The snow is finally MELTING. I cannot overstate how great that is. I thought I was never going to be warm again. I know it’s a little obnoxious when someone who voluntarily relocated to New England complains about New England winters, but this particular one was a cast-iron bitch. To illustrate: we usually buy six…
my american decade.
Ten years ago today, I walked into the federal courthouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee as a German citizen, and walked out a newly-minted American. The first thing I did when we got home to Knoxville was to take my shiny new Certificate of Naturalization to the town clerk’s office, to register to vote and file the…
365 days of “terms of enlistment”.
One year ago today, I put TERMS OF ENLISTMENT up on the Kindle Store and Smashwords and announced its availability on my blog, just in case a few of you wanted to spend a handful of quarters on some new Space Kablooie reading material for your Kindles and Nooks and what-not. And then things kind…
there’s no such thing as localized incompetence in politics.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong…
how very un-libertarian of me.
Our school district has a combined middle school and high school. It’s over forty years old and not in the best shape anymore. Every year for the last few years, they’ve put a proposition on the town ballot to bump the property taxes a little so they can use the extra money to finance a…
bors, 2000-2014.
Bors, a.k.a. Booger Boy, a.k.a. Elder Dog, is no longer with us. He had a seizure of some sort a week ago, but bounced back to normal very quickly. This morning, it happened again, only there was no bounce. He went quietly in front of the pellet stove, the favorite doggy spot in the winter,…
news from absurdistan, item #2,912.
Fifth-grader points finger in gun-like fashion; gets suspended from school. “Level 2 Lookalike Firearm” sure sounds a whole lot less idiotic than “pointing your index finger and thumb”. Public education is on the ropes in this country not because we aren’t spending enough money on it, but because the lion’s share of it goes toward…
on dogs, chickens, and suburban sensibilities.
There’s a WaPo article in our local fish wrapper about the law regarding dogs who kill poultry. Current law allows for farmers to shoot dogs caught in the act of killing their poultry, and the article had a decidedly…oppositional slant. It tells the story of one Alan Taylor, a real estate developer who brought his…
nothing to hide, nothing to fear, part MCVIII.
Feds seek contractor to build federal license plate reader database. Remember: if Team Us does it, it’s a sensible national security measure, and if you oppose it, you’re a paranoid nutjob and/or want the terrorists to win. If Team Them does it, it’s a totalitarian police state measure, and if you support it, you’re a…
a snow-related math problem.
Marko’s garage roof is a flat surface of 75×25 feet. If there is a uniform snow layer of 2.5 feet thickness on the roof, a cubic foot of lightly compacted snow weighs 15 pounds, and Marko just removed all that snow with nothing but muscle power and a goddamn snow shovel, a.) How much snow…