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Month: November 2018

Car vs excavator

As Joel might say, “I got nothin’ today.” Life is happily dull. The Internet is all-politics-all-the-time, but won’t cough up a single bit of actual news until tonight. So while the universal writer’s block works its way out of both my system and the ‘Net’s, here’s a bit of good cheer from Russia: Source

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Monday links

  • The way modern empires die: They become too heavy-handed, and tech makes it practical to slip away from them. (H/T TSO)
  • Nine years after implementation of Common Core, schooling standards continue to fall. (True, no doubt, but let’s note that they’ve been falling under virtually every government-driven initiative, ever, and in fact falling since universal government schooling was imposed.)
  • Oh yeah, here’s another of those typical white supremacists who vandalize synagogues. This one was helped along by the New York Times and NYC city hall. 2 Comments
  • T’was the night before voting …

    An excerpt. The rest is here. T’was the night before voting when all through the land, Collectivists were clamoring to take command. Their platforms were posted on Facebook with care, In hopes that Control! soon would be theirs. Bernistas were nestled all snug in their beds, While dreams of “free” college danced in their heads. And the socialists of the left, and the protectionists of the right, Had a common enemy: free trade, to fight. When down in the market there arose such a clatter, They suspended debating to see what was the matter! Away to their telescreens they flew…

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    Long weekend read: The masterless people

    The escaped slaves of the early Americas (“Maroons” or cimarrons) and their struggle to live free at all cost. Sometimes, according to this piece, their determination to live without masters led to alliances with pirates. I can’t say how gloriously accurate this book excerpt is, but it’s a good read on a subject that deserves more attention. The book itself is a new history of the Jamestown colony, published a few days ago. But this excerpt is more about the slaves and pirates of the Caribbean in the days of Spanish conquest and early English adventurism.

    6 Comments

    Wouldn’t it be nice?

    Furrydoc and I had lunch together yesterday. We talked politics as we so often do. And we found ourselves in the same state — a not-so-unusual state, these days. We wished news would simply go away. We’re both taking steps to avoid it. The world seems to have gone completely mad. Hate pretends to represent love. Rage replaces thought. Ignorance supplants knowledge. Yet try though we might, both of us find ourselves steeped in the noise of news as if we breathe it in with the very air. Then she told me she talked to her clinic staff about some…

    12 Comments

    Friday links

  • A “pro-gun” president now wants more federal gun control. Which gun groups are fighting Trump’s ineffective, obnoxious, and camel-nose-in-the-tent bump-stock ban?
  • Sad if true: Why medical students are having a strangely hard time mastering surgery.
  • Signal, the privacy-focused messaging app, has a new way of protecting users’ identity. (I still wouldn’t trust any app, but Signal seems to be the best of the real deals.) 13 Comments