What..me read a newspaper? Oh I am so proud of my guv.
November 30, 2011
November 24, 2011
The Bulldog
As a kid I had lots of dogs, serially, as pets. I don't as an adult because I never learned to raise dogs or any four legged animal as an animal with all its shortcomings. I want them to act like a human (although I'm not sure we've shown ourselves as anything too great through the ages). But I ran across this story in the NYTimes about the bulldog, a big brutish looking pussy cat of an animal. I had an history with what we called in my kid days an English Bull. My neighbor guy was a former marine who I remember fondly. This was after the big war WWII. He was the first man on the block to have a television. He would allow me to spend as much time as I wanted, along with his daughters, watching Super Circus, Howdy Doody and other kid shows. But I remember the dog. He was a big strong looking animal who drooled. But he would allow me to pretend to ride him like a horse. He never made a protest. But it looks like the breed is in trouble. I'm sorry to hear it.
November 20, 2011
From Architectural Digest-A Home Library
From Architectural Digest comes this home library. There's a saying we poorer folks use as consolation for being poor. It's that money won't bring you happiness. Well when I need some new space for my books, I search around for a build it yourself with maybe 3 to 6 shelves, and slap a coat of varnish on it, and repeat that mantra about money won't bring me happiness. Sure.
November 19, 2011
November 11, 2011
November 9, 2011
What's on my desktop
Painter George Ault
George Copeland Ault (October 11, 1891 – December 30, 1948) was an American painter. He was loosely grouped with the Precisionist movement and, though influenced by Cubism and Surrealism, his most lasting work is of a realist nature.
Ault was born in Cleveland, Ohio into a wealthy family and spent his youth in London, where he studied at the Slade School of Art and St. John's Wood School of Art. Returning to the United States in 1911, he spent the rest of his life in New York and New Jersey. His personal life henceforth was very troubled. He became alcoholic during the 1920s, after the death of his mother in a mental institution (Schwartz, 301). Each of his three brothers committed suicide, two after the loss of the family fortune in the 1929 stock market crash (Lubowsky, 7).
Although he had exhibited his works with some success, by the early 1930s his neurotic behavior and reclusiveness had alienated him from the gallery world (Lubowsky, 24–26). In 1937, Ault moved to Woodstock, New York with Louise Jonas, who would become his second wife, and tried to put his difficulties in the past. In Woodstock the couple lived a penurious existence in a small rented cottage that had no electricity or indoor plumbing (Lubowsky, 28). Depending on Louise for income, Ault created some of his finest paintings during this time, but had difficulty selling them (Schwartz, 302). In 1948, he apparently committed suicide by drowning. In his lifetime, his works were displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art (in Andover, Massachusetts), among others.
Ault worked in oil, watercolor and pencil. He is often grouped with Precisionist painters such as Charles Sheeler and Ralston Crawford because of his unadorned representations of architecture and urban landscapes. However, the ideological aspects of Precisionism and the unabashed modernism of his influences are not so apparent in his work—for instance, he once referred to skyscrapers as the "tombstones of capitalism" and considered the industrialized American city "the Inferno without the fire" (Fryd, 57). Ault painted what he saw around him, simplifying detail slightly into flat shapes and planes, and portraying the underlying geometric patterns of structures. An analytical painter and ultimately a realist, he was especially noted for his realistic portrayal of light—especially the light of darkness—for he commonly painted nighttime scenes (Schwartz, 300). Of his later paintings, such as January, Full Moon; Black Night; August Night; and Bright Light at Russell's Corners (pictured), The New York Times wrote:
“ The setting is the same in each case—a solitary streetlight, the same bend in the road, the same collection of barns and sheds—but seen from different vantage points. In them, Ault has summoned up the poetry of darkness in an unforgettable way—the implacable solitude and strangeness that night bestows upon once-familiar forms and places.
George Copeland Ault (October 11, 1891 – December 30, 1948) was an American painter. He was loosely grouped with the Precisionist movement and, though influenced by Cubism and Surrealism, his most lasting work is of a realist nature.
Ault was born in Cleveland, Ohio into a wealthy family and spent his youth in London, where he studied at the Slade School of Art and St. John's Wood School of Art. Returning to the United States in 1911, he spent the rest of his life in New York and New Jersey. His personal life henceforth was very troubled. He became alcoholic during the 1920s, after the death of his mother in a mental institution (Schwartz, 301). Each of his three brothers committed suicide, two after the loss of the family fortune in the 1929 stock market crash (Lubowsky, 7).
