April 2009

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Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

-Thomas Jefferson

April 9, 2009

Is Anyone Else Hungry?

I could really go for some Cheetos or something, man.

Photo Credit: Kelly B.
Model: Ginger D.

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August 31, 2008

Trivia Question of the Day

In Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, he writes:

The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion, that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the Blue ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that continuing to rise they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the fore-ground. It is as placid and delightful, as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way too the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Patowmac above the junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and within about 20 miles reach [X] and the fine country round that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighbourhood of the natural bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its center.

For today's Atlas Blogged Trivia Question of the Day, name the city that Thomas Jefferson was standing in while making these observations. [Note: Contest not open to residents of Maryland, Virginia, or West Virginia.]

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August 6, 2008

Household jetsam

Thank you AlanDP for showing us a great Cracked article: 6 Technologies That Don't Know They're Dead.

#2, 3, 4, and 6 take up a lot of space at my house.

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February 9, 2008

What is a Man?

I love this article, What child-men need is some tradition, and how Rod Dreher correctly identifies the culture warriors of the Baby Boomer generation as the main culprit in our sad state of cultural traditions today, specifically in reference to what defines a man.

I suspected that Dreher's use of the word authority would cause the hair to bristle on some libertarians. In Justin's response over at autoDogmatic (Authority is the Anti-man), he focuses heavily on the word authority, and comes dangerously close to confusing government-free authority with that of modern conservative ideologies, as most discussions of Western culture often do.

I am often asked why I associate myself so closely with Conservatives and the Conservative Movement when I have so little--from a social liberty point-of-view--in common with them. (Okay, I have never actually been asked that before, but still.) I have an immense appreciation for cultural values and traditions that are self-imposed and regulated by family and society, much like Dreher speaks to:

It's not that all men, or even most, lived by this general code [virtue]. It's that they recognized that they would be judged by it, and judged themselves by it.

Where I split from the Conservative movement is any attempt to legislate these societal mores. That does not mean, however, that there cannot be a society-defined set of standards by which to live. I believe that this is a noble cause, instead of one that's often dismissed by the Boomers and mocked by the Left.

Submitting to, and accepting that there are things greater than you is also a submission to authority, and I'm not talking about the government outlawing smoking in your car. In this case, authority can be a pastor or a parent, a teacher or a mentor, an elder or an expert. The lessons coming out of the Sixties taught us that we were all great and perfect, and therefore, no one has the authority or right to judge you by how you live your life. This is counter-productive to a self-regulating, nanny-free-state, society. That societal pressure "to be square" that all the Boomers railed against, was actually a good thing. It was non-state, network-based, authority.

Hey, I love the autoDogmatic blog, so my apologies in advance for poking fun here, but I think the cancerous egocentrism passed down from Boomers to my Generation X is nicely summed up in one of Justin's sentences:

For one, I cannot fathom how anyone could be a better judge of my life than me.

And therein lies the problem.

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August 5, 2007

Slowly I Turned...

I will be out of town for about a week, and it's not likely I will be checking in here or even on email. My wife and I are leaving the kids with my parents and bolting for some adult alone time in Ontario - Toronto and the Niagara region. I don't think we'll have trouble staying occupied, but I'm bringing a couple of books along in case of downtime Specifically, I'll be bringing the latest from my favorite contemporary science fiction author (guesses?) and then re-reading Mean Martin Manning, which I heartily recommend to all of you.

We'll probably be spending at least two nights at the Falls. I'm curious to see how much the Canadian side has changed since I was last there.

And much to my wife's dismay, I confess I will have difficulty not making references to the clip here:

So anyway, I'll see you when I get back.

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July 11, 2007

Connections

Remember James Burke's Connections? I miss this show, and was saddened to read that there hasn't been an episode since 1997, and there's seemingly none planned for the future.

I am currently going through a Thomas Jefferson phase (as I imagine most libertarians do), and recently experienced my own, personal connections. But first, a little background: The Rammage Family has recently left The People's Republic of Maryland and is in the process of building a new home in Fauquier County, VA. My excitement on moving to the Old Dominion should be apparent, and I've already traced my new property through its previous owners back to ~~King George III~~ King Charles II (with, admittedly, a few gaps here and there.) While I quickly familiarized myself with such local legends as John Marshall and John "Gray Ghost" Mosby, I hadn't researched yet the origins of Fauquier.

Rewind the clock by four years and the Rammage Family was visiting London on winter holiday. In a whirlwind tour of the city that lasted five days, we caught the two most popular churches, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, along with a Christmas Eve service in a less touristy church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Fast-forward to present-day and my ongoing Jefferson phase, and I'm currently reading Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder by Jack Mclaughlin. The author takes somewhat of a different approach to biographies, and analyzes Jefferson through his owner/builder architectural design and construction of Monticello. A young Thomas Jefferson befriended the royal governor of the Virginia Colony, Francis Fauquier, who was, as McLaughlin wrote, "important in establishing Jefferson's artistic and architectural tastes."

