MikeLigalig.com

He he, nihit tingali og balita tong adlawa...

Hmm, looks like this commenter is also a cat.

Though he wasn't afraid to drink whiskey straight, Mint Juleps cooled him on notoriously hot Mississippi afternoons. So much so, in fact, that Faulkner's recipe for the cocktail resides on a typewritten card, next to his metal julep cup on a shelf in his Oxford home. Quite simply, the card reads "His recipe was: whiskey, 1 tsp Sugar, ice, mint served in a metal cup."

Faulkner also had a special "medicinal" drink for colder temps, when he or one of his relatives were under the weather. It seems the author's Hot Toddy, according to his niece Ms. Dean Faulkner Wells' book The Great American Writers Cookbook, could cure anything from "a bad spill from a horse to a bad cold, from a broken leg to a broken heart."

"Pappy alone decided when a Hot Toddy was needed, and he administered it to his patient with the best bedside manner of a country doctor. He prepared it in the kitchen in the following way: Take one heavy glass tumbler. Fill approximately half full with Heaven Hill bourbon (the Jack Daniel's was reserved for Pappy's ailments). Add one tablespoon of sugar. Squeeze 1/2 lemon and drop into glass. Stir until sugar dissolves. Fill glass with boiling water. Serve with potholder to protect patient's hands from the hot glass. Pappy always made a small ceremony out of serving his Hot Toddy, bringing it upstairs on a silver tray and admonishing his patient to drink it quickly, before it cooled off. It never failed."

While raising your glass this weekend to toast Faulkner's birthday, ponder a line from his first novel, Soldier's Pay: "What can equal a mother's love? Except a good drink of whiskey."

Cheers to that. --https://www.thedailybeast.com/as-faulkner-lay-drinking

As a young, undiscovered writer, he lived in the mid-1920s in New Orleans, which was then a mecca for young literary talent, sort of a Montparnasse of the Delta. He and his roommate, William Spratling, lived in the very bohemian French Quarter and mixed bathtub gin with Pernod for their drinking soirees.

But Faulkner (famously) was primarily a whiskey drinker, be it a fine aged bourbon or a crude jug of corn moonshine.

And he knew where to find it, even on a Sunday in a dry corner of Mississippi. Author Shelby Foote had invited Faulkner to attend an observance of the 90th anniversary of the start of the Civil War battle Shiloh, which neither gentleman wanted to do without liquid courage. Foote was at a loss as to how to get a hold of some whiskey, since it was a Sunday. Faulkner, on the other hand, saw a man getting his shoes shined and reasoned, according to Foote's recollection in Conversations with Shelby Foote, that "anybody getting his shoes shined on Sunday morning would know where it was." Sure enough, when asked where the town bootlegger could be found the man replied, "Well, I was fixing to go out there myself. If you could give me a ride, I'll show you the way." And before too long ol' Bill and Shelby had themselves a pint of Old Taylor and some Cokes for chasers.

To some of his critics (not to mention his rivals), this method was a double-edged sword. During an interview with Hemingway during the mid-1950s, when he was asked if he made himself a pitcher of Martinis before each writing session, Hemingway snorted, "Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You're thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he's had his first one."

Faulkner did say that "civilization begins with distillation;" perhaps his writing sessions did, too. He was known to go on long drinking binges where he would lock himself into, say, a hotel room and drink for days straight. While booze may have been Faulkner's inspiration, it surely took a toll on his health and years off his life. During a 1937 visit to the Algonquin Hotel in New York, after a days-long bender, he passed out against a steam radiator and severely burned his back. He took the unfortunate incident with his typical sense of humor. His friend Bennett Cerf, one of the founders of book publisher Random House, chastised him: "Bill, aren't you ashamed of yourself? You come up here for your first vacation in five years and you spend the whole time in the hospital." Faulkner quietly replied, "Bennett, it was my vacation."

A big part of that persona manifested (again, for better or for worse) in Faulkner's relationship with good-old Southern whiskey. In his 1927 New Orleans—based novel Mosquitoes, he throws out a fitting rhetorical question: "What is it that makes a man drink whisky on a night like this, anyway?"

