Category Archives: Scribbles

Women and children first?

Posted on January 18, 2012 | Comments Off on Women and children first?

Children, okay. But women? Why should they get in the front of the line? You can’t dump on the “dead white male” and expect his chivalry to continue.

It’s sexist, isn’t it? Singling women out in any other way is, so why should we be appalled that women weren’t ushered to the lifeboats first on that sinking Italian cruise ship? Let ‘er swim, I say.

Children, certainly. Up to, say, age 16. But let their fathers take them as well as their mothers. Or both at the same time. Then we can fight about why the dogs and cats and their childless masters and mistresses should be left behind altogether. Heh.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Sailing, Scribbles

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The ruins of Detroit

Posted on January 17, 2012 | Comments Off on The ruins of Detroit

The once-fabled American (and African-American) city (affectionately called MoTown) is a burned-out shambles, thanks to gimme politics, socialist policies and predator labor unions. Photographs of the ruins (above) are part of a new gallery show in, of all places, Germany.

Via David at Spengler

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Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Scribbles

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Wanting the rich less rich

Posted on January 15, 2012 | Comments Off on Wanting the rich less rich

I won’t bother to see the Meryl Streep portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It can’t be accurate or fair given the political predilections of Hollywood.

Obozo, meanwhile, with his unprecedented practice of class warfare, clearly wants the rich to be less rich—at least the ones who aren’t his cronies. But, as the real Thatcher so eloquently puts it here, that’s only a surefire prescription for making the poor poorer.

Via Instapundit

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Scribbles

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One more reason to avoid New York: Free Meredith Graves

Posted on January 15, 2012 | Comments Off on One more reason to avoid New York: Free Meredith Graves

As if their bedbug epidemic wasn’t bad enough, Mayor “loathsome slug” Bloomberg and his out-of-control cops like nothing better than to arrest law-abiding visitors for not being aware of the latest gillionth law their city council has passed.

It happened to Meredith Graves, a Tennessee nurse who was unaware that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply in the oh, so enlightened city of Obozo media lapdogs and other Democrat hand puppets.

If the “public servants” can’t solve the bedbug problem of New York hotels and apartments, at least the cops could do some actual crime-fighting. Or would that be too much like, uh, real work?

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles

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Black Cat

Posted on January 14, 2012 | Comments Off on Black Cat

The rearing black cat on the yellow circle on the nose of these Hueys reminds me they were our resupply and courier service in Viet Nam in 1969. This is one of their bases somewhere near Da Nang.

Note the M-60 machinegun tilted downward on the left side of the bird on the right. Nobody went unarmed. Even our Medevacs had door guns. Old times.

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Posted in Scribbles, Troops, Viet Nam

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Practice slowly

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Comments Off on Practice slowly

Time was (it seems like only yesterday, but it was actually before 1995) if you wanted advice from an expert you had to seek them out and hope for an answer.

You could, for instance, investigate until you found their address and wrote them a letter. Or hunted them down in public and shouted your question over the heads of their security. And probably would be ignored.

Nowadays, some of them have a Facebook page and you can write out a question there and, some of them at any rate, will answer you there, or on YouTube.

Thus advice for beginner violinists from Itzhak Perlman, violin virtuoso. Yep. The advice that I remember the best (because I still have trouble following it) is to practice one or two bars of a new chart at a time and, above all, do it slowly.

Perlman: “If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly….If you learn something very quickly, you forget it immediately.” Thanks, Itzhak.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Reporters are more lazy than credulous

Posted on January 12, 2012 | Comments Off on Reporters are more lazy than credulous

Lazy, sure. Credulous? Maybe. But by the time I’d been in the news biz for a few years I’d realized that truly worthwhile stories didn’t come waltzing into my arms very often. Yet like a cop issuing speeding tickets, I had a quota to meet.

So what Andrew Ferguson calls the Chump Effect, i.e. reporters taking any old social science “development” at face value, was more often my attempt to stay employed while waiting for a better story to come along.

Editors were, more or less, in the same fix. Making us easy targets for analysts like AF. But what did we care? Pay checks came once a week and, like Ms. O’Hara so wisely put it, tomorrow was another day.

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Posted in Civil War, Scribbles

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