Category: Uncategorized

Well, one good thing happened today.

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I am extremely tired today because I lost about two hours sleep last night.  Digestive upset.  I need sleep loss like a hole in the head.

One good thing happened today, however.  If you saw the story about the dumped puppies–the authorities got the woman who did it and slapped her with a $10,000.00 fine.  I hope you saw the follow up.  It looked like it didn’t get any views and I’m wondering if it was lost somehow.  My side of WordPress indicated that it was published, but it didn’t get any views.  I hope I am not losing posts, somehow.  It is very exciting to track a story.  I can understand why Lee loved newspaper work so much.

Please let me know if you didn’t see the story--I have to know so I can talk intelligently to Chalcedon’s WordPress expert.  The title is  “Got her!  Woman who dumped puppies caught and arrested”.

It was a gorgeous day here sunny and bright and here sat yours truly with absolutely no ambition.  I just can’t handle loss of sleep very well.

I also watched an interview with Janine Pirro about a horrendous hospital neglect story.  I know exactly what she is talking about because I have witnessed similar things.  Not quite as egregious as the case she was talking about, but still pretty bad.  Another area that has to be cleaned up, big-time.  In many ways our medical system is broken.

I hope we have another beautiful day tomorrow, then I can get something done.

God bless everybody.

Patty

 

Cambodia Honors Hero Rat Who Found Land Mines

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More Striped Polecat

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The Striped Polecat * sorry about the AI narration *

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What We Wouldn’t’ve Thought Of, but God Did REPRINT

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From  March 15, 2015

If our smartest scientists and our cleverest politicians had had the job of creating the world–a thought engendering almost unimaginable horror–there is a lot they never would have thought of including in it.

Consider some of the extras which God included in His creation, none of which would ever have occurred to any human being.

1. Beauty. Look at a spider web in the grass in the morning, festooned with dew-drops that glisten like pearls, and consider your response to it. Probably you are struck by its beauty. That response is a gift from God. I can’t imagine it having any of that “evolutionary survival value” they’re always going on about in National Geographic specials. Cows while grazing probably see a lot of dewy spider webs. Do you think they appreciate the beauty? Read any nice odes by cows lately?

2. Food and Drink that tastes good and really satisfies. For me it’s fried scallops. How did the Lord ever think of making scallops taste like this? And don’t say it’s the chef, not God: replace the scallops with chunks of pineapple, and there’s nothing the cook can do to make them taste the same. But of course pineapple can be delightful, too.

If humans had been in charge of creation, realizing that you need food to stay alive, they would have created food designed for that purpose. Imagine how blah that would be! Nor would scientists have bothered with the incalculable diversity of taste and color and texture, etc. It would all be this grey gel that keeps us able to fog a mirror–not that I’m trying to give the President’s Wife any more ideas to make school cafeteria food even more unappetizing.

3. Cats and Dogs that love us unconditionally. It doesn’t have Evolutionary Survival Value, so who needs the love of pets? No pug dog ever helped a cave man kill a mammoth, and there’d be no point in even suggesting it to a cat. But he is poor indeed who has never been loved by an animal! Only God–of whom it is written, “God is love”–would have ever thought of that.

God’s world is full of extras that we take for granted. But if we do try to listen to what these say, we begin to understand that they aren’t really extras, after all.

Look. Taste. Love. And listen: there is something here worth hearing.

Rare Bird Attracts Lots of New Yorkers to Bryant Park

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One of My All-Time Favorite Fantasies REPRINT

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From July 8, 2013

Let me introduce you to one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels–Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (“…from the creator of Tarzan”).

I fell in love with this book when I was a teenager; in fact, I still have my 35-cent Ballantine paperback with Bob Abbett’s glorious cover. The older I get, the more I enjoy this book. You can enjoy it, too. If you can’t buy a used copy at various websites, you can read it for free on your computer. I like this book so much, I’m even pitching it to potential readers of my books.

What’s so great about it? Simply this: when I read it, I’m there. That’s the acid test of any fantasy–whether the author can get you to believe the crazy story he made up.

Chessmen takes place on Mars, in a backwater cut off from the rest of the planet. The people are splendidly barbaric, with a lot of strange customs and beliefs. Chief among those is a fanatical devotion to jetan, the Martian equivalent of chess, which these nonconformists play with living pieces battling with live steel. As a bonus, Burroughs also gives you the rules of the game, so you can make your own jetan set and play it. By the way, it’s a very cool game. Of course I made a set. I brought it to my local chess club a few times, and everyone enjoyed it. Sometimes you can also find websites where you can play jetan online.

Chessmen also features one of the most original and captivating characters any writer ever invented: Ghek the kaldane. Ghek is a monstrous head with hardly any body. His kind live parasitically on headless human bodies from which they can detach themselves at will. They worship the intellect and take pride in being uninvolved, unemotional–pure thinkers. But Ghek, wrenched out of his culture by the plot, must wrestle with certain aspects of life which are completely new to him–love, loyalty, friendship, self-sacrifice. As a kaldane, can he learn how to be a human being? His progress makes for fascinating reading.

Why read books like this? For refreshment and escape! Sometimes I just can’t take any more of the pompous asses in the Senate, our civilization-ravaging Supreme Court, that lawless golem in the White House, and pro-aborts chanting “Hail, Satan!” I can’t keep fighting every hour of every day. And so, from time to time, I just take off for Mars. Or Narnia, or Middle-Earth. Anywhere but here.

But don’t worry. I always come back.

It Started With One Grieving Dachshund

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DOGS

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The World’s Most Boring Sports Event REPRINT

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From June 9, 2012

Let me just get this off my chest…

The recently-concluded world championship chess match between Vishy Anand (India) and Boris Gelfand (Israel)–in which Anand successfully defended his title–was mind-crushingly dull. And if they keep it up like this, top-level chess will go extinct.

First they played twelve regular games of chess–ten of which were draws! Each won a single game, leading to a series of “rapid chess” (in which less time is allowed) to break the tie. Anand won one of those and Gelfand didn’t, sparing the world a tie-breaking series of “blitz” (real, real fast chess). And if that had wound up tied, too? Flip a coin? Perhaps a game of battleship?

Don’t even ask what the purse was for this stultifying exhibition of futility. It would only depress you if you knew.

These were boring games! But in championship-quality chess, everybody trains with chess computers using the same software, everybody endlessly studies everybody else’s games, and the world’s top masters wind up playing the same tedious moves all the time, each hoping the other guy falls into a cataleptic trance or something… And with so much money at stake, no one dares try anything original.

Imagine any other sport in which 10 out of 12 games end in a tie. Maybe if they knocked $50,000 off the purse for each draw, the players would change their ways. Or had these big impatient guys on hand to beat the masters up every time they played to a draw… I dunno, but they’ve got to do something. And just about anything would be an improvement.