“Oh crap! More ammo for the ‘ban body armor’ people.” Something on the lighter side from Y.B. ben Avraham. And exactly who here terrorized and abused those free-range kids? Just another example of why people are fleeing the biggest nanny states. Schadenfreude is so very ignoble. Still, it’s a delightful thing to see some of the greatest supporters of Obamacare getting skewered by it. This is one of those things you might have intuitively perceived but never quite believed: we recall better (especially recall concepts better) when we write notes by hand rather than type on a keyboard. Those “racketeering”…
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
Seems cops and the U.S. Justice (sic) Department will go to amazing lengths to hide their newest tracking methods from us. A must-read for philosophical Libertopians: “Welcome to the Arena in the Clouds” by Max Borders. Guerrilla civic improvement. (H/T AG) It takes 13,000 words for the Columbia Journalism Review to say it and those words are thoughtful and worth reading. But bottom line: in their zeal to confirm an agenda, Rolling Stone’s staffers chose to mistake the behavior of a manipulative liar for the behavior of a poor, traumatized victim. (To their credit, RS and writer Sabrina Erdely cooperated…
The other day I posted at TZP about the dangers of mainstreaming bigotry and the folly of modern leftists thinking that their bigotry is somehow superior to the bigotry of others. I was stunned when about half the reader response implied that I was opposing freedom of association. Thanks to a comment by PB, I went back and realized I’d written this phrase in the final paragraph of the article: “discrimination is wrong.” That’s simply a dumb statement. Discrimination is not wrong, certainly not categorically wrong. It’s obviously something people do every day and something a free society would just…
Ilana Mercer on freedom of association. And dialoging with a Neo-Nazi. Related: Kevin D. Williamson on the war on the private mind. Back in the day, science fiction was a realm where freedom of ideas prevailed. Prevailed by definition, I assumed, because how can you speculate about alternate futures and realities without the freedom to think unbound thoughts? I’m still having trouble understanding how political correctness has consumed SF. Self control in a world that promotes self indulgence. This is about primal eating, but has implications way beyond that. (H/T PT) Chris Christie has pardoned Shaneen Allen. (Updated to direct…
Mine on the other hand, is okay. Over at TZP I take on the popularization of group hatred by the left.
You’re looking at three heavy boxes on that bottom shelf there. They’re physically heavy because they’re full of paperwork. But much bigger deal: they’re emotionally heavy because they contain everything I own that’s related to Randy Weaver and the horrors his family endured. Correspondence with Randy from jail. Notes from his trial. Notes and photos from my visit to his home (including the spot where son Sam was murdered by fedthugs).
I want them gone.
I just love reading predictions. Economic. Political. Psychic. No matter. It’s amusing (and a good reminder not to get too cocky). ‘Cause they’re always wrong.
Economists have a special talent for being wrong; they’re right up there with psychics for how egregious they can be. (And just like psychics, they like to edit themselves after the fact to show how “right” they were. The guy who got 9 out of 10 predictions wrong will put up advertising banners touting the one he got sort of semi-correct.) But that’s another story.
Today the “everybody’s always wrong” topic is TEOTWAWKI.
Understand, this isn’t to knock anybody. I perfectly well understand why we need to think about future scenarios, even if our best predictions can only end up being approximations. In fact one of the two articles I’m highlighting below is quite well-thought-out.
It’s just that everybody who ever predicts the future is wrong. Period. Whatever happens always happens in a different way than we think it will. The future may “rhyme” with our predictions, but it will never match them — and it rarely, rarely even comes close to what we envision. That’s just life, not anybody’s fault. But the reason that matters is that, whatever happens, we’ll need flexibility to deal with it.
If we think TEOTWAWKI is inevitable (and we’re kinda secretly hopeful it is so we can haul out our Super-Duper Whizzwhacker cannon and start blasting away at zombies), then we may end up wasting a lot of money, energy, and emotion if zombies never come knocking. OTOH, if we’re sunnily convinced that things just aren’t going to get that bad, we may end up so stunned by reality that we stand there numb and dumb while the zombies run over us.
I was very lucky in one feature of the old wreck of a house I bought back in ought-13. It has enormous, good-quality, double-pane windows, all installed within the last five or six years (PUD-subsidized specials, I’m sure; I’ve often had reason to believe those good windows are the only thing holding the entire structure together). And it has this one room whose sole purpose seems to be to enjoy those windows to the max.
It’s actually a dining room. It opens onto the kitchen and it had pantry shelves when I bought the place. But to me, it is a totally amazing sunroom. In this part of the country, having a sun room is a remarkable thing. We love sun! ‘Cause it’s so rare. Like diamonds, rubies, and honest politicians. So even if the temperature inside occasionally gets up to 90+ in the summer, I’m gloriously cheered because — Oh, look, for a change it’s TOO HOT!!! Isn’t that JUST AWESOME???
I was unlucky with this room in another way.
Alrighty, then. Rain has now grabbed me by the scruff and tossed me and my projects firmly back into the house. So here I am, at the computer, and will try to catch up on blogitude in the next few days.
Actually, “rain” came Monday night in the form of one of those fogs so heavy it drips. The fog melted some of the outside work I’d done. Cedar boards are textury. They hold wet paint a long time in their woody little crannies. Even though I’d painted many hour earlier while the day was still sunny … eeew. Oh well.
Anyhow …
MamaLiberty answers today’s earlier post by asking, “Do you smile every day?” Everyone knows there is plenty in this world to worry about. Even those who avoid the world and national “news” as much as possible can’t help but note the downward spiral in their own financial situation, especially if they or those they love are unemployed. There is the constant push to destroy God given rights to life and liberty, and increasing efforts to criminalize and control everything. Then there is the cost of everyday necessities, increasing due to the sinking national economy and shrinking dollar. A great many…