The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
The 5th Weekly Edition of the Carnival of Cordite is Up.
I have no entry in it this week. (I don’t have many entries at all this week, come to think of it.)
This week’s Carnival is hosted by another Kevin at Technogypsy, and there’s a lot of good gunny stuff in it, so go read.
Book Review: P.J. O’Rourke’s Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism
Sarah from Carnaby Fudge asked me to comment on the book, stating:
Michelle Malkin complained that P.J.’s getting soft and unfunny in his decrepitude, and I really hope this is not the case.
Well, I don’t think he’s getting soft, but the subject matter doesn’t really lend itself to laugh-out-loud hilarity. P.J. is just as sharp as ever, IMHO, though.
O’Rourke dedicates the book to Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor and Washington Post columnist who died in a Humvee accident in Iraq – to much gloating from the Left, I might add. This is pretty indicative of the fact that a laugh-a-minute is not to be expected. O’Rourke does manage, in his inimitable style, to be wry and amusing from the start nonetheless.
The opening chapter, Why Americans Hate Foreign Policy is classic O’Rourke “theater of the absurd” observations of bureaucratic idiocy, and sharp-tongued assessments of uncomfortable realities. “The night before I left to cover the Iraq war I got drunk with another friend, who works in TV news.” he writes. “We were talking about how – as an approach to national security – invading Iraq was . . . different. I’d moved my family from Washington to New Hampshire. My friend was considering getting his family out of New York. ‘Don’t you hope,’ my friend said, ‘that all this has been thought through by someone who is smarter than we are?’ It is, however, a universal tenet of democracy that no one is.”
Amen.
And that is followed by this:
Americans hate foreign policy. Americans hate foreign policy because Americans hate foreigners. Americans hate foreigners because Americans are foreigners. We all come from foreign lands, even if we came ten thousand years ago on a land bridge across the Bering Strait. We didn’t want anything to do with those Ice Age Siberians, them with the itchy cave-bear-pelt underwear and mammoth meat on their breath. We were off to the the Pacific Northwest – great salmon fishing, blowout potluck dinners, a whole new life.
America is not “globally conscious” or “multicultural.” Americans didn’t come to America to be Limey Poofters, Frog-Eaters, Bucket Heads, Micks, Spicks, Sheenies, or Wogs. If we’d wanted foreign entaglements, we would have stayed home. Or – in the particular case of those of us who were shipped to America against our will, as slaves, exiles, or transported prisoners – we would have gone back. Events in Liberia and the kind of American who lives in Paris tell us what to think of that.
Ayup.
Chapter two, Kosovo, discusses the apparent futility of peacekeeping efforts there:
In a background briefing a British Colonel said, “Out of a prewar Serbian population of thirty thousand, there are eight hundred and seventy-five Serbs left in Pristina.”
“Exactly eight hundred and seventy-five?” I asked.
“Exactly.” And (more visions of Saint Nick as NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) the colonel knew when the Serbs were sleeping. He knew when they were awake. He had 250 of his men living with the Serbs.
“Living with them and doing what?” I asked.
“Keeping them alive.”
Sometimes.
Chapter Three is entitled Israel. Too much to excerpt, but another soon-to-be-oft-quoted O’Rourkeism:
In politics, as opposed to reality, everything is zero-sum.
Chapter four goes for the real hilarity. It’s entitled 9/11 Diary. (Can’t imagine what Malkin might be thinking!) Much of this chapter is spent illustrating the vacuity of the protesting Left. It would be infuriating but for O’Rourke’s descriptive style – sadly descriptive ridicule.
Back in Washington, I went to a peace rally on September 29 at Freedom Plaza, near the White House. Several thousand people attended. As I arrived, a man on the speaker’s platform was saying, “We cannot permit the president of our country to claim there are only two forces – good and evil. We are not with either.”
(Wanna bet?) It goes downhill from there. Not O’Rourke’s descriptions, but the described.
