (they hosted George Galloway over a year ago). Here you can see how they desecrated the Canadian flag in that display:
    http://www.blogwrath.com/?p=2505

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