Author Archives: Alaska

L’Estro Armonico (and, tangentially, Gene Simmons)

Posted on March 19, 2018 by Alaska

Nowadays you can find even obscure pieces of classical music but a click away on YouTube (such as the Wolf’s Glen scene from Weber’s Der Freischuetz, I mean, that’s amazing really).   In the past, music majors such as my … Continue reading →

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers, Kewel! | Leave a comment

There Shall Be No Darkness

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Alaska

Twelve years ago I cited James Blish’s “There Shall Be No Darkness” as the best werewolf short fiction bar none, but unlike the quite unrelated Lovecraftian tale “Than Curse The Darkness,” I couldn’t find TSBND online to post or excerpt … Continue reading →

Posted in Enjoy the Decline, Friday Fiction, Have Gun, Will Travel | Leave a comment

Still Enjoying the Decline

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Alaska

Just a reminder of what I’m about nowadays; the sentiment’s still quite the same as when I quoted this Irish fellow. As he seems to have taken his own advice and is off doing better things with his life than … Continue reading →

Posted in Armageddon, By Ourselves, For Ourselves, Enjoy the Decline | 4 Comments

Within living memory we had a fairly uniform standard of living

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Alaska

I’d sort of intuitively remembered experiencing this, perhaps from my own observations while moving across the country as a kid more than most military brats: Today, the story of America is largely the story of two economies — rural and … Continue reading →

Posted in The Economic Way of Thinking | 1 Comment

RIP Stephen Hawking

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Alaska

Steve Hsu has a nice post about Hawking, with good links to Roger Penrose’s obit and some reminiscences of Hsu’s personal encounters with the great man and his staff. (How many people can say they’ve carried Stephen Hawking?) Hsu recalls … Continue reading →

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | 2 Comments

Everybody’s a MacGyver

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Alaska

If a lazy MacGyver just uses a gun, is a gun the lazy man’s MacGyver?

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | Leave a comment

And We’re Back!

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Alaska

As a quasi-test of my ability to embed stuff after almost a year’s absence, here’s a link on Twitter to David Hines’ awesome running list, followed by the video links to the ones I liked. The Gael was played at … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

The Navy will be Trump’s Pearl Harbor

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Alaska

Stephen Hsu observes: The strategic importance of the South China Sea and artificial islands constructed there is primarily to the ability of the US to cut off the flow of oil to PRC. The islands may enable PRC to gain … Continue reading →

Posted in DWWFB, Life in the Atomic Age | 2 Comments

On Moonlight

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Alaska

I have not yet seen “Moonlight,” but will now; not for the Oscar, but because I used to swap between Fuji and Kodak for artistic effect: …the three chapters of the film were designed to imitate different film stocks. The … Continue reading →

Posted in DWWFB, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

On Brave New World

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Alaska

Spivonomist comments on Huxley’s masterpiece with a line guaranteed to intrigue (emphasis mine): If you’re anything like me, you haven’t read Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic A Brave New World since you were awaiting a slightly overdue deployment in a piss-yellow … Continue reading →

Posted in DWWFB, Uncategorized | 1 Comment