"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
There I was at 30,000 feet
It was enormously disappointing to watch Jon Stewart fluffing Mau Mau Mike Huckabee on Wednesday’s Daily Show. Oh, Stewart gently nibbled at him about his support for right-wing fundamentalist David Barton, but he didn’t challenge any of his evasive answers. He didn’t mention Huckabee’s advocacy of religious indoctrination at gunpoint, nor did he bring up […]
No, not bicycles or motorcycles . . . I’m thinking of a different kind of cycle this time, as in: noun: a complete alteration in which a phenomenon attains a maximum and minimum value, returning to a final value equal to the original one (source: dictionary.com) When I entered the F-15 training program in the […]
I’m packing for a motorcycle trip to Nevada and Utah, tomorrow through Monday. In Las Vegas I’ll stay with a friend, visit with the kids and grandkids, and take some day rides around southern Nevada; on Sunday my son and I are going on an all-day out & back ride to southwestern Utah, with Gregory […]
… but I am, these days, a little more down than up. Particularly over the union-busting going on in so many states, and peoples’ refusal to see what lies behind it. Republican governors and Republican-dominated state legislatures aren’t trying to save money by busting public employee unions and cutting back on education and services funding. […]
The captain of the US Navy carrier Enterprise who made raunchy videos and showed them to his sailors? I feel sorry for the guy. Oh, he did a dumbass thing and totally deserves to lose his command, but I’ll bet that until the shit hit the fan he had no idea he was doing anything […]
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 […]
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’ […]
Unconnected thoughts and observations which don’t rate separate blog posts, but when aggregated together might just amount to something: Tasers: This seems like good news, and it comes not a moment too soon: “Police need reasons to believe a suspect is dangerous before firing a Taser and can’t use their stun gun simply because the […]