Retro beauty

I left the television set on as what ever I was watching segued into an ancient episode of "Maverick" in black and white. He's macho, she's lovely, but the ecstasy is the picture itself. Even on my antique low-def electric teevee I can almost count her individual eyebrow hairs, and the cinematographer, a genius, captured every possible shade of the gray scale.

Color pleases the eye. Black and white reveals the soul.

The Cash Culture Dooms America

Nothing threatens orderly government and citizen safety like the great wads of cash increasingly carried by largely untrained Americans. Wouldn't it be a fine public service for the Bloomington (Indiana) Herald Times to identify dangerous persons who surreptitiously carry dozens of unregistered bills -- some of them valued at fifty dollars, some even more?

All authorities agree unregistered cash facilitates crime, from prostitution to drugs to tax evasion to moronic instant gratification. It should be reserved for trained experts, bankers, mortgage brokers, and members of the Congress of the United States.

I mention the Bloomington newspaper because, as Caleb reports, it has shown bold leadership in publishing the whereabouts of dangerous citizens, and I foresee much good if it expands it effort to those who refuse to limit themselves to credit cards, debit cards, and a few emergency coins for the pay toilets.

Imagine, a map of Bloomington blocks with several of those scuzzy little google-map location icons marking the vicinity of houses known to harbor folks who keep the most cash around.

Tora Tora Tora

Leave it to Travis McGee to get things right. He marked this day as one which will, with each passing year, seem ever more quaint. The little tin airplanes bomb the sleeping giants and the world rushes giddily off to war.

This blog was born of an impulse to remember the attack. Oriental militants who gave an intense new meaning to the term jingo decided that your fathers and mine were simply too dangerous to their plan to loot all of the Far East.

It took a few years. American men and women gave up much. In the end they conquered the North Pacific and provided the margin of victory everywhere else.

I don't know if they were the greatest generation, but it seems to me they were the last competent one. The last stand of the kind of American to whom self-reliance was the worthiest goal. Most of them are dead, so I don't know for sure what they would say about what we have done with the gift they gave us. But I suspect they would not praise a people who create the entitlement culture of Amsoc.

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Since it is my blog: Uncle Amzie, Uncle Gene, Uncle George, Mr. Earl Stouffer, Dr. M.B. Smith, Mr. Tom Hartigan, and all the others: Thank you.

The Arming of America; The Warming of the World

This is from NJT and rates a read.

In 2002, for about one nanosecond and thanks to the exposure of Bellesailles, the entire sentient world was willing to concede that academia houses as many frauds as any other profession. I hope for the same -- with a little longer shelf life -- in the wake of the email that suggests that the global warming panic owes its existence to hot air from and hanky panky by alleged scientists anxious for their own 15 minutes.

An aside: Bellesailles has just this year found steady work again. He's teaching history at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. This fact is offered as a public service for parents helping their children choose a place of higher learning.