A few interesting quotes…

Posted on by February 27, 2024

From various places…

If the assumptions are wrong, so are the conclusions. [Murphy’s Laws of Combat, Marion F. Sturkey]

No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the Legislature is in session.  [Mark Twain]

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard, there is nothing you can do about it.  [Golda Meir]

The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened. [Mark Twain]

Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.  [Richard Feynman]

Ain’t but three things in this world that’s worth a solitary dime, but old dogs and children and watermelon wine.  [A 65-year old gentleman in Miami, Florida]

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. [Samuel Johnson]

I don’t get my news from CNN for the same reason I don’t eat out of the toilet.  [Roger Stone]

Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.  [Steven Wright]

What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience.  [Adam Smith]

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.   [George Bernard Shaw]

The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.  [Michael Shaara]

If someone despises me. That’s their problem.  [Marcus Aurelius]

Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.  [Mike Tyson]

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.  [Montaigne]

You are the only person who cares about your excuses.  [Shane Parrish]

One day, you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the one thing you’ve always wanted. Do it now.  Paulo Coelho]

Change your opinions, keep to your principles, change your leaves, keep intact your roots.  [Victor Hugo]

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. [Thomas Jefferson]

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.  [Rumi]

In the short term, you are as good as your intensity. In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency.  [Shane Parrish]

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.  [Turkish proverb]

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.  [Voltaire]

Being dead is like being stupid. Everyone knows it but you. [Unknown]

Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. [Elie Wiesel]

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.  [Marquis De Lafayette]

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans – anything except reason.  [Thomas Sowell]

So many of these are even more applicable today… sigh

Linguistics…

Posted on by February 26, 2024

Or how do we use ‘words’, ‘names’, and other things in our writing…

I don’t think any author today goes to the extent J. R. R. Tolkien, HERE. 

Many authors use ‘unusual’ names, especially in fantasy, space opera, or other genres. David Weber used differently spelled names to show language drift in his Safehold series for example.

Names are another thing that can be used to ‘cue’ the readers to the time period. Modern names don’t really work in historical fiction or westerns. For example, Wendy didn’t become a ‘name’ until the early 1900s in the Peter Pan story.

Made up names are another way to do that, too. I use a random name generator, HERE, for my series, as it does country specific names, in addition to some bio data if desired. Here is a random Native American name/bio-

Mekaisto Klah
Basics
Gender: Masculine
Type: Adult
Nationality: American
Location: Montana, United States
Language: English
Life & Times
Age: 49
Birth date: September 28, 1974 (10:43 AM)
Physical
Height: 163 cm / 5 ft 4 in
Weight: 42 kg / 94 lbs
Handedness: Right
Blood type: A+
Future Outlook
Death date: September 30, 2063 (12:38 AM)
Lifespan: 89
Cause of death: Alzheimer’s

Another thing you can do is ‘structure’ dialog to break out characters. An example, provided by the gent that corrects my bad Spanish, is that the older generation of Hispanics who learned English as a second language NEVER use contractions when they speak or write. They were never taught to use them!

Depending on the genre, say westerns, some use of dialect can also be used to add color to the story. This is the way I do it-

Jeb rode up with three hands from the Nevell place, and Alice smiled. “Thank you for coming. I know this is short notice—”

Evan, the oldest of the Nevell hands, laughed. “We wuz wonderin’ what took y’all so long. Y’all been mooning around each other for the last month and a half. Plain as the nose on yer face!”

Bryce, stoic and hunched, merely smiled, and Skeeter nodded. “Proud to see it.” He glanced over at Anna. “Proud to see both y’all hitched. We wuz always worried them Kidd boys gettin’ stupid.”

I would also note it can be overdone. What I do it to try to replicate the sound of the word in addition to dropping letters, and different word choices.

Lastly, research! There are a lot of ways to find period information on the web for the genre you’re writing in. It might be food, economics, weapons, transport, or??? I would caution to always cross check your data, once you find it, and remember that you don’t HAVE to include all of that data in your writing, just use enough to get the ‘point’ across!

Oh yeah, and watch out about using acronyms. The same acronym may not mean the same thing to all readers! (learned THAT the hard way)… sigh

 

Bias and two tiers…

Posted on by February 25, 2024

Of…’justice’???

