Yes, I guess I over did it yesterday in the sun. Woke a couple of minutes ago feeling hung over. Hands stiff as paddles.
Time to eat and hydrate.
Only 95F in the driveway atm….
n
Sun. July 29, 2018 – open!
60 Comments and discussion on "Sun. July 29, 2018 – open!"
Comments are closed.
Yes, I guess I over did it yesterday in the sun. Woke a couple of minutes ago feeling hung over. Hands stiff as paddles.
I’m about to go out and run the mower around the front quickly before heading back inside to do various chores. Austin is still below 90 this morning.
Retro game show in Austin yesterday. I’m amazed that the crowd for those in Austin is generally more of a freak show than the big event in Portland.
I went outside yesterday and again today for a couple quick tasks and to try to figure out how to get the inner panel off of my van’s sliding door* but otherwise I’ve been working inside in the air conditioning since Friday evening.** I’d sympathize with your thermic difficulties, but I’m an asshole so I’ll probably just sit here snickering.
* The electric lock doesn’t always work so I figured to snug up whatever’s been knocked loose, but the panel’s not budging and the Chilton’s manual is of no use and the internet is of no use. Next step: explosives.
** Almost literally. I’ve been working almost non-stop, taking care of a number of things that need doing, for about 40 hours. I got a few hours’ sleep and I put maybe an hour into the van and I check email and ttgnet and such while waiting for some operation to finish, but mostly I’ve been on task.
100F atm, and 112F ‘feels like’.
I try to have something inside that needs periodic attention while I’m working on outdoor tasks. That way I can alternate. Sometimes I do a better job than others. I did drink a half gallon of gatoraid, but I guess it wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t in the sun the whole time, but I was in the heat. When the seat of you pants is soaked thru, and your socks are soggy, you might be sweating a bit.
n
Well there’s your problem! Why are you wearing clothes in the heat? What you want is plenty of ventilation, let the breeze pull your sweat away. It’s nature’s air conditioner! Get rid of those unsightly clothes and get back to work … in comfort!
My wise grandfather used to always wear long sleeve shirts while in the sun. Southern CA sometimes working in the desert. Shirts and pants were generally soaked. He commented that it was better to wear light cotton clothing rather than let the sun heat your skin. He was right. You stay cooler when working in the sun if you keep your skin covered.
He also had a big canvas water bag that he hung on the side of his truck. That bag must have held three gallons of water. When he arrived at work the water in that bag was very cold and stayed cold most of the day while he had the bag on his road grader. Evaporation cool did a great job of cooling that water. He would drink almost the entire bag in a day.
I now wear a straw hat when mowing while it is sunny. Makes a big difference in my comfort keeping the sun off my head and with some ventilation. I also now wear long sleeve cotton white shirt which helps keeping the sun off my arms.
I now wear a straw hat when mowing while it is sunny. Makes a big difference in my comfort keeping the sun off my head and with some ventilation. I also now wear long sleeve cotton white shirt which helps keeping the sun off my arms.
+1
Yeah, no tight fitting ball caps. Even my costco suncheater folding hat is too heavy for some of the work outside (unless I need its sweat absorbing qualities.) I have a couple super light straw hats with big brims that I use as portable umbrellas…
I normally wear ultralight cargo shorts, of quick dry fabric, but I discovered that if you are grinding, or otherwise working with hot metal, you need cotton. The clima-cool/dri-fit/whatever will melt and the sparks stick to it. I’m a bit amazed how light my newer clothes are compared to the cotton I used to wear. The climate stuff really does work (it’s mostly a fine mesh so wind blows right thru.) Dealing with heat here is as important as prepping for winter elsewhere, which is an idea I didn’t internalize for a long time.
n
The latest stupid out of Austin/Travis County — changing the city’s name.
https://www.mystatesman.com/news/local/city-report-confederate-monuments-raises-idea-renaming-austin/W0ZX8x43xXWQbogdF6tE4M/
Not that I think it will happen since the name “Austin” is approaching San Francisco and Seattle in terms of desirability in many Mainland Chinese households. Marketing comes first. But those of you in Houston, consider yourselves warned — whereas Stephen Austin was merely “flexible” about slavery, Sam Houston was an outright slave owner.
