Personal Musings category archive
Stray Thought, War and Mongers of War Dept. 0
A bayonet is not a scalpel.
On the battlefield, there is no such thing as a “surgical strike,” despite what the mongers of war would have you believe.
Stray Thought 0
Daylight savings time is a con and a scam which disrupts our lives twice a year and accomplishes little else.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
It’s March 6 and I had to turn on the AC to remove humidity from the house.
But climate change is a myth.
Also, pigs, wings.
In One Ear . . . . 0
Boy, it sure sounded like the D. J. on my local classical music station just said, “That was soulless William Bennett on the flute.”
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
The dinosaurs did not know that the meteor was headed their way.
We see the meteor and choose to do (almost) nothing.
Stray Thought, COVID Corner Dept. 0
“Inconvenience” and “hardship” are not synonyms.
Stray Question 0
Why do we venerate actors who play parts created by others in made-up stories above those who do real things in the real world?
Stray Thought 0
If HUAC were still a thing, it would be compelled to investigate today’s Republican Party.
Stray Thought, Devolution Dept. 0
I suspect that future historians, should scholarship survive the impending floods and famines made inevitable by our societal paralysis in the face of accelerating climate change, will conclude that one of the tipping points in the self-destruction of our society came when persons stopped thinking of themselves as fellow participants in the polity and starting thinking of themselves as brands battling for “likes” and “followers.”
I am not sanguine.
Stray Thought 0
It is notable that about the only bit of speculation in the speculative movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, that has come close to fruition is HAL, the malevolent computer.
Road Hazards 0
It is generally considered unwise to drive in a blizzard. I had to do it once and it was one of the scariest experiences of my life.
Mind you, it wasn’t a blizzard when I started out. We broke up our meeting early to beat the snow, but the snow won. Somehow, I made it home in my Chevette–a half-drive that took an hour and a half–where we remained snowed in for the better part of a week.
Sadly, we seem to be nearing peak unwisdom.
Afterthought:
I was living in Arlington, Va., at the time. That was the storm in which a jet crashed into the Potomac.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Somewhere along the line, our society has lost touch with the notion that polite is a good thing to be to each other.
Stray Thought, All the News that Fits Dept. 0
It is an irony that predictions sometimes come true not in the ways envisioned by their predictors.
George Orwell envisioned Big Brother as a remote dictatorial figure enforcing uniformity and compliance through lies (“through lies” is important here), and he predicted a surveillance state in service to Big Brother.
We have a Big Brother, but, rather than promoting unity and conformity in service to the government, it sows chaos and division to undermine government (and governance) through lies (again, the “through lies” is important).
It’s called Fox News (and its many clones and imitators).
We have a surveillance state designed to track our every movement, one to which many persons offer up their deepest secrets willingly, even eagerly; a surveillance state conceived not to enforce uniformity, but to sell advertising, yet which also serves to spread said Big Brother’s lies.
It’s called “social” media.
As Professor Shade was fond of saying, “History is irony.” The irony here is that both of the above resist attempts by government to spread truth.
For example. And another. And another.
Decorated 0
Ubuntu MATE with the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my Christmas collection.
I have been having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Part of the problem is that it’s been a year of lousy news, but I think an even bigger issue has been that the climates they are a-changing. When the temperature’s in the 70’s, it just doesn’t seem very Christmasy for these parts.
For Pete’s sake, I drove to the recycling center with the top of my new(er) Mustang convertible down a couple of weeks ago.
In December.
(I must admit, though, that the last few days have felt a bit more like winter late fall.)
Stray Thought 0
There is no such thing as too many Midsomer Murders.
One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0
With all due respect to Clyde Evely, “suspension of disbelief” and willfull abandonment of reality are not the same thing.
Aside:
The fabled panic created by Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast, to which Evely refers, was not as remembered in popular folklore (we covered this in my Sociology 101 class [mumble] years ago, for Pete’s sake). It affected a very small portion of the audience, mostly persons who listened to other radio shows and tuned into War of the Worlds after it was already about 15 minutes in and who lived in the area of New Jersey where the drama was set.
It’s not that persons disregarded the disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast. It’s that they weren’t listening when the disclaimer was aired.
By the way, you can listen to that broadcast at the OTR Network Library.