It is time to fight back

Fuck Origins Game Fair. Fuck ConCarolinas. Fuck John Ward. Fuck Whitney (the strix) Beltran. May they all rot in a festering pool of maggots. They should all be sodomized with a ricin coated cactus.

Mad Genius Club

Almost a month to the day when it was announced John Ringo would NOT be a Guest of Honor at ConCarolinas, Origins Gaming Fair decided it wanted to play too. First it announced Larry Correia would be its literary guest of honor. Then, very shortly after that, the invitation was revoked. All signs indicate the decision was made by one man, John Ward. It didn’t take long for the tidal wave of reaction to set in and, since then, Origins has done everything wrong in how it has handled the situation.

In fact, we very well may be watching the slow suicide of a con that decided to follow the saying, “Get woke, go broke.”

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Scott Pruitt’s Effort To Expose ‘Secret Science’ Has Environmentalists Scared Stiff

The only things in the government that should be secret are A) National Security Operations B) Ongoing Criminal Investigations – and those should be public as soon as the trial is complete or investigation is complete if no trial.

All research and rule making should be open and transparent to the public at all times.

PA Pundits - International

By Diane Katz ~

A proposed rule announced Tuesday by Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is intended to bring much-needed transparency to agency rule-making.

The environmental lobby is positively apoplectic about the proposal (naturally), even though it aligns perfectly with its long-held commitment to the public’s “right to know” principle.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt testifies before a House appropriations subcommittee on April 26, 2018. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters/Newscom)

The proposed regulation would require the EPA to ensure that the scientific data and research models “pivotal” to significant regulation are “publicly available in a manner sufficient for validation and analysis.”

Despite existing rules on government use of scientific research, federal agencies routinely mask politically driven regulations as scientifically-based imperatives. The supposed science underlying these rules is often hidden from the general public and unavailable for vetting by experts. But credible science and transparency are necessary elements of sound…

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The Convivial Codfish

My review of The Convivial Codfish by Charlotte MacLeod

 

 

At Christmastime in Boston, a thief targets the local scrooge.

The angry old men of the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish club celebrate yuletide doing what they do best: eating, drinking, and greeting the season of giving with a spirited ‘bah, humbug!’ Though well past sixty, Jem Kelling is a relative infant compared to some of the club’s elder statesmen, and he has waited decades to host their annual Christmas scowl. And during his first evening as Exalted Chowderhead, he is thrilled to find the wine abundant, the chowder superb, and the humbugs as lusty as ever. But as the night winds down, Jem is horrified to find that the ceremonial Codfish necklace has vanished — right off of his neck!

His nephew-in-law, art investigator Max Bittersohn, is convinced his new uncle was the victim of a practical joke. But when the old man takes a hip-snapping tumble, Max is forced to conclude that one of the scrooges is trying to perpetrate a deadly Christmas jeer.

Black Beauty

My review of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

 

 

Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse tells the life of a horse from being a young colt running carefree through the fields through his working days pulling a cab. Along the way he talks about his various masters and companion horses at each stop of his life. This edition contains a color watercolor print at the beginning and black and white sketches by Wesley Dennis at each chapter head.

The Bilbao Looking Glass

My review of Charlotte MacLeod’s The Bilbao Looking Glass

 

 

Sarah finds a strange mirror that, though unbroken, proves to be very bad luck

According to Max Bittersohn, he and Sarah Kelling have witnessed enough murder and unhappiness, so it’s high time they got married. And though Sarah hasn’t yet agreed to such drastic measures, she invites Max to summer with her at Ireson’s Landing. But they haven’t been in the house ten minutes when they stumble upon summer’s first mystery—a mint-condition, antique Spanish mirror that is tremendously rare and valuable. Sarah has never seen it before and she doesn’t know how it ended up in the summerhouse, but the sleuthing couple will soon find this looking glass to be more troublesome than anything Lewis Carroll ever invented. As the zany Kelling clan descends on Ireson’s Landing, Sarah and her beau try to uncover the mystery of the Bilbao looking glass—a quest that is disrupted when a vicious next-door neighbor is found hacked to death with a woodshed ax. By summer’s end, Sarah and Max will learn that some murders can be solved simply by looking in the mirror.

Descendants 2

This is my review of Descendants 2 the Junior Novel

 

Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay may be the children of terrible villains, but they’re fitting in amazingly well on Auradon.
Well, at least most of them are.

For Mal, the pressure to be royally perfect is too intense, so she returns to her rotten roots on the Isle of the Lost. But Mal soon finds that her archenemy, Uma, the daughter of Ursula, has taken her spot as self-proclaimed Princess of Evil. Even worse, Uma has a plan to destroy Auradon-and a gnarly gang of pirates to back her up!

It’s a classic battle between wicked and evil . . . and these kids are made for trouble.

Rights of Man

My review of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man

 

The Founding Father’s most influential work: an impassioned defense of democracy and revolution in the name of human rights.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

In Rights of Man, Founding Father of the United States Thomas Paine makes a compelling case in favor of the French Revolution. Written in response to Edmund Burke’s highly critical Reflections on the Revolution in France, its forceful rebuke of aristocratic rule and persuasive endorsement of self-government made it one of the most influential political statements in history. Paine asserts that human rights are not granted by the government but inherent to man’s nature. He goes on to argue that the purpose of government is to protect these natural rights, and if a government fails to do so, its people are duty-bound to revolution.

Originally published in two parts, in 1791 and 1792, Rights of Man was a popular sensation in the United States, while in England, its incendiary views were seen as a threat to the Crown. For its erudite prose and rigorous argumentation, it remains a classic text of political thought.

Dead Men’s Hearts

My review of Aaron Elkins’ novel Dead Men’s Hearts

An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first conundrum to rattle Gideon Oliver when he arrives in Egypt. There to appear in a documentary film, he expects an undemanding week of movie star treatment and a luxurious cruise up the Nile with his wife, Julie. But when Gideon discovers a tantalizing secret in the discarded bones—and violence claims a famous Egyptologist’s life—he is thrust into a spotlight of a different kind. Plying his calipers as the world’s foremost forensic anthropologist, Gideon’s investigation of the goings‑on leads him through the back alleys and bazaars of Cairo and deep into the millennia‑old tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

As the puzzle is painstakingly pieced together, Gideon will find that the identifying traits of a cunning killer are the same now as they were in the time of the pyramids: greed without guilt, lies without conscience . . . and murder without remorse.

Dead Men’s Hearts is the 8th book in the Gideon Oliver Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.