50th

I was drafted into the United States Army exactly fifty years ago today, on March 27, 1968. There was a war going on, and right then the Army needed more bodies: that week's haul of inductees was the largest haul to date, tens of thousands of poor fucks who weren't in college (maybe they couldn't afford it, maybe they weren't smart enough to go or smart enough to stay in once they got there, like me, maybe they'd just graduated and lost their student deferment) or couldn't get a doctor to write a note, or avoided the draft in any of the many other ways creative young men took advantage of at the time.

There I went, after a day at the induction center in Oakland, flying off, drafted, on the first jet plane I'd ever ridden in, flying up north to Fort Lewis.

Annals of Public Service

Nancy McFadden dies

A great talent, a good run, shortened.

Zeus As In Seduce

I,
oh I, can turn a gray sky blue,
you see, I can make it rain when I want it to
oh I,
can build a castle from a single grain of sand
you see, I can make a ship sail on dry land.
Ain't happy am I with all the powers that I possess,
girl, you're the key to my happiness,
and I can't get next to you, babe
can't get next to you.
I've been trying a long time
I don't know what to do
Oooooo
Let me say,
I,
I can fly like a bird in the sky
I can buy anything that money can buy
Oh I,
can turn a river into a raging fire
I can live forever if I so desire
Ain't happy am I with all the powers that I possess,
oh, you're the key, 'cause
I can't get next to you, babe
can't get next to you.
I've been trying for such a long time
…

Let me tell you that
I,
I can turn back the hands of time
you better believe I can
Oh I, you see, I can make the seasons change
just by waving my hand
Let me say,
I,
I can change anything from old to new, girl,
oh I, all the things I want to do the most, you see, I'm unable to do unimportant, all these things that I'm trying to do the other day, girl,
you see, I can't get next to you, baby
can't get next to you
I've been tryin a long time...
oh if somebody'd only help me...
oh, let me, let me go...
whooooo...
I,
I've been working on it baby
I've been thinking about it you see,
I've been trying to call you all day long but, you see,
I don't have your phone number, honey
I,
I've been thinking about you baby something awful,
you see, sometime I feel like I want to moan about it
and I just don't know what to say
and I say
Mmmmmm...

Larry Kudlow's Drug-Addled Career of Publicly Misunderstanding Economics Is Rewarded, As These Matters So Often Are

This message is brought to you as a public service.

Steven Hawking, January 8, 1942 – March 14, 2018

On his own terms, pretty often right. Now departed.

To Hawking's annoyance, his much-checked calculations produced findings that contradicted his second law of black hole mechanics, which claimed black holes could never get smaller, and supported Bekenstein's reasoning about their entropy. His results, which Hawking presented from 1974, showed that black holes emit radiation, known today as Hawking radiation, which may continue until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.

Politics Is Sharp Practices

The established facts of Russian meddling in the 2016 election were the causal basis that prompted the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into the matter early last year.

Tonight the Committee's Republicans have ruled that the established facts are not evidence, and wrapped up their work.

Whose Fair Lady Was That Again, International Women's Day Edition

On the Street Where You Live, the song of a stone stalker.

When she mentioned how her aunt bit off the spoon,

She completely done me in.

And my heart went on a journey to the moon,

When she told about her father and the gin

And I never saw a more enchanting farce

Than that moment when she shouted

"move your bloomin' " ....

I have often walked down this street before;

But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.

All at once am I

Several stories high.

Knowing I'm on the street where you live

Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?

Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?

Does enchantment pour

Out of ev'ry door?

No, it's just on the street where you live!

And oh! The towering feeling

Just to know somehow you are near.

The overpowering feeling

That any second you may suddenly appear!

People stop and stare.

They don't bother me.

For there's no where else on earth that I would rather be.

Let the time go by,

I won't care if I

Can be here on the street where you live.

Music by Lerner and Loewe, 1956

In Like A Lion And Out Like A Light

The thing of it is that getting Steele to spread the corrosive notion that the Russian Government had vetoe'd Trump's choice of Mitt Romney to be US Secretary of State is a perfect move for Russian policy whether or not the notion itself has a grain of truth to it. Once the seeds of such equivocalities are planted in the "proper soil," for which in this instance we will metaphorically substitute Mr. Steele, the transmission of those seeds by Mr. Steele will certainly serve to disrupt our polity, true or no.

If it can be taken as a given that post-Soviet Russian foreign policy includes a strain of sour-grapesist anti-Americanism, then this cleverly crafted imputation about Trump's willingness to do Putin's bidding is an enormous victory for Vlad's side.

Winter's Bonus

I didn't look in on the Olympics in real time, so I'm thankful for the folks at Botnik for taking a run at the event with their Predictive Writing app to supply me with what things might have been like over there if I'd bothered to.