"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Damn! I went away for a motorcycle ride this morning and came home to find Donna in the middle of a cleaning spree. She’s particularly proud of her sewing room, and I must admit, it’s looking pretty organized. Photos, please:
Certain words and phrases indicate a person’s inability or unwillingness to engage in honest conversion. I call them eye-rollers. When you hear them, you know you’ve hit a brick wall: whether it’s stupidity or willful close-mindedness, the person who utters them is not listening. Roll your eyes and find someone else to talk to. Ground […]
Is there something about aviation accidents reporters don’t understand? Upwards of 95% of airplane crashes (actually, more like 99.9%) are caused by the pilots involved. But you might never guess that from newspaper, magazine, and blog reportage, where a passive-voice form of politeness takes over. They report the who/what/when/where of aviation accidents, but rarely the […]
Banned Books Week is September 25-October 2, so mark your calendars. And in case you didn’t know, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, sponsor of Banned Books Week, has a Facebook page. Planning to take your copy of Mein Kampf with you on your next trip to Toronto? Maybe you should rethink that. […]
. . . we got around to spring cleaning! Polly is here for a few days, and she came to work. So far she’s painted our guest bedroom and removed the carpet (Donna’s going to put in laminate flooring, but that’s a near-future project, not an immediate one). Today she’s driving down to Green Valley […]
So, it wasn’t Rush who broke hate radio’s N-word barrier after all. It was Laura Schlessinger. Will there be consequences? À la Don Imus? In my earlier post, I expressed the opinion that Rush could get away with it. Laura, I don’t know. Maybe if Rush backs her up? I must say, though . . […]
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost […]
Former Senator Ted Stevens has been killed in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska. No, I never worked directly for Ted Stevens, but I do think of him as a former boss. I was an F-15 pilot at Elemendorf AFB in Anchorage from 1982 to 1985, flying for what we all fondly called “Ted Stevens’ […]