San Diego Local Order of Bloggers

2014 podcast: "The Vikings" with Leslie Eastman & friends

Silvio Canto, Jr.
7/26/2026 10:03:00 PM

      Perhaps you've been watching "The Vikings" on The History Channel.    It is a challenging and complex topic but the series is very entertaining.  The series was written by Michael Hirst of Elizabeth & The Tudors.Back in 2014, Leslie Eastman joined me for a discussion of "The Vkings".  Barry Jacobsen discussed the history, myth, and legends based on The History Channel's new series, focused on famed raider Ragnar Lothbrok.  Then, Thrand Godfrey discussed the weapons, tactics, battles and his video projects on the subject.Leslie wrote a great post about the show and the series.  Check it out    P.S.  Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos.[...]

July 27, 1940: Hello Bugs Bunny

Silvio Canto, Jr.
7/26/2026 10:02:00 PM

                We take a minute today to say happy birthday to Bugs Bunny:    The Warner Bros. icon everybody knows and loves first appeared on July 27, 1940 in Wild Hare, a cartoon short directed by Tex Avery. The clip features a wily Bugs Bunny outsmarting Elmer Fudd, who hunts for a silly wabbit in vain. Warner Bros. made several rabbit cartoons in earlier years, but they were not the same as the distinctive cotton-tailed Bugs featured in July of 1940.    Bugs Bunny was an instant star, He became one of the worlds best-known cartoon characters, starring in more than 175 films, receiving three Oscar nominations, one Academy Award, and appearing in comic[...]

The Jews

K T Cat
7/24/2026 7:36:16 AM
This is awesome.   

Blowing It In Los Angeles

K T Cat
7/23/2026 10:08:23 AM

Dig this.  NEW: Five water main breaks in just one week are raising new questions about the state of L.A.s aging infrastructure.The biggest: a 110-year-old, 36-inch pipe that ruptured in West Hollywood, sending 17 million gallons of water through the Sunset Strip, flooding businesses, pic.twitter.com/S327U84c42 Matthew Seedorff (MattSeedorff) July 20, 2026   Now check out this sweet thing from my backyard.An OctobubblerYou see, here in California, we've not built a new reservoir in decades. Some of our reservoirs can no longer be filled to capacity because they've not been maintained. Our population has increased substantially. Our water prices are insane. Central Valley farmers have gone out of business because[...]

Why does America keep winning?

W.C. Varones
12/12/2025 8:48:00 AM

X:          Yes. But also, America's abundance of natural resources and history of fortuitous developments kinda seems like God shed His grace on thee.        Capitalism and divine providence are like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. 

Inflation is always and everywhere a progressive phenomenon

W.C. Varones
11/13/2025 9:31:17 AM
Excerpt from a text conversation with a young "democratic socialist":DS: Every time the US has become progressive, the right wing and the centrists said the policies were too unrealistic, but the civil rights movement still passed, and FDR is currently looked at as one of the best presidents of the past hundred yearsWC: Some times the right wing and the centrists are right. LBJ's Great Society has trapped millions in multigenerational welfare dependency. Obamacare has made health care unaffordable and is bankrupting both families and the US governmentLBJ's Great Society (and the Vietnam War) was what forced the US government to break the gold standard under Nixon, leading to all subsequent inflation crises. Inflation and all[...]

What Ails Us - But First Some Background

B-Daddy
4/6/2025 5:10:10 PM
Someone close to me asked me to give an overall take on the current state of politics and the prospects for our future. I thought to answer, but first want to explain how I analyze the political landscape.Here are some key principles that are worth repeating because we seem to forget them.1. A chicken is an eggs way of making another egg.      To influence the the size and numbers of your chickens, manage egg production and consumption. Demographics are destiny.2. Eggs are rare, sperm is plentiful.      Combined with 1 above, the most important variable component of demographic destiny is female reproductive behavior and strategies.3. Testosterone confers greater strength and aggression[...]

Bezos vs Burnham - Robber Baron vs Managers

B-Daddy
1/26/2022 8:32:44 PM
 Well not really; and not just because Burnham isn't a household name. James Burnham authored key insights on "managerialism" and predicted its eventual triumph over capitalism in his 1941 book "The Managerial Revolution," summarized here, but skip ahead 5 minutes (this is a great podcast). George Orwell provided this summary in 1943.Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralized society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers,[...]

And Where a Salon Scribe Gets a Tad Out of His Swim Lane

Dean
11/11/2015 9:22:09 AM
Over the weekend, Salon writer, DAVID MASCIOTRA, caused quite a dust-up on social media with his own salute to the troops ahead of Veterans Day . Here is the headline, followed by the sub-headline and then followed by the first paragraph of the piece:You dont protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracyIt's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must endPut a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as heroes.If you desire, you can read it[...]

Football rules changes...? You've come to the right place

Dean
1/31/2015 2:04:56 PM

    Theres no denying that over the last few decades most all on-field rules changes made by the NFL have been exercises in increasing offense and scoring. This has created an arms race in a sense where the pendulum swings back and forth between the NFL offenses and NFL defenses whereby the offenses get aided by rules changes and the defenses counter with a combination of innovative schemes and superior athletes. To wit, for years, its been conventional wisdom that the best athletes in the world were in the NBA. Now days, we would add NFL defensive backs and possibly outside linebackers/rush ends into that mix (you dont think dudes like Richard Sherman, Darrelle Revis and J.J. Watt can ball a little?).But[...]

Starship Flight 13 Success Sets Stage for First Orbital Attempt by SpaceX 

Leslie Eastman

Mission achieved goals of deploying Starlink V3 satellites and relighting a single engine in space.The post Starship Flight 13 Success Sets Stage for First Orbital Attempt by SpaceX first appeared on Legal Insurrection.