And here's where my personal connections came to light while reading the following excerpt:

But Fauquier may also have encouraged Jefferson's interest in a more direct way. In London, before coming to the colonies, Fauquier rented a house in a fashionable section of the town, now Argyll Street near Oxford Circus, from none other than James Gibbs, one of England's most illustrious architects.

Like Fauquier, Gibbs was a member of the Royal Society, and in the close-knit circles of the privileged classes of London, the two men were quite likely social acquaintances. Gibbs had designed some of the most impressive buildings in England in the [Christopher] Wren style. His masterpiece, St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, remains one of London's architectural landmarks, its monumental Corinthian portico and soaring baroque steeple overlooking Trafalgar Square.

His reputation was increased throughout England and the colonies by two publications, A Book of Architecture, a pattern book of his most popular buildings, and Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture, a textbook to be used for designing orders correctly. A Book of Architecture was the most popular style of book of the eighteenth century, and Jefferson had a copy of it, quite possibly purchased at the urging of Fauquier. He also owned Gibbs's Rules and used it to set the proportions for the earliest drawings of the porticoes at Monticello.

So there you have it: from Gibbs to Fauquier to Jefferson to my Jefferson Phase and the subsequent building of our own "monticello" in Fauquier County. Now if only I can convince Mrs. Rammage the desperate need to include a Palladian double portico on our new 4-bedroom colonial, the circle of my own personal connections will be complete.

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June 7, 2007

Harrah's Bans Microsoft Word Creator for Being Lucky

Harrah's Entertainment has banned Microsoft Word creator, Richard Brodie, for "being lucky."

I've meant to blog about this for some time.

I'm a quite-a-bit-better-than-average Texas Hold 'Em player (at least I'd like to think so...I think my poker buddies would agree). I also know the textbook best-odds video poker strategy, and play it consistently (when I get tired of live Texas Hold 'Em).

My Libertarian nature tells me that a casino should be able to deny service to anyone it darn well pleases, but it still annoys me that casinos routinely ban people from their establishments not because they're cheating, but because they are smart players. Wouldn't it be wiser for them to just change the rules of the games they run, to make sure players, on average, lose more money than they win?

On May 10, Harrah's sent certified letters to several high rollers informing them that their business was no longer wanted at Caesars Palace or any of the other Harrah's properties in Nevada, California, and Arizona. I was one of them. I called the office of Tom Jenkins, regional vice president, and got a call back from Terry Byrnes, the VP of customer service. He told me I was being 86ed because they couldn't figure out how to make a profit off me.
Now understand, the only games I play are poker and video poker. In poker, the house makes a 100% guaranteed profit straight off the top. In video poker, the house controls every aspect of the game: the pay tables, the amount of the house edge, and the promotions and incentives they offer. There is no way to use skill - or even cheat - to beat video poker. You can't count cards. You can't peek at the dealer's hole card. It's a machine. The best you could possibly hope for is to play computer-perfect, which I don't, and even if that were possible the machine still has a maximum theoretical payout chosen by the casino. The only thing the casino can't control is luck. One reason I like video poker is because you can get lucky and win. You hit a royal flush every 40,000 hands or so. If you're lucky enough to hit two, you're ahead! If you hit three, you're ahead for a long time!

Boy, have I been lucky at Harrah's.

I hit four huge royal flushes in the last year at three of the Las Vegas Harrah's properties. Not surprisingly, I'm ahead, although I've put 80% of it back. This seems to rub them the wrong way. But I have trouble imagining the thought process that would cause someone to decide that kicking out one of your most loyal customers is an appropriate solution to the problem of him having extremely good luck. If they think the machines are too loose, make them tighter. If they think they are giving me too much in comps, give less. They control every aspect of the game. Except luck. And kicking out players who have been lucky makes about as much sense as banning people from playing the lottery because they win it.

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October 16, 2006

Fortnight vs. Bi-Weekly

Why did we create the word "bi-weekly?"

As if it's not enough that we have to suffer through the same dialogue every time it's used (i.e. "Did you mean semi-weekly?" "No, I meant once every two (2) weeks" etc.), there was already a perfectly good - and more concise, might I add - word well-established in our English lexicon: 'fortnight.'

I encourage all of you to forego using 'bi-weekly' in favor of 'fortnight.'

Example: "Did anyone take minutes at our last fortnightly meeting?"

Thank you.

Next Week: Penultimate vs. Next-to-Last

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