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June 25, 2011 - June 18, 2011

Monday, May 10, 2010

PASTIMES. I had no idea this incident had created such a furor:


So what. Some people are upset with what goes in the Philadelphia sports community. Nothing new. Philadelphia is the city they all love to hate. Then, over the weekend, I learned that two WIP SportsTalk hosts almost came to blows on air over the subject. Hugh Douglas, former Eagles defensive end, clashed with co-host Rob Charry over the issue of team safety. Douglas made the point that a nut on the field is a danger to athletes and to the people who are trying to catch him. Charry, on the other hand, is a stereotypical sports journalist lefty (we learn from facebook that Charry "likes" this), who sees a police state behind every potted palm except the ones statist Democrats are using for props at their news conferences.


Charry, who is exactly my age, is, perhaps needless to say, an obnoxious halfwit I've grown to loathe for his canned diatribes -- whenever call traffic is slow -- about how neither golfers nor racecar drivers are athletes, as well as his not very well disguised bias against any athletes who admit to being conservatives. He can't quite explain, for example, why he dislikes ex-Phillie Curt Schilling, who never dissed Philly even after moving to Boston. He just doesn't like him. You know.

Which means in the current instance, I suppose, that the real culprit in the tasing at the Phillies ballpark was George W. Bush or Dick Cheney.

But I'm with Hugh Douglas. The tasing was justified. A teeneager running loose on a ballfield is no frail grandmother giving lip to a cop at a traffic stop. He's a random unknown obviously in good enough physical shape that tackling him could cause injury to the tacklers and clearly fit enough not to be grievously injured by a taser. A dog running wild on a baseball field is funny. A drunk jerk running wild on the same field is annoying and potentially dangerous. Also upsetting to one of the flightier star pitchers in baseball, Cole Hamels. Which is why I'm prepared to thank GWB and Cheney for tasing the dumb sonofabitch even if he meant no harm. Maybe he's learned not to do it again. That would be a good thing.

I mean, some tasings are good things. That's what got me to thinking about the role tasers might play in big-time sports. They're decisive, to be sure, but not necessarily official or even a penalty. The way the target hits the ground is more cancellation than sentence. It's just an abrupt way of saying "Stop it. This is unacceptable." It interrupts time when the time that is going on is bad behavior. It allows time to resume its normal course when the unacceptable has been removed from the field of action.

There are quite a few things in sports that should be stopped without making a big deal of them otherwise. Without fines, team punishments, stoppages of play, or other sanctions. Things that rules haven't been very good at preventing. Stop the offender cold in his tracks and resume play as if nothing had happened. Without remark, rules changes, or note of any kind. Others tempted to imitate the offender might take the lesson and refrain in future. I've compiled a few examples of where tasers could have a very positive impact on sports. See if you agree.

NFL Football. We've all grown used to silly touchdown celebrations. But who isn't irritated by losing teams whose defensive players make a tackle and then expend energy they obviously need to keep their team in the game stomping around in personal glory over a single second-down stop on their own 20 yard line?


NFL referees should just tase these idiots and have them dragged quietly off the field to the locker room. (Idiot owners should be treated the same way, regardless of income or age.)

Major League Baseball.  Fan interference can change a game, a series, a season. As it did with the Chicago Cubs in 2003. Fans like this shouldn't have fifteen minutes of fame. They should be absented from the moment and forgotten.


There's another MLB example on my mind, but I'll save it for later.

Soccer (i.e., Third World Football). This is the most over-hyped, least intrinsically intriguing, most boring team sport in the world. Nothing could make it a good game, but one thing that could be improved by vigorous tasing is the pansy practice of pretending to be injured for the purpose of drawing the referee "yellow cards" that decide most contests.


Soccer refs? Put away the damn red and yellow cards. Tase these phony creeps and make them play their damn nil-nil game like men.

NHL Hockey. Speaking of men. There was a time when The Hockey was played by men. Now they have helmets, visors, and method acting degrees.


Hockey refs are tough. Remind the players of Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull by tasing them when they act like Sidney Cohen.

