Around The Blogs 2014-07-20, Part 2

Here are the rest of my links from the past couple of weeks.  I put up most of them in Part 1 of this article this morning.

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CenTexTim dedicates a special song to his second ex-wife.

I've got some painful dental work due tomorrow, so his 'Sunday Funnies' this morning, dealing with dentists, was peculiarly appropriate.  This one in particular made me wince.

A man walks into the dentist's office and after the dentist examines him, he says, "that tooth has to come out. I'm going to give you a shot of Novocain and I'll be back in a few minutes."

The man grabs the dentist's arm, "no way. I hate needles I'm not having any shot!"

So the dentist says, "okay, we'll have to go with the gas."

The man replies, "absolutely not. It makes me very sick for a couple of days. I'm not having gas."

So the dentist steps out and comes back with a glass of water, "here," he says. "Take this pill."

The man asks "What is it?"

The doc replies, "Viagra."

The man looks surprised, "will that kill the pain?" he asks.

"No," replies the dentist, "but it will give you something to hang on to while I pull your tooth!"

More at the link.

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Bubblehead Les makes some good points about ammunition supply and stocking up, following a similar point I made last week.

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Francis Porretto discusses what he calls 'strifings' - the increased dissension within the US body politic caused by the migration of affairs from the private to the public forum.  Here's a brief excerpt.

Politics is strife. Every subject that becomes a political subject therefore becomes a battlefield as well.

It's not hard to see the dynamic. Let some subject be politicized: for example, the physical sustenance of persons who can't support themselves, a.k.a. "the poor." What follows from the decision that this is properly a responsibility of some government?

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Each of these [elements] will become a subject of contention in the polity that's been charged with the decisions. Given that a political decision inherently creates "winners" and "losers," we may expect the losers to fight to reverse the decision and the "winners" to labor to solidify and enlarge their gains.

Now apply that dynamic to a society in which nothing is deemed a private matter -- where all personal choices and all modes and manners of interaction with others, regardless of motivations are considered political, at least potentially. Over what shall we not quarrel?

There's more at the link.  Thought-provoking reading.

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Wirecutter posted his rules of civility - what he expects from others in terms of respect for himself, his family and his property.  He sometimes comes across as abrasive, but I expect that if I didn't get similar civility from others, I might get a bit that way, too.

He followed that post a couple of days later with a link to a theory of social interaction I'd heard before - 'The Rules Of Sewage'.  It was a fairly well-known meme in Southern Africa during my earlier years.  I was glad to be reminded of it.

Both articles are well worth reading, and pondering.  Why is it that we've moved so far away from the norms of civility in which we were raised?  I know that if I behaved less than civilly towards anyone, unless they thoroughly deserved it, my Dad would have administered a thorough thrashing to remind me of my place and the standards he required me to observe.  Nowadays that would get him arrested:  but frankly, I think I'm a better person for it.  (Yes, I know, that's a matter of opinion . . . )

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The Lonely Libertarian links to an article about new ACORN affiliates in the border States.  Taking it in tandem with the article from the Silicon Graybeard linked in Part 1 of this article, it certainly looks as if the whole swarm of illegal aliens crossing our borders has been orchestrated by the same assholes that were trying to organize millions of fraudulent votes a couple of elections ago.  Looks like leopards don't change their spots when they're exposed - they just go underground and emerge with a different disguise.

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That's all from my meanderings around the blogosphere over the past couple of weeks.  More soon!

Peter