Isn't it delirious?

Via Puck Daddy, here's Alex Ovechkin on women:

The girls often write on the posters 'Alex, will you marry me!'

All the time. Got used to it and don't feel shy anymore. Sometimes after the game, they pull up T-shirts and ask to sign on the chest. I am all for it. Never asked to sign on the passport. When someone asks to sign on the money I always refuse. Bad omen.

A couple of years ago you were asked why do you change your girlfriends so often? Do you remember what you've answered?

No.

I want to live and have fun.

I could not say that for sure! It was all made up. On the contrary I've always hoped that I would have the one and only girl. But for now my record in relationships is 2 years. However I don't want to talk about my personal life. The newspapers write so much nonsense! For example, as soon as I showed up with the designer Lena Lenskaya at the presentation for Bilan, the rumors about our relationship started flowing. Isn't it delirious?

I'm glad he's "all for" signing chests. Good to know.

Bacharach

Honestly I don't know what I'm doing with this blog; I think next year, after the Classics Project, it may become clear to me. In the meantime maybe I'll just link to things that seem interesting to me, like this post from Dial M on Burt Bacharach.

Bacon whiskey?

I would by dying to know if anyone ever tried this.:

"To make 750ml of bacon whiskey, cook about 1/2 pound of bacon. Make sure to get some really nice bacon, don't go for the bargain stuff here. Once the bacon is thoroughly cooked, set it aside. You can eat it later. Collect the fat drippings and combine with 750ml of good quality whiskey. I used a blend of Jim Beam Rye and H's Eagle Rare Bourbon. Let the bacon fat infuse the whiskey for 48 hours. Then put the infusion in the freezer for 30 minutes to solidify the fat. Remove the bacon fat from the whiskey and filter well to remove any fat that remains."

I am useless

After reading this David Appell post it makes me depressed about this desultory blog, but without me, who would agree with this George Skelton column?

Maybe the takeaway is less opining about national politics and more trying to highlight out-of-the-way stuff. My energy's going to the other blog anyway, which is useless too, but in a way I often find much more delightful.

Annals of Capitalism, House of Cards edition

At Eschaton.

When The Newspapers Go

It will be sad to see that the "interesting article you stumble on" will also go, like this one aboutmoon rocks:

"One of these “grandparents” is a University of Tennessee lunar geologist, Lawrence A. Taylor, 70, an expert on regolith. He has developed ways to extract oxygen from the lunar dust, and, based on the knowledge that regolith contains metallic iron, he patented a method of microwaving the soil to transform it into a glass that can be used as a hard surface for spacecraft landings and takeoffs or for roads."

Turning the soil into glass? It might be worth going to the moon just to see that!

Cleaning Out My Net News Wire

• David Appell, in an aside about health care, says, "What a disincentive towards entrepreneuralism." Just so -- I think the Dems should hammer the idea that someone can't quit their job to start their own business because of health care. (It would be the equivalent of the "family farm" argument on the estate tax.)

• "The future doesn't happen in America anymore."

• Or does it? Kudzu as biofuel? As a son-in-law of the South I can't describe how happily this would be greeted.

• I don't understand this post -- it is too nerdy even for me -- but I am interested in it.

Our 30-year campaign of maleducation is finally bearing fruit

Via Quick Study

Dodgers blogging: our GM is stupid

I was going to mention this earlier, but I see LAist beat me to it.

Peak metal

I was swimming today and thinking about peak helium, which seems vaguely funny and yet its consequences would be anything but, and here's a post on peak iridium and peak zinc. I don't believe that this planet was "designed" to do anything, but we design our lives as though it were true. But if it were true, then it seems that Earth is not "designed" to hold six billion humans with the lifestyle we happen to have right at the moment.

On the optimistic side, I think we outlive our design purposes.

Prudence, indeed

From the other blog:

"To be political for a second I will pull out two of Jefferson's et al. complaints:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

One of my political complaints is the fact that a sizeable number of people don't want you to criticize the troops; this, to me, will tend to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. (Slightly on-topic: in my career I've met a few M*A*S*H writers, all of whom had been in the military in one way or another, because of the draft when they were in college. I think it was much easier to make fun of the military when everyone had been in it, and, on the flip side, it's much easier for those who had no experience of it to feel excessively reverent.)

Such reverence also seems bound to happen when you have, in times of peace, a Standing Army; once you have a Standing Army, it seems inevitable that you will no longer have times of peace ( “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?” -- Madeline Albright).

The Founders had experienced empires from the business end and knew what they were about."

"Why is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

True, but it only matters a little to me today. Happy Fourth!

Sad

This was inevitable, but the sad thing is that I was enjoying the LA Times more under Zell -- it was a little punchier and more local-focused. Sports and Op-Ed still had dreadful columnists, which is unforgivable in the age of the Internet, but I guess it doesn't matter now, the dying-by-inches process has begun.

History repeats the same refrain

My favorite part of the piece:

"I telephoned Bell -- he, too, had not heard about this other street corner stunt. But, though Jacques Gordon died two decades before Bell was born, Bell knew of him. The two men had shared something intimate. From 1991 through 2001, Bell played the same Strad that Gordon had once owned, the same one Gordon had played on the Chicago streets that day in 1930. For 11 years, Bell's fingers held the same ancient wood."