"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Not going to post the spoiler. I’ll just point to the short story and wonder again how many folks will grok the last 3 lines.
If you’re among those who don’t, try some of this. The “real” thing is soooo much better than the watered down, largely misunderstood (or not understood at all, if even known) cultural meme.
Either of the links above can serve as cultural antidotes to the crap noted here.
In 1959, we were a single income family, even though both of my parents were college graduates. My dad was making decent money working in a field not known for particularly good incomes. Still with five children, the budget was sometimes a tad tight. So, when my folks decided to buy a World Book Encyclopedia with all the trimmings, including ten years of “yearbooks” and a large (no, REALLY large, “library-sized”) two-volume dictionary set, our lil family library grew by almost 25% overnight, and I found my backup reading material for the next few years.
Yes, there was always at least one volume of the set under my bed, close enough for a night time “sneak read”. Sometimes, it was just one of the two dictionary volumes (yes, for reading), but most often it was just a volume chosen according to some topic that had caught my fancy, then kept for further reading as one article led to another and another and…
And that’s how I get to be a kid again. For the last 18 years the web has been my go-to reading material for times when I’ve exhausted my stash of new books. It’s also been my substitute for an encyclopedia, since I never run out of things to learn. And thanks to my *cough* encyclopedic reading habits over the years, I have a skill set and basic knowledge base that allows me to filter out most crap.
And the resources–good quality resources–are effectively limitless, now, and not confined to one book case. Heck, I find myself re-reading classics online that are in a book case that’s literally within the reach of my right hand as I type these words.
And on top of being a library with more than enough resources to keep me in learning material for life, the web’s a source of amusement (dumbasses a-plenty to poke fun at! Yipee! *heh*), entertainment (I have a full movie list at Crackle, for example), contemporary information (I’ll not say it’s “news”) and interpersonal interactions.
But most of all, it’s a resource just jam packed with information that’s either new to me or in a new format that makes sense in a different way or old information that’s fun to re-read, review and cogitate over.
Sweet. Kid. In a candy store. Unlimited candy budget.
*sigh* I’ve entered my second childhood.
So Baen has a “challenge” out to readers. The prizes? Get red-shirted in an upcoming Eric Flint novel and receive a complete set of the 1632 “Ring of Fire” eBook series.
Not bad. Of course, I only lack one of the series, so far, so that’s not a biggie, but getting killed off in an Eric Flint novel might be… novel.
So what’s the challenge? Given a 10-mile diameter “Assiti Shard” that displaces either forward or backward in time from 2011, come up with a story proposal. You know: place transported, people, where transported, conflict, etc.
The problem for me is this: it’d be really interesting if a 10-mile diameter area centered around where I took Son&Heir on a country drive here in America’s third world county were transported back in time just 100 years… to the same place. The interesting thing to me would be the situation: how long would it take the people living in this area to discover they’d traveled back in time 100 years? I’m betting on an average of a year, but some might never find out… No. I’m serious. *heh* (You’d really have to know the area I’m talking about. “Piney woods” just doesn’t capture the flavor… )
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OK, the Assiti Shard books and stories, beginning with 1632, are generally just fun reads. But the more extensively read one is in history, especially European history and particularly the Renaissance, the more fun the tales will be.
Just saw the opening to a cop show. If this were real life, I could see some sense in wiping out the gene pool that comprised the “sympathetic” characters.
Car stops by kid walking home from school. She gets in the car with a total stranger. (Too stupid to live.) Behind the car, her brother rides up on a bicycle. Hears his sister scream, sees her in the car. What does he do? He gets off his bicycle and starts running after the car! What?!? He was On! A! Bicycle! (Too stupid to live.)
The writers and director should be terminated. They’ve obviously already lobotomized themselves.
Everybody (but me, the UNintended audience) is frantic! Agitated music and all that! The search is on!
And I’m bored already. I can hardly wait for good news that the fictional lil girl will not be passing on her genetic material to another generation of fictional characters. Please let it be so! (But I’m not holding my breath… or watching the rest of this drivel.)
Forecast for today said high of 97°F. Dam*ed lying Weatherbuggy. The current report from the high school’s weather station is slightly higher in temp…
Well, now that the actual temp is DOWN from 111°F, the heat index of 115°F seems OK, right? Right?
