Author Archives: Alaska

Living in the Green Country

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Alaska

My maternal grandfather was an Arkie — like the Okies from Grapes of Wrath, but he and his wife moved to California from Arkansas in the 1930s. As a kid I was always puzzled by Grandpa’s tendency to use “country” … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Roman Dodecahedron

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Alaska

One of these and some cordage would be a bloody useful piece of kit for the pocket or backpack. For the last 20 years I’ve kept a pair of cheap Wal-Mart glove liners (usually seasonal items, about a buck a … Continue reading →

Posted in By Ourselves, For Ourselves, Kewel! | Leave a comment

Belgrade, 1926

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Alaska

Eric Ambler’s A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS (1939) is one of my favorite novels, for the noir atmospherics alone. (That I number more than one fellow as casually amoral and exotic as Dmitrios Makropoulos among my professional colleagues just adds relish … Continue reading →

Posted in Evil walks the earth, Kewel!, Useful Idiots | Leave a comment

UPS’ drone army

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Alaska

This is a very interesting chart from a very interesting article about surprise and first-strike capability. Also, nanoexplosives. (!!) Emphasis mine. This brings us to another area where U.S. systems are outranged: ground vehicles. Researchers at the University of Virginia … Continue reading →

Posted in Armageddon, Life in the Atomic Age, The Government is Not Your Friend | Leave a comment

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