NBA Basketball. Or is this the WNBA?


No. Lesbians are tougher. But the NBA con is older.

Professional Boxing. It's been on a downhill path for a long time. Ring refs should know when to stop a fight suddenly "by accident" rather than perpetuate an official travesty.


Truthfully, I'm ready for boxing to be banned. Tasing is far more humane than what they do to each other for paychecks that are stolen from them by everyone. (Yes, I'm becoming Howard Cosell. Proudly.) Just tase both fighters when they enter the ring. Much better outcome all around.

Professional Golf. Just for Rob Charry. Because golfers aren't athletes. For example, PGA officials should tase golfers who don't have athletic bodies. Unlike offensive linemen in the NFL, who never look like Kate Smith, only with bigger boobs and a less pretty face. And golfers who don't know how to dress, unlike every NFL wide receiver and NBA star.

Though there is a syndrome related to professional golf that does require tasing. It's hinted at here. And here.


You see? Tasing would be much kinder. No one's seeking senseless bloodshed here. (Although I am rooting for the Hell's Angels to get the first crack at this particular problem, even before my own suggested solution.)

Finally. As a baseball fan, I really wanted to find some way to bring the taser solution into the problem of homeplate umpires who can't call balls and strikes better than a blind man staring in the opposite direction from the pitcher. I had ideas, struggled with the 'who' problem on taser control, and was innovating a fan-held remote taser option when I stumbled across this:


Okay. I admit it. Referee type jobs are difficult. Lots of instantaneous judgments required. Something like cops have to deal with in public safety situations. Maybe, just maybe, the decisions should be left to the professionals. And if and when we second guess those decisions, perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless we're Rob Charry. In which case we can be certain Tiger Woods was never an athlete and Richard Petty was just a redneck with a cowboy hat and a heavy throttle foot. You know. Expertise.

ONCE AN ASS, ALWAYS AN ASS. I wasn't going to touch this. I honestly don't care who's a Lesbian and who isn't. Until people who are trying to influence appointment decisions care. That's when I start to take notice. The only thing I have against Lesbians is their personal conversations. Which in my experience has always been, exclusively, about the most boring subject I've ever heard tell of, namely, uh, Lesbians.

I didn't bring this up today. Michael Smerconish did. The former Republican who discovered late last year that Hope and Change mattered more to him than a lifetime of conservative principles. God bless his little, little heart and smaller brain.

Since then I've pretty much avoided his early morning radio show. Correction. Since then I've avoided his radio show like the plague. But I had to get gas for the mower this morning and suddenly there he was on the car radio. He was working a poll he'd thought of about who we good Americans wanted as the next Supreme Court justice:


The only part I heard was an interview with his new liberal friend Alan Dershowitz, who testified to the fact that Elena Kagan was a moderate's moderate (which must have made Smerconish beam) and that she was a poker player who never bluffed. (He conspicuously didn't say she was a good poker player.)

Anyway, Smerconish subjected Dershowitz to his poll question, and Dershowitz to his credit ignored it completely in favor of clicheed attributes like learning, judgment, neutrality, objectivity, and fidelity to the law. With time out for an advertisement about how gay the Israeli army is, which should tell us backward Americans something because the Israeli army is the best in the world. (Excuse me. Isn't the Israeli army the one that got its pansy ass kicked by hamas and hizbollah a couple years ago and crawled back home with their tail between their legs while the U.S. Army was winning the surge in Iraq? uh, no? Okay. Smerconish didn't object either.)

Our moderate hero Smerconish, fixated on his post-Republican obsession with diversity, devoted himself to sucking up to Dershowitz and only at the last minute forced himself to pose the "L" question. Dershowitz denied it. Awwwww.

Where we are. Smerconish, of course, is a fool. As he ever was. When Dershowitz uses the word moderate he's not talking about the phantom zone of compromise between Barack Obama and Gerald Ford (a.k.a. Oz). He's talking about the Harvard Law School, where the left is busily engineering legal lightning to reanimate the mummy of Lenin and the right is standing on the U.S. Constitution to keep their feet off the pigshit while they write a brand new constitution on the barn wall, beginning with the part about how all animals are equal, only some animals are more equal than others.

