Requiescat in Pace

Ronin-René Espinoza, my great-grandson, 8/10/2019 - 10/20/2019 being held shortly after his birth by my wife, his great-grandmother.

It doesn't seem like it's been a year.

Make the Pain Stop...

A memorial video for my great-grandson done by my daughter.

Requiescat in Pace

 

 Ronin-Rene Espinoza, 8/10/19 - 10/20/19

 

My great-grandson.  Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

This is why I don't believe in a God.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu

So TV chef Anthony Bourdain recently committed suicide.  As to "why," there's very seldom any understandable reason.  I've seen a lot of Bourdain's work, as my wife loved his No Reservations and Parts Unknown shows, and I got sucked into them as well.  Then I ran across the YouTube series Raw Craft, which was about as commercial as Bourdain got.  That was fascinating to me.

The thing about him that appealed to me was that he was very open about what he thought, but was open to pretty much everything.  He listened.

Being an openly New York liberal, his basic beliefs conflicted with a large percentage of the U.S. population.  As an example, in an interview he was asked what he would serve President Trump and Kim Jong Un if given the opportunity.  His response:  "Poison."

Unsurprisingly, that offended a lot of people.

So for the first episode of his eleventh season of "Parts Unknown" he decided to forego the normal destinations like Uganda or Suriname and instead he went to someplace truly exotic and literally unknown:  West Virginia.  (Give that link a watch while it's still available.  It's not quite an hour long.)  From the show notes:

I guess for a long time I’ve been going to foreign locations like Iran, Liberia, Vietnam, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia where the culture and politics are very, very different than my own, and yet I try to go with an open mind and show some respect. And I like the idea of going to the heart of “Trump, God, and guns” country and looking at it in exactly the same way — with an open mind, as I’ve done elsewhere. It seemed only fair and only right.

I’ve gotta tell you, I was absolutely rocked back on my heels by, first of all, how beautiful it is, and how kind people were to me, and generous. I mean, in the same way that my preconceptions are upended so often around the world, I felt the same thing happening in West Virginia. In the stereotypical coal mining town in West Virginia — which is pretty much where we went, into the poorest area of West Virginia coal country — I was utterly moved and enchanted by the people and the place. And I like to think I came back from it with a more nuanced picture of what it means to be a coal miner, and why people voted for a sketchy businessman from New York who’s never changed a tire in his life.

You know, I went right at those things — guns, God, and Trump — and I was very moved by what I found there. I hope that people who watch the show will feel the same kind of empathy and respect, and will be able to walk in somebody else’s shoes, or imagine walking in somebody else’s shoes, for a few minutes in the same way that hopefully they do with one of my other shows.

Yesterday Rod Dreher posted a eulogy to Bourdain, A Tale of Two Tonys for The American Conservative. Give that a read as well.  Dreher concluded his piece with something I cannot say any better than he did:

If you didn’t follow Bourdain’s work, I hope you will now. We lost a great American last week.

Hunter Cressal Hits the Mark

Hunter draws the e-comic Vexxarr!  Here's today's:

91 is a Pretty Good Run

So Hugh Hefner has passed after 91 years on this earth and uncounted platinum blondes.

I hope he got the death Tyrion Lannister wishes for:

9/11

I've got nothing to add to this post from 2003 except "Thank you" to the operators of the Internet Wayback Machine, and I'll be sending them a donation.

F^*& Cancer with a Rusty Chainsaw

Connie du Toit has passed.  I just received a message from Kim.  Connie has passed due to cancer, and now he's got to pay off those bills.  If you've spent much time around the gun blogs and gun boards, you'll be familiar with Kim du Toit and his classic essays like "The Pussification of the Western Male" and "Let Africa Sink."  Kim & Connie were always ones to chart their own path, and that path has cost them.  So if you're so inclined, please consider contributing to Kim's Surviving Life Without Connie GoFundMe page.

