Unqualified Offerings

Provisionally, the second-best exercise decision I ever made was to run less often for shorter stretches. (The first was sucking it up and running much more slowly.) Last week I got in 15 miles in five sets of 3. I also felt some important and useful improvements in my running mechanics.
Fifteen miles isn’t too damn [...]

Mona has a “The contemporary Republican Party is no home for libertarians” piece starting from the Republican Party’s repudiation of libertarian Bob Smither in Texas. Smither’s from the conservative end of the Libertarian Party, and has promised to caucus with the GOP if elected – he’s running to fill Tom Delay’s old seat, for which [...]

Well.
Thematically and strategically, I get it. Take the cuddliness out of Al. Show the seamy underbelly of the “community” that has been the theme of the series: If you’re somehow outside the community, you’re expendable.
I do have trouble accepting Seth Bullock and Charlie Utter acquiescing in the expedient murder of an innocent.
Lots to question. Lots [...]

The push is clearly on for war with Iran. Most of the features of the last “crisis” repeat in this one. Officials and their auxiliaries deem conditions that have obtained for years to somehow suddenly be a “crisis.” People who despise the United Nations argue that we must act in defiance of the UN to [...]

Blotto has a website. “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” is available as a free MP3. Perhaps some of the concert links will include other (and greater) Blotto classics such as “We Are the Nowtones”; “She’s Got a Big Boyfriend”; and – their ultimate achievement – “My Baby’s the Star of a Driver’s Ed Movie.”
That’s via [...]

Paradigm Shift lists one of the searches in AOL’s released data, for user 17556639:
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
17556639 photo of death
17556639 photo of death
17556639 death
17556639 dead people photos
17556639 photo of dead people
17556639 www.murderdpeople.com
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crash photo
Book him! As [...]

This bitter Wilfred Owen poem is quite good, I think:
Soldier’s Dream
I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.
And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But [...]

David Grossman’s eulogy for his son is quite beautiful.
Part of the pity and terror of war is that many victims deserve a beautiful eulogy, but few have mourners with the eloquence to produce one.

Put a passage like this in the first paragraph:
Heck, I may have managed to upset both sides with just the first sentence of this post. One wrong word and the Right might identify me as a terrorist sympathizer who doesn’t understand the dangers of al Qaeda. One wrong word and the Left might identify me [...]

CBS4 in Miami got ahold of leaked video of the alleged first meeting between Narseal Batiste and Informant Number 2 at a hotel room in Miami. The video is heavily edited, and thus useless for evidentiary purposes. Specifically, it can’t answer the question I’ve had since the indictment was first unsealed: Was this a real [...]