I'm sick to death of fools. Especially sick of those who pretend to be humble while with every breath they proclaim their superiority in every sense they value. Look at Smerconish's last choice: A Great Heart. What the fuck does that mean? Is that the Smerconish seat? I suspect so.

But why do we need yet another bullet head telling us what to do, how we should feel, and why what we know is completely wrong?

What's a bullet head, you ask? I'm not smart enough to answer that. Ask Napolitano, Sotomayor, Kagan, or Smerconish.


When people talk about diversity, why don't they ever talk about the kind of diversity real people seek out rather than duck around the corner to avoid? At Big Hollywood today, Michael Moriarty called out a demographic I've never heard a liberal, or even a moderate, pursue for their big tent. And quite correctly, he called it out as an exclusively American demographic:


Liberals all. If they're so damned anxious for us to compromise, I'll compromise that way on this Supreme Court seat. I'd take the judgments of dumb blondes I've known over every liberal I've ever met.


They tend not to be arrogant, resentful little phonies. And they're never bullet heads. That's good enough for me. It's about the most we can hope for these days.
 

Friday, May 07, 2010

CONTINUING DECLINING AND FALLING AND DISGRACING YOURSELF. Some provocations are as narrow and intense as a pinhole in a copper pipe. But the spray can take in a lot of territory. Here's an example from NRO's Andrew McCarthy:


Given that somehow nobody died in the Times Square fiasco, it's impossible to miss a certain comic element in the behavior of the press (excepting NPR, which behaved properly and should be lauded for same). But my own first thought was of an SNL skit during Desert Storm. I couldn't locate the video but here's a transcript:


Probably the only time SNL ever weighed in on the side of Dick Cheney. Maybe that's why the video is unavailable. But the question of where the press stands on matters that can directly affect the safety or peril of American citizens is no laughing matter. The skit highlighted what we can call the 'new ethics' of MSM journalism. Meaning their incredibly arrogant pose of neutrality as they occupy a cushy platform protected by American law, American arms, and American capitalism.

There is, in fact, a pretty repulsive underside of the SNL skit. Here's a glimpse from November 2001:


Later, he was forced to apologize, and did, but we've learned that the apologies of the powerful are usually insincere and loaded with qualifications intended to demonstrate that they're not sorry, just inconvenienced or at risk in terms of their personal careers.

Here's a deeper look (courtesy of Winds of Change, June 2009) at the journalism world of today. As might be expected, it's emblematic of hypocrisy, moral relativism, and what one can only term institutional narcissism:


Well, I see it here, in the Times Square argle-bargle. We got lucky. If the bomb had been real, a lot of people would have died. As it happened, the bomb was a marginally dangerous photo-op. That doesn't mean the investigation should become a Broadway comedy.


Back then, of course, they knew journalists were opportunistic scum you'd never invite into your home. Maybe it's time we remembered that. And maybe that's why the MSM hates it when anyone talks about remembering. Narcissists always want to be in charge of the present, which means making sure there really isn't any past in which they can be held accountable. Good luck with that. Assholes.

Thursday, May 06, 2010

WEIRDNESS. I'm not trying to incite conspiracy theories with this. It's just that there are a couple of things going on right now I don't understand at all.

The first is being kicked around at NRO this morning. Here's the best summary of the riddle:

If we're operating under the assumption that the firecrackers were supposed to ignite the propane gas (not) leaking into the truck, which was in turn supposed to burn the gasoline and ignite the fertilizer, then there is absolutely no place in the circuit for a couple of digital alarm clocks with some Radio Shack wires hooked up (?) to them. Even if the bomb were rigged to a timing device, it would need an explosive detonator that could respond to an electrical signal (off the top of my head, a model rocket engine or something). This device had no such element.

No amount of stupid accounts for this, if you ask me. It's the kind of thing that only a few too many action movies and a big disconnect from reality can explain.