Toward the end of the chapter, you get a little feel for O’Rorke’s emotion on the topic. Discussing the outcome of the still-unsolved anthrax attacks, he comments:
Aren’t we supposed to be a big, terrifying country, a Godzilla of capitalism wrecking the globe? Since when did Godzilla flip out because he might have brushed against something in the mail room while he was devouring Trenton, New Jersey? Since when did Godzilla turn (devastating) tail and scamper to Mexico to buy Cipro over the counter? I trusted this was a momentary lapse. And I hoped that Osama bin Laden was discovering, amid smart bombs and Delta Forces in Afghanistan, that America isn’t scared, America is scary. The members of al Qaeda had gotten dressed up in their holy-warrior costume and gone trick-or-treating at the wrong house.
O’Rourke is not funny in this book, but his observations are as razor-sharp and razor-witted as always. He’s mad, sad, and emotionally wrought here, and it shows, but he’s honest, forthright, and unflinching.
I recommend it.
(Y’know, that Ravenwood fella’s pretty awesome! Another hat tip for the link.)
Remember that thesis-length piece I wrote, Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn’t (And Won’t) Work? I concluded that piece as follows:
“It has simply failed in the Mission and Vision concepts originally established for the Program.”
So in addition to being useless, it has the extra added bonus of being expensive. The MD-IBIS report also notes that New York’s system has been equally successful (i.e., a complete failure) but it’s cost New York taxpayers over eight million dollars so far. According to this link, the price is nearly $16 million. It would appear that throwing more money at the problem doesn’t help.
So the reaction I expect? The philosophy cannot be wrong. Try it again, ONLY HARDER!!
Well, read this:
Gun program could be shot down
Maryland lawmakers consider ending signature ballistic fingerprinting systemBy Sarah Abruzzese
Capital News Service
ANNAPOLIS — Maryland’s marquee ballistic fingerprinting program, which has cost the state $2.5 million to date, is imperiled by an unsupportive administration that has called for its end and zeroed out its budget.A few years ago, the program that requires every new weapon sold in Maryland be ballistics tested and filed was heralded as state-of-the-art gun control. President Clinton watched then Gov. Parris N. Glendening sign the landmark Responsible Gun Act of 2000 into law.
Today, opponents say the system doesn’t work due to faulty information, biased technicians and incompatibility with the federal ballistics system. It, they say, should be abolished.
No, opponents say the system doesn’t work because the idea behind it is technically infeasable. It has nothing to do with “faulty information, biased technicians, nor incompatibility with the federal ballistics system.” THE CONCEPT IS FLAWED AND CANNOT BE IMPLEMENTED FOR WHOLLY TECHNICAL REASONS, NOT IDEOLOGICAL ONES.
*Ahem* Sorry about the shouting.
Proponents say ballistic fingerprinting offers law enforcement a valuable tool for investigating crime.
Of course they do. Facts matter not a whit to them. The philosophy cannot be wrong!
Del. Neil F. Quinter, D-Howard, said the program needs to be given more time to fully develop.
But of course! We must hurl more good money after bad! The philosophy CANNOT BE WRONG!
It is still too early to see if the system that began operating in 2000 is effective, Quinter said, because there is a lag between a gun’s purchase and when it is used in a crime — 3 to 6.1 years.
Except they’ve tested the system against guns KNOWN TO BE IN THE DATABASE and IT FAILED TO IDENTIFY THEM. (But facts, once again, DON’T MATTER to these people. The PHILOSOPHY CANNOT BE WRONG!)
The sponsors said the purpose of the bill to kill the program is housekeeping.
Read: “We don’t have the spine to stand up and tell these morons THE PHILOSOPHY IS WRONG!”
With no money in the budget to support the program, said Del. Joan D. Cadden, D-Anne Arundel, “The program is already dead. … We need to pass the legislation so state police won’t be breaking the law.”
The ballistic fingerprinting system cost $1.4 million to set up and state police estimated it will cost $435,269 in fiscal year 2005.
Concerns
As a legislator, Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. Thomas E. Hutchins voted against Glendening’s gun bill, even though he said he supported the ballistics testing component. Now he said the program should be cut.
The state’s attorney for Prince George’s County has a pending murder case where ballistics fingerprinting helped but he couldn’t reveal details of the ongoing case.