One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from former President Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

Full article, HERE by VDH.

Mr. Hanson hits the nail on the head, as usual, and doesn’t pull any punches either.

Here’s a list, direct from him on the ‘new’ precedents set by the left for national politics.

Here are 20 some precedents they now have established for America in the future:

1) When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t.

2) Call for the end of the Electoral College–but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition.

3) In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate.

4) Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same.

5) Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same.

6) Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate any, Supreme Court officials, politicians, or citizens you oppose.

7) Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival.

8) Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear any one as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment.

9) Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault—but only if they are radical supporters of your party.

10) Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda—but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences.

11) Try to pack the Supreme Court—but only if justices you don’t like are in a majority.

12) Seek in an election year to remove a presidential opponent off state ballots for crimes for which he has never been charged, much less convicted of.

13) First target a presidential opponent, and then change, warp, or redefine laws to convict him. Weaponized prosecutors should always indict their political opponents in jurisdictions where they are guaranteed like-minded justices and jury pools.

14) Violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (the prohibition of “excessive fines”) by having sympathetic judges level multimillion-dollar fines to bankrupt the opposition candidate during a presidential campaign. The more there is no victim of a crime, the higher fines should be leveled for “damages”.

15) Open the border by destroying all the protocols and executive orders of a predecessor president. Then welcome 8-million illegal aliens to “surge” into America on the premise a new constituency might support agendas that American citizens do not. Then call the nonexistent border “secure,” while blaming a predecessor president for having left it secure.

16) Have local prosecutors invent criminal acts of an opposition national presidential candidate in efforts to make it impossible for him to campaign for the presidency.

17) Use the FBI to hire out social media auditors to censor any news deemed problematic for the correct presidential candidate.

18) Hire a foreign national to concoct a smear dossier about one’s opposition political nominee. Ensure the FBI also uses and pays the foreign national to spread untruths among the media and administrative state.

19) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president drains the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices.

20) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president promises to cancel billions of dollars in contracted federal student loans.

It is pretty apparent the left/dems/libs will do ANYTHING to maintain power, not caring a bit about legalities and the gloves are truly coming off this year as they are deathly afraid of Trump getting back in office.

This year is going to get uglier and uglier as the months roll on. I just hope and pray they don’t ‘flip the switch’ we all know is hanging out there.

I’m back in battery and enjoyed sleeping in my own bed last night! 🙂

h/t Stretch for the VDH quotes

Heading home…

Posted on by February 24, 2024

Fun times on the road… Kinda sorta…

Got a chance to go to the Naval Aviation Museum in P’cola for the first time in 10 years, LOTS of changes, and a nice tour by one of the employees (thanks to Jonna). Got to see some folks I’ve known for years, and a Cubi Dog for lunch…

One of the MANY aircraft in the museum, still one of my favorites, and yes a better flyer than the P-51! But OMG, the P-factor with that monster engine!!!

And of course my one good meal requirement was met by us getting together with Matt and his lovely wife at the local ‘meat faucet’ last night…

There are car shows starting up, and these three were in the hotel parking lot yesterday morning, heading from Alabama to Panama City! Sweet sounding and lots of work done to them! The Shoebox is a 20 year old restoration, but the two Novas are 2022 and 2023 restomods and VERY well done!

And made the obligatory stop at Pensacon yesterday. It’s more of a ‘media’ con than writers, so lots of cosplay types. These were two that were in a panel I sat in on…

 

On the road…

Posted on by February 22, 2024

Again…

Got to take Jonna and Kortnee to a pretty good BBQ place last night…

Going to be busy, so little posting and even less commenting. I should be back in battery on Monday.

Go read the folks on the sidebar, they’re better at this than I am!

Posted from my iPhone.

DC jury strikes again…

Posted on by February 21, 2024

They definitely ‘toe the line’ based on what their masters tell them…

“Science,” wrote the philosopher Karl Popper, “is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticised and fairly often, in time, corrected.” The sub-title of Popper’s 1963 book Conjectures and Refutations, in which he argued that science progresses through inspired conjectures checked by attempts to refute them through criticism, is “The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.” Now, a six-person jury in Washington, DC has refuted Popper’s formulation of the uniqueness of science, finding in favor of climate scientist Michael Mann in the defamation suit he brought against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn dating back to 2012.

