James Lileks has a great little piece up over at Pajamas Media: ‘Question Authority’? Dude, That’s sooo 2008

. . . and then answers his own question.

My preferred comparison models for what Obama-Pelosi-Reid are doing to this country have been Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and, most horrifying of all, California.

But  Richard Rahn makes a strong case for Argentina. Check it out.

. . . to bring you a lame excuse.

Dear readers, I’m in the final few days of working on the first draft of the new book. Thus the utter neglect of the blog the last few weeks.

I’ll resume blathering with feckless abandon in a few days. (wondering . . . if someone is not “feckless” does that mean they possess ample “feck”?)

Much to tell. Can’t wait to tell the story of how an intractable two-year-old $2,000 problem of mine was resolved for me last week, by this thing.

Plus I’ll be rolling out a new approach to presenting content here on the Blather blog. Thanks for your patience and patronage.

In the meantime, ponder this.

A long-time friend of blather has launched a new blog focused extensively, though not exlusively, on theology and on issues surrounding militant Islam and the West’s slow surrender to creeping sharia.

He’s blogging anonymously due to the controversial nature of some of the subject matter, but I know him to be absurdly smart, well read, and a good man. Check out Jithran if you’re so inclined.

So . . . my Macbook died on Easter Sunday. Just up and died. Hard drive failure. I would have taken more time to savor the irony except I was, and am, on a bone crunching book manuscript delivery deadline, so I was busy gnashing my teeth and rending my clothing.

On the bright side, about a month ago I had subscribed to an online backup service that backed up all my new and changed files every night. Upon making my awful discovery Sunday morning, I grabbed my wife’s laptop and steered her browser to the backup site. There, sitting pretty as you please, was all of my data, including the book chapter I had sweat drops of blood to finish the night before.

Took the Macbook to the Apple Genius bar Monday afternoon and had my machine back in my hands with a shiny new drive installed by the end of the next day.

It’s probably going to take to biggest part of two days to get everything restored, and I simply can’t afford the time right now.

Had this crash happened a month ago, I would have lost a couple years worth of irreplaceable work and pictures.

So let my near-catastrophe serve as a cautionary tale. Back your stuff up.