Does this mean that Shahzad was living in a fantasy world? Does it mean that — to use some psycho-babble — this wasn't terrorism so much as a "terroristic gesture"? Does it mean he wanted to get caught? (When he was arrested on the Emirates flight, Shahzad reportedly told authorities "I was expecting you. Are you NYPD or FBI?"). Or was he a sincere, true-blue jihadist who was just incompetent, perhaps the best the Tehrik-e-Taliban — harried on the ground by the Pakistani army and from above by the drones — could come up with?

It doesn't make sense. On the one hand he's supposed to be a trained terrorist in an international jihadi network. On the other hand he's planted a bomb that wasn't so much dysfunctional as a prop designed to look like a bomb. Feel free to explain it to me.

Here's the second item that has me scratching my head. It was forwarded to me by Lloyd Pye, who has no more idea what it means than I do. Obviously it has no provenance whatever. But it sure is curious. A pair of commenters on the oil rig explosion in the gulf:

#1
There is something fishy with this disaster. Long ago I worked in oil refining. Safety devices are everywhere and yet on this rig none were set off. This rig is massive so whatever blew it had to be something other than oil. The fire is on the deck. The flotation legs don't burn. So the fire would have burned out leaving a floating wreck. So how did it blow up?

[Am] I missing something?

#2
This just doesn’t make sense, if the well was just cased and cemented that would leave the well totally isolated from the down hole formation fluids. It might be possible that they did not control down hole pressure and some oil (and more importantly gas) was circulated up ahead of the cement slurry, but even that would give all sorts of obvious signs that would have set off alarms. There are panic buttons in several places on the platform that would have automatically shut in the well on the seabed, but none of them had been activated. The oil and gas was 18,000 feet deep, it does not blow out instantaneously. The well would have to displace thousands of gallons of fluid in the wellbore first.

So a highly unlikely and sudden explosion occurs on a state of the art drilling rig, on the eve of Earth Day, just a few weeks after an announcement of increased offshore drilling.

I think that the investigation of this disaster should also include a background check of everyone involved just to be prudent.

I don't know anything about this subject. If you do, let me know.

HIGHWAYS IN HELL. I've been there several times. Kind, hospitable people and a city that's a fascinating mix of old south and brand new entrepreneurial, uh, things made of concrete and amusement park accessories. It's wonderful and touching and awful all at the same time. Someone took me to a nightclub in the old part of town, and it was the first time I realized just how well those country rednecks can play. It's not screeching. It's music and when you're there with them it's the best and most vital music you've ever heard. Nothing beats that slide guitar when you're three feet away from it and feeling the smile. And, yeah, I've been in jazz clubs in Chicago, too, but virtuosity is virtuosity, whether it's wearing sunglasses and fedoras or snakeskin boots and cowboy hats.


It's all underwater now. Here's Michelle Malkin's roundup of problems and ways to chip in.

Do what you can. They may not be begging for our help, but they need it.

UNINTENDED OBVIOUSNESS. I hate fisking conservatives and deep-down political allies. But sometimes it's necessary. I have to fisk this post, which is hard to do because I don't want to and he uses every format trick from italics to boldface to bolster his arguments. I need to highlight certain parts of his post and differentiate my added fisking text. Here's how I'll do it. When I highlight his text, I'll jump up the font size. When it's me commenting, I'll go old school: Courier type. Fair enough? He read the conversation between me and Doc Zero about the obvious. He's pretty sure the Doc holds all the cards.

It seems so much of what was assumed to be obvious, that free enterprize and success based on merit is a morally superior economic system for example, no longer gets the institutional reinforcement it once enjoyed, and has been replaced by the counter argument.  Commenters here tend to substantiate that observation in mentioning the gaps in their public education.   Doc Zero's dedication to repopularizing first principles helps fill that gap and I applaud and share it.  The filling of those gaps is the role being filled by the alternative media and it is having a positive affect.  Notice I didn't say it was pretty, quite the contrary.

