Starters: White beer, olives and newspaper in evening sun.

Main: aubergine medallions out of the oven topped with tomato, mozzarella and basil; complemented by a slice of ham and a tomato salad with pine nuts.

Dessert: Three flavours of vla and a movie somewhere.

Out.

The Catholic chruch in the US has decided that dealing with that which is God's is all very well, but they'd really like a piece of that which is Caesars in addition.

this completely crazy video has surfaced from some Catholic lobby group that is basically saying "Vote Republican or you'll go to Hell".

h/t New dealer @ dKos

keep to the Fen Causeway

Let's impale MicroSoft on a rusty pitchfork.

(That is All & I'm back to work.)

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

I have continued to be occupied with my garden. I now have a top rail around the garden at about 2m high and have set stakes for six interior posts. I set up string lines to get the stakes aligned and have now moved the strings to the top, where they will serve as references to set the posts to a common top height. Next will be digging, setting and pouring concrete - likely next week.

We have just had a two nights of rain, about 2cm total and the weather has turned cool and cloudy - perfect weather for tomatoes to set fruit. I already have half a dozen or more tiny tomatoes on my Early Girl plants and several others, including Better Boy and Goliath are flowering, but the cool weather will only last until next week, when it is back to the 90s. I can at least hope for several dozen tomatoes in the first crop.

When I have the rest of the posts set in the garden and have the 2x4s tying them together in place I can set my shade cloth. That should give me as much as 5F temperature reduction at the plants and hopefully extend the time during which they can set fruit.

This weekend I am going to Oklahoma for a family reunion. My two brothers will be there along with lots of cousins from my father's side of the family. I will be interested to see what they think of the current political situation. I am the eldest from our branch and my father was always the non-believer WRT religion, so I will hold up that tradition. :-) Most of my aunts and uncles were Democrats, but that was the '50s. I expect the staunchly religious to be firm Republicans but don't really know about the rest. I will be amazed if I am not the furthest left of the batch. I know I am among my brothers. Should be fun.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Thought I'd share a piece of tonight's Salon prep music background with y'all:

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

krugman is on hard talk, if anyone's interested.

predicting a grexit, maybe 2 weeks away.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

Fox decides to abandon the pretence that it's Fair and Balanced with an attack ad on Obama's Presidency.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Wandering through the Internet looking at paintings by C. R. W. Nevinson and ran across this amazing portrait of Edith Sitwell:

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

More like "London, France's 68th biggest city" | A Fistful Of Euros

the 2001 UK census, which estimated that the largest foreign community (measured by country of birth) in London was the Indian community. Total population: 172,162. At the time, the number of people born in France and living in London was 38,130. So did the French population in London really grow ten-fold in 10 years?

In a word: no. In two words: hell, no.

Firstly, it is well-known that the French consulate figures are inflated. In a 2007 article, an observer noted that (pdf):

In the U.K., [the] consulates estimate the French population at 300,000, whereas our study puts it at 130,000 (±15,000).

Who was that? Well, none other than a senior statistician working for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time, being interviewed in an Insee journal.

Secondly, and crucially, official estimates on the number of French people living in London do exist. One is done by the British Office for National Statistics based on data from its Labour Force Survey. The latest figure (XLS file, sheet 2.4), for the year 2010-2011, puts the number of French nationals living in London at around 70,000 (+/- 14,000).

Make no mistake: this is a large number. And French people make up the fourth largest foreign community (at least by country of nationality) in London, after Indians, Poles and Irish. But the official figure is still 5 times less than the one bandied about by the BBC.

So. As French cities go, London is smaller than Béziers, but bigger than Colmar or Bourges.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}