What is it about people? Denying history is stupid. The culture 200 years ago was not the culture today. If you took the SJWs of today and sent them back 200 years, they would be denigrated, laughed at, and probably shot.
I’m a bit amazed how light my newer clothes are compared to the cotton I used to wear.
Newer stuff is generally thinner than it used to be over the last few years. LL Bean changed their return policy back in February to reflect the new reality of their suppliers’ quality declines.
LLBean also had an issue with thrifters and resellers buying used and returning it for full replacement…
Craftsman has this issue, and it’s a perennial discussion on tool boards, where people will endlessly debate the ethics of the “lifetime” warranty.
Snap on also has the same issue. When there were a few people trading in dad’s snapon for new, they were pleased to do so. Now that there is a whole industry that does nothing but look for snap on to trade in for replacement, not so much.
n
LLBean also had an issue with thrifters and resellers buying used and returning it for full replacement…
Having seen some of the ugly of the thrifting/reselling industry yesterday at the video game show, I’ll buy that argument to a point.
Bean’s quality is still off, however, and, thanks to email archives more people have ready access to their order numbers to obtain refunds on defective merchandise instead of simply exchanging for new.
A few years ago Wunderground was always spot on. Now? Pretty much crap. Today’s high was to be 100. Actual? 107. Rain forecasts? Forget it.
It’s been the same the last couple of winters. “Low of 28”. Er, no, more like low of 23.
And getting the forecast for the airport, that is about 3 bird miles away…. it’s just not there. There’s a weather station in downtown and another three miles the other side of town from me.
About all they get right is the moon phase and if it’s a sunny or cloudy day.
Grumpy. Yes.
A few years ago Wunderground was always spot on. Now? Pretty much crap. Today’s high was to be 100. Actual? 107. Rain forecasts? Forget it.
Did the decline in forecast quality coincide with the IBM purchase of Wunderground’s parent company?
Agreed. I’ve been using weather.com for a year or two. With careful tuning of the scripts I allow through.
I hadn’t realize they had. That would explain it. (Bias alert: I’m so disgusted with IBM’s developer and database tools and their business model that I may be primed to see only the bad in everything they do. It’s possible IBM still does some high-quality or beneficial things. It’s unlikely, but in the physics sense it is possible.)
“New York Times Publisher and Trump Clash Over President’s Threats Against Journalism”
https://www.wral.com/new-york-times-publisher-and-trump-clash-over-president-s-threats-against-journalism/17732980/
Whine, whine, whine. Don’t call me a bad person for telling lies about you.
A few years ago Wunderground was always spot on. Now? Pretty much crap. Today’s high was to be 100. Actual? 107. Rain forecasts? Forget it.
Yup, we were supposed to be 96 F today according to Wunderground. I saw 101 F driving around this afternoon.
And their new website is slower than watching paint dry.
I’ve been using the NOAA national weather report, mainly to see rain predictions. They have been horrible this spring onward. They were spot on for the last year. The change happened at the same time they changed software to create the maps. I guess the algorithms creating the data on the maps changed too.
n
Based on what little I know, I side with the NYT on this. Political speech is exactly what the First Amendment protects. Trump can file defamation lawsuits if the MSM tell any outright lies (which they do) but vague threats by the President against a media organization should be entirely out of bounds.
Counterpoint: Buttsuck Obama, the AG, and other federal officials did the same and worse against news and opinion groups which said bad things about His Buttsuckiness, and SFAIK not one judge or congressman spoke up against it. Door’s been opened, scumbags!
…
Global Warming is real!!! And it’s acting faster than expected!!!
As an economic observation- I am seeing signs for “body man” wanted by the car repair places. Pretty much all of them have signs out hiring. This tells me there is an uptick in people fixing their cars. Take the insurance check and cash it, then have some bondo and paint done instead of the real fix. Spend the remainder on living expenses.
