2019 archive
Geeking Out 0
The Hydrostat screensaver (one of the screensavers in the xscreensaver library) on Slackware 14.2 with the KDE desktop environment.
The Price of the Polity 0
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I like paying taxes. They buy me civilization.”
David addresses the farcical notion that taxation (otherwise known as “paying your fair share”) is theft.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Writing in The Roanoke Times, John Freivalds sees disturbing echoes of the past in the present.
What Center? 0
Thom wonders what is this “center” of which the pundits speak, then goes on an epic rant about Republicans’ 90 year history of calling Democrats “socialists.”
The Bully’s Pulpit 0
Thomas Hills, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, dissects Donald Trump’s negotiation* strategy. A snippet:
Now when the bully (sorry, intimidator) pulls out, he says “We’re not going to pay you amount X.”
And the cycle continues . . . .
Hills goes on to explain why this is a loser’s tactic in international relations and accounts for so many of Trump’s “diplomatic” (I use the term loosely, natch) failures. Give it a read.
________________-
*”Negatiation” would be more like it.
New Twists in Spam 0
Based on what I see in my mail client’s inbox, the latest spammer trick is to send emails with no dates in the email headers.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
Earlier this week I linked to a news report about how sea level rise due to climate change is causing the salinization of farmland. Yesterday brought came a another story about salt-water encroachment in a completely different location. A snippet:
But sea-level rise fueled by warmer oceans and sinking land is pushing saltwater ever closer to the trees, with the potential to kill them in the not-so-distant future.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your neighbors.
“He failed to inspect whether the chamber was empty,” he said. “It appears he was demonstrating how to shoot it.”
The shot went off and sent a bullet sailing through the bedroom and through two walls, including one leading to the garage where the victim was standing, Christensen said.
QOTD 0
Rex Stout, in the voice of Nero Wolfe:
You should know that your only safe secrets are those that you have yourself forgotten.
Stout, Rex, Death of a Doxy (New York: Bantam, 1995), p. 97.
Recommended Reading 0
If Conan Doyle for the Defense were just a narrative of Arthur Conan Doyle’s efforts to free a man who was railroaded for a crime that it was obvious to any unbiased observer he did not commit, I might not be writing this. But it is much more.
The book blends elements of Doyle’s upbringing and life with the cultural and social history of the times–Great Britain during the end of the Victorian Era and the early 20th Century. The author gracefully pirouettes among threads addressing
- the historical facts of the crime and prosecution,
- the societal climate and forces of the day,
- the culture and woeful techniques of police work of the time,
- the traits and talents Conan Doyle brought to the case, including biographical elements.
And, as the author points out in her forward, there are parallels–I would say quite eerie parallels–between that time and ours.
Aside:
We stumbled over this volume at our favorite bookshop.