二！Spam comments from Chinese pirates.

Posted on November 15, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Recently a Chinese pirate outfit has been blasting blogs (including this one) with spam comments. The last four I received were:

Hello,I noticed your blog named “Weight Loss Lies, Redux (for the jillionth time) | Playing in the World Game” like every week. Your humoristic style is witty, keep up the good work! And you can look my website about 雷神索爾. (That’s the Chinese Title for “Thor”)
Dear Sirs,I read your article named “Marketing moves the goalposts again. | Playing in the World Game” on a regular basis. Your humoristic style is bravo, keep it up! And you can look our website about 無名套裝. (No-name suit, whatever that means)
Hello,I saw your blog named “Weight Loss Lies, Redux (for the jillionth time) | Playing in the World Game” like every week. Your writing style is awesome, keep doing what you`re doing! And you can check my website about 藍光影片. (Blu-Ray)
Hello,I checked your blog named “Marketing moves the goalposts again. | Playing in the World Game” on a regular basis. Your story-telling style is awesome, keep doing what you`re doing! And you can see our website about 藍光影片. (Blu-Ray)

Thank Mogg for services like Akismet, which has filtered 31,614 spam comments from my blog since its inception^[1], and some few still get through, which I have to filter out by hand. Websites that are not moderated can accumulate hundreds or even thousands of spam comments on a single page.

The point of this exercise is that each spam comment has an embedded link to a product site, which links serve to boost that page’s ratings during a web search. What the spammers don’t get is that Google is doing its best to make sure that pages which try to increase traffic in this way are punished. The downside is that if you allow comment spam to accumulate on your own blog, its rankings will also diminish. So if you’re a blogger, make sure only valid comments are allowed to stay on your pages, and if you’re using Akismet on WordPress, make sure you empty your spam folder regularly, just for extra safety.

In case you were not sure, any company that engages in this kind of practice to increase their business is immoral, unclean, reprobate and nefarious – not to mention downright criminal – and you should never deal with them. Most of this garbage comes from Asia; I would love to see anyone who spreads this kind of ejecta spend a few years in a hard-labor re-education camp.

It is conceivable that some of these blog spam comments have been placed by disreputable marketing firms hired by legitimate businesses – as Eric Turkewitz has commented over at his personal injury law blog, “outsourced marketing = outsourced ethics.” Frankly, I’ve never seen one.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1]And some 25 billion total between 2005 and 2011. By now the total should be significantly higher.

Rice Bubbles and Weeties

Posted on November 13, 2013 by The Old Wolf

If you were a Kiwi in 1958, you didn’t know about Rice Krispies unless you were familiar with American produce. You got Rice Bubbles. And Breakfast of Champions? Well, that was Weeties.

One of my favorite parts of traveling to a different country – especially one where they speak English, and things are not muddled by a language barrier – is shopping, and seeing the differences in products offered. It’s like being in Europe without having to carry your phrasebook. I remember being in Ireland with the family and staying for a week at Abbeyville Cottage in Cill Mocheallog, Co Ciarraí ^[1] – we went shopping for provender and brought home all sorts of wonderful new products that we had never tried, such as Weetabix™, for which I developed an undying love, or Aero™ bars, which despite being heavy on air and light on chocolate were a delight… just because they’re so different. Same thing with TimTams™ from Australia, or Scott’s Porage Oats from the UK or… well, the list goes on forever. Everything you’re familiar with at home has a different name, a slightly different flavor, and it’s wonderful.

If I were Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, I’d take a few lifetimes off from insulting people to spend a few decades in every country and culture of the world (a few centuries for Japan, just because.) There’s nothing I enjoy more than getting to know another people, getting inside their heads and learning about their languages, foods, ways, and customs; there’s just not the time to do that as a tourist, and just not the experience to do it as a student.

Being a citizen of the world at heart is tough, especially when resources are tight – but I do all I can from my armchair; let me tell you about Azalea Adair.

