“Which one do you reckon is faster?” Cousin Terrance posed the question, and despite the interposition of the Internet I thought I could spy the mischief in his eyes. He’s like that.
It’s one of those questions that inspires some thought, especially considering where it’s coming from. Now, which one would go faster — jet or bike? I’m guessing (more…)
I don’t generally bother to get involved in whatever the current trending national outrage phenomenon happens to be. Our country loves to be outraged, so there’s always something different, and it’s usually petty. So when a random sports guy did something to protest something else, I just let it pass by unnoticed. After all, he’s probably just another overpaid egoist who does something I’ll never care about for a living.
So I ignored the furor, the counter-furor, the anti-furor furor, and the inevitable Fuehrer comparison — until someone mentioned history, in particular military history. The points on the ends of my ears stood upright and I suddenly took notice. (more…)
This is what comes of me reading John Gould books: I get the urge to tell stories, and since everyone in breathing distance knows the warning signs by now, there’s nobody left near enough to tell them to without hollering, and my mother brought me up not to raise my voice.
(more…)A lovely lady of my acquaintance once asked me how many of those little pine trees you’d have to hang in the cellar to hide the scent of a corpse. Since I was visiting without a chaperone at the time, that question got me to thinking, and once I’d finished my slice of apple pie I thanked her cordially for a fine meal and made my excuses without tasting her mince. I’m mostly sure she was just making conversation, but I didn’t reach my present advanced age by taking needless risks.
Those pine trees are some powerful, it’s true, but my experience is they just cover things up, burying them in the olfactory noise (if there is such a thing). They hide the lesser sins, (more…)
The longer I spend talking to people about the upcoming presidential elections, the more I’m convinced that Mencken was right: The American people know what they want, and deserve to get it — good and hard. (more…)
(For those few of you who’ve been living in a cave in northern Nunavut for the past ten days, you might have missed Ben Popken’s story on the EpiPen price gouge. Go read it, then come back and join the rest of the class. Slacker.)
I’m going to call “bullshit”. Once again, the American Media, courtesy of political campaigns, is indulging the American Media Consumer — blinkered, pig-ignorant, and proud of it — in a pointless round of outrage at nothing.
Look, the basic problem isn’t the damn EpiPen, or that some CEO got a raise of $18 million. It’s that we have a system where people make a profit from other people being sick, and nobody is even remotely interested in changing it. (more…)
Is Donald Trump a dangerous madman? Is Hillary Clinton assassinating her political foes? Is someone rigging the ballots and cheating us out of our elections?
I’m pretty sure Trump is far more clever and personable than he lets on, and I’m also quite certain that nobody who’s as much in the spotlight as Senator Clinton could sneak away from her Secret Service entourage long enough to commit murder. But the answer to that third question is an emphatic “YES!” (more…)
NOTE: This is intended as a response to an article by T. N. Reider published at “The Conversation” entitled “Is the ‘lesser of two evils’ an ethical choice for voters?” That article is well-written, and I recommend reading it. All quotes come from there.
As I’ve discussed in other articles, despair is endemic in this country. The presidential politics of this year underline this in a fashion seldom seen before, with the fiercest supporters of each candidate shouting loudly that their pick for president isn’t quite as bad as the only other choice. People have stopped questioning the system, which seems to guarantee that the worst possible candidate always gains their party’s nomination. Instead they like to shout at one another about how the other option is worse.
One thing that cannot be denied: Americans hate both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and they do so in record numbers. We haven’t seen this level (more…)
The general public is having another pointless debate, this one over the Second Amendment.
I call it a “debate” only out of courtesy. It’s not really a debate; it’s a loud argument and it’s convincing nobody. It’s just like talking to your idiot brother-in-law over the holiday table; after a couple of minutes, both sides are too busy shouting to even hear anyone else, much less actually listen to them. That moment when we drift beyond polite and reasonable discussion is the moment talking stops being productive. (more…)
This is a picture of a SiG MCX.
It’s a highly efficient modular tactical infantry weapon, designed to be easily modified so as to be the proper gun for any situation. It’s lightweight, reliable, and deadly. Oh, and a homicidal maniac used one to kill fifty people in Orlando the other day.
At the moment, the nation is sick and tired of hearing about guns and shootings. We’ve had enough, and if the problem doesn’t get solved, We The People are about to fire a whole raft of Congressmen and Senators. And the lawmakers in question know this full well, so they’re making a lot of extra noise about it this time around.
In fact, so very much noise is being made that I think we’ve lost sight of what exactly it is that we’re talking about. (more…)
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