When times are tight, people fix things.
n
anyone try the Nancy Drew PC mystery games with their kids?
n
It’s hard enough to find the Nancy Drew books — the real ones, the originals older than I am. They were withdrawn from publication and from many libraries because of, ah, insufficient sensitivity to modern sensitivies regarding race and religion.
Presumably that’s not the kind of PC you were referring to.
I’m a bit amazed how light my newer clothes are compared to the cotton I used to wear.
Newer stuff is generally thinner than it used to be over the last few years.
My old Lands End button down oxford shirts are double the weight of my new Columbia button down oxford shirts. I wore a Lands End to church this morning, I’ll bet that it has been washed 100 times and is still heavy.
I saw the whole Nancy Drew series in the original at an estate sale. They wanted $3/book, iirc. Not gonna do it.
There is a series of games for the PC where ND explores and solves puzzles, etc to solve mysteries. I’ve picked up the first 17 at various thrift stores. Haven’t installed any of them. Was interested if anyone with girls had tried them?
n
Don’t call me a bad person for telling lies about you.
Based on what little I know, I side with the NYT on this. Political speech is exactly what the First Amendment protects. Trump can file defamation lawsuits if the MSM tell any outright lies (which they do) but vague threats by the President against a media organization should be entirely out of bounds.
“How Trump Lost Re-election in 2020”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/opinion/columnists/trump-loss-re-election-2020.html
“A sneak peek at The Times’s news analysis from Nov. 4, 2020.”
“Heading into the campaign, Trump’s advisers believed they had two major advantages: the economic growth of the past four years and the undeniable liberalism of Warren and her running mate, former Attorney General Eric Holder. Neither panned out as the Trump campaign had hoped.”
Oh yeah, awesome newspapering there. Warren and Holder, what a pair of losers.
And predicting an election two years away right before the upcoming federal election. Which, all of the media are predicting that Nancy Pelosi will be the Speaker of the House again but these are the same people that predicted Himlerty would be President.
I’m missing your point, Lynn. Against my policy, this isn’t a veiled shiv, a multilingual pun, or a joke, it’s incomprehension. Blame it on fatigue — I’ve been working too many hours and my brain’s shutting down. (Why am I writing things on the internet when I don’t have a functional brain? you might ask. Well, going but what I see of people writing things on the internet, not having a brain is preferred.)
Anyway, I don’t see how your point is contradicting mine, nor how it’s supporting mine. Please clarify, unless we’re just talking past one another (another internet commonality) in which case you should probably tell a fart joke.
hmm, you actually believe that Trump said or implied or did what the MSM is reporting he did? Nope. Not gonna believe it. Seen them skew it too often.
In other news—– our old friend Ebola may have made it here after all
Re: WeatherUnderground: aren’t the reporting stations (often) ‘personal weather stations’ (PWS)? That’s what my station is, which reports to Weather Underground.
Unless you are talking about forecasts…
My PWS accuracy seems to mirror nearby PWS stations. Sometimes the wind direction is different, but it is slightly hilly around here, so that is to be expected.
Now, their forecasts…they appear to be via the National Weather Service ; at least the “Scientific Discussion” page looks to be NWS. I think the WU forecasts are also parsed from the NWS. I have found the forecasts to be accurate for this region; they are based in Seattle, which is usually a bit warmer and wetter than my place opposite Mutiny Bay in the Puget Sound.
(We get some rain blocking – rain shadowing – from the Olympic Mountains to my SW, so it is not as rainy during the winter at my house compared to Seattle. Or north of Seattle, which gets more rain due to the ‘convergencezone’, where the weather systems split around the Olympic Mountains then meet together north of Seattle.)
So forecast accuracy depends on NWS accuracy. And the ‘current conditions’ depend on the proper placement of the personal weather stations.
Around here, it’s cooling off: 63F after a high of 81F. Slightly warmer prediction for tomorrow: 85F. Around here, that is getting into ‘heat wave’ territory. Most folks around here don’t have air conditioning, so there is a ‘heat alert’ from the NWS for this area.
