Last Wednesday, a 14-year-old guy riding an e-motorcycle (not an e-bicycle that has pedals) on a hiker-biker trail on which e-motorcycles are not allowed, rode through an intersection with a 2-lane road, struck the side of a full-size pickup truck and died in the hospital. This was in Severna Park, MD.

14 years old.

I've had some of these e-motorcycles ride toward and come from behind me on that trail. They are as big as small ICE-powered motorcycles (125cc or 175cc) and if someone hit you with one, you could be badly hurt or killed.

I don't know how these things can be controlled but you can't have anyone, adults or kids, riding these heavy two-wheelers at speed where people are walking and running.

It's a damn shame what happened here. No one under 16 should be allowed to ride these things and then they should only be ridden on roads, not sidewalks or hiking trails.

PS I've seen some adults riding too fast on these things, so it isn't just teens, either.

It's hard to put into words how powerfully Jimi Hendrix's music came across to us young people in the late 1960s. But I watched a video of his performance at Woodstock and he played a more or less impromptu jam, as he told the crowd the band would be doing, that was just genius. I don't know of any other word that could do his playing justice. I've never heard anyone play like that.

Even though I'm a pilot, sometimes it seems we ought to stop all this damn flying around and start using electric trains for long-distance travel.

Sophie Scott-Brown is a speaker, writer, and teacher on anarchy in the UK.

In an interview, she said that one book that had really gotten her more into anarchy was David Graeber's "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology."

This utterly delighted me because this book got me to thinking far more about anarchy, too!

Graeber's small book (he called it a "pamphlet") has led me to question everything we call "democracy" but also has led me to rethink how we look at history and past societies and people.

I really wish more people would read this. Even if you are not "into" anarchy, this will make you think about a lot of things that are being done today and whether or not they should be rethought or ditched altogether.

Hour walk near a swamp this afternoon, took a little detour to a footbridge I rarely visit. Peering over the railing, I saw something big moving in the swampwater below me. It was a 2-foot long snapping turtle. I watched it climb over a beaver dam into deeper water. As it sank under the surface, a muskrat came over another part of the dam! Further along near another part of the swamp were 3 mud turtles and a frog on a log. But, wait! There's more! Loping back along the trail, I made a hasty halt to allow not one, but two 2-foot black snakes (rat snakes?) to cross in front of me. What a wild life.

A poster here slammed me by calling me a David Graeber "stan." First, that's really kind of a compliment! Second, I don't have to agree with everything Graeber came up with to find much of what he said and wrote to be at the very least worth thinking twice about. It was Graeber's astonishing way of seeing into things around us and then making clear how those things work and what they do to us, good and bad, that makes me want to keep reading his work. "Revolutions in Reverse" and "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" are stunning in the way he uncovers a lot of what most of us take or took for granted for most of our lives.

Now and then, I think about the researcher into deep human history who said that all of modern-day Europe about 50,000 years ago or so was populated by about 1000 humans. He said you have to think about that, about how it must have been that no matter where any group went in Europe then, it was empty! You could go off in any direction you liked and there would be no people at all there. What must that have been like?

Steven Miller has made the same argument about "how the world works" as Sepulveda did centuries ago. That argument is "Whoever has the power to overcome everyone else has the right to use that power to overcome everyone else." Sepulveda used it to excuse horrific atrocities against indigenous people by Spanish "conquistadores" in what became "America." Some guy named Adolf Hitler used that argument too. It's a favorite of all sorts of monsters and criminals. What always astonishes me about the people who make that argument is that they assume that they are the ones with that kind of power and that, somehow, they are entitled to use that power any way they like. It never seems to cross their mind that the monsters they create will someday turn on them.

Peter Thiel is quoted as saying "democracy is a failed experiment." Even if that is true, that does not mean the only other choice is full-blown fascism as seems to be his argument.
One may be anti-democracy and also be anti-fascist. This is because democracy is more along the line towards fascism than it is towards anarchy. That line shows anarchy is the true opposite of fascism, not democracy. Fascism is utterly anti-anarchy and anarchy is utterly non-fascist. This because, with anarchy, there is no power structure to be taken over by fascism. The power is, as David Graeber put it, horizontal rather than vertical. There is no "hierarchy" to be taken over. It just isn't there.

There's a term "sociopathy" that some claim is outdated. But what is wrong with 47 is not a "disorder." About 1-2% of all people are like this. They do not feel the kind of emotional pain most of us feel thus they are unable to empathize with us when we feel such pain. But also there's self-aggrandizement on a huge scale and that is not merely ego, it is a part of their brain and it is not able to be changed. What is really wrong is that we've allowed ourselves to be "governed" by a system that invites people like 47 to come in and grab everything they can. So, the problem is not 47 alone, it is a system that, like all systems, is failed and needs to be gotten away from. As one person put it, "The only good system is a sound system."

Whoa, while Hitler, er, 47 is running around threatening and bombing, Canada is making some deft moves that are not going to go over well with 47 and his gang of plundering thieves at all. It's easy to say, "47 is stupid," he's not, really, but he is so overwhelmed by his own greed that he ends up being wildly short-sighted about things smarter people would have seen and acted upon. As the term "Anti-social personality disorder" shows, people like him are truly unable to be cooperative. Their brains don't have that kind of wiring unlike most people.

Many years ago, at a Maryland airport, a very strange aircraft taxied onto the ramp. It had a pivoting wing meaning its wings rotated in response to turbulence. This pivoting wing allowed the fuselage to remain stable while the wings themselves rotated during flight in turbulent air. This meant pilots and passengers in the fuselage didn't feel any turbulence. I spoke with the pilot who seemed to be quite comfortable with the flying characteristics of this airplane. With the heating climate, turbulence at all altitudes is getting worse. (I flew jets for more than 20 years and was surprised to learn that turbulence is now getting stronger even up to altitudes 40,000 feet and higher). Maybe it's time to look at this design again?

So-called "religion" is political ideology that claims there is some sort of magical "authority" that sets its tenets beyond challenge or question. This is nonsense, of course. Any opinion may be challenged or questioned. The claimed "authority" is the person making the claim. Once you see this, that's the end of "religion." It just fades away. But don't overlook the emotional power of being raised in any sort of "religious" state: Often, cutting away from "religion" means cutting ties with family and loved ones and that is not as easy as it may seem. Still, it must be faced. Once all those "fences" that hemmed you in are gone, the freedom, richness, and color is simply wonderful.

Today, my GP asked me why I was wearing a mask (N95). He thought maybe I was seriously ill. I told him I always wear a mask in pharmacies and medical offices. To me, it's simple: Where are the sick people?

It is upsetting to read or hear that the "US" deported someone illegally or is taking some action or another that is illegal. It's not the "US," it's 47 and his gang of thieves and looters. Reporters should make it clear that the people who live in this so-called "country" are not doing this nor are they okay with it.

I have had trouble with people who call themselves "atheists" or "theists." When you claim that something does or does not exist, how can you do that if you cannot even say in plain, simple language what that "something" is? If you are unable, yourself, to do this, then what are you even talking about? I once asked a young woman who was talking about "god" what a "god" was. She replied, "I don't know." At least that's an honest answer.

These are my mom's kitchen knives, which I learned to cook with. They're recycled saws: the steel is from the sawblades and the wood is from the handles. They were made in the Yupik village of Kongiganak, where my parents lived and taught for 8 years. The shape is intended for skinning and butchering in addition to slicing and chopping. They're great for scraping, scooping up and transporting ingredients, etc. When I switched to using western and asian type knives, I had to unlearn some habits, and I still sometimes fall back to more of a rocking motion than you're "supposed" to. These have been in daily use for about 50 years, and they've still got a lot more years in them.

One of my brothers went to "chiropractic school" many, many years ago. He then had offices where he did something that he called "chiropractic." To this day, I have no idea what that is. As far as I can tell, it's a money-making scheme. When I read about the ideas behind "chiropractic," they are bizarre. They are not based on medical science at all. The best I can say is maybe a little bit of physical therapy is what they do. But there is no real science behind it. He keeps calling himself "doctor," although I've told him he is not a doctor. There is no such thing as a "doctor of chiropractic." It's not that far from saying you're a doctor because you have a PhD in astrology.

I read where this "unitary executive power" is a legal theory. What a joke. It is not a "theory," it's a brazen claim that the Constitution allows a dictatorship. Shut up about "theory" you fascist, thieving bastards.

Here and there are posts about violent action being taken against what's happening in the former "United States." I am against this. Non-violent campaigns end up being overall far more successful than violent actions and what comes after tends to be more stable and peaceful, too. Chenoweth and Stephan make the case for this in their book, "Why Civil Resistance Works." PS I was startled to learn that the violent Resistance in WWII against the Nazis was pretty much a failure while non-violent campaigns were more successful. This goes against the popular narrative.