By special request — and because we could all use a little extra cheer at the dark days of this ChrismaKwanzaaHannukahYule season — I present the amazing doings of the newest member of our tribe, Trixie the Tailless Wonderdog. She climbs trees! She lies on beds of hot coals! Don’t worry; we didn’t let her stay in the fireplace very long. But she’s entranced by fire and pouts if we put up the screen between her and the flames. She lifts colossal weights! She hunts big game at great peril! Squirrels. She tracks squirrels to their lairs, risking either falling…
18 CommentsMonth: December 2021
Have you heard of the misery index? (Stick with me; this does have to do with the very real violence we face.) Very simple: The misery index is the rate of inflation added to the rate of unemployment. It was invented by one of LBJ’s economists back in the 1960s and designed as an imprecise indicator of how Average Joe and Average Josie are feeling at any given time. The lower, the better. Index is 2.97? Happy people, happy country. That, BTW, is the lowest it’s ever estimated to have been, (presumably retroactively calculated) for 1953. Index is 21.98? Unhappy…
53 CommentsMike Hendrix, proprietor of the Cold Fury blog, is in dire straits in an ICU and losing limbs as we speak. He could yet lose his life. He is a great guy who runs a great blog. His physical condition is dire, and by the time all this is done, so will his medical bills be. Please help him if you can. The GoFundMe is here. The tragic, and ongoing, story can be found in several places including the GoFundMe page, but I got it from Bayou Renaissance Man. Good luck, Mike (my fellow Ravenclaw). Live long and prosper. UPDATE:…
7 CommentsThe other day I witnessed a conversation I could never have imagined. Picture two successful professionals, thoroughly decent people, respected (perhaps even revered) in their fields. Intelligent, moderate individuals, but outside what was once the political mainstream. They relax over glasses of wine, discussing a certain prominent “public health expert.” They discuss whether prison is too good for said expert, or whether dragging him behind a mule cart, drawing, castrating, quartering, and placing his head on a pike in a public square is more appropriate. And no, they hadn’t had that much wine. Both were embarrassed by their own words.…
91 CommentsYou can avoid reality, but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. — Ayn Rand(ish) —– In what I hope (no doubt in vain) is peak reality-avoidance, the British Evening Standard has written an article attributing the dramatic rise in youthful heart problems to a new psychological malady, Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder. Suddenly, in 2021 — notably not in 2020, the first really traumatic year of the permademic — previously healthy young men are becoming so freaked out over COVID that they’re increasing the UK’s rate of heart problems by nearly five percent. The article doesn’t mention — not even…
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