She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists made. Whle she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody nowadays knows too much–oh, so much too much–of real life…

“On the surface,” said Azalea Adair. “I have traveled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings – print and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered – with rice powder. In San Francisco’s Chinatown I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee.^[2]

This is beauty; this is language to chew on; this is imagination. This is what people did when travel was prohibitively expensive and television had not been invented and the most exciting form of entertainment was to pull out the stereopticon and marvel over the strange ways and beauties of other lands and other cultures.

Nowadays, for the most part, we lack the kind of language that was common in O. Henry’s day – but in exchange we have the Internet, and that is just about the next best thing to being there in person.

The Great Wall of China

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] With many thanks to Mary Slattery for her hospitality!
[2] From “A Municipal Report” by O. Henry.

Weight Loss Lies, Redux (for the jillionth time)

Posted on November 13, 2013 by The Old Wolf

We’ve all seen the spam. Weight loss, sexual enhancers, body part enlargers… it’s a never-ending stream. Spam is so cheap to send out and requires such a small percentage of turnover relative to how much is blasted out that it will always be profitable for goons and drones and paid affiliates to engage in this shady enterprise.

But it always surprises me when hqiz like this goes mainstream.

If you’re not convinced yet, let me show you one that showed up in my email this morning.

Wow! Wouldn’t you like results that amazing? Wow! Based on the images, the happy lady in those pictures up there has lost at least 30 pounds, and likely more – all in the brief space of 30 days.

Never mind that healthy weight loss takes place at the rate of 1 to 2 pounds per week… whatever this weight loss secret is, I gotta get me some of that! And Dr. Oz is happy to hawk it, right alongside last year’s green coffee extract, or the confusum combobulosum he was hawking before that.

At least the ad above didn’t use the “one weird old trick” line, even though that’s still being used everywhere. But it’s still 100% pure, unadulterated camel ejecta. Snake Oil. Garbage.

What is it? Well, let’s dig a bit.

Doing the “show source” dance from my email client, we find that this ad will direct you to

http://rincomplex.com/UQWbhbuS/ObXtnsJa_ApdXupIv/r-MjIwZTAxOWMhYzZw
OTBwOTRwNzMhZmRiMjchNDIyIXBhZDAxfGNvbSFydHB1cmVnYW5pYWNwYz
EwNThjbWRmcmohZHRidDdkZCEw/X9iBg

Ain’t that a mouthful? These dynamically-generated URL’s are one of the first clues that a particular website is illicit, shady, or otherwise disreputable. What’s more, if you reverse-hack the URL to just “rincomplex.com”, you find a placeholder website full of dummy text and randomly-scraped news articles. They might as well have filled it with lorem ipsum.

But never mind that… I toddled over to the website and found this:

Ok, so this “miracle product” is garcinia cambogia. Along with the typical shameless infomercial/show by Oz, the Great and Powerful. But pay no attention to the little man behind that screen, folks – if you plunk down your money in the hopes of losing weight fast, fast, fast, you’re going to be disappointed. But before we get into the substance itself, let’s look at how insistent and immoral the marketing practice is.

If you scroll down the page above and express interest, you’ll need to provide your contact information in full – information which will be immediately sold on to other scam companies by this disreputable marketing outfit. If you try to leave the page by using your “back” button or closing your browser, you’ll get this:

Wow, 60% discount. Maybe I’d better stick around. But both options (expressing interest or trying to leave) take you to the same “special discount” page anyway. Now, notice that you got promised a 60% discount plus free shipping, but the page below says it’s “Over 30%”. But on top of that, I’ve mentioned it before – any website that employs this tactic to try to get you to buy is immediately flagged as both spammy and scammy in my book, and the fact that they’re still doing it shows me that it’s effective. Please, don’t fall victim to these snake-oil vendors.

So, depending on how gullible you are, you’ll spend between $148.00 and $48.00 for some herbs of questionable effectiveness (more about that later) and spurious quality.

If you’re still not convinced, you get another popup:

Now it’s a BOGO offer – buy one, get one free. But you’re still spending that 48.00, which was the minimum purchase level on the previous screen.

Nah, I think I’ll pass… but WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! We don’t have your money yet, and by all that’s holy we want some of it.

So now you’re up to an 80% discount…

Just give us your information, send us a double sawbuck, and we’ll consider ourselves winners (and you a loser.) But really, who could turn down such an amazing offer, with free shipping no less?