Although he had exhibited his works with some success, by the early 1930s his neurotic behavior and reclusiveness had alienated him from the gallery world (Lubowsky, 24–26). In 1937, Ault moved to Woodstock, New York with Louise Jonas, who would become his second wife, and tried to put his difficulties in the past. In Woodstock the couple lived a penurious existence in a small rented cottage that had no electricity or indoor plumbing (Lubowsky, 28). Depending on Louise for income, Ault created some of his finest paintings during this time, but had difficulty selling them (Schwartz, 302). In 1948, he apparently committed suicide by drowning. In his lifetime, his works were displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art (in Andover, Massachusetts), among others.
Ault worked in oil, watercolor and pencil. He is often grouped with Precisionist painters such as Charles Sheeler and Ralston Crawford because of his unadorned representations of architecture and urban landscapes. However, the ideological aspects of Precisionism and the unabashed modernism of his influences are not so apparent in his work—for instance, he once referred to skyscrapers as the "tombstones of capitalism" and considered the industrialized American city "the Inferno without the fire" (Fryd, 57). Ault painted what he saw around him, simplifying detail slightly into flat shapes and planes, and portraying the underlying geometric patterns of structures. An analytical painter and ultimately a realist, he was especially noted for his realistic portrayal of light—especially the light of darkness—for he commonly painted nighttime scenes (Schwartz, 300). Of his later paintings, such as January, Full Moon; Black Night; August Night; and Bright Light at Russell's Corners (pictured), The New York Times wrote:
“ The setting is the same in each case—a solitary streetlight, the same bend in the road, the same collection of barns and sheds—but seen from different vantage points. In them, Ault has summoned up the poetry of darkness in an unforgettable way—the implacable solitude and strangeness that night bestows upon once-familiar forms and places.
Stress
There seems to be a week set aside for everything. This week is put stress aside week. The picture caught my attention, but the subject stress is indeed a worthy one to address. Personally since I retired most of my personal anxieties have disappeared. Of course job angst is a big one, but when you get older, health issues take center stage. I wish there was a magic pill to relieve us from all types of stress but of course we know there isn't. Some people handle it well some of us don't. Hope you're one of the former.
November 2, 2011
Watson and Cancer
Once your family is touched by cancer you can't pass articles like this without reading it and saying to yourself..Yes this makes sense, which it does. Accumulating all the diagnoses and treatments and applying those facts combined with the doctors good hands will give everyone more faith in a good outcome battling this terrible disease.
IBM's Watson supercomputer to diagnose patients
Watson will initially be used to help treat cancer patients
Lucas Mearian
September 12, 2011 (Computerworld)
Watson, IBM's game-show-playing supercomputer, will soon be used to help physicians diagnose and treat cancer patients.
IBM announced earlier this year that healthcare would be the first commercial application for the computer, which defeated two human champions on the popular television game show Jeopardy!in February.
IBM and the WellPoint health benefits company today announced a plan to jointly create applications that can be used by WellPoint's teams of physicians and other medical personnel.
IBM and WellPoint, which is Blue Cross, Blue Shield's largest health plan, have agreed to develop Watson-based applications that can improve patient care through the use of evidence-based medicine, which is designed to standardize patient treatments by identifying proven best practices. A simple example of evidence-based medicine in action would be when a provider automatically places someone who has suffered a heart attack on an aspirin regimen upon leaving the hospital.
The Watson supercomputer is made up of 90 IBM Power 750 Express servers powered by eight-core processors -- four in each machine for a total of 32 processors per machine. The servers are virtualized using a kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) implementation, creating a server cluster with a total processing capacity of 80 teraflops. A teraflop is one trillion operations per second.
Working with speech and imaging recognition software provider Nuance Communications, IBM said the supercomputer can assist healthcare professionals in culling through gigabytes or terabytes of patient healthcare information to determine how to best treat specific illnesses.
For example, Watson's analytics technology, used with Nuance's voice and clinical language understanding software, could help a physician consider all related texts, reference materials, prior cases, and latest knowledge in journals and medical literature when treating an illness. The analysis could quickly help physicians determine the best options for diagnosis and treatment.
"There are breathtaking advances in medical science and clinical knowledge [but] this clinical information is not always used in the care of patients," said Dr. Sam Nussbaum, WellPoint's Chief Medical Officer, in a statement.
"Imagine having the ability to take in all the information around a patient's medical care -- symptoms, findings, patient interviews and diagnostic studies. Then, imagine using Watson analytic capabilities to consider all of the prior cases, the state-of-the-art clinical knowledge in the medical literature and clinical best practices to help a physician advance a diagnosis and guide a course of treatment. We believe this will be an invaluable resource for our partnering physicians and will dramatically enhance the quality and effectiveness of medical care they deliver to our members," Nussbaum added.
Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas Watson, can rifle through 200 million pages of data and provide precise responses in just seconds.
WellPoint said it expects to begin employing Watson technology in early 2012 in clinical pilots with selected physician groups.
"The implications for healthcare are extraordinary," said Lori Beer, WellPoint's executive vice president of Enterprise Business Services. "We believe new solutions built on the IBM Watson technology will be valuable for our provider partners, and more importantly, give us new tools to help ensure our members are receiving the best possible care."
Manoj Saxena, Global Solutions Leader for IBM Global Business Services, said Watson will initially be piloted by Wellpoint's community of oncologists, who will access its capabilities through a Web-based platform.
The computer used for the pilot will be somewhat smaller than the model used in Jeopardy!, but because of optimization since that time, it will have the same processing power, Saxena said.
Saxena said that much like travel sites Expedia and Travelocity, physicians will be able to input certain criteria to get back the best options for diagnoses and treatment. The results will come after Watson sifts through online clinical research and best practices, patient information in electronic health records (EHR), as well as historical insurance claim information related to specific patients, Saxena added.
The computer will reside in Wellpoint's core data center in Richmond, Va., but as the system develops, IBM said it will also be offering its capabilities to caregivers through a Web-based cloud service.
Lori Beer, executive vice president of Enterprise Business Services at WellPoint, said that while the healthcare provider has its own homegrown EHR system, many of its caregivers use platforms from a variety of vendors, so Watson's interface will need to adapt to different workflows.
Beer said that the program is starting in the oncology unit because cancer care and treatment research costs are growing faster than other areas.
"If you think about the power of [combining] all our information along with all that comparative research and medical knowledge ... that's what really creates this game changing capability for healthcare," Beer said. "Watson can present the physician with the most likely diagnosis ... and the probability that it's accurate, as well as presenting all the evidence that supports that diagnosis."
"Even more important is the course of treatment that follows that diagnosis. Through that whole continuity of care, from diagnosis through the whole course of treatment - that's really how we envision Watson being a game changers in terms of driving better quality healthcare," she added.
October 31, 2011
Kindle Fire-two weeks until release
The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet will be at the stores in about two weeks. It will cost us $199. I thought it was interesting to see what it actually cost to manufacture the product. Obviously Amazon is gambling that we will try to fill it up with content that they sell. It seems a sure thing to be a hit with books, music, apps, movies to stream, buy or rent, and a browser with unlimited capacity. The company loses $10 per unit, but everything we put on it comes from them, through the company store it seems. O.K. by me, it looks like a winner unless something goes wrong with the hardware. I'll take a chance.
October 30, 2011
To: A.V. blogger
A.V. blogger,
Thanks for the comment. Here is a snap of that particular small garden 'before the wilt'. Hazel finds it a little difficult to dig and weed on her knee's these days, so it will be all mine next year. I'm in the process of deciding what I might incorporate in with flowers. Maybe some herbs or maybe one of a kind type of flower. We have a great garden spot in our town called KINGWOOD Horticultural Center that is a great place to see new stuff . Of course out there all the conditions are the best so our stuff is a laugh next to theirs. Of course we have fun comparing theirs to ours. We sometimes think we should wear a bag over our heads when we mention Kingwood and our stuff in the same breath. But I think we have more fun than they do.
Thanks for the comment. Here is a snap of that particular small garden 'before the wilt'. Hazel finds it a little difficult to dig and weed on her knee's these days, so it will be all mine next year. I'm in the process of deciding what I might incorporate in with flowers. Maybe some herbs or maybe one of a kind type of flower. We have a great garden spot in our town called KINGWOOD Horticultural Center that is a great place to see new stuff . Of course out there all the conditions are the best so our stuff is a laugh next to theirs. Of course we have fun comparing theirs to ours. We sometimes think we should wear a bag over our heads when we mention Kingwood and our stuff in the same breath. But I think we have more fun than they do.
KISS
I have been told by a reliable source that my eldest son drops in here from time to time to see what his old man is up to, and see if I have become certifiable as yet. As a reward for doing that, here is a group of gentlemen he liked a lot in his youth.
October 28, 2011
Yeah yeah, it's been great
wilted gardenYeah the changing seasons are great, but
as I get older I appreciate the season ing
on the food about as well.
It scares the bejesus out of me to count
birthdays and realize I'm counting down
instead of up.
