Monday Snow Sleet Sneet Blogging

So how’s the weather? Actually bad, for a welcome change. When Tucsonans complain about the weather, we’re usually griping about scattered to broken clouds, and, once in a great while, rain — weather that would be innocuous anywhere else, so don’t pay us no never-mind.  When it snows, we act like the Apocalypse is at […]

Empty Bellicosity, Thy Name Is DPRK

You know, if you’ve never read news from the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea before, you might be inclined to take something like this seriously: All Service Members Are Waiting for Order to Fire Pyongyang, March 16 (KCNA) — All servicepersons of the Korean People’s Army, fully ready to launch a sacred war of retaliation […]

Air-Minded: America’s First Jet Fighter (Updated 9/16/15)

Walking around the outdoor displays at the Pima Air & Space Museum (PASM) the other day, I stopped in front of a dusty relic, a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter. I always think of the P-80 (later redesignated the F-80) as a Korean War-era fighter.  It’s true that the P-80 first […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic roundup of news about banned and challenged books. Arizona: Last month I wrote about various groups planning to make banned Mexican American studies books available to Tucson area students. Since then I’ve been receiving daily updates on one such group, the Librotraficante Caravan … so many updates that […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: An Omnivore’s Mix

“Nobody could have held it against the guides at Eigergletscher Station if they had refused to take a single step onto the Face when they heard of the accident. But there was one man still alive. They were all determined to rescue him, to snatch him, if possible, from the clutches of that fatal wall.” […]

Snakes & Ladders

Consider the great gains we’ve made in this country: from universal suffrage to civil rights, from labor unions and protections for workers to minimum wages and unemployment insurance, from Social Security to Medicare, from free public education to womens’ athletics, from good highways to the postal system.  If you follow the news you know that […]

Friday Bag o’ Fries

My computer’s back from the shop, and what a pleasure it is to work on it again.  Yesterday I typed a post on the other computer at Donna’s desk, where everything is six inches lower.  I couldn’t get through a single sentence without making multiple typos.  It didn’t help that she has her keyboard on […]

He’s Still on Armed Forces Radio?

First of all, I apologize for the blogging slowdown. Over the weekend the fan in the back of my CPR started howling; Monday I took it into the shop to have a new one installed.  They’re running behind and I may not have my computer back for a few days yet.  I’m posting this from […]