Some people can, but there’s one final hook for them:

Only fi’dollars. Just a fin. That’s hardly nuttin’, mister. So if you click “Stay on this page,” you get their rock-bottom offer:

Click on this to claim your offer, and see what you’ve won!

So you greedily fill out the form, thinking you’ve sure pulled one over on these boobs… but you’ve failed to notice that tiny, tiny print up there that says “terms apply.” What in the world could those terms be?

So if you read the fine print down there at the bottom of the page, you discover that you need to call them within 14 days to get that $4.99 price. If you don’t, they’ll gleefully charge your credit card for $29.95, ten bucks more than their previous offer, and you find yourself enrolled in an “autoship” program whereby they’ll send you a new bottle every 30 days, for the low low price of only $29.95.

Great Mogg’s tufted ears, folks – why in the name of all that’s holy would you do business with a checkered-suit operation like this? They get you coming, they get you going, and if they get their hooks into you, they’ll never let go.

So before we sign off for today, let’s have a quick look at this garcinia cambogia and see what it’s really all about.

If you look up garcinia at WebMD, you find that it’s marketed under various names:

Acide Hydroxycitrique, AHC, Brindal Berry, Brindle Berry, Cambogia gummi-guta, Garcinia Cambogi, Garcinia cambogia, Garcinia gummi-guta, Garcinia quaesita, Gorikapuli, Hydroxycitrate, Hydroxycitric Acid, HCA, Kankusta, Malabar Tamarind, Mangostana cambogia, Tamarinier de Malabar, Vrikshamla.

As well as this insightful description:

Garcinia is a plant. The fruit rind is used to make medicine. Don’t confuse garcinia with Garcinia hanburyi (gamboge resin).
How does it work?
Developing research suggests that garcinia might prevent fat storage and control appetite; however, whether these effects occur in humans is unclear.

But as I have mentioned before, a single scientific study or even some preliminary research is enough to get the media to latch on to those results and get some advertising clicks out of it – and if that starts to happen, the marketeers come from the voodvork out.

Click a little further into WebMD and you find the User Ratings page for the product – reviews which look a whole lot different from the shill-written reviews on the marketing pages:

Been taking it for 3 weeks. Have not lost one pound. Have been sleeping more soundly, though. Biggest problem is that my whole body has started to ache. And my joints hurt. I thought at first it was because of my workouts, which I had increased- but I stopped for a week and the pain is still there. I just read on another website that is you are taking stati. Drugs for high cholesterol – which I do – it can exacerbate the negative effects of those drugs and cause muscle degeneration and joint pain. Guess I will be stopping this supplement.
Didn’t lose any weight, often had GI upset
I have been using this product for one week. Yes it suppresses your appetite but I have had a migraine for the entire week. Stopped taking it…..no headache. Not worth it.

Check the reviews yourself. Oh, and side effects?

Garcinia is POSSIBLY SAFE for most people when used for 12 weeks or less. Long-term safety is unknown. Garcinia can cause nausea, digestive tract discomfort, and headache.
Special Precautions & Warnings:
Pregnancy and breast-feeding: Not enough is known about the use of garcinia during pregnancy and breast-feeding. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.

“Possibly safe?” Wow, that means it might not hurt me. The bottom line is that sufficient scientific research on this and most other herbal supplements is woefully inadequate – randomized, double-blind, placebo-based studies over decades are usually required to give a clear picture of how safe and effective any substance is to take into your body.

But the salespeople don’t want you to know that, and they pay people like Dr. Oz big bucks to hawk these products, which nets them millions of dollars from poor yutzes like you and me, if we’re foolish enough to pay attention to their pestilential marketing campaigns.

One last point: be careful not to assume that I’m saying all natural remedies are worthless or dangerous. That’s not the case. But the vast majority of the things you see hawked on the internet or on these infomercial-style media advertisements are there for only one reason – to get your money based on false promises and false hope. If you’re interested in releasing weight, my recommendations can be found here – scroll to the bottom of the page and find the section entitled “So if you’re interested in releasing weight, what can you do?”

