Good one from Sheila Stokes-Begley on “smart” autos and “smart” guns. I wouldn’t normally blog the death of a pro wrestler. But Rowdy Roddy Piper, who just died, age 61, also starred in John Carpenter’s terrific, underrated, and oh-so-apt freedomista social satire, They Live. Where all the presidential candidates stand on pot legalization. Speaking of which, even D.A.R.E. (that family-destroying, lying, totally ineffective-against-drug-abuse scourge of the 1980s) has now published an op-ed in favor of legal cannabis. That CEO who raised the minimum wage at his company to $70,000 per year had some of his experienced employees quit for reasons…
Category: Books and Movies
Lenore Skenazy (once again) demands that kids — and their parents — be free to walk free. It’s fascinating just how many ways the $15/hour minimum wage is backfiring. J.D. Tuccille has yet another. (And it’s great to see his Disloyal Opposition blog back again!) Via Sipsey Street: It’s no surprise, but soooo gratifying that the number of guns being manufactured has doubled during the Obama regime. Yep, as I guessed yesterday, Chrysler is handling the hack-a-Jeep (or anything else we make) fix staggeringly poorly. Also yesterday I said that no writer had ever come up with a description of…
Eleven things to quit right now. (Might be more helpful if that list came with some how-tos …) Theodore Bikel has died. He was one of those amazingly talented people. The late Dr. Seuss has him beat, though. He’s managed to come up with a “new” book years after dying. (Amazon link) Judge bans Bong-a-Thon from the town of Stoner — yes, Stoner — Colorado. (H/T jed) Yet another reason to prefer older cars. Remember those bootable drives with the prep info? Mark, aka Greylocke, their creator, is adding files of surgery basics. And he’s still looking for somebody to…
Been a little quiet lately, I know. Partly this is to do with the protracted deathwatch for Robbie. He’s 14 and hasn’t been in good health for a long time. His “doggie Alzheimers” gives him anxiety attacks that increasingly override his pharmacopia of meds. He’s got bad legs that look like they shouldn’t hold him up (but somehow do). Now add a hacking cough of mystery origin. But he’s still happy, hungry, and eager to go for walks. Never mind that he spends more time sniffing and peeing than actually walking. So hard to know what to do or when…
Time to do another emergency update on your flash player. (H/T MJR) A modest proposal for economically illiterate New York Times opinionists. Now that the Nazgul have (probably) ensured the future of Obamacare, even liberal media feel it’s safe to point out the obvious. It appears there may be a link between SSRI antidepressants and birth defects. But not to worry. Even though some SSRIs may more than double your baby’s chance of being born without a brain, it’s still a small risk. Even if you’re born with a brain, you’re hardly out of the woods. Childhood stress alters our…
More surprises from the most transparent administration in history. That DoJ gag order against Reason was even more unreasonable than it seemed. Though I gasp at his apparent belief that U.S. cops aren’t hardass enough, Kevin D. Williamson is once again perspicacious. He says we’re seeing “peak leftism.” We can surely hope so, because if the current crop of ranters and banners goes much farther, we’ll end up with full-blown fascism. Drug addiction: It isn’t what we’ve been told. (This book by the writer of that article looks like a must read: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days…
You thought maybe the TSA was the fedgov’s worst example of idiotic “security”? Hey, at least the TSA puts on an impressive pretense. OTOH, it appears that the Office of Personnel Management actually gave root access for all those now-hacked personnel files to contractors in Argentina and … yes, here it comes: China. How Orange is the New Black misrepresents women’s federal prisons. Yes, but it’s a good show. And the memoir it’s based on is even better. More lesbian sex in the Netflix version, but the horror of petty people in power comes across even more strongly in the…
Today is the 800th anniversary of the signing sealing of the Magna Carta. Good article on things we mostly don’t know about it and why it still matters.
ADDED: Here’s Bovard’s take on it. (Never trust a king, even after you think you’ve beaten him.)
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I’m sort of getting used to having neither a functional vehicle nor functional legs. There are still moments I want to weep. Like on Friday when a mechanic told me the Xterra was all fixed, running perfectly, even got the service-engine light to go out — and I got in it, found the light back on, and had to limp back home after driving the mere half mile to town.
Hastert may be a criminal. But other feds are worse. (Never mind that Hastert and his ilk made them worse.) I admit it. Maeve Binchy, the mega-selling Irish author of simple domestic tales, is one of my guilty girly pleasures. Binchy died in 2012 of heart problems. While looking for something completely unrelated to her health, I stumbled upon this nice article about how she made the best of her initial diagnosis. Inspiring. The fedgov has recently made it 5x more expensive to do. But Americans are again surrendering their citizenship in small but record-setting numbers. (Tip o’ hat to…