Is that the one where the system “worked exactly backwards”? Where it was used not to identify a gun in the database (but not in police hands) as a crime gun, but matched a known or suspected crime gun that the police already had to a crime?
I wonder if that’s why he can’t “reveal the details.”
“It has the potential to be equivalent to fingerprints and the DNA database,” Glenn F. Ivey said. “You have to make sure you can reach a critical mass of data.”
Mr. Ivey, you are a lying sonofabitch. It CANNOT be “equivalent to fingerprints and the DNA database, as I showed in excruciating detail. And that “critical mass of data”? That’s newspeak for “every single firearm in existence.”
Not gonna happen.
And there is a significant amount of data that could be put into the system, said a Baltimore City Police Department spokesman.
“Just to go by the number of shootings we have in the city,” Officer Troy Harris said, “it would be thousands.”
The state’s ballistic database system has 43,729 casings and has had only 208 queries to date. Just six successful identifications have been made — a reason opponents cite for dropping the program.
The state’s DNA database, which has assisted in 224 investigations, took as long to bear fruit. Just two years ago it assisted in only 39 cases.
That DNA program, which began in 1994 and got its first hit in 1998, does work, the assistant director for the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division said. The lag in effectiveness was blamed on federal changes that entailed a complete overhaul of the state’s system.
Reliability is also a problem, said Teresa M. Long.
The state has found 222 test firings conducted by gun makers that were inaccurate, she said.
“If you were to investigate other instances you may find them suspect,” Long said.
Technicians interpreting the data also have biases, she said.
That shouldn’t be the case, said the vice president for Strategic Planning & Marketing for Forensic Technology, which sold the ballistic fingerprinting system to Maryland.
“The system needs to be nurtured,” said Pete Gagliardi. “The system needs to be fed. It depends on people. Technology is just a tool. It is only useful if someone uses it.”
Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. It’s not a “fingerprint,” it’s not “gun DNA,” and calling it so won’t make it so. But keep telling those lies! Someone will believe you, and they’ll drag out a big checkbook!
Forensic Technology has supplied 234 systems in the United States, many of them part of National Integrated Ballistics Information Network and New York’s system, which also has a ballistic fingerprinting program similar to Maryland’s.
Yes, and as they fail to mention, New York’s has cost far more, and been equally useless. Wonder why they left that out?
When he learned Friday of the state’s problem with biased information, Gagliardi offered to retrain the users — for free.
So now they want to base the problems on “technician bias”? I thought the system was supposed to be automated? How “biased” can an operator be when his job is to take pictures of fired cases, and then look at the “hits” the system generates? I smell more evasive bullshit.
Opposition
Gun advocates see the situation as a vindication of their opposition to the program.
“Gun advocates.” Not gun RIGHTS advocates, but just “gun advocates.” Nope, no bias there!
“When ballistic fingerprinting was implemented,” the National Rifle Association of America’s State Liaison Jennifer H. Palmer said, “the NRA said it was a waste of time, money and resources. … It doesn’t work, it’s ineffective.”
A gun store owner from Baltimore said ballistic fingerprints can easily be changed and that the system only comes up with matches that eliminate guns, not positively identify them.
“This is not DNA,” said Sanford Abrams. “This is not fingerprinting.”
Gun owners on the Lower Shore also continue to be leery of the measure.
“If we were seeing some good results, I wouldn’t have that much of problem with it,” said Franklin Emerson of Pocomoke City. “But right now, it just seems to be a drag on our money and manpower.”
Proponents of ballistic testing say Maryland’s problem with the system is poor implementation of procedures.
Of course they do! No mention of California’s two Ballistic Imaging reports, no discussion of New York’s abject failure. The philosophy cannot be wrong!, It must be improper implementation!
Classic cognitive dissonance.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence wants Maryland to work to connect its system with the federal one so testing could be done statewide. Maryland’s system differs from the federal one, which collects ballistic information from crimes.
There are simple remedies to the problems the state police are reporting, the coalition’s executive director said.
“For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.” – Attributed to a lot of different people, but no less true for that.
“These are minor issues you can easily overcome with a well-thought-out work plan,” said Joshua Horowitz.
