Shot in the Dark

Category: Deep Thoughts

  • Snappy Answers To Casual Gaslighting, Part IV

    “Check your privilege” OK. Let’s check my privilege. I grew up descended from people from an inhospitable place that nobody wanted to conquer and that nobody managed to enslave (or who managed to kill everyone that tried). My dominant culture has no experience of being enslaved – indeed, it abolished slavery hundreds of years before…

  • 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…

  • Human Nature

    In college poli-sci classes, you learn there are two schools of thought about what humans would be like in the absence of government. Some think humans are Basically Good and government corrupts us, so if we could get rid of government, everything would be wonderful. Others think humans are Basically Rotten and only government protects…

  • Diversity Falls Short

    I am attending continuing education classes, required for Minnesota lawyers. The legal profession has a serious diversity problem. There are too many old white men at this conference,  too few young hot chicks.  Nothing pleasant to look at, when the Power Point is boring.  Joe Doakes Pretty sure its true most everywhere these days. 

  • 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…

  • Conversion

    When I was a kid, cars didn’t have seat belts.  My Dad installed some and we thought they were a nuisance but I don’t have to listen to flight attendants, I know how to operate the buckle on a 1960-style seat belt.  I remember when George Bush the Elder was running for President, Doonesbury made…

  • 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…

  • Story

    You know how you see a person and based on appearance and a few words, make up a story about that person in your mind?  Maybe you don’t.  I do.I was at Cub, just walking up to the checkout (with actual cashier because I had more than 20 items).  A woman came quickly from an…

  • 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…

  • Doakes Potpourri

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: We need universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, like these.   ***   When politicians are spending taxpayer dollars, they have a moral obligation to get the most value for their money.  In olden days, that meant “cheapest price” but nowadays, it means…

  • That Moment…

    …you see a “News” story on social media, and find yourself looking for a byline from “the Onion”or “Babylon Bee”, and you don’t see it, and you realize the real world is starting to become more like Facebook rather than the other way around.

  • Crazy Enough To Work

    Let’s take a quick pause and feel good about humanity for a moment or two.

  • Edge Of Our Seats

    On the one hand, few stories have cranked my claustrophobia to 11 quite like the story of the Thai boys trapped in a cave for… …gulp… …two weeks. But as this is written, the staggeringly tricky rescue is finally underway: Senior officials told Reuters and AFP that six boys had been rescued, but this could…

  • They’re Coming For A Lot More Than Your Guns

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The story of how the court can seize a person’s guns based on one quip alone is bad enough, but I have two more thoughts: When the cops seize your guns, do they run the serial numbers to see if they’re stolen; or test-fire them and run ballistics to…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Human Nature

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Liberals insist people are basically good.  If the cops laid down their guns, then the criminals would see there’s no need to be armed so they’d lay down their guns, too.  The world would be a better place if we got rid of the nasty guns. That’s a lovely…

  • People Addict People

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. There is a crisis.  People who are prescribed drugs containing opioids can become addicted to them. There is a problem.  People who receive medical treatment have privacy rights.  We don’t know who’s doing the prescribing, who’s doctor-shopping, who’s obtaining prescriptions only…

  • Disagreement

    Being able to disagree is a dying art – and a vital one: To say the words, “I agree” — whether it’s agreeing to join an organization, or submit to a political authority, or subscribe to a religious faith — may be the basis of every community. But to say, I disagree; I refuse; you’re…

  • Boomed

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I’m considered a “Boomer” because my birth date is before the arbitrary cut-off in 1964; but by the time I reached each new stage in life, the older Boomers already had been there and ravaged it, like locusts.  I was about 5 years too late for everything, which makes…

  • 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.

  • Count Your Technological Blessings

    Autocorrect mixed blessing.  Especially with voice-to-text – which has caused me a problem or two on this blog over the past couple years. But I’m reminded… …there’s an upside

  • Alas, Babylon

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: There’s a reason the United States considers cyber warfare to be a weapon of mass destruction, same as nuclear weapons: because of the massive damage it can cause to modern civilization. Mitch wrote recently about a grid-down scenario from EMP attack.  How about grid-down event caused by ramsomware?  How…