Everyone Knows That -

There’s a scene in Cabaret where the landlord is listening to the Nazi propaganda on the radio and one of the characters tries to show him that hatred of Jews is irrational. His response is that everyone knows that there is a conspiracy of Jewish bankers to take over all of Europe, and anyway, all the communists are Jewish. It does not matter to him that this is totally irrational since “everyone knows these things”. History has shown the consequences of this “everyone knows”.

Just about anytime “everyone knows” something it should be a danger signal to anyone who has any intelligence at all. At one time the “everyone knows” in this country was that black people were quite inferior and not capable of any intelligent action. This in spite of the many black artisans such as Cesar Chelor, the celebrated wooden plane maker of Wrentham, Massachusetts. He was freed on the death of his master in 1752. His master, Francis Nicholson said in his will ” . . .As to my Negro Man Cesar Chelor, considering his faithful Service, his tender Care & kind & Christian carriage, I do set him free to Act for himself in the world . . .” Chelor plane are highly prized collectables as they are some of the finest examples of Colonial wooden planes in existence. This in spite of people of great intellectual accomplishments such as Frederick Douglas. And in spite of the great scientific strides made by George Washington Carver. And a ton of others.

At one time “everyone knows” that women are intellectually substandard. Guess they never met anyone like my mother. Extraordinary woman. Or my wife. Plenty of gray cells, and knows how to use them.

At one time everyone knew that the earth was flat.

Just about any time an “everyone knows” is grasped by the majority of people who do not or cannot think for themselves the consequences are not good.

The current “everyone knows” is the global warming business. We see the Congress pass laws based on this “everyone knows” instead of rationally considered consequences. This is so ingrained in the minds of the average citizen that even if evidence shows up contrary to that “everyone knows”. There is the silly idea that the next ice age will be caused by global warming. And of course “everyone knows” that this is the fault of the people of the United States. I suppose that the last several ice ages were the fault of the mammoths on this continent, since there was no US to beat up on back then.

“Everyone knows” that the ice caps are disappearing. Except that they aren’t. Of course, the “everyone knows” crowd says that the fact that the ice caps are back up to size is also a result of global warming, which “everyone knows” is cause by the evil humans.

Nuts. Better check your “everyone knows” meter. It will surely be a disastrous set of consequences as much as any other “everyone knows” in history.

Comments on the dance -

Now you may wonder what an old grump like me could say about dancing. Well, brace yourselves. For about two years in my late twenties I made my living as a dancer and a ballroom dance teacher.

Obviously, my bias is towards what the ballet types sneeringly refer to as “social dancing”. Ah yes, I lead, female follows. Good old atavistic, fun stuff. Ballet types do not seem to regard ballroom or tap or folk as “serious” dancing. On the other paw, I do not regard ballet as dancing. No, I am not disparaging same. What it is, to me, is quite beautiful gymnastics. Extremely difficult, but usually carefully choreographed. Relying more on careful counting and memorization than free-form and rhythm.

What has brought on these musings is watching the Michael Flatley Irish dance DVDs. It seems that every third or fourth generation rediscovers some form of tap, and Irish hard-shoe dancing is certainly one of the genetic ancestors of tap. Irish, tap, folk are almost always exuberant expressions of joyful music with a strong, driving beat and a happy melodic line.

The early Shirley Temple/Bill Robinson (Bojangles) collaborations were sheer joy to watch. Especially, see any of the routines involving stairs. Bill Robinson invented the up and down stairs tap routines back in his Vaudeville days. The reason that his taps sound a bit different than others you may have heard is that his taps are wooden rather than metal. Another one of his innovations.

For tap raised to high art, see any of the Eleanor Powell movies. Gorgeous woman. Also any of Frederick Austerlitz’s movies. Oh yeah, you know him as Fred Astair. For a special treat see the collaboration Broadway Melody of 1940. The dances in that are as near perfection as you will ever see.

Ann Miller’s Too Darn Hot routine in Kiss Me Kate is also superb.

The problem is that by the 1950s MGM trended toward ballet type routines in their musicals. See Gene Kelly’s later works, or even Fred Astair’s later movies and you will see what I mean. Great dancing, but not the joyous fusions of music and exuberant movement of the earlier stuff. Ballet is great, but it is not and cannot be the supremely stimulating rush of a tap or ballroom routine.

