Category Archives: Scribbles

Randy Travis in better days

Posted on August 9, 2012 | Comments Off on Randy Travis in better days

I’d certainly prefer to remember him this way than via his mug shots.

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Posted in Music, Scribbles, Texana

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The mystical violin

Posted on August 9, 2012 | Comments Off on The mystical violin

My new violin teacher, a professional performer, is quite mystical about the instrument: the less you think with the violin, he said, the better.

He found no issues with my left hand, though I still feel I squeeze the neck more than I should. Good intonation, he said, good choice of fingering. Avoid string crossings where possible. But the right hand, the bow hand, definitely is my albatross. The bow takes long-term practice, he said, and I can believe it.

Here’s where it gets mystical: feel connected with the string, he said, be consistently engaged with the string. Engaged with the string. Use the whole bow, moving farther and faster, all the way to the tip and all the way back to the frog. Don’t take the bow off the string!

Too many beginners, he said, don’t go all the way down to the frog and then they lift the bow off the string and set it down again to begin a new upstroke and they crash land with a bounce and a wobble. That’s me.

The hardest part, he said, is the frog, getting to it and getting out of it. As bad as it may sound at first. No kidding, it’s very scratchy down there. He demonstrated playing toneful scales at the frog and insisted I practice that at least five minutes a day until I can get as warm a tone out of it as he can. Hmm. That may take forever.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Scribbles

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Mars we’re onto you, again!

Posted on August 6, 2012 | Comments Off on Mars we’re onto you, again!

And how. Lots of fun watching NASA-TV on the Web via C/Net as the new robot Curiosity—about the size of an Austin Mini Cooper automobile—touched down on the Red Planet thirty-nine minutes after midnight Sunday here, or about 3 p.m. Martian time.

A gentle touchdown, apparently, as Curiosity quickly sent back the first photos of one of its wheels and the distant Martian horizon. They were relayed to Earth through Odyssey, another NASA robot in orbit—since 2001.

Curiosity is a one ton, mobile chemistry lab and it landed in a basin crater called Gale which is believed to contain sediments washed downhill a long, long time ago that may contain… Who knows? We’ll be finding out in the next two years and, probably, even longer.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space

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Let’s see Harry Reid’s tax returns

Posted on August 3, 2012 | Comments Off on Let’s see Harry Reid’s tax returns

Maybe that way we can figure out just how the Democrat Senate Majority Leader (also known as the pederast-without-a-brain) got so filthy rich.

How did this supposed champion of the little guy, as the Dems all claim to be, accumulate $10 million in assets on a measly $193,000 annual income?

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Scribbles

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Propping up the Democrat narrative

Posted on August 3, 2012 | Comments Off on Propping up the Democrat narrative

This is pretty disgusting: the non-profit Ford Foundation giving $1.5 million to the profit-making WaPo and LA Times, chief purveyors of the Democrat “news” narrative. I suppose the NYTimes, the narrative’s exalted cyclops is next.

The FF has long been part of the Left-Wing money machine, according to conservative author David Horowiz:

“If you read articles by liberal journalists, they’ll be warning about the dangers of the Koch brothers. The Koch Foundation has $239 million. Ford is 40 times as big as Koch.”

The WaPo, L.A. Times grants are for so-called specialty reporting, they say, though more probably they’re simply to help them keep their financial heads above the rising tide of red ink drowning newspapers (and WaPo’s Snoozeweak mag) across the country—the rest of which happily reprint these leaders’ latest Democrat-inspired “news” on their front pages day after day. It’s for sure they won’t be getting any millions from the effing FF.

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Posted in Library, Obamalot, Scribbles

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Romney assaults cultural relativism

Posted on August 2, 2012 | Comments Off on Romney assaults cultural relativism

Mittens is a pretty boring public speaker and writer. Particularly a boring writer. The man doesn’t believe in contractions, which everyone uses every day in their speech. And most good writers try to imitate speech. The no-contractions result, as an editor once told me, is a page full of “Amish-straight.”

Maybe the Amish and the Mormons have something in common?

It’s refreshing, however, to see/hear Romney assault “cultural relativism.” You know, the academic nonsense of the last twenty years or so that all cultures are equally valid? That American culture is not superior to, say, Afghani culture. Or, in Romney’s recent Jerusalem riff, Israeli culture and its dynamic economy is not superior to the we’re-all-on-UN-welfare culture of the Israel-hating, bomb belt-wearing Palestinians.

But of course there’s a difference. Any fool can see it. But so far Romney is the only presidential candidate daring to be that fool out loud. So, while the GOP nominee certainly doesn’t have a sparkling personality, he’s already making more sense to the average American than Obozo and his tedious PC-speak. That’s refreshing! Go get ’em Mittens. You can beat this guy.

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Posted in Israel, Obamalot, Scribbles

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The private vs public economies

Posted on July 29, 2012 | Comments Off on The private vs public economies

“Barack Obama is explicitly seeking a mandate to make the public economy pre-eminent. That is the unmistakable meaning of ‘You didn’t build that.’ His opponent so far is talking about, but not seeking a mandate for, the [private] economy. One expects that in time Mitt Romney will seek a mandate equal to Mr. Obama’s.”

Mittens had better. If the elephants don’t at least take back the Senate and keep the House, our goose is cooked. Greece, here we come.

UPDATE:  In other words, considering how corrupt the federal government (i.e. the public economy) really is, the choice between Obozo and Mittens is between crony capitalism and genuine competition.

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Posted in Obamalot, Scribbles

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