Home » Open thread 8/17/21

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Open thread 8/17/21 — 14 Comments

  1. People are just awful. I’ve read some anti-war folks on Twitter I’ve regarded as reasonable essentially defending Biden on Afghanistan because “getting out was always going to be a mess.”

    They’ll trumpet their moral superiority to the war-mongers but all they care about is winning the argument.

    Mike

  2. So politically incorrect, not to mention profane, and strangely wonderful.

    Great start to my morning!

  3. “Ozzy Man, Barry Gibb and Leonard Cohen walk into a bar…”

    Not the start of a joke, just a scene from a dream Neo had last night. 🙂

  4. Jacques d’Amboise died in may….

    Neo has commented on related works, but never about Jacques himself…

    Was 15 when George Balanchine recruited him for the New York City Ballet. He performed on its stage for almost 35 years.

  5. Where I live, we get a lot of snow — usually about twenty feet per winter. A friend who raises sheep says that they frequently wander off into deep snow and get stuck, as if they were a high-centered vehicle.

    When this happens, my friend has to go out and pick up the stuck sheep and carry them back to the cleared area outside the barn. What’s worse is that they don’t seem to learn. Maybe he should try teaching them about metaphors, or international politics. I’ve heard that they’re willing students.

  6. My aunt’s family had a ranch in Marin County where they raised some sheep. From their stories I learned at an early age that sheep are deeply, deeply, DEEPLY stupid.

  7. Now that Ozzy video is very funny.

    If you are looking to brighten up your day further, there is this song and dance number. I found it when Irving Berlin was a topic of discussion.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjNYPVyxOuM

    It is very popular; it has a whole 323 views. I think I represent 6 of those views.
    Irving Berlin, Puttin on the Ritz, Herb Alpert, and it is shot in Germany. I have no idea who the dancer is.

  8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoLX0R89Hig

    This is charming. Martha Nettleton was the inspiration for the character ‘Deirdre McEwan’ in the James Herriot books. (Generating the characters ‘Deirdre McEwan’ and ‘Calum Buchanan’ required the use of much more imaginary detail than the other characters). She and her husband decamped to Nova Scotia in 1959; she’s the last survivor of the recurring adult characters in the books.

  9. I could not persuade my husband to even glance at the video. As a teenager, he paid for college by herding sheep (on horseback) one summer back in the 1950’s. He says that’s enough sheep to last him a lifetime. Although he does enjoy my lambchops!
    As a side note: he worked on an enormous Texas ranch where they happened to be filming the movie “Giant.” He and the other young guys got cleaned up (ironed jeans and starched white tees) for a trip into town on a Saturday night. As he came around a corner in the drugstore, he ran smack dab into Elizabeth Taylor. He said his mouth went dry and his life flashed before him…the most famous movie star in the world…and those violet eyes….
    Maybe the sheep were worth it!

  10. My aunt’s family had a ranch in Marin County where they raised some sheep. From their stories I learned at an early age that sheep are deeply, deeply, DEEPLY stupid.

    Bryan Lovely:

    I worked on a chicken farm once and I was struck by how stupid the chickens were. Wild birds are not, as anyone who has tried to watch those little beauties knows.

    Is this the fate of farm animals?

    PS. Avoid chicken farm work.

  11. A note on sheep, learned at a sheep farm in Wales during a vacation trip.
    There are many, many breeds of sheep, far more than you will ever see, because the “heritage” lines are not commercially profitable.
    Sheep were bred for the white wool so it could be dyed.

    Apparently, the intellectual power of sheep is related to the color of their wool, and was bred out along with the pigmentation.
    Black sheep are much, much smarter.

    My great-uncle the turkey farmer said just about the same thing – the large, whitish-feathered domestic birds would drown in a rainstorm, by looking upward with their beaks open, but the native dark feathered fowl are very canny.

    Ben Franklin appreciated their characteristics.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds4dv4IS0PM

    https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/turkey

  12. @ TommyJay “If you are looking to brighten up your day further, there is this song and dance number. I found it when Irving Berlin was a topic of discussion.”

    That was outstanding! Does that young many even have any solid bones? And he seems to float along the floor, or street as the case may be.
    Why doesn’t anyone even look at him, though?
    I liked the end with the shopkeepers and kids dancing along.

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