"There is no such thing as bad whiskey," Faulkner once reasoned. "Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't."

Indeed, the man loved his whiskey. Too much. It became a muse and a constant writing companion. In 1937, he explained his method to his French translator Maurice Edgar Coindreau: "You see, I usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach; so many ideas that I can't remember in the morning pop into my head."

Faulkner is one of the greatest writers of this generation, penning such classics as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Sanctuary, Pylon, Absalom, Absalom!. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and twice won a Pulitzer Prize, in 1955 for A Fable, and again in 1963 (posthumously) for The Reivers. He was born in New Albany, Mississippi, a small town not far from Oxford, where he lived most of his adult life.

Faulkner came to personify the Southern Gothic genre of American letters, adopting that dark, brooding, occasionally disturbing, always complex style, redolent of hoary old oak trees and Spanish moss. His novels and stories were consumed with the ideals, reputations, and legacies of families that were falling apart like the decrepit plantation homes in which they lived. Through them, he came to represent the old-line gentleman of the post—Civil War Southern aristocracy.

As Faulkner Lay Drinking
A look at the award-winning author's complex relationship with liquor and writing.
Philip Greene
09.20.16 1:02 AM ET





A close look at most great 20th-century novelists and playwrights will reveal lives, for better or for worse, well lubricated with alcohol. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Eugene O'Neill, Hunter S. Thompson, Tennessee Williams, Ian Fleming, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, Sherwood Anderson, Walker Percy, James Baldwin, Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Jim Harrison... The list goes on and on. Prominent on that roll call is, of course, William Faulkner, who would have turned 119 this weekend.

For these legendary writers, it became de rigueur to drink, often to excess. Fitzgerald noted that for the American writer, "the hangover became a part of the day as well allowed-for as the Spanish siesta." Yet this affliction—er, condition—among writers goes back to ancient times. It was the great poet Horace (65-8 B.C.) who observed that, "No poems can please nor live long which are written by water-drinkers."

Bwahaha!

Lisod hingut-an diring dapita...

Quote from: diablo on August 17, 2013, 08:21:10 PM
Softly, I will leave you softly
For my heart would break if you should wake and see me go
So I leave you softly, long before you miss me
Long before your arms can beg me stay
For one more hour or one more day
After all the years, I can't bear the tears to fall
So, softly as I leave you there

(softly, long before you kiss me)
(long before your arms can beg me stay)
(for one more hour) or one more day
After all the years, I can't bear the tears to fall
So, softly as I leave you there
As I leave I you there
As I leave I you there

Pensive dog. 

He he...

Hayahay ang lagay ani...

Malagmit kapila na niya maangkon ang katumanan sa ul-ol niyang pangandoy... 

Bwahaha!

Kini, kinsa kaha ni...

Bwahaha! Di kaha ni sila mga taga Tubag Bohol...

But Prime Minister Theresa May has been unable to say much new at this summit - the last one before October - because she has yet to get her cabinet to agree on a blueprint for the UK's future relationship with the EU.

They are due to meet at Chequers next Friday, in what has been billed as a make-or-break meeting. Mrs May has said the UK will then publish a White Paper setting out "in more detail what strong partnership the United Kingdom wants to see with the European Union in the future".

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Mrs May would "come to Germany and we will have a longer debate on this", once the proposals were published.

At the close of the summit, Mr Tusk told reporters there was a "great deal of work ahead" on Brexit and the "most difficult tasks are still unresolved".

"Quick progress" was needed if a deal was to be reached at the next summit.

"This is the last call to lay the cards on the table," he said.

9 hours ago



Mr Tusk said the "most difficult" issues were as yet unresolved. REUTERS


Donald Tusk has issued a "last call" to the UK to "lay the cards on the table" if a Brexit deal is to be done in time.

The European Council president said the "most difficult" issues were unresolved and "quick progress" was needed if agreement was to be reached by October.

Talks continue over the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU in March next year. What happens to the Irish border remains a sticking point.

