Over at The Price of Liberty, Mama Liberty has the first passages of what looks to become a new novel. And it all started with the comment section here at Living Freedom. So. Where’s the real “war on women”? This one could actually be killing some — and all in the name of progress and humanity. (H/T O) “How to send anonymous email without getting caught.” (Thanks to JG for the best article yet on this month’s hot privacy topic.) Alleged “private” enterprise is once again poised to help the fedgov become more obtrusive. Cannabis reform marches on. Whatever Mordor…
Category: Miscellaneous
Too bad granite slabs don’t include a spellchecker “Epitaph for a Four Star.” A scathing retrospective on Petraeus from a military man. (H/T EN, who knows the author) Um … lessee if I understand this correctly. You can’t quit favoring women and minorities because it violates the equal protection clause??? The Seattle PD has done a lot of baaaad things. But once in a while they get it right. They just hired a former journalist from an alternative weekly to write a handbook to cannabis legalization. It’s called “Marijwhatnow?” Among other advice: “Hold your breath.” This fascinating story about linguists…
A handful of links and two (longish) videos for your Friday and weekend pleasure: Nano-material stops bullets? This I’d like to see. (H/T PT) Among all the other laughs of the Petraeus scandal is the scandalously flawed method the lovers used to hide their email correspondence. (And this guy was the nation’s top intelligence officer?) The Electronic Frontier Foundation has analysis and advice. So does the ACLU. (Tip o’ hat to JG) It’s pretty amazing what the FBI went through to trace emails that probably weren’t even illegal — and the kind of data they had fingertip access to (e.g.…
I was pretty excited to look at my Amazon wish list tonight. Oh my. Some of the most needed items from the list are already coming my way, thanks to you. And some of the not-strictly-needed but most very cool are also in the “purchased” list. Someone — and I hope that person included a note with their identity — even bought something I never imagined anyone would. Nobody is contributing to the generator fund. But that’s okay. ‘Cause you know, this is more fun. 🙂 I wish I could leave you all milk and cookies on Christmas Eve because…
Unlike Joel, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the Petraeus scandal. Oh, not the sex part. What’s emerged about that so far is pretty dull: middle-aged married man boffs attractive, slightly younger married woman. This is news? (The British, who do sex scandals with more color and athleticism than anybody, must be laughing at us for getting excited over this.) But what a marvelous cast of characters — from the “victim” who’s a more sketchy character than her anonymous stalker to the infamously shirtless FBI agent. When somebody makes a movie out of this — and they must — it should be…
STICKIED. Scroll down for newer posts — then come back and do your Christmas shopping. 🙂 It’s that time of year again. Yep, already. If you value the information you get from this blog, please contribute to its (and my) well-being. As I’ve mentioned before, Backwoods Home is kind enough to pay me for this blog, but the pay is based on one post a week. I think we’re doing better than that. As always, please do your online shopping via my Amazon links. I did have an Amazon wish list, but I’ve had to remove it for reasons I…
The preacher Obama chose to give the benediction at his 2009 inaugural says that all white people are going to hell. Well, this comes as a relief. I’ve long figured that, if Christians are right, I’m headed for some boiling vat of something unpleasant. But there was always that teeny chance I might get saved if I could only find the right line to toe. But nope. Now I can just go on being my ornery, skeptical self, doomed no matter what I do. Seriously (and I have to say seriously because certain people don’t have a sense of humor…
This has nothing directly to do with any of the usual topics. It started out to be a short vignette in a group of short vignettes. Then it grew. It won’t be to everybody’s taste, but it’s something I needed to write. To my mind, it has as much to do with freedom as anything else I write, but not necessarily in an obvious way. —– The summer I was five, my family drove to the train station — a very exotic thing in itself! — to pick up an old lady none of us had ever met. I remember…
Well, in some places that was as bad as everybody thought it would be. Oy, that picture of seawater flooding into the PATH station — impressive. A lot of phony photos of Sandy have been circulating, though. I’m not sure this one of a Niagra of seawater flooding into the World Trade Center construction site is real; it’s credited to the AP, but there so much to sort out yet. Is anybody hereabouts planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month? I’m thinking about it, but the idea scares the bejabbers out of me. “The Island Where People Forget to…
With post-Sandy comments You folks on the mid and upper east coast — batten down the hatches and good luck with that b***h, Sandy. I hadn’t been taking the Sandy reports very seriously. (How many media-touted mega-storms fizzle every year?) But this morning I heard a normally dispassionate meteorologist here in the west compare Sandy to The Perfect Storm of 1991 — only worse. Then he likened it to the west coast’s Columbus Day Storm. That one remains the biggest “wind event” to hit the U.S. since records have been kept; even the fringes of it, which I experienced as…