The success of the left came from a heretofore prolonged monopolistic control of the narrative.  Corporate taxes, aren't on the average voters radar precisely because the left has successfully posited, incorrectly, that corporate taxes do not affect the average consumer. (How they can justify taxing corporations to kingdom come while trying to limit their freedom of expression via political donations is one of myriad left/liberal incoherencies that somehow remain largely unchallenged in the public debate. But that is a whole different issue)  To me, because I think, the incoherency is obvious with a capital O.   

The debate therefore, should not be about getting liberals to think, as that labyrinth of aforementioned incoherencies has metastasized into a groupthink impenetrable by logic.  So I agree attempts at said penetration are indeed a waste of time and effort. 

I'm pretty sure I said THIS in my initial post: "People on the left do not think. They pose, they preen, they presume, they polemicize, they piss on their putative enemies, but they do not ponder anything of import anymore. Since the last new progressive idea occurred to them a long human lifetime ago, they are, as a procreative power, suffering peripatetically from an enlarged pseudo-populist prostate gland. Their peeing is urgent, precise as a petunia watering can, and it pulverizes their peace of mind by keeping their little pee-pees problematic all night. Not to mention impotent. Like every pompous popinjay at the Puffington Post."

That said, a strong consistent effort should be aimed at self proclaimed moderates, focusing primarily at getting them to think, period.   The effort spent there, I believe, would be much more fruitful than preaching to the hopelessly nonconvertible.  That effort will facilitate an open debate where truth and logic are allowed as opposed to the fringy lib/left screed where those elements, though never really explained, are foregone conclusions.  Instapunk's final "obviousness" captures it perfectly.  

So why didn't you understand it?

I've tried reasoning with a liberal.  I've tried reasoning with a brick wall.  The latter makes more sense every time.  You are on the right track Doc, no pun intended, arguing to assuage an attitude is very different than arguing against a set of attitudes.   The open re-examination of first principles, debateable on their own merits, has been an untapped product in the marketplace of ideas for far too long.  I'm not sure Al Gore was counting on this when he invented the internets, but bless his carbon trading billionaire heart for accidently providing the forum.

"Arguing to assuage an attitude is very different than arguing against a set of attitudes." What does that even mean? Nothing. None of this post means anything. The writer can't read. He doesn't understand what he presumes to analyze. He misunderstood my essay from its first sentence. I wrote a post about this not long ago. The syndrome is called "the purely prudential use of language":

...using words not because he knows what he means by them, but because he knows how they are ordinarily used, and does with them what he has heard other people do with them before. He strings them together in suitable sequences, maneuvers them aptly enough, produces with them pretty well the effects he intends, yet meanwhile he may have not much more inkling of what he is really (or should be) doing with them than a telephone girl need have of the inner wiring of the switchboard she operates so deftly.

It's the reason why laboring the obvious no longer works. People who are assumed to understand logic and rhetoric do not. They're just faking it. Their hearts may be in the right place, but they're idiots with big vocabularies and gnat-like attention spans.

Sorry I had to do this. But I had to.


So often, they make it impossible not to.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

MORE OBVIOUS. This one's about liberal media bias. I'll repeat what I said:


Yeah. Boring. Fact is, you could go to work every day and ask yourself, "How would the MSM handle this story if the president were Bush?" and the answer would blow the top off your head. Every day. In the same way, you could measure every utterance of the Obama administration against NRO's Jim Geraghty, who said, "Every Obama statement comes with an expiration date" and NEVER be proven wrong. Not. Ever.

Which should be QED. So what do you do? You just laugh. You try to be entertaining, as if recognition were proof. It isn't, of course. This is the ULTIMATE definition of too obvious to be provable.

But it's still possible to be entertaining. And so I will be. Here's an excerpt from the MSNBC valley girl's bio.


Have to admit, I never heard that a journalism degree could be a "Bachelor of Science." I guess we all have to listen, huh? Nice looking girl, though. Too bad she swallows her consonants. Makes her sound, uh, clueless.

And here's noted Canadian dimwit Donald Sutherland.


