I Need To Concentrate ...

(To the tune of "You're All I Think About These Days," sung by Patty Loveless, written by Gary Scott Burr)

I try to think about Freedom
Owning
Self-posession through the day
I try to think about indiv-
idu-
ality built in the clay
I try to think about ideals
And real deals
Anything to get me through
I need to concentrate
Free will, I think about these days

I try to contemplate the cosmos
Mottoes
Self-possession through the night
I try to rely on my brain
All reigns
Finally going out of sight
I try to avoid the headlines
News whines
Every time I think I might
I need to concentrate
Honesty, I think about these days

My mind wanders where I will
When it sets on what to do
I well know what I should say
I well know what I should do

I try to think about Rothbard
Life's hard
Tardigrades, Robert Heinlein
I try to think about don't-do's
Real news
Quotations and well-wrought lines
I try to think about podcasts
The past
But I guess I should have known
I need to concentrate
Voluntarily I think these days
Voluntarily I think these days

Murder

Nobody asked but ...

Are we in an echo chamber?  Certain sounds are coming back.  Sounds like, "We must control guns because guns kill," are everywhere.  How effective have been all such prior cries?  And yet a madman smuggles 2 dozen firearms into a perfect vantage point to kill 58 people (and counting).  High vantage points are associated with projectile deaths -- let's outlaw all structures over the average human height -- tall structures kill.  Below, from an article based on Center for Disease Control statistics, "5 things cause two-thirds of U. S. deaths:"

Five things kill more people in the United States than anything else: heart disease, cancer, lung disease such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis, stroke and unintentional injuries such as those on roads or caused by medication overdoses. {emphasis added}

Wow!  Neither firearms nor illegal drugs are on that list!  Why don't we find something that is associated with heart disease and outlaw it.  Obesity comes to mind.  Why don't we find something that is associated with unintentional injuries, like automobiles, and ban them.  Let's outlaw death, let's outlaw guns!  But wait, isn't murder already against the law?

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Yalta Bibliography II

 -- Charles L. Mee, Jr.

Seven Fateful Moments When Great Men Met to Change the World, By Charles L. Mee Jr.

Yalta Bibliography I

Nobody asked but ...

The Yalta Conference of 1945 has been shrouded by inattention from mainstream historians.  As I find writings on this neglected but critical point in history, I will share the references here in this Blog.

Seventy years ago, during the week of February 4-11, 1945, the most momentous conference of the Second World War was held at Yalta in the Crimea between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Their decisions have affected much of the world ever since.

 --  Richard M. Ebeling

THE GHOSTS OF YALTA STILL HAUNT THE WORLD,
The Future of Freedom Foundation, web site, February 4, 2015

 -- Kilgore Forelle

The Yalta Fault Line

Nobody asked but ...

Is it a coincidence that one of the most seismic occasions in human cultural history occurred at a place that is characterized by catastrophic geological phenomena.  The Black Sea is a stunning medley of tectonic effects, happening over geologic time scale epochs.  But the outcomes of the Yalta Conference in 1945 have reverberated throughout the latter half of the 20th Century and the first part of the new millennium.  It should be enough to say that the Cold War emanated from Yalta.  The history books are nearly silent about this conference in the Crimea, but the mid-century rise of both Stalinism and Maoism can be traced directly to deals made at Yalta.  Humanity will continue to feel the ripples throughout their entire future.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Catalunya

Nobody asked but ...

Catalunya!  How dare such a region express its independence!

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4D89/production/_98094891_8ec64a5a-ec35-46d9-a7ea-50daa7b60b1c.jpg

 -- Kilgore Forelle

The Golden Rule

Nobody asked but ...

I don't get it.  Isn't the Golden Rule simple and straightforward enough?  I heard a young girl in the Ophthalmologist's waiting room this morning, "Why can't people just treat each other as they would like to be treated?"  There's the confusion -- why do people suspend the Golden Rule?  Why do they take killing implements, with malice of forethought, to a high floor of a hotel overlooking an open air concert, to shoot more than a quarter of a thousand people?  Too soon?  Then, when is it a good time to address why the Golden Rule is observed too often in its breach.  Children and thoughtful adults want to know.  Gun control is not the answer -- guns do not observe the Golden Rule to the good or the bad.  It is people who forget the Golden Rule.

 -- Kilgore Forelle