- “Dogs are people, too.” At least in their abilities to feel and anticipate — something that will come as no surprise to anybody who’s lived with them, but is apparently news in neuroscience. (Tip o’ hat to MLS)
- Federal theater of the absurd. (I also agree with Carl that the Crazy Horse monument is so superior to Mt. Rushmore in every way that even after the silly feddies remove the barriers I’d still just drive on past and watch free enterprise at work a few miles down the road.)
- Erm … I don’t usually read Glamour. But I found this heartfelt smackdown of a money-hungry bride on a forum I frequent. Even as a young girl, I hated the notion of weddings; these days when they’ve become big excuses to put families into debt while the couple collects big cash gifts, this response from a guest is a touch of sanity.
- Here’s another “non-journalist who wouldn’t be entitled to First Amendment freedom-of-press protections if TPTB have their way.
- You may have heard that the dollar ain’t worth sh*t these days. Well ….
- You don’t always need a gun to foil bad guys. 🙂
- Although this is last month’s news, it’s still very good. The state of Jefferson is on its way back from the dead.
- And finally, here are three from the Commentariat: How to tell your mother and your boss why they should object to the surveillance state; Choosing the gun that’s right for you; and seriously now, here’s some Pollyanna in rose-colored glasses on some serious mind-altering drugs who sees benefits in the surveillance state. (H/T finders, one and all!)
And thank you all for the weekend’s excellent comments helping my friend L find the best gun for her needs!
Tactically, the pistol is a modern sword. Most pistol fights take place in sword range (search “Teuller drill” if you aren’t already familiar with this). The advantage of the pistol is that it takes less training and physical strength than the sword. Of course, swords don’t run out of ammo.
I’m probably one of Claire’s few readers who has actually sent more than one person to the ER with sword injuries. To be fair, I had to go to the ER for such once. You’d be amazed at the response you get from USAF ER staff when the nurse calls out to the doctors, “We’ve got a broadsword injury here!”
I have three swords. I’ve trained in epee, rapier, and broadsword, among other forms. I still practice.
That wedding letter was a real shocker. I have to say- good for the friend!
Mem’saab and I pulled off our wedding- this at a gorgeous 1920s hotel in a tony mountain resort town, with over a hundred guests, a huge meal, professional photography, her dress custom sewn, the whole nut- for a sum in the mid four figures. We did a -lot- of shopping around, and had help from her very generous family, but paid for the bulk of it ourselves. We had a gift registry on Amazon because that’s how her family does things, but over half of our wedding gifts were either splendid handmade home supplies (big shout-out to The Queen Of The Universe for the handmade tea service!) or small amounts of cash, slated by the givers to be help with our honeymoon or the expenses of Little Froggie’s birth. One friend, my boss from the pizza joint I worked at in college, bought us an industrial-grade food processor; another co-worker from the same place gave us our baby daughter’s first silver ounce. Lots of Amazon and WallyWorld gift cards. We couldn’t have been happier or more touched with any of it. The important thing is that people were -there-.
When we were planning the wedding, we ran across innumerable stories such as the one Claire’s linked to. Some of the demands made of wedding guests and family these days are beyond the excesses of a medieval monarch or eastern potentate. Eleanor Of Aquitaine would shrink back in shame from the sheer shrewish greed of it all. There’s a very peevish Henry-VIII/Louis-XVI feel to this business, from what we saw, has sent more than one Groom-to-be blamelessly screaming into the night. Not infrequent were comments from Brides that “the wedding is MY DAY, and it has to be perfect and meet MY EVERY DESIRE and if it doesn’t then anyone and everyone who prevented this is a BAD FRIEND or a FAMILY OF HATERS and you all SUCK…” All I could think of was Motel and Tzeitel, ecstatic over a feather mattress and four chickens.
I think there’s very little that better encapsulates the mad, meaningless, relationship-shattering and soul-crushing materialism of modern American culture than this. It’s proof, in my mind, of how far off the rails we’ve gone. This sort of madness has always existed, in every culture and every place on Earth. But its’ ubiquity, and the level to which it’s endorsed, in modern America are utterly insane.
Mark Baird, a spokesperson for the Jefferson Declaration Committee, said the group hopes to have a dozen counties commit their support before asking California legislators to allow the formation of the new state.
They’re goiing to ask Sacramento for permission to secede? Tell me there’s a Plan B.
More on dogs: they also get the same “runner’s high” humans get.
http://love.theanimalrescuesite.com/sharing-a-runners-high-with-your-dog/?origin=FK_Trivia_10-07-2013
“The study examined the levels of a neurotransmitter called endocannabinoid in humans, dogs and ferrets after having them run on a treadmill.”
No treadmill needed, just ask any Husky – he would understand the runner’s high.
I thought the first link (“Dogs are human too”) was self-evident – if any scientist had truly paid attention to dogs.
I remember a class in High School Sociology when behaviorism (of lab animals) was being studied, wherein I had way too many questions for the teacher to answer. She finally told me to please allow some time for others, and totally ignored me after that. (And I totally ignored the textbook after that.)
In this article, http://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html, the stated goal of psychology “as a behaviorist views it” is “… prediction and control (1913, p. 158).”
And it’s been so ever since.
Loved the story about the guy with the sword! That’s the ATTITUDE I keep talking about. He not only had the will to live and fight for himself, he had the will to do what was right for the other person.
Somebody ought to DO something… and most people seem to think that means somebody ELSE. Call 911 and die…
Bravo for that man, and I hope he has lots and lots of children.
