It turns out Audible.com has quite a few free books on offer. At first I stuck to classics, some Jane Austen and so forth, because I'm suspicious of modern fiction recommended by sites like Audible or Kindle. In desperation during a long painting job, though, I took a chance on an author named Colin Cotteril, who turns out to be terrific. Imagine John Le Carre on antidepressants and channeling Roger Zelazny.
So far I've listened to the first two in a series about a Laotian coroner, The Coroner's Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth. Unlike many coroner-based procedurals, this one doesn't try to gross the reader out. The protagonist, a disillusioned 72-year-old doctor who finds himself the reluctant national coroner without training or facilities in post-revolution socialist Laos in 1978, is cynical but not in the least hard-hearted, more of a Jane Marple than a Sam Spade. Actually a bit of Obi-Wan Kenobe. The Audible version is especially enjoyable for the accents, which are all Brit.
Life Advice from Old Cowboy Movies
There's three times in a man's life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and... and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start.Today I finished something I was probably crazy to start, which I've been working on for seven years. I'm going to be offline for a bit; perhaps a week. I don't know that I'll yell at the moon, but I'll definitely celebrate with some time doing something else.
-Red River
Enjoy yourselves. I'll be back.
Cybersecurity, the Old-Fashioned Way
Vice points out that our nuclear missiles are almost completely secure from cyber attack.
The technology that currently powers these nukes is notoriously antiquated. Most of the systems were designed and built during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and ’70s, with the last major overhaul completed during the Reagan administration. Some computers in the missile base command centers still use eight-inch floppy disks....That strikes me as a good point.
U.S. nuclear missile base technology is ancient by modern standards, but the old machines offer almost maximum cybersecurity simply by virtue of their age. With everything hardwired and analog, the system is uniquely impervious to intrusion and meddling. That leaves some nuclear experts to ask: Why spend billions switching from a system that is relatively safe to one that’s potentially more vulnerable?
Good Order & Discipline
The Department of the Navy has settled upon a regulatory change to address the Marines United photo-sharing scandal.
It's a half-step, but my guess is that there is no one in the leadership who feels empowered to question the place of Free Love in the military at this particular moment in American history. As with other 1960s counterculture values, Free Love is now ascendant for good and for ill.
Even in the Marine Corps.
The statute details three conditions that will be considered a violation of Navy regulations, including if images are broadcast or transmitted: “with the intent to realize personal gain; with the intent to humiliate, harm, harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce the depicted person; or with reckless disregard as to whether the depicted person would be humiliated, harmed, intimidated, threatened, or coerced,” the regs read...As expected, 100% of the focus is on the unauthorized sharing of the photos. There will not be any attempt to rein in the fraternizing of male and female Marines, nor their sharing of nude photos of each other so long as it is consensual. Neither will there be any inquiry into whether such an environment is really compatible with good order and discipline.
In this case, detailing expectations of Department of the Navy personnel amounts to a lawful order, which can be enforced with the full weight of the justice system, from non-judicial punishment to general court martial. Sailors and Marines who run afoul of the new regs could be charged with an Article 92, failure to obey a lawful order, the Navy's chief spokesperson confirmed in a statement.
It's a half-step, but my guess is that there is no one in the leadership who feels empowered to question the place of Free Love in the military at this particular moment in American history. As with other 1960s counterculture values, Free Love is now ascendant for good and for ill.
Even in the Marine Corps.
Awakening
A Vox writer comes to the dawning realization that the US government isn't capable of handling the legalization of drugs. It's a pretty good piece -- I don't raise it to mock it, but to praise the willingness to rethink a long-held position based on evidence you would likely prefer to ignore.
The basic idea is that he has come to realize that, while legalization might work elsewhere, America's particular government is incapable of regulating drugs effectively. Legalization will thus predictably bring a vast increase in drug use and the trauma associated with it. It is not that it is impossible to legalize drugs and regulate them wisely; other countries may be able to do it. Our system, however, is incapable of it.
I sometimes use a similar argument against single-payer in America. It may be that other governments can do that well, but if we had single-payer, you already know what it would look like. It would look like the VA.
The basic idea is that he has come to realize that, while legalization might work elsewhere, America's particular government is incapable of regulating drugs effectively. Legalization will thus predictably bring a vast increase in drug use and the trauma associated with it. It is not that it is impossible to legalize drugs and regulate them wisely; other countries may be able to do it. Our system, however, is incapable of it.