RIP Professor Brian Anse Patrick

Just announced on his Facebook page:

It brings me great sadness to report that Brian Anse Patrick, pictured here with a great elk that he took down in Montana in 2010 (his favorite activity of all), known to many as the author of numerous books published by Arktos and elsewhere, as a Professor of Communication at the University of Toledo, as a championship target shooter and advocate for gun rights, as a CCW permit instructor, as well as through his many lectures and interviews on the subjects of propaganda and the American gun rights movement, passed away after suffering from cancer on the night of December 26/27 at the all too premature age of 62. As generous a soul as there has ever been, many of us who knew him can attest that our lives were made better through our friendship with him. Brian helped me through many rough patches of my own life over the course of nearly 20 years with his sage counsel and indefatigable drive to help his friends, as well as with his astute wit, which was matched only by the sharpness of his marksman's eye. He was also the one who first taught this city boy how to shoot and appreciate the outdoors at his estate in northern Michigan, a true refuge from the ravages of the modern world where we would be regaled with tales of his wild youth and philosophically plumb the depths of life, the universe, and everything while quaffing the finest spirits. He was certainly the most fiercely independent individual I have ever known in both mind and action, and a man who benefited from a lifetime of wide reading and love of good books. I also never knew anyone else who could throw together a meal in half an hour from whatever was lying around his kitchen and have it taste like the best thing you'd ever eaten on every single occasion - and never be the same twice. His story, rising from a ne'er-do-well problem child with a GED to become a tenured professor, should be an inspiration to those who see academia as closed to the unconventional. He was representative of an archetypal type of primordial American which is becoming all too rare in America today. Brian, wherever you are now, you won't be forgotten.

Professor Patrick is the author of The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage, which I quoted from extensively in my 2008 überpost The Church of MSM and the New Reformation. Someone sent the Professor a link to it, and after that we sometimes traded emails and he sent me proof copies of a couple of his later publications. Great guy and a stout supporter of the Second Amendment. Read his 2015 Daily Caller peice, A Martin Luther of Gun Rights?

Give 'em hell wherever you are, Professor.

It's official:  2016 sucks donkey balls.

I'm REALLY Tired of 2016

Rest in peace, Steven DenBeste.

I've quoted extensively from Steven's work at U.S.S. Clueless, and today I find that not only has Steven passed, but the archive of U.S.S. Clueless is gone as well.  Both are major losses.

Dammit.

UPDATE, 10/27/16:  Several commenters have noted that the archive is available on the Internet Wayback machine and in several other sources.  Apparently a lot of people felt it was worth making a copy.

"Rule of Law" has been Dead for Awhile Now...

Today they just admitted it out loud.

In Memoriam

My mother passed away on this day one year ago. In honor of her memory, I'm reposting the eulogy I gave at her memorial service:

RIP Justice Scalia

Antonin Scalia, the last Justice of the Supreme Court to receive a unanimous approval from the Senate, has died.  While I have not always agreed with his decisions, he was one of the very few practicing Originalists on the Court, and his dissents were exceptionally clear, concise and (more to the point) precise.

Take, for example, his dissent in King v. Burwell:

This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. In order to receive any money under §36B, an individual must enroll in an insurance plan through an "Exchange established by the State." The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State. So an Exchange established by the Secretary is not an Exchange established by the State—which means people who buy health insurance through such an Exchange get no money under §36B.

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State." It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words "established by the State." And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words "by the State" other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. "[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover." Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

We've lost one of the five votes that prevailed in Heller and McDonald, and now Obama gets to appoint his successor.

I guess we get to see how much spine the Republican majority in the Senate has.

Oh, wait....


RIP, Tony.  Thanks for everything you did.

Challenger

I first posted this in 2005. The link to Dr. Sanity's blog is still good.