I’m missing your point, Lynn. Against my policy, this isn’t a veiled shiv, a multilingual pun, or a joke, it’s incomprehension.
Sorry, I find the publisher of the NYT to be hypocritical. And hilarious. On one hand, the publisher of the NYT is publishing a crazy article stating that Trump is so incompetent that he will lose the 2020 election. The publisher is also assuming that the November election will give the dumbocrats the House and maybe even the Senate. Then he asks Trump to be nice to him.
You can’t be both the good cop and the bad cop. You gotta pick one.
Oh yeah, awesome newspapering there. Warren and Holder, what a pair of losers.
Warren. Not gonna happen. The “Fauxcahontas” tag has traction in flyover country.
Or “Crockajawea”. Take your pick.
That’s the Ted Kennedy Senate seat she occupies. The people of MA tolerated an unindicted murderer continuing to occupy that char for nearly 40 years after Chappaquiddick.
Fake American Indian? “Meh. We’ve had worse.”
Which, all of the media are predicting that Nancy Pelosi will be the Speaker of the House again
Returning Pelosi to the Speaker’s chair is the surest way to get Trump reelected.
The X-er Dems need to decide if they want power or are content to let the Millennials take charge in the 2022 midterms after Trump beats one of the wheezebags in 2020.
“And their new website is slower than watching paint dry.” I’ve recently, after a long hiatus, been around various paints and noticed that many dried much faster than I recall. It could be that we will have to retire the watching paint dry analogy as younger folks likely won’t understand it.
“And their new website is slower than watching paint dry.” I’ve recently, after a long hiatus, been around various paints and noticed that many dried much faster than I recall. It could be that we will have to retire the watching paint dry analogy as younger folks likely won’t understand it.
I am all ears. What would you advise using instead ?
“Waiting for the video to load?”
My 4 yo said “it’s buffering” when she saw the spinning wheel on netflix. She also tried to swipe the menus on the TV….
Like fusion power always being ‘about 20 years away’, no matter how fast the intarwebs get, we’ll still be looking at buffering……
nnnnnnnnn
n
Like fusion power always being ‘about 20 years away’, no matter how fast the intarwebs get, we’ll still be looking at buffering……
And no matter how much memory you buy, Microsoft will find a way to use all of it.
Corollary: Word will always take about the same amount of time to scroll through a page of text.
In other news—– our old friend Ebola may have made it here after all.
We are fortunate that the incubation period is short.
OTOH, the airlines are getting tighter about refreshing cabin air. Two hours to Tampa on a plane with a handful of “therapy animals” left me severely congested earlier this month.
(Yes, the therapy animal situation is out of control, but that’s a separate subject.)
Probably worth it. Sets seem to go for over $300. The originals were reprinted a while back – I got a set for my mom, who grew up on them.
There have been at least 3 or 4 versions of the books. The originals, the 1950s rewrites, and one or two later. The 50s version took out the most racist and anti-Semitic elements.
The kids really liked the modern movie.
There are lots of books I’d like them to read that I’ve been trying to figure out how. Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, any other Twain, etc. Found a ‘school’ version of Tom Sawyer, “retold from the original”. Since the language of the original is what makes it worth reading, we’ll see.
I read all the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift Jr, etc as a kid. Even then the Bobbsey Twins was a bit dated. I remember stumbling over the “magic lantern”…
n
When I came back from Croatia I had acquired some nasty cough that was easily spread by air and did not require physical contact. I coughed a lot during the flight, covered my mouth, etc., did what I could to minimize the exposure. But I am sure it did not do much good. I probably infected a lot of the people on the plane.
On lady in the row across the aisle pitched a fit. I then asked her if she wanted to pay my ticket change charge and the hotel costs for an extra three nights in Croatia. She huffed a couple of times. I hope she is one that I infected. A nine hour exposure to a sick person probably did the job.
