- It is surely a mixed blessing to have time to design your own headstone. That’s a wonderful monument, though, and the Vanderboeghs could use some help getting it made. Kudos to Kurt Hofmann for a quote deserving of such immortality.
- “Trump: Why it happened and what comes next” by David Stockman. (How come presidential advisors never sound either this smart or this liberty-minded while they’re presidential advisors? Only afterward?)
- Yes, indeedy. We should always believe our heroic protectors when they tell us they need tools like Sting-Ray technology to catch terrorists, child-abductors, and the like. Sure thing.
- Herschel Smith says goodbye to politics. He and I (and probably you) come from different places in the political spectrum, but I’m proud to be his friend-I’ve-never-met.
- Andrew Sullivan’s blind spot.
- And you think you’re having a bad day? (NSFW; it’s Nicki, after all. But it would still be NSFW even without Nicki.)
- Pro-gun mom whose kidlet shot her in the back gets a very fitting alternative to criminal prosecution.
- Sometimes even writers at the New Yorker think about the real world and ask good questions: What would happen if GPS failed? (A bunch of over-dependent individuals should also be asking what they’d do if their personal GPS devices failed. Or why they’re so dependent on technology that so often misleads them.)
Yeah, bad days at work. Reminds of the old joke about the Irishman who drowned in a vat of beer. Did he go quickly? No, he got out 3 times to take a leak.
Having done plenty of paper-map navigation, I just don’t get the GPS obsession. Sure, it can be handy, and I’ve used it on my phone a few times, but like to have my route in my head before leaving on a trip.
It took me a bunch of holsters and three weapons until I found the right combination for my carry rig. I don’t use a car mount. It’s a good thing she has 90 days and, she may need a bit of money, it will take some doing to find a good fit for her vehicle needs.
I like the deal she got. Seems to me that’s stuff any armed parent should be doing already. She should keep a journal of her attempt at compliance. Not only would it be educational for others but the judge might appreciate her efforts upon seeing details of the endeavor.
I’ve got my GPS programmed to take me right to my stash of maps and compasses. I’m all set.
Never have used GPS myself, but I’ve watched my niece get lost using it several times. 🙂 I drove up to 400 miles a day for 14 years when I was doing home health and hospice nursing. I used maps, the “Thomas Guide” and careful attention to details like signs and construction detours (there is always road construction going on somewhere in So. Calif.) I got lost sometimes, and had to backtrack, and learning to use the Thomas Guide was not easy at first, but I always managed to get to where I was going. After the first year or so, I would brag that all I needed was an name, address and phone number. I avoided calling ahead for directions, actually, because sometimes they were more misleading than helpful.
So, no… the loss of GPS shouldn’t be the end of the world. The Thomas Guide is still published, I hope. 🙂
Great links today, Claire!
I didn’t say it before, so I will now. I would sorely misss this blog of you decide that doing it for free is no longer tenable. I hope you keep doing it.
Hershel Smith may be completely right about Donald Trump (egotist, authoritarian, leftist), but he has serious blinders on when discussing Cruz (Constitutionalist? Anti-war? Really?) Cruz is the one who made the crack about dropping nukes on the Middle East to see if sand glows. He is absolutely ineligible to be President based on the very Constitution he claims to follow. Smith is deluding himself because he self-identifies with Cruz’s ‘Christianity.’ I can’t think of a less relevant reason to support someone for public office.
I agree with him to the extent that I am a confirmed non-voter because it is the only MORAL position I can take concerning politics. Voting for a lesser evil still makes you a supporter of evil.
Ron Johnson- I agree so much with what you said about Cruz… and non-v*ting.
How come presidential advisors never sound either this smart or this liberty-minded while they’re presidential advisors?
Because they spend their time making the person paying them sound smart. As they should.
The Thomas Guide is still published, I hope.
Got lost going to our daughter’s house. (The highway was flooded, cops shunted us off onto a toll road we had to exit quick, ended up someplace where all the roads except the one that was flooded ran north-south, and we needed to go east. The Texas map in my Jeep was several years old.)
We found an open convenience store, and asked the clerk for a new Texas map.
[blank stare] “Uh, Jose, we got any maps?”
[blank stare] “Like paper maps? Nope.”
Dang, I’m getting old.
2 years ago, mom and I made our annual trip from Wisconsin to Missouri to visit family, and the GPS took us all over the place, doubled back several times, and at one point instructed us to drive into the river. This last trip, we made sure to have paper maps, and didn’t get lost once, in spite of road construction and detours!
Several times my mom commented how most people in my generation have no idea how to read a map, and that she was glad I was such a luddite sometimes 🙂
When I have used GPS, I use it to show me where something is, but I often choose my own path to get there because the path it wants me to travel is stupid and random. (I don’t have a GPS, but my parents do and sometimes want to use it when I’m driving them somewhere.)
GPS fails? Rand McNally’s Motor Carrier’s Atlas. The one truckers use. A little more expensive than the typical road atlas, but worth it. My phone has GPS, in that “Bitchin’ Betty” voice( I need to change that ). It’s generally accurate, unless you are in a city that has had a lot of recent infrastructure work.
I too like to know where I’m going before I depart, and use a paper map (or, more likely these days, check MapQuest on my computer!) before leaving. But I have to say that GPS units are very handy and, largely, accurate. Yes, more than once I have chastised my son for allowing his GPS to take him onto back roads because he didn’t know where he was going and simply took as gospel what the machine told him, but the truth is I like them a lot. We recently purchased a new (and upper-end) Garmin unit and it’s truly remarkable how much information they pack into them. Not just directions, but the nearest gas station, restaurant or Walmart (my son likes to “camp out” in their parking lots when he’s travelling) and even information on traffic congestion. Everyone should know how to read a map, and keep some in his car, but modern GPS devices are really wonderful.
As to Stockman’s “epiphany” (if you can call it that), please keep in mind that he was Reagan’s Director of OMB 35 years ago. People do learn over time, especially with a career as varied as his. If anyone here hasn’t read his book “The Great Deformation”, I highly recommend it. He is actually highly critical of Reagan (and especially Dick Cheney) for excessive military spending, and apparently was so at the time. Undoubtedly he is more vocal today, but he was always known as a deficit hawk. Don’t be too harsh on the man.
My recollection of David Stockman is that he was always on the side of fiscal restraint. Once, after a measure was passed that opened some financial avenues, his assessment was “[T]he pigs are feeding at the trough.” I tried briefly to find a direct reference, but had no luck. He was consistently vilified in the press for his positions.