No description needed. Dogs are life. Cats are also necessary on the Internet.
Sometimes I’m not sure which is harder: writer’s block or that rare and supposedly wondrous state of flow, where words fly from the end of your fingers without conscious input from your mind, where things like eating, getting dressed, and taking the dogs for a walk either get forgotten or force themselves upon your attention like the unforgivable person from Porlock.
I used to live for the flow state. Now it exhausts me. Definitely more exhilarating and productive than writer’s block, though.
In the schadenfreude department: Melissa Click, the social-justice pecksniff who shoved one reporter and called for “muscle” to remove another from a public demonstration, has been charged with assault. Despite using annoying “gun violence” language, this CNN article brings the good news that mental health professionals aren’t likely to sit still for Obama administration attempts to label every mentally ill person as too dangerous to own a firearm. With statistics, even! From Microsoft: useful, creepy, or both? If this is accurate in describing how classified material “escapes” from secure servers and ends up on private ones, then Hillary and several…
Will people now have to start watching their “threat scores” the way they have to watch their credit scores? Given the notoriously bad and biased information that goes into marking us as “threats,” that could be a real challenge. Mental Floss tells the story of German teens who rebelled against Hitler. Another fascinating, little-known bit of history. To call it the gun issue even the NRA won’t touch might be an exaggeration. But the problem of non-violent ex-felons being denied gun rights does hit blacks harder than the rest of us. (Thank you, War on Drugs.) Funny timing. Last evening…
Deadlining today. The article came together nicely over the last several days, so today I had only to polish it, choose photos, and write captions. But this was still urgent, intense work. All the while I felt terrible because I could not pause to write a worthy blog on Mike Vanderboegh’s terrible news. M. posted the link yesterday evening in comments, so thank you for that. But I needed to do more — and now that I have the time, I don’t have the words.
Mike announced his own impending death with resolution and grace. You should definitely read what he wrote. The news wasn’t surprising; Mike’s been battling cancer for years. He’s reported many, many recent bad days. And merely the thin, drawn look of him at the events he’s managed to attend in the last year said he was no longer winning the fight. He’s a believer, of course. So he has that to hold onto. I hope it sustains him.
Mike is an authentic hero not only to gun rights, but to freedom in general. Nobody will ever match or replace him.
Heh. Carl-Bear Bussjaeger has an idea for those who are likely to be reclassified as “gun dealers” by Obama fiat: comply, comply, comply, comply … and comply some more. Very good one from Mas Ayoob: Five myths of gun fighting. Until recently, the common assumption was that carefree, laid-back people lived longer, healthier lives and that anxiety and worry were bad for you. Lots of research these days points away from that belief. Here’s one more datapoint. Anxious people process threats in a part of the brain devoted to action. The Bill Clinton effect or why liberals may be more…
Ava is the cutest dog. She’s got absolutely gorgeous red cattle-dog coloring, but is more the shape of the border collies that make up the other half of her ancestry. She has big dark eyes in a complex double mask and ears like a bat. And above all, she has this soulful expression that says, “I live only to love you.”
It’s hard to get a good picture of her, though, because until recently she thought the camera was some sort of exotic punishment device, and even now she’s not certain. She tolerates it for my sake, but pictures of her always end up looking like Oliver Twist, she’s so wretched.
I once drew this pastel of her from a photo she blurred by leaping up from a lying position and running off to escape the camera. It’s called “Ava says, ‘Please Don’t Take My Picture, Ma!'”:
Border collies routinely test as the most intelligent dogs in the world and cattle dogs place in the top 10. Good thing Ava was absent when they were conducting the IQ tests; she’d have lowered the average considerably for both her breeds.
Father gets into a stand-off with police to prevent a hospital from taking his “brain dead” son off life support. Happened earlier this year but the follow-up is what’s making this a Christmas-season story. Pot for the homeless. (H/T jed) Also from jed: all the SF books to binge read over the holidays. (Can’t vouch for them myself ’cause I haven’t read any of them. If you’re buying, you know where to purchase them.) Dave Barry’s year in review. (I’ve lost track of the people who’ve sent this one to me; it’s definitely been making the rounds.) Jim Bovard’s Raging…
SpaceX has launched — and landed — an orbital rocket at Cape Canaveral. Whoohoo! ADDED: Better link. If you’ve got friends or family who don’t think there’s anything wrong with being on a government list, or who believe the gov’s pledges of privacy or promises that missions will never creep … have them read Carl-Bear’s latest over at TZP. Real world example, right there. If those friends are against the wide dissemination of “dangerous” information, Historian says, “Ask the Jews of Warsaw.” Kaiser Permanente opens its own medical school with a focus on teamwork. I can see some positives and…
Whatever you think (or whether you think) of Caitlyn Jenner, this is good. Seems Caitlyn refuses to toe the politically correct line on victimology. Meet the lobbyists who represent the world’s worst dictators to Your Representatives in Washington. I failed to acknowledge two very big historic dates earlier this week. First, the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Second, the Boston Tea Party. Here’s an interesting retrospective on the tea party. (Amusing how the Brahmins downplayed it.) And here’s an eyewitness account. You, too can evade the no-fly list. (Well, maybe. I’m sure this wouldn’t work for international flights where…
With Christmas cheer warming up and possibly even some chestnuts roasting over open fires, it seems like time for a little lite stuff. (Cheerfully stolen from furrydoc) A song for politicians and v*ters everywhere (Source; per Laird in comments) And a modern freedomista Christmas classic from Neema Vedadi and FreedomFeens (with Ben Stone aka Bad Quaker as Santa). (Source) And finally … Decorating with Canine from Brigid at Home on the Range.