But I thought the Ballistic Fingerprinting System was a “well-thought-out-plan,” and it failed. So try again, only harder?
Doug Kramer of Salisbury agreed, saying the system needs to be refined more before it is complete shelved.
Yup, “Try again, only HARDER!“
“I just feel like it got thrown out there too quickly,” he said.
“The philosophy CANNOT BE WRONG!
The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, which heard testimony on one bill to eliminate the program on March 1, has not set a date for a vote.
No vote has been set for the bill in the House Judiciary Committee, which heard testimony Wednesday. Committee members appear divided on whether to scrap the system.
“It’s confusing,” said Del. Luiz Simmons, D-Montgomery. “Opponents and proponents have their own set of facts.”
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” – Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“I think that repealing the bill, if it does not deserve to be repealed,” Simmons said, “merely ratifies bad policy and bad administration.”
Try again, ONLY HARDER!!!
It never stops.
I hope like hell Delegate Cadden is correct and the program is well and truly dead, but I smell a zombie rising here.
As some of you may know, I grew up on Florida’s Space Coast. My father was a Quality Control engineer for IBM, working on the Instrument Unit (guidance system) for the Saturn V rocket. I got to see all of the manned missions up through Skylab launch from just across the Indian River, except for Apollo XVII – the only night launch. I watched that one from my front yard in Titusville.
There were two dawns that day.
Consequently, I’ve been a space exploration enthusiast from a young age. I try to watch all the launches, or at least listen to them on the radio. I remember listening to the launch of the Challenger early in the morning here in Tucson, and thinking – as the station broke for a commercial – “At least this one didn’t blow up on the pad.”
Morbid, I know, but I’m also an engineer. I wasn’t then – I had just graduated from college in December and didn’t have a job yet – but that’s been my orientation for most of my life. I knew that each manned launch was a roll of the dice, a spin of the cylinder in a big game of Russian Roulette, and that NASA had become just another government bureaucracy. (And I also knew just how close we had come to losing three men in Apollo 13 because a series of small, innocuous errors had cascaded into a catastrophic failure in a system that was almost neurotic in its quest for safety.)
It was just a matter of time.
Still, I was shocked when they came back from commercial to announce that Challenger had been destroyed in a launch accident just minutes after liftoff. I knew that all seven of the astronauts were dead. I knew that the “teacher in space” wasn’t going to get there, and that a classroom of students had to be devastated by that realization. Many, many classrooms, but one in particular.
I watched the footage of the liftoff, now splayed in endless grisly loops on every network – all of which had previously declined to show the launch live and interrupt really important stuff like “Good Morning America.” I watched as the flame bloomed out from a Solid Rocket Booster joint, impinging on the huge external fuel tank, and said, “That’s what killed them. What the hell caused that failure?” I watched the Satan’s horns of the SRB exhaust tracks as they trailed up and away from the epicenter of the blast. And then I watched it all again.
Over and over.
Later I discovered that the engineers at Morton Thiokol had tried to get the launch scrubbed, knowing the problems that cold weather caused in the O-ring joint seals of the SRBs, but they had been told to “take off their engineer hats and put on their manager hats” in order to make a launch decision. The launch had been delayed too many times, and President Reagan would be making his State of the Union address that night, with a call to Crista McAuliffe – Teacher in Space.
I decided right then that I didn’t ever want to be a goddamned manager.
I also found out later that the crew, at least most of them, probably survived the destruction of the Challenger, and were alive and aware all the way to impact in the Atlantic. I like to hope not, but facts are sometimes ugly things.
And I wondered if NASA could regain the spirit, professionalism, and devotion to excellence it’d had during the race to the moon – and doubted it severely. As I said, NASA has become just another government bureacracy, more interested in expanding its budget and not making waves than in the visceral excitement and attention to minute detail that space exploration should inspire. (I’m speaking of the upper-level management, and many of the lower-level drones. I’m quite certain that there are still hundreds of people there still dedicated to the dream. They’re just shackled and smothered by the career bureaucrats and the nine-to-fivers who punch the clock and wait for retirement.)
