VTOLing

I should be posting about my sprint triathlon and the Turkey Trot 10k, but the pictures are elsewhere and what is a race repot without pictures. Yep. Boring.

Instead I bring you Stratfor's assessment of the President's Afghanistan strategy. It's been interesting to hear Republicans praising the president and the left not quite knowing what to do or say.

The analysis itself is interesting and I'm paraphrasing here:

What we have is the Taliban that is definitely going to infiltrate the Afghan army. The Afghan army which is the key to the success of the President's strategy. So instead of focusing all of our efforts on preventing this infiltration, which is near nigh impossible, we'll use the Pakistani ISI to infiltrate the Taliban.

What is that you say? The ISI has been instrumental in helping the Taliban in the past? No matter. We don't have any other options.

Aged, Sharp Provolone - Exactly as it sounds. It's harder due to the aging and its sharpness is just a notch below a sharp cheddar. Borderline fantastic and definitely a cheese I'd put out for cheese novices that would initially shy away from the stinkier, softer, more adventurous cheeses.

Only one new cheese this week. I was so busy inhaling the fresh mozarella, the Fourme d'Ambert (wrapped in prosciutto di parma - Oh My!!), Parmigiano Reggiano, and the Drunken Goat that I didn't have a chance to try any other new cheese except for Caciocavallo. It's a hard cow's milk cheese from Italy. It's slightly salty. It comes in an unusual giant pear shape and legend has it that it originally was made from mare's milk.

I had a smoked version that was fantastic. The only problem I found is that it dried out extremely quickly.

James Kwak asks, "Do Smart, Hard-Working People Deserve More Money?".

My views on this topic have changed pretty drastically over the past 20 years. Genetics and luck just play too big a factor.

As much as I disagree with what I think the end result of the health care debate will be, I just have to smile and shake my head in admiration at the introduction of the state Opt Out clause. Andrew Sullivan touches on it here.

Those are some pretty sweet tactics.

You know that my primary goal is to ensure that you are entertained. Why else would I post about cheese, running, politics, and economics? They are all topics that make one smile and in some instances chuckle. So it is with great sadness that I bring to you Mark Thoma, who published a piece about monetary policy, the Fed, and international reserves as they pertain to the financial crisis, over at The Economist's View, which was then republished at The RGE Monitor.

Mark, sadly is lacking in the entertainment department. However, he more than makes up for it in the "Damn, he's probably right." department.

Most of the time, I have no idea what I'm doing. Saturday, November 7th will be no different. It's my first triathlon. It will also mark the 18 month mark since the last time I swam laps in a pool. Should be interesting. Here's hoping my four weeks of training pay off.

Had dinner at Vivat Bacchus last night. They had a cheese room. A whole room in a restaurant dedicated to cheese. Stinky, stinky cheese. Mmmmmmm. So for dessert:

Comte - an unpasteurized cow's milk cheese. Pretty mild and a cheese I like to use to cleanse the palet if I'm out of fruit.

St. Maure - an aged goat cheese wrapped in ash. I'm a big fan of hardened goat cheeses with creamy centers. Very nice.

Fourme d'Ambert - Wow. Simply wow. A French blue. When I tasted it, the fruity aftertaste completely shocked me. Apparently they inject the cheese with a sweet wine. A sweet blue? Amazing.

Even though Christopher Hitchens most likely thinks I'm an idiot, I still can't get enough of his writing. The man has some serious chops. His latest piece in The Atlantic on Jon Stewart's rise to the top of the news heap is definitely worth reading.

Not a money quote. Simply my favorite quote of the article:

"Franken very often refers to himself as a “satirist,” which is a piece of hubris that comes to him too glibly and naturally. One wants to say, on hearing or reading such a claim, “Actually, sunshine, we’ll be the judge of that.”"

Capra Valtellina - an aged, semi-hard goat cheese. It's mild and a little nutty.

Blacksticks Blue - a soft, but not creamy blue cow cheese from the U.K. It's orange, which is unusual. Pretty smooth initially with a nice blue aftertaste.