As some of you may know, I grew up on Florida's Space Coast. My father was a Quality Control engineer for IBM, working on the Instrument Unit (guidance system) for the Saturn V rocket. I got to see all of the manned missions up through Skylab launch from just across the Indian River, except for Apollo XVII - the only night launch. I watched that one from my front yard in Titusville.

There were two dawns that day.

Consequently, I've been a space exploration enthusiast from a young age. I try to watch all the launches, or at least listen to them on the radio. I remember listening to the launch of the Challenger early in the morning here in Tucson, and thinking - as the station broke for a commercial - "At least this one didn't blow up on the pad."

Morbid, I know, but I'm also an engineer. I wasn't then - I had just graduated from college in December and didn't have a job yet - but that's been my orientation for most of my life. I knew that each manned launch was a roll of the dice, a spin of the cylinder in a big game of Russian Roulette, and that NASA had become just another government bureaucracy. (And I also knew just how close we had come to losing three men in Apollo 13 because a series of small, innocuous errors had cascaded into a catastrophic failure in a system that was almost neurotic in its quest for safety.)

It was just a matter of time.

Still, I was shocked when they came back from commercial to announce that Challenger had been destroyed in a launch accident just minutes after liftoff. I knew that all seven of the astronauts were dead. I knew that the "teacher in space" wasn't going to get there, and that a classroom of students had to be devastated by that realization. Many, many classrooms, but one in particular.

I watched the footage of the liftoff, now splayed in endless grisly loops on every network - all of which had previously declined to show the launch live and interrupt really important stuff like "Good Morning America." I watched as the flame bloomed out from a Solid Rocket Booster joint, impinging on the huge external fuel tank, and said, "That's what killed them. What the hell caused that failure?" I watched the Satan's horns of the SRB exhaust tracks as they trailed up and away from the epicenter of the blast. And then I watched it all again.

Over and over.

Later I discovered that the engineers at Morton Thiokol had tried to get the launch scrubbed, knowing the problems that cold weather caused in the O-ring joint seals of the SRBs, but they had been told to "take off their engineer hats and put on their manager hats" in order to make a launch decision. The launch had been delayed too many times, and President Reagan would be making his State of the Union address that night, with a call to Crista McAuliffe - Teacher in Space.

I decided right then that I didn't ever want to be a goddamned manager.

I also found out later that the crew, at least most of them, probably survived the destruction of the Challenger, and were alive and aware all the way to impact in the Atlantic. I like to hope not, but facts are sometimes ugly things.

And I wondered if NASA could regain the spirit, professionalism, and devotion to excellence it'd had during the race to the moon - and doubted it severely. As I said, NASA has become just another government bureacracy, more interested in expanding its budget and not making waves than in the visceral excitement and attention to minute detail that space exploration should inspire. (I'm speaking of the upper-level management, and many of the lower-level drones. I'm quite certain that there are still hundreds of people there still dedicated to the dream. They're just shackled and smothered by the career bureaucrats and the nine-to-fivers who punch the clock and wait for retirement.)

Anyway, all this is leading to a blog I found while perusing my sitemeter links tonight. GM's Corner, which linked to me last month, has a recurring "new blogs" post. This month's entry is Dr. Sanity, the blog of Dr. Pat Santy - who happened to be the flight surgeon for the Challenger mission. She has a post up about that day, and it's well worth the read: Challenger - A Flight Surgeon Remembers.

Highly recommended.

And if you want to read something even more inspiring, I strongly recommend Bill Whittle's essay Courage, about the Columbia disaster. Warning: it gets dusty towards the end.

Goodbye, Glenn Frey

A perfect day, the sun is sinking low
As evening falls the gentle breezes blow
The time we shared went by so fast
Just like a dream we knew it couldn't last

But I'd do it all again if I could somehow
But I must be leaving soon, it's your world now

It's your world now, my race is run
I'm moving on like the setting sun
No sad goodbyes, no tears allowed
You'll be alright, it's your world now

Even when we are apart
You'll always be in my heart
When dark clouds appear in the sky
Remember true love never dies

But first a kiss, one glass of wine
Just one more dance while there's still time
My one last wish, someday you'll see
How hard I tried and how much you meant to me

It's your world now, use well the time
Be part of something good, leave something good behind
The curtain falls, I take my bow
That's how it's meant to be, it's your world now
It's your world now, it's your world now

He left a lot of good behind.