I sometimes use a similar argument against single-payer in America. It may be that other governments can do that well, but if we had single-payer, you already know what it would look like. It would look like the VA.
Two Very Different Takes on the Same Information
The American Spectator has been developing a report from the UK's Guardian. The information in the stories is substantially the same, but the impression you get about what the story actually is will differ wildly depending on which publication you read. The Guardian report is another "Trump (or at least some people with his campaign) colluded with Russia" story. The Spectator story is not.
...John Brennan was the American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump. One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election — Hillary’s.Is it possible that both papers are correct in their take? The claim that Brennan was a "supporter" of CPUSA does at least track to his admission that he voted for the CPUSA candidate in 1976. He was also the CIA director when the Agency hacked the US Senate, which should have been a red line for anyone who respected democratic limits on the powers of spying.
Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.
John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump. An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with “Hillary for president cups” and other campaign paraphernalia.
A supporter of the American Communist Party at the height of the Cold War, Brennan brought into the CIA a raft of subversives and gave them plum positions from which to gather and leak political espionage on Trump. He bastardized standards so that these left-wing activists could burrow in and take career positions.
Up or Down?
From a mostly-correct piece on the dangers of politics as comedy:
The late-night political-comedy shows... staked their territory during the heat of the general election: unwavering, bombastic, belittling, humiliating screeds against Donald Trump. Fair enough. Trump is a man who on any casual summer day during the campaign could be found inciting a crowd to violence. This isn’t the slippery slope; this is the ditch at the bottom of the hill. Once a man stands before a mob and exhorts the powerful to beat the outlier, it’s all over except for the cannibalism and the cave painting. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” said Abraham Lincoln. “Knock the crap out of them,” said Donald Trump.Which way is down slope? Lincoln's remarks were made on a battlefield very recently interred with ten thousand men.
WeaponsMan, aka Kevin O'Brien, RIP
I don't know about you all, but I often lurked over at WeaponsMan blog, not really knowing enough to say anything of interest, but learning a great deal. Today, sad news that after suffering a massive and sudden heart attack, and after a few days deteriorating in the hospital, he has passed away.
He will be missed, but surely, he lived!
He will be missed, but surely, he lived!
Unload and Show Clear
Don't try to catch a cleared cartridge in your hand, that seems to be the lesson of this post.
But as a man of the old fashion, let me just say that this never happens with a revolver.
But as a man of the old fashion, let me just say that this never happens with a revolver.
Five Dollar Bill
I wrote my new song on a five dollar bill
but I won't be able to sing it until
I get hot on the trail for to pick up the track
of the dirty little thief and get my five bucks back ...
Schism and resolution
Among the nuttier reasons to get your state to secede from the U.S. has got to be the hope that you'll have less to fear from terrorists if you are less associated with the guilt of America.
"When I talk to people about California independence, they always say: ‘Well, what would you do if China invades?’” says Yes California president Louis Marinelli from his home in . . . Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk (city motto: Don’t call us Siberia), an industrial center on the edge of the Ural Mountains in Russia. “Seriously,” he asks, “when’s the last time China invaded another country?” I mention the obvious ones: Tibet, India, and the Soviet Union. There’s Vietnam and Korea. Marinelli is a young man; perhaps much of this seems like ancient history to him. It does not to the Indians, or the Russians, or the Vietnamese, or many others. “No, I mean: When’s the last time China crossed an ocean to invade another country?” he clarifies. “Only the United States does that.”
Only?
The American war machine must surely be of some intense concern to California’s would-be Jefferson Davis, inasmuch as there is no legal or constitutional process for a state’s separating from the Union, a question that was settled definitively if not in court then just outside the courthouse at Appomattox.We have been watching a ScyFy TV series called "The Expanse," set in 2020, about (among other things) the pains of nation-building and colonial resentments on Mars and in the Asteroid Belt. Perhaps because I was trying to do crafts while watching the first season, I found I enjoyed a lot of the characters, dialogue, sets, and atmosphere without in any being able to figure out what in the world was supposed to be happening with the many interlocking story lines. The second season is a little tighter and more compelling. Anyway, the characters all have a pretty good grasp of how important it is to get your hands on the occasional warship.
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