Anyway, all this is leading to a blog I found while perusing my sitemeter links tonight. GM’s Corner, which linked to me last month, has a recurring “new blogs” post. This month’s entry is Dr. Sanity, the blog of Dr. Pat Santy – who happened to be the flight surgeon for the Challenger mission. She has a post up about that day, and it’s well worth the read: Challenger – A Flight Surgeon Remembers.
Highly recommended.
Now THAT’S Service!.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that a magazine manufacturer, MWG Co., was giving away free samples to bloggers who would put up a link to them and write one post on the offer. Well, my magazines arrived in the mail today. Yes, they are plasticfantastic, but they look pretty sturdy. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to test them out.
Who’s Next? Looks Like You’re Doing Fine on Your Own!
There are lots of photos of the protests in Lebanon up on the web. I stole this one from AlphaPatriot, though, as it’s the only place I’ve seen it. (He has many, many more.) And you can bet your bottom dollar that it won’t be seen on any of the pages of the New York Times, either.
Outstanding question, though, no?
(But Bush is at best only peripherally responsible for the spread of democracy movement in the Mideast. And besides, he lied! And people died! And the invasion of Iraq was illegitimate! There were no WMD capabilities in Iraq – except that maybe there were…)
Have You Been Following the Susan Estrich / Michael Kinsley Spat?
Instapundit has been keeping tabs on it. Today’s entry is about Cathy Siepp’s Independent Women’s Forum column on Estrich’s behavior. Glenn characterizes Siepp’s piece as wondering what’s wrong with Estrich. I read the piece. This description piqued my attention:
(T)ake a look at her other big gun, a website she created about L.A. Times bias.
Originally the site’s only content was Estrich’s syndicated column, in fairly unreadable 8-point type, with a weird logo on top that looked like the dashboard from the Starship Enterprise.
Best of Me Symphony #67 is Up.
Gary at The Owner’s Manual has posted the latest collection of 60-day or older posts for our review. If this picture doesn’t draw your attention,
I don’t know what would. (If it weren’t for the cup sizes, I’d think that was a Michelle Malkin / Ann Coulter grudge match.)
My entry is in honor of last week’s resurrection of the “origin of rights” question: It’s Not All Faith, from July of last year.
In the recurring theme here of “Our Collapsing Schools,” I also strongly recommend Durrr from the blog Sakrata. Excerpt:
Where are the education standards? How come the elementary, middle, and high school teachers that taught these people still have jobs, and how come these students never had to take their classes over again until they learned how to form a sentence? When I was in elementary school, if you didn’t grasp a concept, it was 3rd grade for you all over again until you managed to get a grip, or were sent to the school across town that specialized in difficult cases. How come these students in college don’t have full schedules this semester of remedial English and composition classes so they aren’t unleashed on society with Frankenstein-esque writing skills?
The answer comes in the next paragraph. And the conclusion is spot-on.
Gary’s idea of recycling oldies-but-goodies is an excellent one. The blogosphere is rightly oriented towards the here-and-now, but the internet provides us a photographic memory, and we ought to employ that power as much as possible.
This Should be a Fascinating Thing to Follow.
Via Centerdigit comes the new blog The Last Nail. From the opening post:
I’ve always been into designing things. As a squirt I made drawings all the time. Blueprints of all types. Office buildings that were huge giant seven-hundred-story upside-down pyramids impossibly balanced on single points, factories and scientific machinery that transformed entire city’s human waste into delicious popsicle treats called Billiard Pops. Young kid mind you – like ten years old. I designed boats, flying machines, cars (land, air, and subterranean rock-boring), I charted neighborhoods and patches of woods, I made scale drawings of every floor of my family’s house and marked every hiding spot (color-coded, of course, according to hiddenness).
—
My obsession with pointless time-sucking scale drawings marched forward with robotic creepiness, acquiring new appendages, growing bigger and stronger like Voltron. Pointless repetition, unwavering and bland. If I had a company it’s motto would have been “Providing You with Endless Detail for No Reason.” Reams and reams of exact replicas of animals. I recently discovered all of these drawings. Weird stuff. It was like going through some sicko’s case file.