If you’re wanting to be lighter and thinner, the odds are you can be – but as I’ve said before and often and don’t care who hears it: there’s no magic bullet. Save your money.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Oh, and who’s sending this garbage email out?

Pure Garcinia Cambogia
530 Lake Avenue #501 (Appears to be the Pasadena Rug Mart)
Pasadena, CA 91101

and their spam affiliate,

“Multispecialty Medical Groups”
1231 Northern Lights Blvd, #569 (A post office box at a UPS Store)
Anchorage, AK 99503

Naples, 1900

Posted on November 13, 2013 by The Old Wolf

A photo of Naples in 1900, showing one of the countless “vicoli” (alleys) where hundreds of thousands of people live, work, and play.

Aside from modern cars, scooters, and mopeds, very little has changed. It is in these alleys that one finds the “bassi” or ground-floor apartments which are ubiquitous and characteristic of Naples life.

See Naples and Die. If appreciating a rich and colorful culture is of interest, you could do worse than putting Napoli on your itinerary.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Marketing moves the goalposts again.

Posted on November 13, 2013 by The Old Wolf

To start with, let’s take a look at this ingredient label for a Nestlé’s Toll House Cookie:

Amounts per serving:

Calories 130
Fat Calories 60
Total fat 6g (9% Daily Value)
Saturated Fat 4g (20% Daily Value)
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 7g (7% Daily Value)
Sodium 100mg (4% Daily Value)
Total Carbohydrates 16g (5% Daily Value)
Fiber: Nothing
Sugars 9g
Protein 2g
And a few vitamins.
The DV (Daily Value) amounts are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Now, what you may or may have not noticed is that these values are for one serving. Well, there’s one cookie in the pack right? But many people will gloss over the fact that there are approximately four servings per package, and that one serving is calculated at ¼ cookie.

So let’s recalculate the information if you eat the entire cookie at one sitting, which the vast majority of people will do:

Calories 520 (about ¼ of your daily total)
Fat Calories 240
Total fat 24g (36% Daily Value)
Saturated Fat 16g (80% Daily Value)
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 28g (28% Daily Value)
Sodium 400mg (16% Daily Value)
Total Carbohydrates 64g (20% Daily Value)
Fiber: Nothing
Sugars 36g
Protein 8g
And a few vitamins.
The DV (Daily Value) amounts are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

So this monster accounts for a quarter of your daily intake of calores, almost all your allowance of saturated fat, 1/3 your allowance of total fat, and 1/5 your carbohydrate intake. In other words, it’s death for your health, and Nestlé doesn’t dare admit it straight up.

Question: How can you tell when a marketer is lying?
Answer: His lips are moving

I remember when I was a kid, the candy bars you bought started getting smaller and smaller, even though the cardboard trays that were wrapped around them stayed the same size – and that was in the 50’s. Since I’ve been alive, marketing has been a neverending race to the bottom in terms of morality, ethicality and honor.

An article on KSL today highlights how the marketing bar has been lowered at least another notch: A lady was delighted when shopping at a trendy jeans store to find she had dropped a size, but when she went to the website to order another pair, she followed a link that mentioned “updated sizes;” it turns out old size 10s were now 8s, the old 6s are now 4s, and so on. The author of the article makes some good points about how marketing drives consumer spending habits, among them:

I had let the label of an article of clothing dictate not only my spending habits, but how I felt about myself. Those moments when I congratulated myself over how I looked in those new jeans were false.

I’ve mentioned the tactics of persuasion elsewhere, but consumers who want to shepherd their dollars carefully need to be constantly vigilant, because the marketeers are right on their heels, looking for new ways to separate them from their hard-earned money. If we’re not careful, we’ll return to what must be the undisputed nadir of marketing ethics:

In case you don’t grok why this advertisement is so shameful, here’s what it says in plain English

Throw away your old rabbit ears
Buy our rabbit ears, because they’re prettier!
You’re not getting satellite service, but in spite of our telling you that straight up, you’re still going to think you are.
We’ve told you nothing but the truth, but because you’re stupid and we’ve used a lot of weasel-words, you are getting a completely untruthful idea about our product.
Thanks for your money, suckers.