Robiola Bosina - a very soft cheese from Italy made with both cow's and sheep's milk. Has a velvety rind with a buttery, sweet inside.

I've been meaning to post this article from The Atlantic for over a month.

Money quote:

"To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy."

Bergfichter - a truly awful stinky cheese. I'm renaming it "baby's diaper after baby starts eating solid food".

Drunken Goat - an aged goat cheese bathed in red wine. Fantastic. Smooth, with just a hint of goat. One of my favorites.

Humboldt Fog - a goat cheese, aged slightly so it has a rind, with chevre-like middle. And they throw a layer of ash in it for good measure. Lots of flavor and the multiple textures do wonders.

Is seething at the wrong person. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist, lays the blame squarely at the feet of the man who created and presided over our current economic disaster, George W. Bush.

But that's not as fun as blaming black on white violence on our president. So the tea party and 9/12ers continue to foam at the fact that not only do we have a Democrat in the White House, but he's also a black man. A combination that the wingnuts just can't accept.

I try not to complain too often, except about cyclists, I can't stand cyclists, but there comes a time when one peanut is one too many, particularly on a red eye.

I was taking my semi-monthly trip to New York on the Sunday night red eye. I was in poor man's first class (exit row) and was asleep before take off. I woke up briefly when the flight attendants came by with the drink service when I heard it for the first time, the crinkling of a peanut bag. Now as everyone knows, those peanut bags are pretty loud, especially on a plane where everyone is asleep and no one else is eating any peanuts.

Now a normal person would eat several peanuts at a time. A normal person might even pour the bag of peanuts into his hand. Not this guy. He took out one peanut at a time. He didn't even open the peanut bag all the way, but opened it just enough for his fingers to barely make their way in to the bag where he would grab a single peanut, eat it, and then squeeze his way in to the peanut bag once again. Over and over until his 25 peanuts were gone. The racket was intolerable. The only thing getting me through the 10 minutes of torture was the fact that it was just a single bag of peanuts.

Or so I thought. THE DUDE ATE ABOUT 10 BAGS OF PEANUTS! Once he ran out, he asked for more AND ATE PEANUTS THE ENTIRE FLIGHT!! (I'm starting to get angry again.) Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle, grab, chomp. Repeat 250 times. The humanity!

Needless to say, if he hadn't been 6'5", burly, wearing an American flag do-rag, and a sleeveless Harley t-shirt, my elbow would have likely ended up making contact with his nose.

Victor was our first Bishop when we lived in Brooklyn. He was on the 85th floor of the North Tower when it was hit on 9/11. I was surprised to see this video of his story on the home page of LDS.org. Incredible story of survival and renewal.

September 1st in Arizona is one of my favorite days of the year. It's opening day for the early season dove hunt. Getting together with my friends and family and hunting has been something I've missed greatly while living outside of Arizona. Yesterday was the first time in over a decade that I was able to hunt with those I grew up hunting with.

My friend had scouted out a great place. Close, lots of dove, and did I mention close. Unfortunately, it had rained the night before so the dove were not flying as much as usual (if you can drink from a puddle next to you, why fly to the big watering hole you usually go to?), but there were still plenty of flyers. Unfortunately, my aim needs some refining. It took me about 50 shells to get 7 dove. One person got the limit of 10 and the rest of us had between 5 and 7. One of us even took down 2 with one shot (he really missed both, as the birds were about 15 feet apart, but lucked out).

One of the dove that I shot fell in to some tumbleweeds. As I was poking around looking for it, I heard some rustling around and then some high pitched squeaking. I then moved the giant tumbleweed and came across one of these:



A black and white/yellow king snake who was very grateful to me for providing his breakfast, which I graciously let him keep.

The rest of the hunt was uneventful. We went back home, cleaned our dove, brined them, and then BBQ'd about 8 hours later. Nothing like brined dove, with a split jalapeno on the breastbone wrapped in bacon, and dipped in honey BBQ sauce. Can't wait to go on Monday.