That is a problem with airlines. To change the tickets would have cost me $300.00 plus tax. I then would have been saddled with at least three more nights in Croatia at about $200.00 a night. Round it to a thousand dollars to get a different flight. Not going to happen.
The cough lasted for six weeks. Wife got it and went to the doctor and he stated it would last six weeks. Wife got some steroid pills and hers lasted five weeks. I did not see the rational in paying another $150.00 for just another week of coughing. I basically felt OK except for the cough. Doctor did give her a prescription for me which I did not fill. I try to avoid medications if possible.
On lady in the row across the aisle pitched a fit. I then asked her if she wanted to pay my ticket change charge and the hotel costs for an extra three nights in Croatia. She huffed a couple of times. I hope she is one that I infected. A nine hour exposure to a sick person probably did the job.
Physical illness is beyond your control.
Faking a therapy animal is another story. I walked onto the plane in Austin, and a passenger in the first row had a goldendoodle sitting on the floor who was bigger than my daughter.
At least some airlines have the stones to ban non-traditional therapy animals such as goats or peacocks (Google is your friend). Not all do, however.
I didn’t know that the Nancy Drews of the 1950s had been rewritten. Or The Hardy Boys, or Tom Swift Jr. Of course I was probably too young at the time to recognize it. I ran through all of those old series when I was a kid, including original Tom Swift. Most I would pick up at thrift stores or antique shops and were the originals; often I would finish up the series by getting them from the library which must have been the rewritten versions.
I don’t understand how Amazon is capable of ripping off authors so much, or why the authors don’t rise up in arms (pens?) against them. My aunt recommended _Shadow Divers_, a tale about discovering a U-Boat off the coast of New Jersey. Long waiting list at the library so I check Amazon. They want $7 and change for a paperback and $13 for the Kindle version!
iirc amazon doesn’t set book prices, they are set by the publisher. Same with DRM, audio narration, etc.
n
” Or The Hardy Boys, or Tom Swift Jr. ”
don’t know if they got “updated” Not sure how you could with Tom Swift, as the concepts were so very ‘atomic age.’
n
I loved The Mad Scientists Club books way back in the day.
http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Scientists-Club-Scientist/dp/1930900538
Available on Kindle Unlimited so I might give them a try for a distraction, since I’ve forgotten most of the plot details. Heinlein’s juveniles are still readable as an adult but these might be too juvenile to really hold my interest now.
Edit: the link got mangled somehow. Fixed now.
Heinlein’s juveniles are still readable as an adult but these might be too juvenile to really hold my interest now.
Two of Heinlein’s juveniles, “Citizen of the Galaxy” and “The Star Beast”, are in my six star out of five star SF books. I have reread them many times.
https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Galaxy-Robert-Heinlein/dp/1416505520/?tag=ttgnet-20
and
https://www.amazon.com/Star-Beast-Robert-Heinlein/dp/1451638914/?tag=ttgnet-20
Speaking of Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is now available on Kindle. (Since May, I believe). As soon as I saw it (in July), I jumped on it and read it again. It was like talking to an old friend. One of the best.
Speaking of Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is now available on Kindle. (Since May, I believe). As soon as I saw it (in July), I jumped on it and read it again. It was like talking to an old friend. One of the best.
Yes. Also a member of my six star books.
https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Harsh-Mistress-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0312863551/?tag=ttgnet-20
Heinlein is famous for selling everything he ever wrote, no matter how bad, so his more obscure stuff is sometimes pretty iffy. There also seems to be a point in many where the main character shrugs and says “when in Rome” and engages in some sort of sexual activity that I find distasteful. My suspicion is that he was a ‘swinger’ or ‘free love’ advocate although I’ve never heard anything directly. It’s just what I got from “Grumbles from the Grave” and some other comments I’ve read. Nothing wrong with that, just not my thing.
n
Two solutions:
1) Great! The airline food is always crap, but your goldendoodle will feed two dozen!
2) Hey! Why does she get to bring a sex toy in the cabin but I had to put my RealDoll in luggage?
