Onnellista Uutta Vuotta

And a Happy New Year!

You Can't Pick Family (but you can keep them out of the kitchen)

My wife has taken over the preparation of Christmas dinner and has been doing it now for several years. This usually involves meal preparation for at least 20 people. She starts cooking in mid December in order to have everything ready and she sets a very formal table. This year was particularly difficult as we had her mother living us for post op care following a triple bypass and heart valve replacement. But one thing that we can usually count on is that we will have plenty of leftovers and those can save her the chore of cooking at least for a few days while we nosh on them.

Yesterday we headed for the refrigerator to pull them out and microwave them for dinner but they were nowhere to be found. After some thought and picking through the memory of the chaotic clean up after the meal we determined that one of our "sisters in law" walked out of the house with most of our leftovers. She made off with all the oyster dressing, the scalloped potatoes, most of the white meat from the turkey and all of the stuffed roast pork. We don't begrudge people a take away plate but this was over the top. Well, lesson learned. She will not be allowed into the kitchen ever again.

A New Orleans Christmas Classic

What is Christmas without this classic song.

Hyvaa Juolua

Merry Christmas Y'all.

The Emirates and Freedom of Speech

When I worked in Dubai I became aware of some of their laws regarding freedom of speech. Basically, if you say anything bad about the Sheik, you can be arrested. And that includes bad satire. Now we have the case of an American that has been convicted and sentenced to serve one year in a Dubai jail for making a video that the government said violated their cyber security laws. It is supposed to be a tongue in cheek representation of urban ganstas in an area of Dubai known as Satwa. Satwa is primarily an area that contains Indian and Pakistani businesses and is the center of the knock off stores.
Shez Cassim from Minnesota was the film maker. Here is the video in question. Do you think it is worth a year in jail?



If you travel, be aware that other countries have different levels of tolerance for criticism and that if you run afoul of their laws, the US will not help you unless you can generate a lot of publicity.

Obama's Election Manipulations

I've written before about how government regulations will be used to control the country. And now the Washington Post, not an especially conservative rag, has an article about how the issuing of regulations was delayed to benefit Obama in the 2012 election. The graph below shows how the pace of issuing regulations was slowed prior to the election to keep them from becoming campaign issues.

Book Review - Spirit of Steamboat

This started as a short story but Craig Johnson decided to turn it into a novella. It is not a mystery story as much as it is an adventure tale. Of course, Walt Longmire is the central character and it takes place after Walt has been sheriff only a few months. A traffic accident during a December snow storm leaves a child in need of emergency air transport on Christmas Eve. The only vehicle capable of flying in the deteriorating weather is an old B-25 and the only person who can fly this beast is Lucian Connally.

This story is appropriate for the Christmas season and aviation buffs will enjoy the technical aspects. This is only 129 pages so it won't take long to read. And while it helps to know the Longmire backstories, it's not completely necessary.