I am saddened by the fact that I used to
enjoy playing tennis at high noon with
perspiration dripping off of me like the
Niagara river and now I have to separate
mowing my lawn into a morning and
afternoon event.
I do crossword puzzles not for the pure
enjoyment, but like a race. It's now a race
to fill in the blanks this minute because
I may not remember the answer tomorrow.
But even though each step requires some
payment from an angry joint, or muscles
that don't really work without a protest or two,
it has been fun and if it were possible to
re-enlist, if I could take Grandma with me
as a signing bonus, I'd love to have a go
at it.
October 27, 2011
small accomplishments
I think this is an achievement. I know I cannot do it. I can't even memorize the states.
Garrison Keillor recites all the counties in his state of Minnesota.
Garrison Keillor recites all the counties in his state of Minnesota.
October 17, 2011
October 16, 2011
An icon of my youth bites the dust
Nothing new or unique about this. Another list of ten restaurants failing, except this one is, or used to be one of my favorites. Used to be because there hasn't been one close to me in many a year. But I sure loved their hamburgers, called Big Boys. When I was close to one it was known as Manner's Big Boy, then I saw one again years later and it was Fischers? Big Boy. Whatever I remember it was delicious.
7. Big Boy
> Change in sales (2001-2010): -68.6%
> Sales 2001: $580 million
> Sales 2010: $182.25 million
> Change in units (2001-2010): -65.2%
Big Boy is the restaurant with the most locations on this list. It is also, perhaps, the most well known. In 2000, the company’s owner, the Elias Brothers Corporation, declared bankruptcy following cash-flow problems and difficulties with expansions. The month before it filed for bankruptcy, the company closed 43 restaurants. The restaurant, which specializes in double-decker hamburgers, has not done very well since. In 2001 Big Boy had 405 locations. By 2010, that number had decreased to 141.
I bet 2000 will look like this.
Illustrations by French artist Villemard in 1910 of how he imagined the future to be in the year 2000.
I guess this might be close to SKYPE?
October 14, 2011
Our Working Life
How many of us go through our working life thinking just what this guy is thinking. Sadly, even in this country of free choice many of us work our forty some working years in jobs that we just fell into and for lack of inertia, lack of skills, lack of imagination, we remain.
I thought about it many many times in those forty some years about what would I like to be doing instead of what I was doing. You know what, I never knew, still couldn't tell you now to tell you the truth. Bad on me as they say. I admire those who loved their work and thought how great it would be to not care how much money you were making but just loved what you were doing. Oh well I've always been happy, maybe I should say stupid and happy.
October 12, 2011
Tomato's, Carbonara, Ham and more.
It's that time of year that is bittersweet. On one hand soon I will be able to quit mowing the lawn for this year. Thank God for that. It is the reality that I am getting older and my hip most times does not react well to mowing both the front yard and the back yard at the same time. I know it will happen, but either it's a man thing..I can do it, whatta you think I'm too old to do both at the same time? Of course I am unless I want to feel the pain to prove I'm still alive enough to do what I have been doing for the last almost forty years.
The temperatures are moderating and the evenings and nights are getting cooler, which is nice at bedtime. Just a little reading upon hitting the sack and kerplunk I'm asleep.
Looking back on Hazel's garden I think it could be proclaimed a success. This is the first in many years that the tomato's have been like the tomato's of old. She planted several varieties, but the big one was the Brandyboys. They were not so much on looks, big and shaped irregularly but big enough that you could slice the entire top off and have enough slices for many sandwiches, tasty as we've had in many years. Hurrah Hazel, Hurrah Brandyboys.
Speaking of Hazel, as I enjoy doing from time to time, she purchased a ham this week and she is going through her cook book and pleasuring my pallet with her many ways to serve ham. Today we had ham chunks, cooked in with green beans, and potatoes. Oh so good. After a breakfast with eggs and ham, and a supper of carbonara she has promised me a nice pot of bean soup, including of course the remainder of the ham.
Many of Hazel's recipes are in the cookbook in the sidebar. I am shamelessly behind adding recipes. I promise to be more diligent in that regard.
Seen above is the tomato. This one is/was one pound. Some others were bigger yet. They are not the prettiest tomato's but certainly the best tasting I've eaten in many years
October 1, 2011
More about Luther.
Three days ago I posted a paragraph or two about the BBC show Luther. I mentioned it was too grim for my taste and that was about it. Today in the New York Times there is a more in depth review of the show. If you are a regular viewer of the show it will fill in some parts you may have missed or wondered about. Here is the hyperlink to get there.
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