The UK says both sides want to see a "faster pace" in talks.

By Madeline Farber   | Fox News



Doctors with Jackson Hospital removed the cyst on May 26.  (Jackson Hospital )


For months, Kayla Rahn of Montgomery, Ala., had unexplained stomach pain and was unable to lose weight. The situation was taking a toll on her life and well-being.

"I couldn't even walk to my car without losing my breath," Rahn recalled to NBC12, adding that she was once asked if she was pregnant with twins.

In May, Rahn finally got the answer to her mysterious medical condition. After her mother took her to the emergency department at Jackson Hospital, doctors informed the 30-year-old that she had a massive cyst in one of her ovaries.

"I do remember telling my mom and busting out crying that they were going to fix it," Rahn said in a news release sent to Fox News via email.

Indifference to prospective creation of federal states. The numbers on "support" and "opposition" to federalism in the SWS report should likewise be interpreted as pertaining to that single basic feature.

The 37 percent support and 29 percent opposition, which imply a neutral +7 (correctly rounded) net agreement, pertain to the entire population, including the three-fourths that realized, only upon being interviewed, that federalism involves creating a new level of local government.

Public understanding enhances support. Looking more closely, we find that opinions toward federalism are quite different between the one-fourth previously aware and the three-fourths previously unaware of the implied creation of a new level of local government.

Those previously aware are 57 percent supportive and only 22 percent opposed to the feature of creating new local governments. Such people are both familiar and comfortable with federalism as a unification of certain levels of local governments.

Those previously unaware are 38 percent undecided, 32 percent opposed and 30 percent supportive. Opinions could not be any more divided. These numbers will be posted as a supplement to the original report.

Present public discourse about amending the Constitution, it seems to me, is mainly about term limits, the parliamentary system and the like. It is not really about federalism.

That was a deliberately minimalist characterization of federalism. There is no proposal for federalism, as far as I know, that would keep the present provinces completely separate, and not grouped into a set of federal "states."

Unawareness that federalism involves creation of states. The report's numbers about "awareness" pertain, therefore, to the single basic feature of creation of a new level of local government. It does not mean that only 25 percent of those interviewed got acquainted with the word "federalism" for the very first time.

What it does mean is that only a small minority of 25 percent were previously conscious that federalism, of any form, would necessarily introduce an entirely new level of local governments (called "states," for example) to the Philippine political system.

Inability to name one's federal state. The public unconsciousness of the impending creation of states is confirmed by the inability of over 70 percent to name what their federal state would be.

Hardly any named a region, such as Bangsamoro or National Capital Region. Among those who did respond, almost all named merely provinces, cities, or towns. Even "state of calamity" was cited, which might not even have been a joke.

By: Mahar Mangahas - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:08 AM June 30, 2018


Federalism is not readily definable, but comes in many different forms, shapes and sizes.  Polling about a specific type of federalism will potentially find the extent of public  support or opposition to that particular type. This has serious implications for political partisans.

The administration's vagueness (deliberate, or accidental?) about what type of federalism it espouses for the Philippines makes it difficult for a politically nonpartisan institution like Social Weather Stations to survey public opinion on the matter on its own account. Is the survey looking for good news, or bad? Good or bad for whom?

The SWS report this week—"One of four Pinoys are aware of the Federal System of Government: 37% support it, 34% are undecided, 29% oppose it," posted at www.sws.org.ph on 6/28/18—is based on a survey that described federalism only as a system that creates a new level of local government, above the provincial but below the national.

Quote from: islander on June 27, 2018, 03:22:23 AM

He he, gwapo jamo...

Skinner then flew from New Zealand to Australia, Australia to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Washington D.C. From D.C., he took a Greyhound bus to Richmond.

In Richmond he stayed at Hosteling International USA, according to investigators.

When he arrived at the family's home, he yelled that he had hitchhiked 30 miles to the house and needed help.

"This was not random, not spontaneous, this was something very planned," Sheriff Agnew said.

He was carrying a knife, duct tape, and pepper spray -- that he purchased at the Short Pump Walmart -- when he arrived at the family's home.

