Archive for June 2005
Flight Training Report / Solo
It began six weeks ago with this entry on May 13. Today, I soloed in a Citabria 7ECA (N5032G) after completing exactly 16.7 hours of instruction. Three takeoffs, three landings. It's generally considered a success when your number of landings precisely equal your number of takeoffs, which is always my primary objective. I actually should/would have soloed last Friday, within an hour of receiving my medical clearance and student pilot certificate, and at exactly 15.1…Read More
Driving
I've always been a car enthusiast--moreso as a kid working on them and dreaming of having my own to work on and drive. I've owned a few cool ones. My "Ensignmobile" (first car upon obtaining my commission in the US Navy in 1984) was the new Pontiac Fiero. Silly, now, but in 1984, the idea of an $11,000 mid-engine sports car with 60 series, semi-low profile tires that could do better than .8 Gs on…Read More
Just Desserts
Well, I've been around libertarian blabber long enough to know that something like this just isn't very damn likely to happen. Still, it is pleasurable, and hence, difficult to resist sitting here indulging myself in the pure fantasy of it.Read More
Sumpreme Surprise
Well, I see that while I wasn't looking, the Supremes went and voted to take away your right and mine to own property. Take note: that emphasis on the word "own" is of critical importance. At any rate, they didn't take away anything, from a political standpoint; for, the state can't grant that which is not its to grant in the first place, and given that, can not then take it away. The right to…Read More
Goings On
Spent most of the last week in a wonderful suite just off Union Square in San Francisco with my beautiful and charming wife, who just completed her 23rd year teaching 5th graders (in the manner it's generally supposed to be done). San Francisco is a great place, even though it's filled to the brim with loads of commies, which, but for their incessant and ignorant wrangling in everyone's affairs, the city would be one hell…Read More
Do I Really Need to Say…
It was a great country we had here once. But every day, in so many ways, we're losing every one of the liberties the founders bequeathed to us. We are in the process of building the same system the Europeans have: A system where the limits to acceptable political debate are severely circumscribed, and political elites make every possible decision they can, while granting us an increasingly meaningless fiction of democracy. And this is happening,…Read More
Bow to the Authority
I caught wind of something in an email from Aviation Web this morning. You can read about it, here. And now, the decision has come down. Oh, aren't we all just so happy? Only a "Letter of Admonishment." The message? Hey, Jeremy Johnson, or anyone else: don't grab the limelight, next time. Next time you have an inkling to save a family of six, come up with a way to help them financially, and potentially…Read More
Of Idiots Who Think They Know What Economics Is
You've probably had at least one course called "economics." Did it use equations? Then it wasn't economics. Did it refer to aggregates, "interest rates," variables, "inflation is a rise in the average level of prices," and "functions"? Then it wasn't economics. Were none of its statements referred back to the decisions and values of individuals and the pricing system? Then it wasn't economics. For the past eight decades, what has been taught as economics, has…Read More
Flyin’
Haven't dropped a note in a while on this topic. Been busy. But I just had a particularly great morning of flying. Rain is coming, and we've got a low ceiling, but winds are almost dead calm. So, I was to the airport at 8:45 so that I was pre-flighted and ready to go when my instructor arrived at nine. Since about 5 hrs. of instruction, I've generally been taking off and landing with little…Read More
2005?
It's really difficult to believe, isn't it? ...That we can have some tribunal of imbeciles perched behind marble pillars, wearing black robes, sitting high atop carved wooden benches dictating what 270 million people can and can't smoke on their own time and at their own expense. John Lopez has it right on. You should be ashamed. You who support such nanny-statism by going to the polls to have your 1/270,000,000th say in how yours and…Read More
Vito
Beck points to an entry at Samizdata that's well worth the read. In certain areas in Dallas, you're the nuisance if thugs come knocking at your door and you ask the police for assistance--"too many" times. They'll send Vito out to set you straight. Fuckers. Every single one. May they all die of horrible and painful diseases, and then rot in hell. May their children be ridiculed for even attending their funerals. You know, it…Read More
Dear John:
John gets mail from his 20/20 segment last week on the bogus "wage gap." Really, more issues ought to be aired in this way. Just let idiots blather away. One thing I like is that it tends to cut through the that's-your-point-of-view crap. Listen: if you believe there is a real wage gap between men and women, for equivalent work, then you're either ignorant, or too stupid to understand a complex set of facts. At…Read More
Simple, Indeed
...everything about government is about lashing people who know what they're doing to the carts of idiots who're busy driving off the various cliffs of life. "Freedom", ladies and gentlemen, means the leave to dissent from the actions of idiots and act differently -- on one's own judgment -- in order to not ride over the various cliffs, etc. From here.Read More
The Fiction That Is the State
For a number of years, I've been on the email list of The Independent Institute. I'm not really a Great Big Fan of pubic policy "think tanks" for several reasons, but as such things go, these guys and CATO do some good work I suppose. I usually only skim the emails that come, rarely reading the whole thing or really even any one of the articles completely. Today was different. Finally; something comes along with…Read More
Busy as Hell
Here I've spent the last few month building up a respectable readership, and now nothing posted for days. It's all mostly good, though. Making significant strides on all other important fronts. Flying lessons, business plans, making and charting goals. I've set sights on buying an airplane in the next year. It's on paper. Always write down your goals, make them big goals, and make a habit of reviewing them often--if not each day, at least…Read More