The Renaissance Man Knows

Just teasing -- getting ready for one or more really tiresome  screeds.

With a free math application (newspeak "app" -- oldspeak: "program")  on every magic telephone, why would a guy burden himself by memorizing multiplication tables?



And with advanced technology like this:















Why the heck should anyone bother with learning to tie a tautline hitch?

Security code: Unit of Self-Sufficiency

Got change for a nickel?

It has occurred to our masters that one coin of the realm still carries intrinsic value, the nickel, of course.

A five-cent piece is still worth almost five cents. At 75 per cent copper and the rest nickel,  it is a slug of highly-desirable metal which is worth something all by itself, no matter what Janet Yellen decrees next month when she takes over from Ben as the official decree-er of value.

Can't have that. Mommiedotguv is trying to figure out a way to debase it without irritating the nickelodeon industry too much.

Some preppers have been tucking away nickels for years, just as other skeptics squirrel away the pre-1982 pennies (the poor man's Krugerrand)  from their pocket change. Any bets on who gets the last laugh?

Care to be my neighbor?

Pretty nice digs just up the lake. For 15 million bucks you can move right in, and I'll do my damndest to make you feel welcome.

It's called "Peace Harbor," a little twee, but you can change it after your check clears.

The seller is Tom Bedell who was fortunate smart enough to be born to former Congressman Berkeley Bedell who, prior to serving his nation in Washington, pulled off a classic American Horatio Alger act. Berk started tying flies in his bedroom, and years later owned one of the largest fishing tackle companies in the world.

You'll be an easy half-hour paddle from me for those long afternoons when you're bored with your 16 bedrooms, nine baths, and full-size Irish pub (in the basement, I think). You can beach your canoe near my rear door step and give me a hand with the firewood.

Negroes and guns.

Rational gun people routinely argue that gun control mania is often a tool for   -- and result of -- racial bigotry. Lately we're getting more help from academia.

From a review of  Nicholas Johnson's Negroes and  the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms:


“Race has always been part of the unspoken motive for gun control in the United States. Johnson provides the best, most thorough history of the topic, telling the story mainly from the perspective and voices of blacks themselves. Shattering the myth of black passivity in the face of violent racism, the book is full of inspiring stories of genuine American heroes—some of them famous and many who were not—who used their Second Amendment rights to defend the civil rights of their people. Never shying away from the hardest questions, Johnson addresses the moral and practical complexities of armed self-defense, past and present. A major contribution to cultural studies and to the history of race in America.”

—David B. Kopel, research director, Independence Institute, Denver, Colorado