Full article, HERE from Real Clear Energy. h/t Eric

This one is…ridiculous, to put it mildly.

Mann’s hockey stick has been disproven multiple times, and it’s well known that he did as much as he could to keep any counter arguments from being published.

The $1 awards were fine, but the $1,000 in punitive damages from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn is when they went off the rails.

Steyn is a conservative, and the ‘masters’ said he must be PUNISHED for questioning the ‘science’…

Why does this sound…oh yeah, $350 M from Trump via a NYC judge…

Grrr…

NOW they worry…

Posted on by February 20, 2024

Sigh…

Late last year, experts confirmed Yellowstone National Park’s first case of the infection — officially known as chronic wasting disease — after a deer carcass found in the Wyoming area of the park tested positive for the highly contagious disease. 

Now, cases have been reported in deer, elk and moose in 33 states across the US, as well as in Canada, Norway and South Korea. 

The disease “damages portions of the brain and typically causes progressive loss of body condition, behavioral changes, excessive salivation, and death,” according to the New York State Department of Health. 

It is 100% fatal, and there are no treatments or vaccines. 

Full article, HERE, and HERE from the NYP and HERE from the CDC.

It’s been in the ‘wild’ for over 40 years, but is just now getting ‘publicity’ outside the hunting community. I think the reason is, tourists/e.g. ‘regular’ people will start seeing them in Yellowstone and PETA et al will start raising a stink over it.

And yes, I do believe this is similar to ‘Mad Cow’, as the researcher, Sabine Gilch, a researcher  at the University of Calgary, knows what she is talking about.  I also know that people who count on deer, elk, moose, etc. for subsistence protein will continue to hunt the animals.

What are they planning to do with the predators that eat those deer, etc. after they die in the fields/woods? Are they going to put them down too? Cue PETA again…

Maybe PETA could ‘adopt’ all those poor critters and take care of them (pay no attention to their ‘no kill’ shelters that routinely kill dogs/cats).

I think this fall’s hunting season may be a ‘tad’ interesting, depending on where you’re hunting!

Who are we???

Posted on by February 19, 2024

Are we peons to the elite?

Or are we ‘flyover country’ and only deserve to be denigrated and ignored by our ‘betters’ on the coasts?

We do pickup trucks, boots, and cowboy hats. And we know about oil, cows, and how to raise, butcher, and cook things. And we don’t think the stuff in grocery stores comes from trucks…

Most of us have travelled, not necessarily by choice, since a simple trip to the store can be 20 miles or more, not down the block to the bodega. A lot of us have also served in the military, or were ‘military adjacent’, e.g. military kids/family.

And yes, most of us believe in God, guns, and country. We don’t care about the color of a person’s skin either. It’s what they are inside that counts for us (that military thing again).

We want our children to be educated, to know readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, and civics too! But we also appreciate those who work in the service side of things, as most of us, at one time or another, have been one of those people.

We value family, and the ‘family’ we choose to associate with. We will help folks at the drop of a hat, knowing that there, but for the grace of God, go us.

And we try to live within our means, although as inflation hits, that becomes harder to do each month. Either that, or I’ve grown so strong I can carry $100 worth of groceries with two fingers (well, it WAS only two bags…sigh).

Given the choice, we always prefer to laugh, not cry, and prefer to live our lives quietly, with dignity, and left in peace.

But if we don’t have that option, we do have other capabilities…

Thank you for attending my TED talk…

When MSNBC starts questioning…

Posted on by February 18, 2024

The cat is out of the bag…

MSNBC host Katy Tur is questioning the legitimacy of whether the ban against former President Trump’s businesses is “fair.”

Full article, HERE.

And it’s obvious a LOT of business folks are taking a hard look at New York and whether or not their business might be the next one to come to the state’s attention.

I’m betting there will be a quiet exodus in the next couple of years of major corporations to ‘friendlier’ states…

Posted from my iPhone.

When you say the truth…

Posted on by February 17, 2024

People get…uncomfortable…

nuff said…