Shot in the Dark

Category: Deep Thoughts

  • The Bravest Man

    Joe Doakes, late of Como Park, emails: I guess a guy got arrested for interrupting the State of the Union address. A parent, protesting the shameful way his son’s life was wasted in the retreat from Afghanistan. I know soldiers are brave, cops and firefighters, too. But I’ve only ever witnessed one act of raw…

  • 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.

  • It’s MLK Day…

    ..and I”m taking a long weekend, myself. With that in mind, I’ll urge you to listen, as I do this time every year, to Reverend King’s final, and in some ways most iconic, speech, “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop”. “I Have A Dream”, full of vigor and hope, gets all the headlines; “Mountaintop” is both…

  • December 8, 1980

    Haven’t posted here in a while. About time I did. So herewith, a memory.   True story: on the day John Lennon was killed, I had turned in a paper I wrote for my high school sociology class concerning gun control. And as a young smartass and White Album fan, I had titled the paper,…

  • Mister Bad Example

    I’m not sure how I missed this piece, from five years ago, about supremely complicated story of Warren Zevon – a deeply flawed person who wrote some of the best music ever about deeply flawed people. It’s a sprawling article that covers a lot of turf – too many In an old Late Show episode from the…

  • “The Only Way Home Is Through Berlin”

    It’s an aphorism I’ve kept in my mind through a *lot* of life’s ugly travails and misfortunes this past 20-odd years, along with “This, Too, Shall Pass”. Together, the two lines are wonderful, complementary views of coping with life’s vicissitudes; trouble ain’t forever – but sometimes, the only way past a problem is to finesse,…

  • The Social Event of the Season/Your Morning Piñata

    It’s the Woodstock of perfidy! Hail, hail, the gang’s all here*: *Kinda disappointed that ol’ Klaus Schwab couldn’t make it, but there’s hope George Soros will appear in animatronic form.

  • 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…

  • A Matter Of Trust

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: My car broke down Saturday evening, as I was coming home from St.Cloud.  Well not “broke,” exactly.  The computer decided something waswrong and threw me into “Limp Mode.”  Engine runs but can’t go over 15mph.  It’s designed so you can limp to the nearest exit to get your caroff…

  • Musk In The Wind

    An Inigo Montoya moment: Democracy. They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Of course, what frightens Max Boot is having anything he says face a challenge. Content moderation is especially cool if it means you don’t have to face any discontent. Boot’s preferred usage is a…

  • P. J. O’Rourke, RIP

    P. J. O’Rourke died yesterday at the age of 74. He was one of the best conservative pundits of the last 50 years and certainly the funniest. He also had a keen eye. In his 1990 classic Parliament of Whores, he provided a spot-on synopsis of the people you meet at a protest rally. Tell…

  • The Next Battle

    David Strom, writing on Facebook, sums up what I’ve been wanting/trying to say for much of this past 23 months: Follow the science is a bullshit phrase, not because science itself is bullshit, but because science at best can only provide input and data on what are not scientific questions. Science is a branch of…

  • It’s Veterans Day

    I’ve said it in the past; I’ve always found the practice of thanking veterans for their service to be a little…off. Nothing against those that do say it – but it’s always felt a little strange to me. “Thanks for taking a couple years out of your life, in many cases going around the world…

  • Logic 090

    Want to get docked a letter grade on your argument? Call it “evidence-based”. Seriouslly. We are seeing this phrase from an awful lot of groups, especially media, to try and market themselves as authoritative, objective, and “not fake“. (Dishonorable mention to Minnesota and National Public Radio who’ve been leading with the equally-dumb “fact-based”). The phrase…

  • Random Thoughts

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: We need a new word to describe an establishment conservative, someone who claims to be conservative but is always willing to stab in the back any truly conservative movement (the Tea Party) or candidate (Trump.) StabCon, as in, “Geez, Romney is such a StabCon.” It is well established that…

  • What The In Crowd Knows

    A tale as old as time: Dominant liberal culture is, if nothing else, fiercely rule-abiding: they get very upset when they see anyone defying decrees from authorities, even if the rule-breaker is the official who promulgated the directives for everyone else.  While I appreciate the willingness of Glenn Greenwald, a man of the Left, to…

  • Being Locked Down And Nothingness, Part II

    As I pointed out yesterday, I didn’t have a lot of personal sturm und drang during the “lockdown”. Life changed, of course – but I don’t think I especially did. I was listening to an NPR science show a few weeks back. It discussed new discoveries about the interconnectedness of pleasure and pain – literal…

  • Being Locked Down, And Nothingness, Part I

    Back around the fall of 2020, in respect to the mewling avalanche of navel gazing in the media and among parts of my social circle about how 2020 was “the worst year ever”, I made two observations. Tell that to anyone alive in 1942, or 1916 (or the 1918 Influenza), 1861, or any of the…

  • 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…

  • Planet Of The Humans, Part 0

    I spent a lot of time thinking about this scene last week: I first started paying serious attention to politics in about 1980. Like a lot of high school kids, then and now, I was somewhere out on what would be called “the left”; I wrote a platform for North Dakota Boys State (a statewide…

  • Peak Minnesota

  • 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…

  • My New Project

    I maaaaaay just have to raise some money to start distributing a few thousand of these: And, of course, coating them with a caustic chemical.

  • My Next Project

    However the election comes out, I need to print up a few hundred of these. And, in my neighborhood, rub them down with poison ivy.

  • Mitigating Circumstance

    In a metro area of 2.6 million, with probably close to 2 million cars, I have merged onto the freeway behind the same car – a Malibu with a distinctive sticker and a Purple Heart license plate – twice in one week. So maybe 2020 isn’t so bad after all.