I am vaguely surprised that some movie mogul has not tried to incorporate Irish dance into a musical. And I’m not so sure it would work, anyway. It will be interesting to see what the next craze is, not that I’ll live long enough to find out if it takes another generation or so.

Tempura -

Like anything else that they do the Japanese take something relatively simple, spend a lifetime doing it elegantly, and produce something magical that will drive you nuts trying to duplicate it.

Tempura was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese in the 16^th century. The Japanese took the concept, filed the serial numbers off, redesigned the body style, changed the paint color and came up with something totally wonderful and uniquely Japanese.

Tempura is battered and fried food. Usually with a nice dipping sauce. Since this is Japanese the order is backward from what you might expect. Make the dipping sauce first, have everything ready to serve, get the oil just right, then fry and eat immediately.

So, the dipping sauce. For each two or three people:

1 tablespoon of mirin
1 tablespoon of sake
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 teaspoon dashi no moto (soup stock, optional)
fresh grated ginger to taste (optional)
wasabi powder to taste (optional)

There are about a million and one other dipping sauces that you can whip up, but the basic jobbie is the first 3 or 4 ingredients. If you can’t find dashi no moto don’t freak, it’s rather optional.

The batter:

Stick your water in the refrigerator for a good while. You want the water to be ice-cold, but you don’t want to use ice water. You will get better results from a soft flour of the Southern persuasion than a bread flour, so use Martha White, White Lily or some other Southern flour.

1 egg, beaten
1 cup ice-cold water
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons sake

The normal Japanese method is to use chopsticks to mix up the batter and to mix it just before using. They are right, it works best. Beat the egg, mix in the water, then quickly and lightly mix in the flour. You do want some small lumps, you do not want a completely smooth paste. As a side note, you can spend a good bit of time and money looking for special tempura batter. If you get it, follow the directions. You really don’t need to as this batter works fine. There are also some fairly elaborate batters out there. Experiment as you like.

Two schools of thought on the battering. One school is just batter and fry. The other school is batter, roll in dry flour, then fry. Try both ways and see which one you prefer. You could also do a flour, then batter approach. Do not think that you need to get a thick coat, you don’t. In fact, you generally don’t want to completely cover the object with batter. A thin coat with about 50% exposure of the food is about right. The Japanese don’t overdo anything and this is not like the thick American breading.

Frying temp is 340°F to 350°F. Now a purist will use a mix of sesame and vegetable oil. A true tempura fanatic can tell the difference. I mostly just use canola or peanut oil. This can be strained, cleaned, and reused two or three times. If it smells a bit off, get some fresh.

Anyway, fry for two or three minutes or until golden brown. What to tempura? Just about anything. Shrimp, vegetables cut into thin strips about 1-1/2″ long, anything else that you have on hand. About any seafood or vegetable can be done, just keep the pieces bite size. Broccoli is outstanding.

Like I said, typically Japanese. Simple and elegant. Any fool can learn to do it just by following these simple directions. Any fool can spend a lifetime perfecting this to the high art of a true tempura chef. The results are worth the effort.

The myth of the bomb -

One of the myths that liberals seem to believe that gives them comfort as they try to portray the US as an evil country is that the atomic bombing of Japan was totally unnecessary and evil.

Let us look at some historical fact. Not myth. Fact.

All prior Allied battle experience with the Japanese forces showed that they would fight like madmen and would rarely surrender. The Allies had learned to respect this fierce and implacable foe. And they had learned that Japanese territory could only be conquered with great cost in men and material. The Battle of Okinawa only confirmed the Allies worst views.

The Battle of Okinawa was fought as the prelude to and the staging point for the invasion of Japan proper. It must be realized that the oath of a Japanese soldier was to fight to the death and never to embarrass his family by surrender. The Battle of Okinawa lasted from late March to June of 1945.

The battle has been called the “rain of steel” because of the intensity of the fighting, the gunfire, and the sheer volume of men and material the battle cost. US losses were somewhere around 70,000 men. The Japanese losses were somewhat similar. The civilian deaths were somewhere between 70,000 to 140,000. Almost the entire infrastructure of the island was destroyed and the remaining civilian populous would have died of starvation if not for Allied relief  efforts. We are looking at somewhere between 200,000 to 250,000 casualties for the conquest of this island.

