Shot in the Dark

Category: Life The Universe and Everything

  • Data Point

    Humans without purpose get toxic and ugly, fast. Exploration – finding new things – maybe one of the most important human purposes. With that in mind – if you’re looking for evidence that Elon Musk is a contender to eventually be one of the greatest humans ever to live? Here you go: More later.

  • The Pop-Culture Hereafter

    For every singer who manages to keep a career going for decades, there are hundreds of flashes in the pan – people who get a one-hit-wonder in their teens or twenties, have a brief spurt of stardom, and then… …well, nothing. What happens to them? Nick Duerden at the Guardian wondered the same thing, enough…

  • Church, State, And The Condition Of The Soul

    It’s been a longstanding issue — how does the Catholic Church deal with politicians who are Catholic, but who actively support policies inimical to the faith? Especially now, since Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic, is in the Oval Office? The nation’s bishops are meeting this week and the matter is coming to a head: This…

  • Emotional Day

    For the last few years, I’ve secretly left candy in the grandkids’ shoes on St. Nicholas Day, a family holiday tradition which stretches back five generations (that I know of) and possibly more. This year, my daughter decided the oldest grandson could take over the role. I’m no longer needed. I said it was fine…

  • All Shook Up

    Modern airplanes are equipped with a “stick-shaker” that vibrates thecontrol stick with increasing harshness as the airplane approaches astalled configuration.  The hope is the pilot will feel the shaking andcorrect the airplane’s attitude before the stall occurs. My work computer has a time-out safety feature.  If I don’t touch themouse every so often, it logs…

  • Stymied

    Gloomy, rainy day.  I have things I should do, but don’t want to.  I have things I want to do, but shouldn’t.  So I’m sitting here, on-line, complaining about it.  OMG I’m becoming a Millennial. Joe Doakes The email’s from last week. But the sentiment – and millennial kvetching – is eternal.

  • Suggestions Sought?

    A co-worker is leaving the office to take a new job. We’re all supposed to sign the card. I have trouble with them. I overthink the message to make sure it’s politically correct and inoffensive, yet sincere and heartfelt. First I tried “I’m happy you’re leaving,” but maybe that should be re-written as “I’m happy…

  • Guilty

    US currency is legal tender for all debts, public and private. 80% of all currency contains trace amounts of cocaine.  Possession of a trace amount of cocaine on currency in your pocket is a felony, regardless of how the cocaine got on the currency. You are required to use our money, but you are prohibited from using…

  • Miserably Woke

    One of the reasons I’m such a yuge fan of Dennis Prager is his weekly “Happiness Hour” – in which he talks not only about the practice and moral imperative of being happy (hint:  it’s not just for you), but about the struggle to become happy. One of his sayings, and his advice, on the…

  • Travelogue

    Manny Laureano – principal trumpeter for the Minnesota Orchestra, and a longtime friend of this blog and me personally – went back to his native Puerto Rico. Nothing new there – he goes back roughly once a year. It’s a little different this time – it’s his first visit since hurricane Maria. Manny’s got a…

  • Call For Mr. Hobbs

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: If IQ exists (which SJWs debate but serious researchers do not), then the Theory of Evolution through Survival of the Fittest would suggest that average IQ was higher in the past.  It must have been – only the people clever enough to survive, lived long enough to reproduce. Nowadays,…

  • Memorial Day

    I’m just going to leave you with this story today.

  • Changing Times

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Where did Americans get the assumption that if I work in the same office with other people, they’re automatically bosom buddies entitled to know everything about my life, and entitled to regale me with humorous anecdotes about every detail of their lives? If I wanted to know about your…

  • That Splashing Sound You Hear When Fonzie Lands

    Signs your counterculture niche has either jumped the shark, or run out of things to be irate about.

  • Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions

    Question (via the NYTimes):  Are humans necessary? Answer:  Yes.  But the NYTimes is not.

  • Requiem For A Dog

    The real celebrity passing here in the Twin Cities over the weekend was “Jasper”, long-time star of James Lileks’ Bleat blog and namesake of “Jasperwood”. And recipient of probably the most beautiful elegy ever written for a dog.  I’m going to hug Clu when I get home tonight. UPDATE:  Fixed the link.  The perils of blogging…

  • This Hard Land

    Note to all you folks thinking of moving to North Dakota to start cashing in on the oil boom:  North Dakota is cold.   There aren’t a lot of trees.  And outside of the eight or nine significant-sized cities (Fargo, Grand Forks, Jamestown, Devil’s Lake, Bismark/Mandan, Minot, Williston, Dickinson, and maybe Valley City), there just aren’t a…

  • I’ll Take A Moment…

    …to send my best wishes and prayers to my friend and former NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb and his family.  Michael was critically injured in an accident last night. And whatever your political point of view, I’d urge you to do the same. Not much information is available. UPDATE:  A demented ghoul tried to comment that…

  • Alas, Babylon

    I thought about writing a long, acerbic piece about Roe V. Wade, the SCOTUS decision handed down forty years ago today. About how the decision – which sniffed imaginary emanations of penumbras from between the lines of the Constitution – was an incredibly badly-written decision.  About how it was a deeply wrong-headed over-run of the Tenth…

  • Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part V: The Cross Of My Calling

    Rock and roll has always been, ostensibly, about upsetting the existing order.  In the beginning, its very existence upended what passed for “order” in popular culture, at least to the extent of helping create a “youth culture” – something that’d never existed before, and really started in America.  As culture and the genre evolved through…

  • Prudence

    Joe Doakes from Como Park writes: I like this analogy, from Instapundit *** Don’t think that zero is as low as interest rates can go: money as a store of value is also threatened. Primitive man often faced an interest rate of -%50 per hour, if he caught some meat for instance, and was trying…

  • The Baby Bust

    P.J. O’Rourke – the greatest writer of my generation, even though he’s a generation older than me – writes on the dolorous effect of the Baby Boomers on not just American society, but the idea of America. O’Rourke laments the death of far-sweeping goals – going to the moon, building the biggest dam or the…

  • All Of Life, From Zero To Eleven

    Let’s imagine, if you will, a big knob or dial with a scale from 0 to 11. This dial measures… …well, anything, really.  For purposes of this article, let’s measure “Liberty” – the prevalence of and respect for the rights to think, speak, act, work and prosper freely. Let’s say the numbers on the dial…

  • This Hits Us All Like A Car Crash

    I just got the news that Chris Tiedeman – political PR guru extraordinaire, and a  longtime friend of this blog – and his wife Sara were involved in a “serious” car accident last night. There are painfully few details. I’ll ask for your prayers, karmic imprecations, best wishes or whatever your world views call for.

  • Some Good News

    Jack Jablonski – the kid injured and potentially paralyzed after a hockey accident – is apparently moving his arms, which is a good sign: Eight days after a check sent the Benilde-St Margaret’s hockey player into the boards breaking his spinal cord and paralyzing him, Jablonski moved his arms. In an interview with several media members prior…