Side Aches And Shooting Pains (Redux)
A reader writes: Dear Ray: Awhile ago you answered a reader’s question about side-stitches that was equally informative and made me laugh so hard I spit coffee all over my computer screen!! I was looking for it to show my Girlfriend (whom has been battling side-stiches since she started running) and could not find it!…
The Mona Lisa
Thirty-one years after Leonardo da Vinci’s death, Giorgio Vasari wrote Leonardo’s biography, from which the famous painting got its name: The Mona Lisa — or, as it’s known in Italian, La Gioconda, and in French La Joconde. Before Vasari, the painting had been referred to as “a certain Florentine lady.” Later, in the collection at…
Worst Power Plant Disaster?
It’s not nuclear. Quoting Annalee Newitz, at i09: “[W]hen accidents happen, the deadliest and costliest source of energy is water — especially when it’s held back by poorly-designed dams. The Chernobyl disaster doesn’t come close to the damage done when a dam at a hydroelectric plant bursts.” Here’s her rundown: 1975: Shimantan/Banqiao Dam Failure Type…
Al Gore And The Snow-Job Of Kilimanjaro
In 2006, a movie director named Davis Guggenheim made a documentary about former Vice President Albert Gore and his global warming propaganda campaign. That movie is entitled An Inconvenient Truth, and since its release, the term “global warming” has, as you may have heard, fallen completely out of fashion — ostensibly because the earth has…
Spring
A reader reminded me that spring has just begun, and that in turn reminded me of a peculiar poem I’ve always liked, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), whose poetry is wildly erratic. This is Edna St. Vincent Millay at her best: Spring To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough.…
Shakespeare Revisited
Ophelia: Woe is me To have seen what I have seen, see what I see. — Hamlet Act III, scene i Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? — Hamlet…
Nuclear Over-Reaction
[UPDATE: The sudden interest in this subject and the subsequent glut of traffic that that interest has generated has also, not quite coincidentally, generated a number of requests for my “nuclear credentials” and “my scientific qualifications.” As a bartender, I am of course eminently qualified to discuss these and similar issues, and I refer all…
Mayhem In Madison; Death Threats Against Republicans: “Hope you have a good time in hell”
Pandemonium erupts in Madison, Wisconsin, as pro-union protesters converge upon the Capitol to protest the passage of Governor Scott Walker’s so-called union-bargaining bill. The following is an unedited email, presumably written by a union thug — judging, at least, by the lingo — and published on the website of 620 WTMJ radio, Madison. The letter…
Ex High School Basketball Star
You were a pure shooter, a long shot. You were a star. Another nobody kid raised in a half-broken home in middle America: a drunk father who worked twenty-five years for Clayton County, and a mother who loved you but was always too passive, it seemed, to truly care. Yet you were inherently happy. Your…
Individual Rights
Rights are a formal codification of human freedom. Rights state explicitly the fact that no other person or institution has rightful jurisdiction over the person or property of another. Justice — also known as equity — is nothing more or less than the legal recognition of each and every individual’s right to her own life…
Unhinged Mob Of Pro-Union Peaceniks Go Beserk In Madison; Shout “Fuck-You” At Republican Senator Glenn Grothman
The mob captured in the following video calls to mind Massachusetts Congressman Michael Capuano’s recent instructions to unions: “Time to get a little bloody.” Watch: If you don’t have the time or the stomach to watch, here are some of the highpoints: “Shame! Shame! Shame!” “Fuck you! Fuck you!” All the while clubbing that cheesy…
Barack Obama Is Suddenly Concerned With Individual Rights
Barack Obama — who, in 2008, at the Philadelphia primary, shocked and sickened so many of us when he said (and I quote) “Just because you have an individual right does not mean that state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right” — has suddenly, it seems, developed an inexplicable regard for…
Caught On Video: More Union Civility In Michigan
Here’s some amusing footage, caught very recently, of some more of that famous liberal tolerance and civility we’re always hearing about:
Labor Unions
The first unions in the United States were formed in the late 18th century, and they’ve always been socialist at their core, explicitly or implicitly. The principle that most people — union people in particular — do not understand about wages is this: Wages are determined by worker productivity. Worker productivity is determined by the…
Castro Pot Bust Goes Awry, Law Professor Converts, Threatens to Sue
One year ago, I wrote in a previous post that virtually everyone believes in freedom — that is, until everyone finds out what freedom actually means. Then almost no one believes in it. Freedom simply means you are left alone: you are neither helped nor hindered. And that’s all it means. Rightwing politicos and leftwing…