I was eight or nine. I was bored. With nothing of my own to read, I tried a book from the grown-ups’ shelves for the first time. My parents weren’t readers. They had just two shelves of hardbound books, which, lacking pictures, had never interested me. That day I found a lone paperback. Although it, too, had no illustrations, its cover was bright and strange enough to attract me. I had never heard of Arthur C. Clarke. I had no concept of science fiction. I didn’t know there were such things as grownup stories about spaceships or time travel. How…
Category: Books and Movies
Morpheus: Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. … Do you know what I’m talking about? Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take…
Celebrating the fighters who risk their lives for freedom and justice: Or not. —– Tip o’ hat to C^2 for the Battle of Athens video link, which I’ve been waiting months to use. That’s a fictionalized version, but not so far from the reality.
NOTE: This post started out to be one thing, then turned into another. So it’s not the most organized piece I’ve ever written. Bear with me. Toward the end, I’m going to ask your thoughts on what might be a worthwhile project. —– I should have remembered this clip from Firefly. Instead, H/T JB for this most elegant method of dealing with a snitch: Of course, few of us have spaceships or fantastic script writers for dealing with betrayers, so we have to wing it and probably not do so well. Let’s talk about that. This post is not about…
31 Days to Survival: A Complete Plan for Emergency Preparedness By M.D. Creekmore Paladin Press 2012 153 pages It’s felt like a long wait for M.D. Creekmore’s new book, 31 Days to Survival: A Complete Plan for Emergency Preparedness. True, it’s been only a little over a year since his last book (Dirt-Cheap Survival Retreat: One Man’s Solution — my review here). But it’s been one vital year for preparedness. Even some fairly dim bulbs are beginning to realize the problem now. If the Maya don’t get us first (and I expect we’re pretty safe from them), the Fed and…
How many federal laws are there? Let us (try to) count the ways. A rarity in the rare book room. While I doubt that many readers of this blog want to walk down the street looking like this, it’s a brilliant thing that young fashionistas are thinking of avoiding facial-recognition cams. I could picture Jeremy and Cedra got up like that. I know your heart’s in the right place, Downsize DC. But if congressthingies have become so irresponsible and depraved that they don’t bother to read the bills they vote for, what makes you think that writing to the culprits…
Despite (or — sigh — perhaps in part because of) a little flag-waving, this is a damnfine piece of free-market agit-prop.
There’s a perfectly sensible manual designed to help you deal with dogs. If you give a damn, read & heed it. We non-cops might want to see that our local PDs get copies of the thing. It would be good for everybody to see more stories like this (H/T naturegirl) and a lot fewer of these.
Of course! This is exactly what the U.S. needs: a federal government that can do more. Now why didn’t we think of that? How exactly does a “civil servant” steal $30 million from a town of 12,000? Ten completely ridiculous (and not necessarily SFW) road signs. (Tip o’ hat to C^2.) SOPA is dead. Long live CISPA! Or maybe we should say SOPA is dead; will somebody fer cryin’ out loud put a stake in its heart and bury it at the crossroads??? Does that take-away-your-passport-if-you-haven’t-paid-your-taxes law that’s making its way through Congress also give the IRS the authority to…