May, 2023 archive
Geeking Out 0
I do likes me my purty pictures.
Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.
A Now for a Moment of Curiosity 0
This poem by Alastair Reid served as the introduction to a small book on genetics that I read in high school. For some reason, it’s stuck in my mind for all these years.
may have killed the cat, more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die –
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Vaccine Nation 0
Laurie Roberts reports on the Arizona state legislature’s decision to convene a coterie of COVID charlatans “examine federal, state and local efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.” She is not sanguine.
Here’s a tiny bit from her article; follow the link for her reasoning.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
One more time, “accidental” and “negligent” are not synonyms.
I wonder if that’s why WTVQ put the word “accidental” in quotation marks in their headline.
Durham’s Bull 0
The Washington Monthly’s Margaret Carlson reports that Republicans plan to keep stirring the empty pot.
A First for Florida Man 0
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier thinks the Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have earned a place in the Guinness Book:
At least three different entities — the NAACP, the League of United American Citizens, the biggest Hispanic and Latin American organization in the country, and Equality Florida, which advocates for the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community — have issued travel advisories warning that policies put into practice by DeSantis have rendered the Sunshine State a credible threat to the health, safety, and freedom of their constituencies.
Follow the link for his reasoning.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another oxymoronic “responsible gun owner” shoots himself in the foot leg.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
Responsible Fiscals 0
I submit that tanking the nation’s economy out of spite–they know they can’t get their way through negotiation and compromise–cannot be considered an act of fiscal responsibility, especially from the party that brags however mendaciously that it is the party of fiscal responsibility.
Courting Disaster 0
Writing at Above the Law, Joe Patrice is somewhat less than impressed with Chief Justice Roberts’s latest remarks on judicial ethics in the Federal judiciary.
The Lake Effect 0
The Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts has the back story. Here’s a bit:
A brief review of the record is in order.
Lake lost her challenge to the Nov. 8 election in Superior Court.
She lost at the Arizona Court of Appeals. She largely lost at the Arizona Supreme Court, though the justices returned one claim to the trial court judge for a second look.
And on Monday, she lost that one, too, after a three-day trial in which Judge Thompson relaxed the court rules and allowed her bumbling attorneys a remarkable amount of latitude to make their case.
But, natch, Kari Lake vows to keep on fighting.
The Fallacy behind the Falsehood 0
At The Roanoke Times, Tim Harvey looks at the recent surge in unprovoked shootings and argues that it exposes the fallacy of the NRA’s long-running “politeness” propaganda pitch. An excerpt (emphasis added):
(snip)
The assumption behind the “armed society is a polite society” myth is that someone being armed will change the other person’s behavior. These shootings reveal how being armed changes one’s own behavior. When the gun is viewed as the first response to a situation that is not fully understood — especially when a gun owner is disinclined to identify alternative responses — then people are killed or maimed unnecessarily. It is the tragic realization of the old proverb, “When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