Skinner has not yet officially been charged with a crime; police continued to investigate Monday evening.

The violent encounter took place Friday when the mother was home with her two daughters.

They heard Skinner banging on the door with a brick, the sheriff said.

When the mother called her husband, he told her to grab a gun.

When Skinner threw a landscaping stone through the glass door, the teenage girl's mother fired twice, hitting Skinner once in the neck.

He was taken to the hospital and is expected to survive the shooting.

The sheriff said Skinner first encountered the 14-year-old girl using the Discord chat service.

After three or four months of conversation, the girl attempted to end their communication.

POSTED 8:04 AM, JUNE 26, 2018, BY TRIBUNE MEDIA WIRE
   

GOOCHLAND COUNTY, Va. -- The FBI is now investigating after a woman shot a New Zealand man outside her Virginia home Friday afternoon.

Troy Skinner, 25, flew to Virginia to meet the woman's teenage daughter after the two chatted online using Discord, a service popular among gamers, the Goochland County Sheriff said.

The 14-year-old girl's mother shot Skinner when he attempted to break into the family's home in the Holland Hills community, the sheriff said.

"He was not invited here, he was not expected here, he had been told in the past that the daughter no longer wished to communicate with him," Goochland Sheriff Jim Agnew said.

Hmm, si Bay Bugsay man ni...

Previous estimates of the Drake equation have assigned a single number to those variables. The recent study sought to make a more informed guess. It relies on our latest knowledge of biology, chemistry, and cosmology, and uses a distribution of probabilities (a range) to capture the most likely scenarios, rather than assign a single value.

When they did, the researchers found that the possibility we're alone in the galaxy is far higher than presumed given the truly gargantuan number of possible home planets. The authors assert that the chance humanity stands alone among intelligent civilizations in our galaxy is 53%–99.6%, and across the observable universe is 39%–85%.

Since the Fermi "paradox" exists only if we are confident alien civilizations are out there, this uncertainty suggests we may just be the lucky ones—thus, there is no such paradox. "We should not actually be all that surprised to see an empty galaxy," the authors write. But don't give up entirely. The Drake equation, at best, merely gives us a way to formalize what is still unknowable. It's a big universe. --https://qz.com/

Scientists have been trying to answer Fermi's question ever since. Many of the most rigorous attempts have built on a postulation known as the Drake equation. There are plenty of unknowns, but the equation suggests it's plausible thousands of detectable alien civilizations could be roaming the Milky Way based on the probability of seven factors. The equation:



N: total detectable alien civilizations in the Milky Way
R∗: rate of star formation per year
fp: fraction of stars with planets
ne: Earth-like (or otherwise habitable) planets per system with planets
fl: fraction of such planets with life
fi: fraction with life that develop intelligence
fc: fraction of intelligent civilizations that are detectable/contactable
L: average longevity of such detectable civilizations

In a paper submitted to the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (it appeared online this month on the pre-publication site arXiv), the researchers write that there is "a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe," and we shouldn't be surprised if we fail to detect any signs of it. In other words, there is no need to speculate about the fate of aliens. It's likely they've never existed, they assert in the paper, titled "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox."

The Fermi Paradox derives from a question reportedly posed by physicist Enrico Fermi during a 1950 lunch in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the state of New Mexico. According to Scientific American, a group of scientists were discussing a New Yorker cartoon showing aliens emerging a spaceship, onto the streets of New York City. "Where is everyone?" Fermi asked. While he was likely questioning the possibility of interstellar travel, later accounts suggested he was casting doubt on the existence of extraterrestrials themselves, the magazine reports.

"WHERE IS EVERYBODY?"
We may have answered the Fermi Paradox: We are alone in the universe
WRITTEN BY
Michael J. Coren
June 25, 2018


Alien life should be everywhere. The sheer abundance of stars in the universe (the number far outstrips the total number of grains of sand on every beach on Earth) suggests that, somewhere, an intelligent lifeform should be warming itself on a distant planet. Even if life evolves rarely, ET should be phoning us.

