Looking Back, Looking Forward

What a portentous title for a blog post! Someone stop me before I start posting “top ten whatevers of 2012” or “new year’s resolutions for 2013” lists. So, no: not looking back, nor will I make promises I won’t keep. Load of bollocks, all that. What’s up today, New Year’s Eve? Later this afternoon I’ll […]

You Can’t Read That!

YCRT! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Is your child’s teacher thinking about sex? Right this minute? Smutty-minded parents in Ohio clamor for a high school teacher to be fired after she writes a novel with sex in it Same thing (Pennsylvania, last year) Michigan educators stand firm against removing Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass […]

Thursday Bag o’ Right-Wing Hatred

I should write about our Christmas with the kids in Las Vegas, but when I think of it I’m happy, and as with most things happy, words are slow to come and inadequate when they do. When I see right-wingers getting up to their old shenanigans, on the other hand, I see red and words […]

London Bridge: Still Standing

So much for the Mayan Calendar. Here’s the bridge, apparently not in any danger of falling down, in Lake Havasu, Arizona: Last week my riding buddy Ed suggested a two-day round robin to Lake Havasu, and having nothing better to do I said “two’s in.” We left on Wednesday, rode about 330 miles to northwestern […]

Can We Talk About Guns Now?

Sorry for the incoherence, but I just don’t know what can be done about gun violence in America. If some new disease was killing tens of thousands of people each year we’d be doing something about it, just as we do with existing diseases. Traffic accidents kill a horrific number of people but we’ve been […]

Attack Imminent

A Tucson friend posted this to Facebook this morning: We’re far enough from the base that we don’t hear the sirens. Actually it’s been years since we’ve heard one, but then it’s been years since we retired from the Air Force. We’re going on base to buy groceries this afternoon; maybe the exercise will still […]

Air-Minded Addendum: Hucks Starter

More on the Hucks starter I described in an earlier entry. One of the aircraft at the Pima Air & Space Museum, a Japanese WWII fighter,  used this starting method. When I was at the museum today I took a photo of the prop spinner so you could see the boss they’d hook the Hucks […]