Why not go to Project Gutenberg? eg, Tom Sawyer, in multiple formats Or am I missing the problem?
re Amazon, pricing, and DRM: Yes, the publisher sets the price, whether the book is in Kindle Unlimited, DRM policy, and a few other things. There are varying explanations for why the big publishers price the ebooks higher than the paperbacks or even the hardback, but most of them boil down to (opinion alert) the bosses at the publishing houses are retards or scumbags.
re Tom Swift books, note that there was the original Tom Swift series, which started before WWI and ran until the US entered WWII, then the Tom Swift Jr books in the 50s and 60s (and that’s the one which was “very atomic age” as well as lasers, spacecraft, and the beginning of cybernetics), and then a couple more reboots which I don’t know anything about.
re Heinlein, Have Space Suit, Will Travel is his greatest juvenile, one of his best overall, and one of the best novels ever written. That last is subject to cultural dispute; it’s very much an American book, with the hero succeeding through grit, ability, and “can do”. I fed that to my sons as soon as they were old enough to understand. Tried to feed it to my daughter but she wasn’t interested because the protagonist and narrator were a boy.
If anyone has a suggestion for a book pushing the virtues of grit but with a female lead, please let me know. I could write one myself, but it takes me so long to write fiction that my daughter would have kids of her own by the time I finished it.
EDIT: A female or animal lead. A story about a cat who succeeded through grit, ability, and “can do” would be read three times back-to-back, I’m sure.
If anyone has a suggestion for a book pushing the virtues of grit but with a female lead, please let me know. I could write one myself, but it takes me so long to write fiction that my daughter would have kids of her own by the time I finished it.
“Emergence” by David Palmer
https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-David-R-Palmer/dp/194881806X/?tag=ttgnet-20
“Locker Nine: A Novel of Societal Collapse Paperback” by Franklin Horton
https://www.amazon.com/Locker-Nine-Novel-Societal-Collapse/dp/1536905658/
“A Soldier’s Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why)” by Jean Johnson
https://www.amazon.com/Soldiers-Duty-Theirs-Not-Reason/dp/0441020631/
I’ve got about a dozen more. Maybe two dozen.
“A Beautiful Friendship (Star Kingdom (Weber))” by David Weber
https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Friendship-Star-Kingdom-Weber/dp/1451638264/?tag=ttgnet-20
“Moon Called” by Patricia Briggs
https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Called-Mercy-Thompson-Book/dp/0441013813/?tag=ttgnet-20
“Bitten (Otherworld)” by Kelley Armstrong
https://www.amazon.com/Bitten-Otherworld-Kelley-Armstrong/dp/0452296641/?tag=ttgnet-20
Some of these may be older than a 10 ? year old. Ok, maybe most of them.
Thanks, Lynn.
Is the story a grim-and-gritty romp through a postapocalyptic hellscape? That would be a turn-off for certain descendants of mine. (And for me, too, but that’s not the point here.)
And does the protagonist win because she’s smarter/stronger/faster/immuner than everyone else, or are her enhancements just equal to all of her obstacles?
Is the story a grim-and-gritty romp through a postapocalyptic hellscape? That would be a turn-off for certain descendants of mine. (And for me, too, but that’s not the point here.)
“Emergence” is about a virus spread via high altitude bombs. The protagonist, an 11 year old girl, is a new species forked from the humans by the Spanish Flu. The new species is smarter, faster, immuner. And tough. All of the old humans die, only the new species survive. And there is not many of them. The USA is still there, just underpopulated. Way underpopulated.
She has an idiot twin brother, a 3 ft tall Macaw, who constantly talks to her.
Out of these six books, the youngest book is “A Beautiful Friendship (Star Kingdom (Weber))” by David Weber. There are three books in the series.
https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Friendship-Star-Kingdom-Weber/dp/1451638264/?tag=ttgnet-20
re Emergence, yes, I read the blurb on Amazon’s page, hence my concern. I’m looking for something to motivate Little Miss Stinkbutt to grit her teeth and get through problems, not a curbstomp because the protagonist outclasses all opposition. Presumably Emergence isn’t a total curbstomp, because that would be boring (unless played for laughs or hammed way up).