Weddings. Hmmm, Mine cost about $500 dollars total and I wore my service dress uniform, 30 years ago. Oldest daughter (her husband actually) wanted a big formal wedding. I set a modest limit of what I would contribute, left the rest up to them. They were horrified, but as days wore on they came to me for advice to find the best deals etc. Nice enough wedding, way to stressful in my opinion though. Second daughter was married by the local JP (very nice ceremony) with the reception at Chili’s. Great time was had by all.
Best wedding reception I ever went to was at the local American Legion hall. Nice dive. It was potluck with lots of KFC, Eggrolls and lots of homemade mexican food. The family and friends were very ethnically diverse.
Although I loved both dog articles, the dogs are human too article was probably your tax dollars at work “proving” something that any dog owner could have told them. The runner’s high in dogs is also sort of a given for running breeds. Our Aussie shephard was never happier than when she was running alongside(and around and behind and in front of) DH on a horse or mule ride. A 10 mile ride was nothing for her.
And a great letter to the bridezilla! Don’t you just wish you could slap the snot out of some people? We got married at home with 30 family and dearest friends, followed by a reception at my mom’s house that included maybe 60 friends, neighbors and co-workers. I wore a winter white suit(Mom wore a suit at her post WW2 wedding-functional wear it again) as a tradition and only carried 3 roses, 2 of which I gave to the mothers. The reception featured a buffet of foods prepared by the friends and neighbors(set out on the ping pong table) and a wedding cake made by a co-worker who did a better than professional job on it. My boss took a roll of pictures. We asked people not to do presents since we were both mature and really didn’t need anything. But, I worked for a British company located in Derby England, where Royal Crown Derby china is made and my coworkers all went in and got us some serving pieces of our china pattern, which was very cool of them and a complete surprise. To me, the best thing about the whole event was all the participation of the people. But that was long ago in a different kind of society than the me/me/me society of today.
The fellow with the sword reminded me of a Dear Abby column I cut out of the paper years ago;
Speaker no 1: Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, famine and injustice when He could do something about it.
Speaker no 2: Well, why don’t you ask Him?
Speaker no 1: Because I’m afraid He might ask me the same question.
Enough rambling for now.
On the Mt. Rushmore thing, I have to admit whenever I see a picture of Rushmore I have a fantasy of going out there with a big can of spray paint and a rope to swing down and paint “TYRANT” on Lincoln’s cheek.
I was with a friend one day who was driving his big truck and we came along a section of road with some cones on it. I just wondered aloud what would happen if a cone was hit. He proceeded to send every cone for the next mile or so into the weeds. That Rushmore pic with the cones made me think of that past example of “cone terrorism” too for some reason…
The story about Wheeler reminds me of… myself! 🙂 I spent some years reading hundreds of bills going into the Wyoming legislature, for my Wyoming Liberty Index:
http://wyominglibertyindex.info/
Funny thing about that, it was largely that experience that kicked me the final step into anarchism. I got tired of reading about all the wheeling and dealing of interest groups and passed WLI to a certain person 😉 who can stomach that sort of thing more than I can these days (although I did rate a fair number of bills for him this year too). Anyway I’m not saying the work is as important as what Wheeler does, but the job was somewhat similar.
From that “state of Jefferson” article, a comment:
[Modoc County gets more state taxpayer dollars than all but one of California’s 58 counties.Yet they have the highest Republican base in the state. Further they are slowly going broke, even with the tax dollars they are sucking from the state.]
This is one thing that makes me prefer “liberals” to “conservatives”; at least the former are a bit more honest about their plundering. I always liked “El Neil” Smith’s comments about this phemomenon: “Government can only do two things: It can beat people up and kill them. Or it can threaten to do so. When it seems to be doing something else – for example, handing out money or, say, surplus cheese – what’s actually going on is that something has been taken away from one set of individuals by deadly force or the threat of deadly force, a hefty middleman’s fee deducted, and whatever is left thrown to peasants delighted to receive stolen goods.”
Got married in a large tipi we were living in up in the mountains of Colorado. About 20 straight folk wearing ties, with big eyes sitting on one side, staring at about 20 hippies passing joints sitting on the other side. Bought a blank wedding certificate from an office supply place, filled it out and had everyone sign it. Was a beautiful day.
Wish I could carry my Cold Steel sword cane around. Total felony here.
The greedy bride is a metaphor for the values we have today. When my income shifted from $145,000 to $26,000 a year, I felt blessed to be able to put food on my table and have enough left to give to charity. My social group dropped me lower than a basement (somewhere along the sewer lines). I was still the same person, and their abandonment hurt.
I am now debt free, living on 4 acres in God’s country, and happy. Those former friends are now scrambling for money to pay their debts and stand to lose everything in this economy. What happened to me then is now happening to them.
Living well IS the best revenge.
Off-topic: Claire, do you realize how often your name is being invoked these days? Here’s an example (comment #30):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3076139/posts
You know? Dogs are known to eat crap, doesn’t surprise me the dog ate the money, what does surprise me is that the dog didn’t drop dead or choke on the bills. After all, anything coming out of the Federal Government is poison, as far as I’m concerned.
On another note. There is a Kickstarter to help start up the next (Third) movie of Atlas Shrugged.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasshrugged/atlas-shrugged-movie-who-is-john-galt
Who wants to start a fund to get our Claire onto the movie as an Extra? : )
Maybe if we flood the producers with our letters, she may even get a speaking part.
The thread I linked to got pulled, but the comment read “Claire Wolfe just called. She wants to know what’s taking us so long?”
There’s been a lot of that lately. A sign of how tense things are.
Ellendra — Yegads. Ulp.
Still, after all these years. And growing …?
Jim B. — Thanks for the thought, but let’s let YOU be the movie extra instead …
Claire, you’ve got a lot of fans at Free Republic. It used to be a mostly Republican (big R) forum, but the last 10 years or so it’s been gradually moving to more of a conservo-tarian site.