Yet, by all appearances, humanity seems to be flying solo in our galaxy, and perhaps the universe. Many solutions have been proposed to solve this riddle, known as the Fermi Paradox. The aliens are hiding. They've entered suspended animation until more propitious conditions arise. A Great Filter makes the leap from "life "to "intelligent life" improbable, if not impossible. They've blown themselves up.

Researchers of Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute have another answer. It's likely intelligent life doesn't exist at all, outside of Earth.

Pwede pood ingon ani...

Kini ang dili peke...

Bwahaha!

Quote from: hubag bohol on June 22, 2018, 03:33:34 PM
The match in Berlin was heading for a penalty shoot-out; Mr Zidane, France's captain, had already scored one in the game. With ten minutes to go, an Italian defender muttered something to him (about his mother, Mr Zidane alleged; only about his sister, the defender maintained). Mr Zidane headbutted the Italian in the chest. He was sent off. France lost the shoot-out.

5. A crack in everything. According to the Japanese aesthetic known as wabi-sabi, beauty is not perfect but flawed and incomplete. Leonard Cohen expressed the same thought in "Anthem": "Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in." So, inadvertently, did Pelé, after he won the race with the Uruguayan goalkeeper.

Perhaps no one but Pelé would have done what he did next. He did nothing. His mind whirring faster than his feet, he did not touch the ball, as the keeper expected, but let it run on—hastily collecting it, after his coup de théâtre, on the other side of his opponent. Pelé shot towards the unguarded goal—but scuffed his kick and missed.

He still avenged his father and the Maracanazo. Brazil beat Uruguay and won the final, in which Pelé scored. Still, much later he said he had dreams in which, after that audacious moment of restraint, his aim was true: "It would have been so much more beautiful had it gone in." He may be the greatest football artist of all time, but, about this, Pelé is wrong. The kink in the masterpiece is what makes it human.

4. The tragic hero. The World Cup final in Berlin in 2006 was the last game Zinedine Zidane ever played. He had already won the tournament once, spurring France to victory in 1998. After that, he was more than a footballer. In a country where Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front made it to the run-off in the next presidential election, Mr Zidane—the son of an Algerian warehouseman—became the face of a more tolerant France. Crowds in Paris chanted for him to be president.

The match in Berlin was heading for a penalty shoot-out; Mr Zidane, France's captain, had already scored one in the game. With ten minutes to go, an Italian defender muttered something to him (about his mother, Mr Zidane alleged; only about his sister, the defender maintained). Mr Zidane headbutted the Italian in the chest. He was sent off. France lost the shoot-out.

This implosion was a tragedy in the purest sense. A tragedy, wrote Aristotle in the fourth century BC, depicts the fall of a great but flawed man, and hinges on a peripeteia, or sudden reversal, like the Italian defender's slur. For Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French intellectual, the meltdown represented the "suicide of a demigod"—a tragic hero of whom too much has been demanded. Watch the scene closely, and there is indeed something oddly composed in Mr Zidane's demeanour as, jogging away from his opponent, he hears, stops, and turns back to meet his fate.

3. Dust to dust. In 2009 the artist Mark Wallinger curated an exhibition on the theme of boundaries and doubts. It contained trompe l'oeilpaintings, artificial flowers and a fake Tardis, or perhaps a real one. Mr Wallinger called the show "The Russian Linesman."

Fittingly, the linesman to whom that name referred was not actually Russian. His name was Tofiq Bahramov and he was from Azerbaijan. Bahramov officiated at the World Cup final of 1966, played between England and West Germany at Wembley Stadium in London. With the scores level in extra time, a shot by Geoff Hurst, England's striker, rattled the crossbar and bounced down over the goal line. Or perhaps it didn't: the German players claimed to have seen chalk dust, indicating that the ball hit the line and thus that the goal should not be given. The referee jogged across to consult Bahramov, who briskly nodded an affirmative.

England won 4-2. English fans mostly remember the fourth goal, scored in the final seconds as the joyous crowd spilled onto the pitch. But it is the third that is a work of art. Just as Hamlet's psychology and the Mona Lisa's smile become more enigmatic with each viewing, however many times you watch Mr Hurst's shot, you can never know for sure.

