Hazing is always nasty, and Russian military hazing has perhaps always been bad. But this…. (also an expired- link Moscow Times story): “The Defense Ministry said Thursday that it would close the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy, where a brutal New Year’s Eve hazing resulted in a conscript having his legs and genitals amputated.” (Snip– no, let’s …
Russia Post # 1
The former soldier turned defense writer and novelist, Ralph Peters, once mentioned that Russia would always break your heart. This may be in part because there is so much potential there, and there are so many obstacles to reaching it. For an instance of the first: despite past horrors and the existence of places like …
More Links
From Tech Central Station: is your mind stuck in 1968? I try to be open to ideas, whether they come from left or right– have linked to TCS, Orion, 2Blowhards, Sailer, Derbyshire, the NY andLA Times(es), and more. But I often find conservatives (of a certain kind anyway) and libertarians more open to heretical ideas …
A Winter Braise
(First Published in Three Martini Lunch). Sometimes a phrase will inspire you. I was reading a really bad issue of Esquire, including incompetent food writing (apparently their restaurant critic thinks that gizzards are “chicken assholes” and that kidneys are inedible) when I came upon a simple recipe for braised lamb shanks. The phrase was “use …
Recipes
I have been recipe- blogging at Roseann’s Three Martini Lunch. I will always post these things there first, but will eventually move them here. First, a response to Matt Miller’s request for a jackrabbit– read “hare”– recipe: “We eat lots of hare, as the dogs allow. The thing to remember is that they are HARES, …
Catchup: Blogwatch and Newswatch
One of the things I do when I am busy (I am currently revising a novel, starting another, cutting a lot of firewood, and continuing to help translate an 1865 book from Siberia– apologies to correspondents as well) is just pile up interesting references that I find in the evening. So bear with me as …
Quest for an Aussie
My wife and I have been on a search the last few weeks. Our favorite breed of dog is Australian Shepherd. We have had two as pets and they were both wonderful – very intelligent and very socialized to people. Osa (1983-1999) was a blue-merle female we bought for $10 at a ranch near Bailey, …
Horses and Weeds: To Blame or Not to Blame
I saw this interesting but ultimately frustrating piece in the LA Times a few days ago. For years horses have been blamed as part of the problem for the spread of non-native plants and noxious weeds into National Parks and Wilderness Areas in this part of the world. The reasoning goes that horses eat these …
Surviving
Michael Blowhard tells a moving story of being free from cancer after surviving cancer for five years. Read, please, and raise a glass. Also on 2Blowhards, Friedrich posts on the innate sadism and nastiness of the Classical Romans. I never did quite understand why the culture that gave us the Colosseum is held up as …
Some Critics’ Movie Columns
I have been following the noise over Brokeback Mountain with some amusement, knowing whatwever they say it will all make Annie Proulx money. Suffice to say that I owe her many things, not least that by teaching me to TEACH writing she also taught me much about analyzing writing and so made mine better. I …