—
So flash forward and I’m seventeen working in a bakery with a bunch of lesbians and some carpenter comes in to get a coffee. He sneezes and I say “bless you,” and he says, “I don’t need your fucking blessing.” We throw some convo back and forth a couple minutes and then he offers me a job laboring for him. I take it instantly and thus begins my career in construction. This guy turns out not only to be an amazing carpenter, but the carpentry is a part of his way of life. He’s like a carpenter Buddhist. Teaches me all about the philosophy of it, the respect of the tools and the wood, appreciation of the different architectural styles — he had you seeing ghosts. Ghosts of all the artisans that built and carved Boston with their bare hands.
—
Then I meet this beautiful super talented girl and fall madly in love with her and she strives like hell to funnel my crippling attention to random detail into large labeled bottles. Realistic projects.
We decide to buy an old crusty house and fix it up. We search Mass for a house we find one: a 650 square foot dumpy-ass bungalow twenty minutes south of Boston. Previous owner had a yen for scattering player pianos around his backyard, making walls out of toasters and TVs, flashing people in his bathrobe, but not for cleaning or home improvement. Rough shape, but good bones, so we pick it up for short dough.
—
See, here’s the catch with me: I’m good with details, designs and doing super creative artisan work with my hands, BUT, as it is fully demonstrated by the aforementioned Bible thing, I have no big picture. No higher meaning for anything. No ability to see the layout of time be it retrospectively or futuremindedly. So my fiancée does as much as she has time for, but I’m an organizational boat anchor that can never be reeled up. She’s just gotta set sail and drag my barnacle-encrusted ass along the ocean floor. You can ask me how long the project took and I can probably piece it together like a crime scene but I don’t really know.
—
My fiancee and I bought our second house, a 954 sq. ft. run down ranch in Boston’s Metro West region, and we’re doing a massive addition and renovation. This house is different than the last. Bigger house, bigger scope, bigger money and it could be a financial and emotional disaster if I don’t keep my documentation razor sharp. That’s where this site comes in. At any stage of this project I want to be able to look over my shoulder back down the road where I’ve been and see every gas station, burger joint and motel in crystal clear detail. This site will be my tool to map, chart, and thus maintain constant control of the timeline of this project. This time I’m logging everything, every step of the way, every detail, down to the last nail.
Interesting! And he writes well, too! I’m going to have to add The Last Nail to my reading list and hit that site at least once a week.
My blogging, if you’ve noticed, has been somewhat less voluminous as of late. I’ve been reading – a LOT. I just blasted (no pun intended) through Abigail Kohn’s Shooters: Myths and Realities of America’s Gun Cultures, done some selected reading from Prof. Saul Cornell‘s Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect? (I skipped the last piece, authored by Michael Bellesiles), I read (with relish) Bill Whittle’s Silent America: Essays from a Democracy at War (dead-tree edition – one essay per night,) and Apollo, by Charles Murray & Catherine Bly Cox, the story of the race to the moon from the perspective of the engineers tasked with getting us there – and back. That one ate a lot of hours normally dedicated to sleep. And I have been doggedly slogging through Prof. Randy Barnett’s post-doctoral thesis, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. (I’m almost done with that one. It’s my lunchtime reading, and it is NOT a light read.)
Over the Christmas/New Year’s time off I read Hugh Hewitt’s Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World. Hugh doesn’t have a setting below “Wide Open” does he? Before that I managed to find a copy of Dr. Thomas Sowell’s excellent Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. In between all of that, I’ve snuck in the stray novel or two. Or six.
So when I say I read a lot, you can understand why for my birthday my family and friends all gave me the perfect gift: Gift certificates to book stores. I just came back from Barnes & Noble. Today’s selections:
William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition
P.J. O’Rourke’s Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(Man, I read a lot of books with colons in the titles!)
I wasn’t able to find a copy of James Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America – another colon-separated title. I’ll have to order that, or see if they have a copy at the used book store. I haven’t used that gift certificate yet.
Anyway, all that reading has been cutting into my writing time (because I haven’t stopped reading off the blogs, or even slacked off much.) Hopefully I’ll have some inspiration to write some more of my trademark Den Bestian-length essays, but I’m not promising anything at the moment.
(Now, which should I start reading first….)