Be careful; it’s a jungle out there.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Laus Deo

Posted on November 12, 2013 by The Old Wolf

As part of the repair of the Washington Monument after earthquake damage, workers verify the correct position of the aluminum “capstone” that tops the monument. At the time of its creation, Aluminum was the most precious metal available because of the difficulty of smelting it from bauxite. Estimates vary as to its valuation, but it would have been as precious as silver and perhaps much more so.

The underside of the cap, showing lightning rod conductors and a trap door.

Exterior view of the trap door during repairs. What this exists for I am uncertain, unless to allow access for repair of the lightning rods which are placed atop the monument.

In 1984, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its casting, a full-size replica was cast and exhibited at Tiffany’s.

The cap has four sides, each one exhibiting an inscription in cursive writing:

North face	West face	South face	East face
Joint Commission at Setting of CapstoneChester A. Arthur W. W. Corcoran, Chairman M. E. Bell Edward Clark John Newton Act of August 2, 1876	Corner Stone Laid on Bed of Foundation July 4, 1848 First Stone at Height of 152 feet laid August 7, 1880 Capstone set December 6, 1884	Chief Engineer and Architect, Thos. Lincoln Casey, Colonel, Corps of EngineersAssistants: George W. Davis, Captain, 14th Infantry Bernard R. Green, Civil EngineerMaster Mechanic P. H. McLaughlin	Laus Deo

North face

West face

South face

East face

Joint Commission
at
Setting of CapstoneChester A. Arthur
W. W. Corcoran, Chairman
M. E. Bell
Edward Clark
John Newton

Act of August 2, 1876

Corner Stone Laid on Bed of Foundation
July 4, 1848

First Stone at Height of 152 feet laid
August 7, 1880

Capstone set
December 6, 1884

Chief Engineer and Architect,
Thos. Lincoln Casey,
Colonel, Corps of EngineersAssistants:
George W. Davis,
Captain, 14th Infantry
Bernard R. Green,
Civil EngineerMaster Mechanic
P. H. McLaughlin

Laus Deo

The expression “Laus Deo” means “praise be to God.”

The reason for this inscription has been and continues to be debated by religious and secular scholars, as well as readers of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which was an intriguing book despite being short on fact and long on artistic license . Since the founders aren’t around to ask, the true answer to its meaning will probably lie forever shrouded in uncertainty. But it’s interesting to know that the cap is there, even though very few people on earth have ever seen it directly.

Click through for more history about the cap.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

“Moving Stairs”: World’s Fair, 1939

Posted on November 12, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Visitors to the Hall of Power at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 ride the novel “moving stairs.”

The longest escalator in the world is found in the St. Petersburg Metro system, up to 433 feet (132 meters) long.

Some folks are still not clear on the concept:

Only in America

Advicing good

Inconceivable!

I’m tempted to shout ‘Merica! but this is obviously somewhere in Asia

Guerrilla art

There we go: ‘Merica! At the Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, NJ.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Movies: The best of 2013

Posted on November 11, 2013 by The Old Wolf

I love watching movies. They’re great stuff. As I wrote over at Livejournal one day, in answer to a Writer’s Block question – “What’s your favorite activity for the short days of Winter?”, the answer was “a good blood-n-guts / sword-swinging / explosions-are-many / bad-guys-get-ground-up action movie and a steaming cup of Pero. Fireplace if available. Cat in lap preferred.”

I’ve seen quite a few shows recently, and there hasn’t been one that I didn’t enjoy at some level. A list of the most popular ones from this year, in alphabetical order:

After Earth (only half of it, for a number of reasons)
Croods, The
Despicable Me 2
Gravity
Iron Man 3
Man of Steel
Now You See Me
Oblivion
Oz the Great and Powerful
Pacific Rim
Red 2
Star Trek Into Darkness

Each film had good points and weaker points. Some of them were great rides, great popcorn movies; others had something to say while entertaining. But I’d put every single one of these on a scale, together, against a film we watched tonight, and they’d come up short.