Beneath MSNBC? Is that even possible? And slamming Joe Scarborough? Who's not even a conservative anymore but an MSNBC shill? Kewl. That's actually funny. (Something to remember. Actors are not intellects. They're throbbing emotional veins. Otherwise, they'd be writers.)

And here's Glenn Beck recounting his experience with Joe Klein at the Time 100 dinner.


But. lest we forget, liberal bias in the MSM has to remain unproven and unprovable.

P.S. Just to nail down that last sentence, be sure to read every word of this.

THE HOCKEY CONTINUE. Hello again! Are you watch the anyshell playoffs? I hope so, because we are having the most exciting time in the hockey right now. I can not believe! I still do not have TV in my apartment, but I find a bar of the sport down the road and make friends there. Except they like to watch the any-A baseketball and get anger when I speak about change a channel to the anyshell, but they let me watch on fuzzy TV in the corner next to bathroom.

First I need make l'apologie to the people in the Shark of San Jose. It look like maybe they do not chocke right now like I think. They come back to beat the Colorados and now must only win on the Detroits once more to kill them. A very good job.

The Punks ask me to make comment on the decision of the any-A Phoenix Suns to wear a jersey for their playoff that say "Los Lobos." This is to show that they have many anger about a new law in the Phoenix that makes the Mexican move to New York City, I think. Well in Canada we like to let everybody come, and it is always work fine with no problem. Mostly. So I think the anyshell should make a statement, too. Maybe not about the Mexican since Scott Gomez is only Mexican ever in history of the hockey (even to watch a game, I think). Instead I think the hockey can be use to show a light on the troubles of the discrimination that happen to us French Canadians. So I have an idea that the Washington Caps can change their jersey to say Les Miserables.

Maybe you do not hear, but the Caps have make the history by being the first #1 playoff team ever to have lead of 3 game to 1 on a #8 playoff team but still have a chocke of the throat and lose anyway. And they are lose to my Montreal Canadiens, or the Habs as they are call, even though nobody knows why about that. In the heart I am always have the love of my Quebec Nordiques, but the team is steal by the Colorado, so instead I cheer for the Habs.


The Phlyers also play the Bear of Boston, but they get in some trouble. I think it is because some of their player get the idea of the playoff beard backward and grow the playoff mullet instead. That brings a bad luck.

Uh-oh, I hear the knocking at the door again. If I am not deport back to Canada or put in jail, I will come back next time. Until then, please remember about calling the Dish Networks about me so I can get money for my loan and maybe bail, too.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

PROVING THE OBVIOUS. Commenter Lake asked:


This one, sorry to say at the outset, can't be proven. But it can be argued very effectively. The problem is not so much the numbers, which are numerous and highly debatable in many respects, but the layer upon layer of assumptions litigators of (so-called) fact bring to the table without ever acknowledging.

The best place to start is therefore with the kind of logic that indicts religion as a pernicious influence in human affairs. Oh. Wait. Let's look at this table, called "The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other," before we get started:
War casualties throughout human history.

Primitive War. (You know. Before civilization. As high as 50 percent casualties.)

Death Tolls of Humanity. (Lots of good stuff here. Details. Categories. Insights. Numbers galore. And doubts. Dig, dig, dig...)

Gotta say. In the grand scheme of things, Christianity looks good. Huguenots and Carolingians, and even Merovingians, aside. Proof? Maybe not. But truth? Maybe so.

Monday, May 03, 2010

FOLLOWUP TO "FEDERAL SAFETY MAGIC." Just a point of clarification in response to part of Lake's comment:


I have always been a believer in seat belts, including shoulder belts. Everyone should wear them, always, as I insisted to my stepdaughter when she was getting her driver's license. They're called "passive" safety devices, which is a misnomer. They're passive as opposed to airbags in the event of a crash, but they're an active part of being a skilled driver. Why? They hold you in the optimum seat position behind the wheel and in relation to the other controls -- the clutch, the brake, the accelerator, the gearshift -- no matter how extreme the motion forces affecting the vehicle. Yes, the lives of racecar drivers are protected by their five-point belts in crashes, but it's equally the case that no driver could win a race without them. I started buckling up religiously as soon as I began aspiring to drive well at speed.