The Battle of Okinawa saw heavy use of the Kamikaze tactics. The Japanese would not surrender. The US High Command estimated that the conquest of Japan proper would cost over 1,000,000 US casualties, probably another million of other Allied troops, several millions Japanese military, and tens of millions estimated Japanese civilian deaths. We are probably talking about 15 million casualties to subdue the Japanese Empire.

There was no way to deal with the Japanese other than defeating them. They would not surrender without defeat. They would not come to a bargaining table and promise to be good boys in the future.

It must be remembered that the US had been bombing Japanese cities since1942, with great destruction and somewhere around 500,000 civilian casualties and some 5 million rendered homeless. The Japanese will to fight had not been weakened in the least.

The High Command decided that possibly the atomic bomb could get through the Japanese will to fight to the end and might result in millions of lives saved. On August 6, 1945 Hiroshima was bombed with casualties around 70,000. The Japanese did not immediately surrender so the city of Nagasaki was bombed on August 9, with casualties around 40,000. The Japanese finally understood that total destruction would be their lot if they continued to fight. It is true that many more people died later of radiation poisoning, bringing the totals to 140,000 for Hiroshima and 80,000 for Nagasaki. However, 220,000 is better than 15 million by a long shot.

Herself Sez: So many people are convinced that the Atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima caused millions of deaths that I wanted to add just a touch of reality here. This is the researched and documented numbers of dead from the final statistics:

TABLE A: Estimates of Casualties

	Hiroshima	Nagasaki
Pre-raid population	255,000	195,000
Dead	66,000	39,000
Injured	69,000	25,000
Total Casualties	135,000	64,000

So in this case, Himself actually overestimated the deaths and injuries. Now, back to Himself’s rantings!

Now, libs, please explain to me why the US is so evil for using a weapon that saved 14-3/4 million lives and kept the Allies from having to completely destroy the infrastructure of Japan, which would have resulted in the complete obliteration of the country.

Liberal Fraud

By now everyone who has not had their head in the sand has heard that the current data on weather change indicate that we are not only not in global warming but may, in fact, be headed toward a mini ice age. That’s a definite maybe - we don’t yet have enough info to form a good picture.

This has proven to be one of the coldest winters on record and the ice caps are not only up to where they were previously, but are larger. It seems that the sun does have more to do with earth’s climate than does human activity. No matter what the environuts have put out they are not qualified weather scientists.

It is worthy of note that John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, and eminently more qualified than 99% of the populous to render an opinion on the subject has written extensively debunking the global warming myth. He has even advocated suing Al Gore and all those involved in the “carbon credits” scam. An article worth reading is http://media.kusi.clickability.com/documents/Comments+on+Global+Warming1.pdf

I will be willing to bet that none of the true believers of the church of global warming are likely to examine their beliefs in light of the current data. Sort of - “Don’t confuse me with facts, my minds already made up”. The only problem with this nutty religion is that these people have taken over the Democrat party and a good many Republicans - and they are making law based on emotion rather than science. We are wasting resources that could be better spent on other things that are of consequence.

Another current news story from the environazis is the eco-terrorist firebombing of the million dollar homes in Seattle. These homes were being built to all the latest green standards. In showing their “love for mother earth” these idiots have damaged the environment far more than the contractor, who was being as careful as possible to be a good environmental citizen. Their activity has dumped all the products of combustion that they decry into the air. I wonder how many phony carbon offsets they need to buy to wash the soot off their hands? Would these people care if human lives were lost in their terrorist activities. Would carbon offsets wash the blood from their hands? Or does their “purity of belief” exempt them from the condemnation they heap on everyone else. And just think of all the poisons that were washed into the water table. Yeah, they really showed love for mama earth. That’s like killing your mother to prove that you love her. Not rational logic.

I do not see any difference between these people who would force their will on everyone else, either by force of law - with the implied threat of punishment if we do not accede to their world view - and any other dictatorial madman. The Moslem terrorists, the IRA terrorists, the Eco-Terrorists, the Spanish Inquisition, Hitlerian Germany. All samey-samey. Any of the above will destroy, torture, kill, jail, fine, or whatever if you disagree with their agenda and do not bow to their will.

It is high time to reject the forces of the left in this country and tell them to go away, we will not surrender our freedom in the name of junk science.

This does not mean that we should not be responsible stewards of the environment. But we are stewards, not slaves, and should act as such.

Ol’ Curmudgeon Away!

Herself sez: The Ol’ Curmudgeon is away for a few days, but will return to the blogosphere on Saturday. I miss him!!

Turtlemom3