Oh, and I noticed that the publisher (Eric Flint’s op, basically) priced the Kindle version much lower than the paperback. Kudos to them.
re A Beautiful Friendship, thanks for the suggestion. I should have thought of that myself. I might even have it in a box somewhere, assuming neither of my sons stole it.
re Emergence, yes, I read the blurb on Amazon’s page, hence my concern. I’m looking for something to motivate Little Miss Stinkbutt to grit her teeth and get through problems, not a curbstomp because the protagonist outclasses all opposition. Presumably Emergence isn’t a total curbstomp, because that would be boring (unless played for laughs or hammed way up).
Whoa, I just realized that “Emergence” is a brand new reissue. The original book (which survived my Great Flood of 1989) was published in 1984. I would definitely not call it a curbstomp. Her first problem is that she is locked in her father’s bomb shelter, without her father, and he never showed her how to get out. Then she wanders around the town looking for people but only finds dogs, a lot of hungry dogs. Then she drives a van across country looking for people and crashes into the only other person she finds. Then …
I am reading the sequel to “Emergence” right now. It is called “Tracking” and I had to download it in pdf from a very dubious website. It was originally serialized in Amazing ??? magazine in 1987 ??? and never published in book form. I would buy it if I could.
“am I missing the problem?”
yup, don’t want to get called to the principal’s office when she has a discussion about nigger jim in class….
I own the collected works of twain, and most other authors worth reading. I find the collected works, for the same price as a normal used hardback, is a tremendous bargain.
We are starting to counter the lefty cant, but she’s not old enough to get the racial stuff straight, without wanting to talk to the wrong people about it. To this point we’ve raised them to be color blind. We never use skin color as a descriptor, don’t make any distinction between our black brown and white friends, etc. We talk about culture and what people do and how they act as ways to differentiate them, etc. (we also have an issue with ‘illegals’ since school is 67% and they fear the Donald.)
Yesterday she said something about the Europeans did this to the indians, stole their land, killed the peaceful tribes, etc. She was gobsmacked when we told her that “The Europeans” is US. White people from elsewhere who came here…. That the indians were warriors and fought with their neighbors constantly and brutally was a shock to her too. So, some red pills. Still, think the language of Tom Sawyer will get her in trouble, and then me.
n
Still not seeing the problem.
Old Man Flandrey took his axe
And gave the principal forty whacks
It is, to the best of my knowledge (and I’m very topically learned for a layman but I’m not a trained historian or sociologist) (and the latter part is good, because about 99% of sociologists seem to have social disease rotting their brains) (alleged brains), universally true that hunter-gatherer societies are extremely brutal in their wars over resources. They have to be. A square mile of hunter-gathered land will typically support 1% the population of a square mile of agricultural land. The Mohawks couldn’t tolerate a Cayuga hunting party coming through and poaching a few deer because the Mohawks needed those deer if they were to survive the winter.
If anyone has a suggestion for a book pushing the virtues of grit but with a female lead, please let me know. I could write one myself, but it takes me so long to write fiction that my daughter would have kids of her own by the time I finished it.
Podkayne of Mars – another Heinlein Juvenile. It’s definitely a product of the 50s, but I think it holds up well. https://www.amazon.com/Podkayne-Mars-Robert-Heinlein-ebook/dp/B00Z76QMMW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1533037071&sr=1-1&keywords=podkayne+of+mars&tag=ttgnet-20
Heinlein’s adult fiction helped me get over some of my hangups about sexuality (others’, not my own.) Not a “fan” of gay marriage, line marriage, or anything else, but I’m in a traditional marriage and very happy that way. Raising the next generation is the part I admire. We’re only #1 as long as we keep reproducing and getting the next generation ready for the battle of survival.
Good suggestion, JimL. Thanks. And I should have it in a box somewhere, barring thieving sons and such.