I'm tired of all these deaths.

Eulogy

Here's the eulogy I gave for my Mom at her memorial service Saturday:

Thank You All

I appreciate the notes of sympathy and condolence my last post (and the associated FB post) have drawn.  Thanks to all of you.  It's really appreciated.

She's Gone

Blogging will be even more sparse than usual.  Mom passed away this evening.  She was at home, and passed quietly.  Her last two surviving siblings had traveled from Virginia to see her. They got there in time.

Take care, Mom.  We'll miss you.

Goodbye, Farewell, and Thanks for All the Joy...

Author Terry Pratchett has passed, and reader GOF has left an excellent eulogy to the man in my quotes, which I shall reproduce here:

"I would like my pudding now nurse. And then I think I'd like to... write... something... I don't remember what."

Standing in the corner, he waits. The sand slowly flows, but it nears its end. The old man still glows, as thousands of threads spread away from him.

SQUEAK.

I AGREE. IT IS A SHAME TO SEE HIM THIS WAY.

SQUEAK.

NO. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN.... BUT I CANNOT WAIT TO ASK HIM HOW IT ALL ENDS.

The old man looks up, through them at first... and then he sees them. For once, the smile on the hooded figure's skull is genuine.

"I... I remember you. The anth... ant..."

ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION.

"Yes, that. We knew each other?"

ONCE. AND WILL AGAIN, SIR.

He so rarely said it, and these feelings... remembering his young apprentice, and beloved daughter. The beautiful child they have.

"There... is a girl, yes?"

SHE IS SPEAKING TO THE AUDITORS, SIR. THEY ARE UNWILLING TO LISTEN.

"Well then. You know what they say, two things you cannot avoid. Taxes and..." He looks into the fiery blue eyes, and becomes aware.

SQUEAK.

"Quite right. Is it time already? I have so much left to do."

YOU HAVE GIVEN ALL YOU CAN SIR.

"No, not cancer. Alzheimers."

I AM AWARE.

"So, where is the boy? I remember a boy."

CARRIAGE ACCIDENT.

"Ahh. Never much trusted cars. Or horses."

THEY GET YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

"Must I?"

SOON. BUT WE MAY SIT HERE AWHILE.

SQUEAK.

DO YOU HAVE ANY BISCUITS?

"No. Shame really."

YES.

"Is it truly turtles?"

ALL THE WAY DOWN. I HAVE SEEN THEM.

"Ahh. I would love to see it. Perhaps a small trip before?"

IT WOULD BE MY PLEASURE.

"The light is slower there... and there's a monkey...."

ORANGUTAN. SAME PRINCIPLE.

"Yes... will they remember me?"

SQUEAK.

"What was that? I could not hear you."

HE SAYS WE WILL, SIR.

"I never much liked the trouble people had with you. You seem like a nice fellow."

I HAVE MY DAYS.

"Don't we all?"

SOME LESS THAN OTHERS.

"Is it quick?"

YES. AND I BROUGHT THE SWORD. CEREMONY DICTATES IT.

"Ahh. How about a cup of tea?"

I WOULD ENJOY IT. DO YOU PLAY CHESS?

"No. how about checkers?"

And so they sat, two old friends regaling each other, and though the old man could not remember all of the details, the cloaked man and his rat filled him in, when it was needed.

--

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett, 1948-2015

Stolen from /tg/ on 4chan years back and came to me via FB.

• 

I Feel Like I've Been Through This Already....

"Amazing Grace" on bagpipes always makes me cloud up.


And this image says a great deal: