Letters to the Editor
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Please.
Somebody blow their nose like a moose to wake YKW up?
The nations corrupt CEO's will soon forget to wear socks.
The condition grows bad fast. Gravy stains will be on the shirts.
The old CEO's wear suspenders and will a CEO Snap suspenders?
Why? Because.
To wake Glenn
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@ LWM
'98 VTR 100F (Super Hawk) and a '93 Duc SS 900 and a '93 VFR 750
I would trade any of them for the BMW airhead trio I used to have- R60, R90 and R100s. I sold those when my wrists went out. After the operation I bought "sport" bikes. The only sport I've noticed is how much faster I'm get to suck on the tailpipe of the car in front of me. Where the hell did I think I was going? Also, my wife loved the R60 (toaster tank) and doesn't like the VFR, so she holds that over me constantly.
Up here the car drivers are, actually pretty good. They have saved my life many times, when I have made a bad decision like ignoring my motorcycle driving motto: "Leave no turn unstoned!"
Also the BMWs fixed a lot cheaper and stayed fixed. Ah! the bikes of yesteryear! What I wouldn't give for my Honda 350! Did I mention the lousy mileage all my bikes get? 25!
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Tidbits
Locally, we are are planning a vigil, and a reading of names. Also a printout of 4,000 small human figures to be sent to newspapers. Not anything to shake the earth, but something to encourage us to keep the faith.
@ drdave39
Oy! Just when I was swearing that I wasn't really a libertarian. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country always smelt a little of Mussolini to me. Even now, were I as gelded and responsible as adnoto has accused me of being, I'd believe that I was right about that.
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drdave39
What 'danes do not understand about SF is that the better authors spent an immense amount of time and effort to be at least plausible in their fiction.
It's damn near impossible to surprise fen with scientific developments, they have heard it all before..
Asimov predicted teh intertoobz in his short story "Hostess" in 1951, it was a single throwaway line. Analog computers weren't even a decade old at the time..
Clarke invented the communications satellite and didn't bother to patent it because he never dreamed it would become reality in his own lifetime.
Yes, I've read "Gulf"..
And then of course, there is "The Last Question"..
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html]
If you happen to read it (it's quite short) keep in mind it was written in 1956..
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After the operation...
"I bought "sport" bikes"
And if the lobotomy had been completely successful, I probably would have bought a Harley. I should sue for malpractice!
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And then there is of course, steampunk..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
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Jebbie - I saw that...
I'm really not that into pumps. I'm short, 5'1 3/4" (good guess the other day GC!), and anything over a 2" heel leaves me looking like an amateur on a pair of stilts.
So, it's mostly soccer shoes and muddy garden boots (today) for me with an occasional pair of nice heels for the even more rare night out.
Most of those pumps I mentioned are at least 3" or higher. ;->
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Don't be an ass
Heinlien was a Young Adult author for most of his career.
An ad hominem argument if I ever heard one..
You seem to specialize in those..
It's a statement of fact. I can't help it if your reading tastes run toward the juvenile. You do the math. From 1939 to 1958 is most of his career. I consider Sci-Fi something for the younger set. Especially when it has so called "libertarian themes".
1959–1960: the seminal years
Heinlein decisively ended his juvenile novels with likely the most controversial work in science fiction, the 1959 Starship Troopers, his personal riposte to leftist calls to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 to stop nuclear testing. "[Heinlein] called for the formation of the Patrick Henry League and spent the next several weeks writing and publishing his own polemic that lambasted 'Communist-line goals concealed in idealistic-sounding nonsense' and urged Americans not to become 'soft-headed.' ... Critics labeled Heinlein everything from a Nazi to a racist."
"'The "Patrick Henry" ad shocked 'em,' he wrote many years later. "Starship Troopers outraged 'em."
A coming-of-age story about duty, citizenship, and the role of the military in a free society, Starship Troopers resonates with modern concerns.[22] The book posits that suffrage be given only to those who have earned it through military or other arduous service, with no conscription. Fundamentally, Heinlein propounded that votes or political decisions are best made by individuals who have previously made decisions of conscience.
Middle period work, 1961–1973
From about 1961 (Stranger in a Strange Land) to 1973 (Time Enough for Love), Heinlein wrote some of his more libertarian novels (in terms of sexual mores). His work during this period explored his most important themes, such as individualism, libertarianism, and free expression of physical and emotional love. To some extent, the apparent discrepancy between these works and the more naïve themes of his earlier novels can be attributed to his own perception, which was probably correct, that readers and publishers in the 1950s were not yet ready for some of his more radical ideas. He did not publish Stranger in a Strange Land until some time after it was written, and the themes of free love and radical individualism are prominently featured in his long-unpublished first novel, For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs.[23] The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress tells of a war of independence of Lunar colonies, with significant commentary regarding the threat posed by any government — including a republic — to individual freedom.
Although Heinlein had previously written a few short stories in the fantasy genre, during this period he wrote his first fantasy novel, Glory Road, and in Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil, he began to mix hard science with fantasy, mysticism, and satire of organized religion. Critics William H. Patterson, Jr., and Andrew Thornton[24] believe that this is simply an expression of Heinlein's longstanding philosophical opposition to positivism. Heinlein stated that he was influenced by James Branch Cabell in taking this new literary direction. The next-to-last novel of this period, I Will Fear No Evil, is according to critic James Gifford "almost universally regarded as a literary failure," and he attributes its shortcomings to Heinlein's near-death from peritonitis.[25]
Then he "took an hiatus". After seven years he took it up again but he was never the same. He'd lost his stride. Maybe one decent effort:
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls