PEOPLE PLACEMENT: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT August 18, 2010
Sometimes I wonder whether it would unethical (or merely a bit
sleazy) to do with my novels what most studios routinely do with their
movies.
In the wonderful world of cinema, it’s called “product placement”.
Understand that nothing in the movies ever happens accidentally. There
is no territory on this Earth more tightly planned, closely guarded,
or diligently groomed than what you see within a single frame of film.
Any time there’s a billboard in a movie, or an ad on the side of a
bus, or a big truck with some …
SALT WATER IN MY VEINS August 11, 2010
One of my more interesting Internet correspondents told me and his other online friends today that he was taking a brief vacation at Big Sur. It filled me with an amiable envy, a deep longing, and got me thinking about my life with the sea.
I was born in landlocked Denver, but, thanks to an Air Force dad, I grew up in various places around North America, most of them with access to, or right on, water of some kind. The earliest was a lovely house we rented on Lake McQueenie, Texas when I was in first grade. (We …
FIELD MANUAL FOR THE OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF THE M1993-2010 UTOPIAN NOVEL, _PALLAS_ August 9, 2010
My Prometheus Award-winning action-adventure novel _Pallas_ is
about to be reissued by Phoenix Pick and will soon be available at
Amazon.com in dead-tree form, as well as in electronic download
formats.
Sad to say, we are now living in a dreary, hopeless era when the
survival of America — and of Western Civilization itself — is in
doubt. I predicted this development in _Pallas_ seventeen long years
ago.
The arrogant, elitist, dictatorial left threatens us with more of
the same — presumably until we are reduced to the “sustainable” level …
A GUN FOR BUFFALO August 1, 2010
That’s it: I have made up my mind. In November of next year
(provided that there _is_ a next year), I’m going to hunt and kill a
buffalo. I know where I’m going to do it (in Wyoming), I know how much
it will cost (much less than I thought), and I’ve always wanted to do
it.
Wikipedia says “bison” and “buffalo” are equally correct, with
philological seniority going to the latter. The animals can stand 6′6″
tall, weigh 2500 pounds, and the “woods” variety are the largest wild
cattle in North America. The …
THINKING ABOUT CHARACTER July 27, 2010
For the next few days I will be carefully rereading my 1993 novel
_Pallas_, which I didn’t know at the time would become the foundation
for the four-volume “Ngu Family Saga” I’m in the middle of writing
now.
I’m doing this because Phoenix Pick will be rereleasing _Pallas_
in a few weeks and it’s necessary to check the proofs. It’s actually a
little more complicted than simply reading the book. This time, my
lovely and talented wife Cathy is reading the proofs to me from the
computer, while I follow along in the …
REGARDING PROP. 19
Dear Richard Lee and friends,
With regard to Proposition 19, I wish I felt free to help you, but I despise the idea of justifying the “legalization” of marijuana — or of anything else — on the basis of the revenue it would generate for government. There was no Constitutional justification for outlawing marijuana in the first place, and its cultivation, sale, and possession are all Ninth Amendment rights.
I understand your motivation in conducting this campaign. Understand me, that taxation is slavery. Taxation is the fuel of war. Offering the State something …
_ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO_ July 25, 2010
From _The Libertarian Enterprise_
Number 580, July 25, 2010
A few days ago, in a peculiar sort of sidebar to an argument I seem to be having with a handful of trendy lefties who resent the fact that I insist on ownership of what I write, somebody named Rick over on a blog at the Mises.org site decided it was time to open another front.
I would post the URL here, but this frigging software won’t let me do it.
Responding to an article of mine that had recently been published in The Libertarian Enterprise concerning Intellectual Property Rights, or, more precisely, to …
THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW July 14, 2010
Immediately upon passage of this measure, every act, bill, decree,
directive, edict, executive or administrative order, initiative, law,
mandate, ordinance, proclamation, regulation, resolution, rule, or statute,
promulgated or enacted by any agency or any other part of the United
States government between January 19, 2009 and January 21, 2013 or the
end of the Barack Obama Administration, shall be null and void.
LETTER TO GLENN BECK & COMPANY June 17, 2010
Gents –
I support your desire to keep youth baseball fully competitive in nature. May I suggest a procedure by which it can also be uniquely valuable to these kids as professional players of he future?
Every inning, rotate the defensive positions. In the first inning, a given kid pitches. In the second inning, he catches. In the third, he plays first base, and so on, through all nine positions. All the other kids rotate in the same order.
I thought of this idea because I got sick of watching “my” team, the …
LOOKING FOR BURKE June 9, 2010
The 1960s were bleak years for anyone interested in individual
freedom, although many of us in the libertarian movement got off to a
serious start in that decade of Lyndon Baines Johnson and his “Great
Society”.
One of the few bright spots in the dark and terrible wilderness of
television was a series of lectures given by an individual who seemed
to stand with one foot on the libertarian side of a divide that was
considerably narrower back then, and the other on the conservative
side.
His name was …
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