The story of Jackie Robinson has a great cast, a moving story, and supreme social relevance. Boseman and Ford played off each other beautifully as Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, and the film brings the past into the present with absolute clarity without being “hit you over the head” about it. This was the state of America within my lifetime, and I don’t fool myself for a minute into thinking that just because we are two generations removed from that day, that all is well. It is not. Racism and prejudice are still rampant in our country, just not as open as they once were. It will take many more generations and much more work before we can say that we have a nation – let alone a world – that works for everyone, with no one left out.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

European Road Trip – 1971

Posted on November 11, 2013 by The Old Wolf

In December of 1971, I was living in Naples, Italy, where I had also spent a year previously, and a friend of mine who was at the time serving on the USS Cascade (AD-16) had a little Fiat 850 Spider. It was decided that we should take a road trip, and so we did. (How George managed so much shore leave was a mystery to me, but I wasn’t asking questions.) We drove up Italy through Cesena to Venice, past Udine to Vienna, across Austria to Lofer, down through the Romansch-speaking part of Switzerland, across the Lake Como area, and back. It was a wonderful trip.

I recently came across my slides from the journey, which I thought I had lost for years, and decided it was worth a post, if only so my friend, with whom I’m still in touch, could see them. The photography is hardly award-winning, but there are some pretty shots here and there.

Near Cesena, Italy

Venice was cold and foggy.

Twin bridges

Parked Gondola

Canal with bridges

I would later return to Venice many times as a consequence of my employment, in much better weather and more pleasant seasons. It is one of my favorite places on earth.

As we proceeded north, we broke out of the fog as we approached the Alps in the vicinity of Udine. The views were glorious.

Italian Alps

Clearing the Fog

Found on the wall in an osteria (guest house) on the road – the sign says, “We’ll give credit when this rooster crows.”

A church near Udine

Near Udine

Udine

Wolsfberg, Austria

Wolfsberg, Austria

It turns out our route took us past Villach and through Klagenfurt and Graz, cities where I would spend much time in 1975 although I had no idea that would be the case. Wolfsberg lies on the road between Klagenfurt and Graz.

I would also spend about 6 months in Vienna in 1976, but even as early as 1971 I had this fixation on Beethoven, whose piano sonatas I was laboriously learning to play, and Vienna was like making a pilgrimage to Mecca. The weather was gray and wintry for the most part, but for 20-year-old me, it was still a gas being there.

The Beethoven Monument, Vienna. You can tell by the trees that this was not taken in December; in fact, it was taken 5 years later when I returned to Vienna as a missionary. But it’s almost a clone of the picture that I took in 1971, albeit much clearer, so I allowed myself the substitution.

Der Allermeister in all his scowly grandeur

Beethoven House

Beethovenhaus closeup – the plaque reads, “In this house lived Ludwig van Beethoven during the winter of 1819/20. The Missa Solemnis was written here.”

Vienna street with overpass

Donaukanal at low ebb

Vienna – Monument to Maria Theresa

Vienna – Parliament

Vienna – Karlskirche

We stopped for cocoa in this warm and cozy restaurant

Vienna – Skaters. I can hear Waldteufel’s “Skater’s Waltz” playing in the back of my mind…

Vienna – National Museum

Vienna – Monument to Richard Strauss

Vienna – Strauss monument closeup

Vienna – National Musem

Vienna

Vienna – People’s Theatre

After Vienna, we headed west, and spent the night in Lofer, Austria – one of the most picturesque places I have ever seen. It still rivals many others, and often appears on Austrian travel adverts.

The hotel where we spent the night – 100 Schillings, breakfast included. That came to about $4.00, the Austrian Schilling being about 24 to the dollar at the time. 5 years later it was down to 15.

The Lofer church by day.

Church in Lofer at sunset.

Lofer – Haus Anna

Lofer, Austria

Another view of the iconic Church

The following pictures were taken in Austria at various points, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to label them at the time. As a result, the precise locations are unknown.

We continued west through Austria toward Switzerland, and passed through the Romansch-speaking areas in the southeast where we encountered some lovely snow sculptures:

Horse rampant

Polar bear with cubs

These don’t rival the ones you find up in Sapporo, Japan, but they were impressive enough for me at the time.

Home and garden near Lake Como

It was a trip not to be forgotten. George, I hope you enjoyed these memories as much as I did.

The Old Wolf has spoken.