Oh, dear. Spoke a bit too soon. After burning myself on the table saw out on the deck, I decided to check again:
Again, if weather forecasts are this inaccurate from one day to the next, even IF the global warmistas’ Cult of Anthropogenic Global Climate Scare-ism models hadn’t already been shot full of holes, I’d still have no reason to place any confidence in them, now would I? At least not confidence enough to further wreck the global economy with their proposed “remedies” for “problems” they’ve not offered anything more than failed computer models to support..
Meanwhile, it’s hot. It’s called “Summer”. I remember it from last year about this time. *heh*
And speaking of heat and summer and all that jazz, as I have been, how can I neglect to link this (via Sister Nicole) and give a hearty and soul felt “AMEN! Preach on brother!”
(One small cavil about The Church of The Blessed Evaporator: w/o AC, Congress wouldn’t meet so often and make so much trouble, and “feddle gummint bureaucraps” wouldn’t have all those nice, air conditioned offices from which to work their deeds of iniquity. Sad that such a boon to humanity can be perverted so… *sigh*)
Every now and then I see another piece of evidence that people simply do not read–or think.
“paper view”–the words heard when someone said “pay per view” in the presence of someone who doesn’t read and, apparently, has no idea what the words mean.
One small data point and I’ll rest my case: the Cheetos “chopsticks” commercial. The dumbasses are playing the thing wrong. No, not just a wee tad wrong, no, massively, hugely, inescapably wrong. They misss the frickin’ TIME SIGNATURE and add a really stupid, amusical duple that screws the thing beyond massively screwed up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBoImLUbaoE
That the producers of the commercial could do such a thing is beyond cultural illiteracy all the way to cultural lobotomy.
Now, this guy goes beyond merely elaborate variations, but he does cite the tune correctly.
Bonus brownie points to those who can identify three or more of the composers or performers he gives homage to in the course of his variations. 🙂 (No, “Loonie Tunes” doesn’t qualify as a guess. *heh*)
Actually, TV commercials, political speech and anything uttered by Mass MEdia Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and assorted members of the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade all qualify as evidence that José Ortega y Gasset was right. (I highly recommend reading “Revolt of the Masses” in its entirety. Just sayin’.)
Well, hotter wings. OK, didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted, but worth eating and refining. The one failing? The sauce was too thin. Fixable.
Ingredients
About 2/3 of a pound of chicken wings (from a full pound; 1/3 was reserved for my Wonder Woman’s raspberry barbecue sauced wings).
1/2 cup Frank’s Red Hot Wings Sauce
2 TBS “wild onion” olive oil*
2 TBS mixed peppers**
1 TSP Bhut Jolokia (“ghost pepper”) powder
3 cloves of minced garlic
Process
Salted the wings (covered with sea salt) and let them sit in the fridge for 30 minutes or so, then rinsed. Marinated the wings most of the day. Then in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven (preheated to 400, then backed off to 350 when the wings went in) in an uncovered dish for 40 minutes.
Next time, less oil, more garlic, some finely minced onion. And I think I’ll make more of the sauce, puree the garlic and onion into it in a blender and then reduce it a bit before marinating.
Still, very, very tasty. The Bhut Jolokia adds a nice punchup to the Frank’s cayenne pepper-based sauce and a little smokiness, almost chipotle flavor. Oh, heck, I might (propably will!) use more Bhut Jolokia next time as well. After all, I didn’t even get int Son&Heir’s kilogram bag of the stuff. *heh*
* EVOlive oil with wild onions infused
**white, black, green, various reds, some coriander, just some interesting flavors ground and lumped together, different almost every time I mix some
There are plenty of other reasons.
Stolen from GM
Yeh, I voted for the creep in 2008. My only excuse was his opponent, Sauron. Frankly, as I said at the time, I was voting for the real candidate on the ticket, Palin, in hopes that McCain would win election and then health problems would take him out early.
Maybe this will post. Not holding my breath.
Been having sucky internet service since the Joplin tornado. Understood it’d take some time to repair infrastructure, etc., but it’s more than two months, and the intermittent outages–some lasting, as today, for more than eight hours at a time– and slow “speeds” are beginning to pall. Strike that, are now f’in’ irritating. I “grump” fairly easily in recent years, but I’ve been a pretty patient guy, cutting some slack for the circumstances. No more. Going to gripe ’em out, now. If we’re paying for service (and we are) then they’d better start actually providing what we’re paying for.
Enough’s enough.