2. Present at the creation. Greatness in sport, as in art, often comes from unseen, grinding effort. But sometimes it arises from sheer inspiration—a wind awakening a coal to brightness, as Percy Bysshe Shelley put it, or the "flash in the brain" that Johan Cruyff said he experienced at the World Cup in Germany in 1974.

Cruyff was a master of flicks, feints, impudent shots and passes that described arcing lines of beauty. But it was his improvisation in a match against Sweden that made him immortal. By his own account, he had not practised what he did upon receiving the ball near the corner flag, a Swedish defender in close attendance. Cruyff appeared to be heading away from the goal, until, in a quicksilver feat of dexterity and imagination, he tucked the ball behind him, swivelled and set off in the other direction. For an instant he seemed to be running in both directions at once.

The "Cruyff turn" has since been attempted by players everywhere. Seeing it for the first time was akin to hearing the impossible, unscripted E-flat sung by Maria Callas at the end of "Aida" in Mexico City, or watching Michael Jackson unveil his moonwalk. When Cruyff died, one of the best tributes came from Jan Olsson, the defender he bamboozled. "I loved everything about this moment," Mr Olsson said. "I am very proud to have been there."

1. Darkness to light. Redemption is one of the fundamental themes of art and literature, from the Bible to the "Odyssey", from Raskolnikov's rebirth in "Crime and Punishment" to Rick's late-breaking idealism in "Casablanca". In such stories the good and bad that vie in people are heightened and set in conflict. Rarely have a character's base and noble traits collided as they did at the World Cup of 1986, in which Diego Maradona ascended from infamy to sublimity in a single game.

Not just any game. In 1982 Britain defeated Argentina in a war over the Falkland Islands. Four years later, having emerged from a military dictatorship, Argentina faced England in a quarter-final in Mexico. "We were defending our flag, the dead kids, the survivors," Maradona, the team's captain, said later. In the space of four minutes he scored the most scandalous goal in history and the finest. First he surreptitiously punched the ball into the net (the "hand of God", he called it afterwards). For the second goal, he seemed to function on a different plane to the hapless Englishmen. He pirouetted away from two defenders, ran half the length of the pitch, rounded the keeper and guided the ball home. Argentina won the game and, redemptively, the cup.

Before and afterwards, Maradona's life was chequered. He grew up in poverty; later he failed drug tests and ballooned. But, as he said in a memoir, "Nobody anywhere is ever going to forget those two goals I scored against the English." Together they form a diptych as dramatic as Scrooge's enlightenment or Darth Vader's conversion. The first "was like stealing from a thief". As for the second: "It is possible that a more beautiful goal has been scored...but I doubt it."

Heroes, villains, creativity, human frailty: five World Cup moments when art and sport merged
https://www.economist.com/
Jun 9th 2018


PELÉ was nine years old when he first saw his father cry. It was 1950, the year of the Maracanazo—Brazil's devastating loss to Uruguay, at the Maracanã stadium in Rio, which cost the team the World Cup. The child promised his father that he would avenge the defeat. When the two countries next met in the tournament, in the semi-final of 1970, Pelé was playing. With the scores tied at 1-1, he chased a pass deep into Uruguay's half. The goalkeeper rushed from his line. Their foot race was also the climax of a story, or rather several: the story of the game, of Pelé's career, of his country's recovery from the Maracanazo.

With its mortifications and sense of worldwide communion, the World Cup—which begins on June 14th—is a kind of global religion. It is a form of soft diplomacy and a safe outlet for nationalism. For many fans, it is a potent quadrennial madeleine, each tournament summoning memories of previous ones, the lost friends with whom they were watched, past selves. Sometimes the football itself can be cagey and boring. But, especially on its biggest stage and canvas, sometimes football is art. Individual moves can be balletic, a team's routines exquisitely choreographed. Grand narratives unfold and crescendo, tragedies and unlikely triumphs that feature heroes, villains and occasionally players who contrive to be both.