Getting ready for winter at Long Island

For the past five days I've been visiting my wife's family on the north shore of Long Island. I haven't written much during the visit, but I've been thinking a lot and jotting down lots of ideas. I've also been taking quite a few photos, which I'd like to share. long-island-sound-at-sunsetMost of my trip was spent within a stone's throw of Long Island Sound. The temperature ranged from the 40's to the low 60's and the wind was often gusty. Here is a shot of Long Island Sound in the early evening. This is looking north toward Connecticut from Long Island. During the day, flocks of geese will honk and fly in formation, more or less. geese-overheadOne of my favorite things to do out east is to spot horseshoe crab shells. The crabs themselves are large (about two feet long including the tail), majestic and ancient creatures. horseshoe-crab-shellHow ancient? They've been around for more than more than 400 million years in pretty much the same form as we see them today. In other words, if you could be transported back in time to spot each of the various types of dinosaur, you would always be able to see horseshoe crabs that look just like these. Here is a lot more about these creatures from Wikipedia. Fall is that time of year for many living things to go into dormancy. This is certainly true of many types of trees. It is true of apple trees, for instance. I took this photo at Richter's Apple orchard. richter-apple-orchardThe apples have been harvested, and the Richter family, who has owned this orchard since 1938, is still busy selling mouth-watering apples of many varieties. It is only in the Fall that one can spot the intricacies of the skeletal structures of trees, including this beautiful specimen. It is hard to know exactly what is going on under those leaves, until it's Autumn. tree-b-and-w But it is the Long Island Sound that attracts me the most when I am on Long Island. The Sound has a special attraction in the moonlight, and when various members of my wife's family gathered on the north shore a few nights ago, I worked fairly hard to take long-exposure photos of the silhouetted family members enjoying the waves and water and the smells and sounds of the ocean water of Long Island Sound. family-looking-at-sound-at-night two-people-looking-at-sound

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Law professor: Stiff the mortgage company

According to law professor Brent T. White, many of the home owners who currently owe more on their mortgage than the house is worth should stop paying their mortgages and walk away from their houses:

[F]ar more of the estimated 15 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages should stiff their lenders and take a hike. Doing so, he suggests, could save some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars that they "have no reasonable prospect of recouping" in the years ahead. Plus the penalties are nowhere near as painful or long-lasting as they might assume, he says.

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Peasant mentality at large

In a post from a few months ago, Matt Tabbi described the peasant mentality so common in America today. It's a mindset that refuses to criticize the ruling class, no matter how oppressive things get:

After all, the reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over. . . But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit.

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But wait, there’s more!

It's black Friday today, and I was somehow reminded of Ron Popeil, of Chop-o-Matic fame, inventor of many well-known household products. He has sold more than a billion dollars worth of rotisseries. I noticed that many of Popeil's infomercials are available on YouTube, including this one featuring his food dehydrator: Popeil, who was quite successful as an inventor, was equally impressive as a marketer. He explains his approach to inventing and marketing here. Tonight it occurred to me that even though I saw Popeil's commercials decades ago, I remembered much of Popeil's shtick. I especially remember the audiences applauding on cue. It was somehow effective even though I knew that these people had been paid to applaud on cue. What I didn't know was how the audience members were paid, and it was not with money, as you'll read here. As you can read in the same article, Popeil is now getting ready to market what he characterizes as his final invention, a deep fryer.

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