Occupation of Independence

A long time ago I saw my first flash flood, after years of being in the Southwest. It was pretty scrawny -- but still impressive if you think of what it represents. Recently it happened again, except that it was even tinier. The onset of running water was only a quarter inch deep. But it was fascinating! I walked it downstream, at a rate of maybe one mile per hour. I tried to play games with it. Could it be photographed? I looked at it from above: boring. Then I tried to get light to glance off of it: no good. Perhaps if the camera was lowered almost to the ground, and it focussed on the oncoming 'wave front', it might have looked a little bit impressive. But any still photograph would have missed the drama. Where are the photographers when you need them?! I played the game of guessing which way its downstream-most finger would extend. It proved impossible. That finger seemed like a sentient creature, probing, invading, and choosing its next victim. There is such gre

I'm not sure if I have ever pulled in a giant block quote before and just left it -- normally I try to blend it with daily experiences or observations. But this one was so good, I couldn't resist. Sorry if this is lazy of me. It was in an essay about the global warming cult: This cult has grown to be so large and convincing for several reasons. One reason is that we are encouraged by our media organizations to emancipate ourselves from organized religion, in that we are impelled to become agnostic, or an atheist. They are just as happy with us becoming ‘spiritual’, which is either something new age or pagan, and is likely to involve crystals. The important common denominator is that we must migrate as far away from Christian tradition as possible. The majority of Americans, either at their own inclination, or at the urging of popular culture and education, have done so. So many of the self-described atheists and “casual independents” no longer feel compelled to a

The most obvious way to improve the English language is to make spelling and pronunciation agree with each other. Isn't that the whole point in having an alphabet? The old excuse used to be, "But new readers won't be able to read the books published some time ago." But eventually that excuse will be obsolete, as information becomes stored digitally.  But a more timely complaint for me is the difficulty in understanding people's questions on internet discussion forums.  Is English the poster's third language? Or maybe they just don't know how to type. Actually, most confusion is due to one syndrome: they ask a question in sentence #1, which has three or four nouns in it. Then sentence #2 refers to "it".  It what? The reader can't tell which noun in sentence #1 the pronoun in sentence #2 is referring to. It becomes a reinvention of Abbott and Costello's classic "Who's on first?" comedy routine. Why does it even use the

If you feel that you are wasting time watching too much News, here is something that might make you feel a little better: sometimes the News makes you see a classic movie in a new light. It can renew your interest in the movie. Perhaps movies or books that lend themselves to new interpretations are the very ones that become classics. It happened to me last night, as I rewatched Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17."  At the end of the movie, William Holden identifies the German spy in the barracks of the prison camp. The spy has been tipping off the Germans, sometimes lethally. Holden makes a short speech towards the climax of the movie. It fits in perfectly with the news about the FBI's dirty tricks.  from IMDB.com

Earlier I praised reading hotheads on the internet. As long as a reader can gloss over emotional rants over their hobbyhorses, one idea in their post might be useful. And this benefit came again, when reading about the memo. Yes, that memo. Let's not waste each other's time preaching about morality, integrity, what the 'Founding Fathers' would have thought, good versus evil, or any other irrelevancies. Let's look at it the way Machiavelli would have: as power-seeking leaders think of things as they try to get what they want.  Some Republican pundits were disgusted with how long it was taking to bring The Memo out, since that was giving the Democrats time to organize a counterattack.  Have the Republicans failed to gain what they should have from this scandal?  And is sheer stoopidity the only reason for this? Actually the Republicans had a good reason to hesitate bringing the memo out to the public. Think back to Watergate: Nixon and the Republicans had w