In A Few Words

How provoking! This website wants me to compose a tagline, thus:  “In a few words, tell us what this page is about.”

Look, mate — if I knew what the frigging page was about already, I wouldn’t need to write it, now would I?  Bloody cheek!
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All right; most of you who are reading this probably don’t have a clue what that’s supposed to mean, why that simple little request has me (more…)

On Honor In Warfare

(Reposted from The Planets Magazine; revised)

This short treatise was inspired by a public thread in an online game, Planets.Nu, and many of the terms are specific to that game. Nevertheless, the concepts are common ones, and I don’t think the game terms will be any bar to your understanding.

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In the original thread, two Emperors, at least one likely prospective Emperor, and several current and former championship contestants participated in a lively discussion on the subject, but in the end I felt that as many questions were raised as were answered. Here, then, I have attempted to organize many of the thoughts expressed there and to (more…)

On Literacy

“Words! Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music – and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can’t.”
– President Josiah Bartlet
(The West Wing sn. 3 ep. 5 “War Crimes“)

The above quote was meant to be read aloud.

Try it. Pretend, just for a moment, that you are in fact that famed oratorical snob, President Jed Bartlet, and read this aloud. Be persuasive; be passionate. Convince me. (more…)

On Welfare

(from the archives)

I’ve been reading Martin Cruz Smith again – “Gorky Park” and “Polar Star”. It’s a fascinating snapshot of another country at another time, and the contrast of that vision throws the realities of our own time and place into sharp relief.

The great boast of the Soviet Union was that it was a Worker’s Paradise. Everyone (more…)

Samizdat

(From the archives)

Some thirty-five years ago, a particularly brilliant Czechoslovakian dissident named Vaclav Havel wrote an essay entitled “Power of the Powerless”. The subject matter was a thoughtful and timely dissection of certain paradoxical behaviors required by society in order for a person to prosper under the post-totalitarian regime then in power. Unsurprisingly, the (more…)

EVE Online Missions: Lists And Guidelines

NOTE:  This guide is based in part on the original “The Plan” article that was at one time hosted at the EVE Online Wiki but has now, sadly, been lost.  The guiding principles haven’t changed at all, but some of the details work differently due to recent updates.

My own goal in EVE is to gain the maximum advantage from trading in every region, and to do so with the least amount of effort.  The objective is minimum taxes and broker fees in any high-sec at any Empire corporation station — a derived standing of well over 6 with everyone that’s not a pirate faction.

In order to accomplish this, there are some general rules (more…)

Jefferson County Letters (Reference)

This is not a stand-alone article, but rather a reference resource for another article.  In it is reproduced the text of two communications to The Not Fake News from the office of the County Clerk of Jefferson County, Kentucky relating to the primary of 23 June 2020.  To remove this from the stream narrative and for purely technical reasons, this has been back-dated several years; however, it should be clear that the emails were received on the 20th and 22nd of June 2020 respectively. (more…)