In my forty-odd years of employment, I kept a list of things I wanted to do, but for reasons of expense or time, I had to put off. “Fly an airplane” was one of them. “Write a novel” was another. When I retired at the beginning of 2015, I reviewed the list. Some things were […]
Censorship
In China, I discovered how their government let’s you hear only the news they want you to hear. In America, if you’ve haven’t heard about Elon Musk’s Twitter revelations, the reason is the same.
Fifth Estate User’s Manual
The Fifth Estate includes social media, blogs, the internet in general, and all of us. Estates One, Two, and Three The first “three estates” describe the social hierarchy in medieval times. It consisted of the clergy, nobility, and commoners. But the term has been re-applied many times, and not always to denote groups or classes. […]
Banjo Aimed and Plucked at Police in Vancouver
“… faces a felony charge …” In Vancouver, a naked man displayed a sitar before aiming and plucking multiple notes on a banjo at Vancouver Police officers who returned fire with non-lethal ammunition. The man was then subdued and arrested. (Click the image to see the video!)
ITAR Abuse
I’ve worked according to ITAR rules for many years. Each of those years, I attended mandatory training which included a moderately comprehensive examination. Over those years, I have taught highly technical and sometimes defense-related topics in the United States and overseas to citizens of many countries including some to which the ITAR regulations applied “first […]
Responsibility
No matter how many times I chase this around the bush, I come back to the same conclusions: The “instructor” at the northwest Arizona shooting range that was killed by a nine year old with an Uzi, whether by absence of training or short-term failure of good sense, was fatally incompetent; Whomever “certified” this instructor […]
Article the Fourth
Here’s the time-line to keep in mind. British citizens settled in the New World over a couple of centuries. Britain’s King George, strapped for cash, taxed the colonies to help pay the country’s bills, but did so without consulting his citizenry in that New World — he effectively made them non-citizens. The settlers rose up […]
A Fine Line
OK, this is going to be a fine line. The “link” included at the end of this post is to a publicly retrievable photograph on someone else’s web page, on Facebook to be precise. The photographer states (read it at the link) that the picture may not be posted so, therefore, I’m not posting it. […]
Revelation
As near as I can translate it, God said, There’s a whole Universe for you to explore and enjoy. You have the necessary abilities. You have each other for solace, comfort, companionship and help. It’s real, it’s big, it’s exciting. There are dangers and beauties at every place of every size and subtlety. Use everything […]
Google Reader To End
Google has announced it is terminating its RSS aggregator, Google Reader, as of July 1st. I’ve been using an app called “Reeder” by Readability on my iPad for some time to alert me to new posts on my favorite blogs via their RSS updates but since this app a merely a “client” (user) of Google […]