I cited the "interlock" controversy because it demonstrates the native human resistance to being told what to do within the boundaries of one's own personal property. My best friend in those days, who was able to afford a new car when I was not, told the dealer to disengage the interlock device before he took delivery or he wouldn't take delivery, then fastened his seat belt before he ever put the car in gear, every time. He also cherished the luxury of starting the car first, allowing the engine to warm up while he selected the right cassette or radio station, positioned his cigars for easy access, and secured his coffee cup in its (then) aftermarket holder before locking himself into the driver's seat. There's always that pre-launch moment:


Some of us just like to do it with the motor running already. It's, you know, satisfying. But seat belts are indispensable.

I feel much the same way about motorcycle helmets, even though they don't help you ride better because you just can't see as well with them on. But crashing is a more likely outcome on a two-wheeled vehicle. You don't see anyone racing motorcycles of any kind -- from dirtbikes to grand prix machines -- without a helmet. Under most circumstances, I wouldn't feel comfortable without one, although there are specific times and places when a pair of sunglasses really is sufficient in my personal risk-reward calculations. I detest the argument that helmets must be required by law because your body and its potential medical expenses are everyone else's business.

Individual responsibility also means that you're responsible for your own risk-reward assessments, including the ones you make on behalf of your children. Today, my father would probably be jailed for this opinion piece he posted at IP, circa June 1960 (which has been in the archives for a long time but is no longer listed there for some reason):


I wouldn't trade those moments for anything because he taught me something about what it means to fly. Which too many of you will never know in the pure form only a child can experience. I understand and respect your caution. And I also regret some part of life not lived. But that's just me and I would never impose that view on another.

In the interest of fairness, I'm also reproducing Lake's video in support of seat belts.


I understand the sentiment. Believe me, I do. Can't help it, though, if I find it a little nanny-maternal-goddess culture creepy.

But, as I said, that's just me.

P.S. Antidote:


Sorry.

THINKING ABOUT THINGS IS A TWO-EDGED SWORD. Okay. I was persuaded by Doctor Zero's argument that there is merit in applying advanced firepower to prove the obvious. But I ask, in all humility, how many obvious things do we have to prove and is it possible, in the end, to prove them to people who no longer reason, read, or ruminate?

So I'm posing a challenge to the Doc and to my own readers. What follows is a series of obvious truths (er, propositions). Tell me which ones you'd like to see me and/or the Doc try to prove and why. Because you think we can, because you think we can't, or because you'd just enjoy watching us twist ourselves into semantic pretzels trying. You're also encouraged to add to the list. You're allowed, as always, to comment on the idea of this post itself.

Herewith a list of Obvious Propositions:


Preliminary, is it? Then flesh it out. (I apologize for any question marks. They're all rhetorical. Because the answers are, uh, obvious.)

By the way, everyone, it's not enough that the Doc or I have seemed to prove any of these propositions by inference or en passant in prior posts. The challenge is to prove them particularly, as obvious propositions. Just so you know.

UPDATE. Why none of this is academic:


Government is our friend, right? Wrong. Now prove it. Logically and mathematically. See the problem?

Some people can see it. Some people can't. Can Doctor Zero save the day? I doubt it. I could, of course, but I'm pretty busy with other stuff. Movies, TV, sports, bobbleheads, bunnies, and hummingbirds.


Too bad for you. Maybe you should have put the bunny back in the box before things got to this state.


Something to think about anyway.

UPDATE 2. Doctor Zero plans to respond. To the first obvious proposition. Stay tuned. This could take a while.

UPDATE 3. Now the doc has posted on the first proposition ("Corporate taxes are paid by individual taxpayers.") Fine essay, which is par for him, but he's a mite too philosophical for me on this one. I'm thinking in terms of basic arithmetic. Try this:


If you can't follow my logic, let me know. I've been called a simpleton before.

NOT Puck Punk:

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