A pair of outstanding posts this morning...

A pair of outstanding posts this morning ... at Ricochet.  First there's Dave Carter on Planned Parenthood.  Then there's Claire Berlinski on the moral failure of our Middle East policies.  Both worth the few minutes it takes to read them.  As always on Ricochet, the comments are just as interesting as the posts...

Your tax dollars at work...

Your tax dollars at work ... on internal TSA newsletters...

The making of a wooden cup...

The making of a wooden cup...  I used the time-lapse video feature on my iPhone to make the

video at left.  It compresses about an hour's work into just 24 seconds – but you do get a good idea what I do to turn a cup.  In the photo at right, the right-hand cup is the one I turned yesterday; the left-hand cup is the one I did today (and the subject of the video).  On this cup I did make fairly thin walls – about a tenth of an inch all the way down.  I had no problems at all, to my surprise.  It looks to me like if you have a good, dry piece of fine-grained hardwood, you can quite easily turn it down to quite thin walls...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  Miki, Race, and I did our usual morning walk, but a little later than usual – after sunrise for a change :)  The dogs were all excited by the morning smells, especially those in the recently-mowed alfalfa fields we walked by.  I let them roam around the edges, sniffing like mad.  I think we're reaching about peak sunflower; we passed over a hundred blooms this morning. 

In the hay fields for miles in every direction, farmers were already hard at work – moving irrigation lines, mowing, raking, or baling.  A field of the barley fields have been harvested and their straw baled; the beautiful barley fields we walk by every morning will likely be stubble within a few days, dang it. 

I enjoyed all the early-morning lighting effects.  The dogs enjoyed their respite on a perch where they could see all around them.  The dog-level view, I keep forgetting, is very different than mine.  I got down on the ground with them this morning to see for myself – most places, all I could see was the road; the weeds alongside the road obscured everything else.  No wonder they depend on smell – you can't see much down there!