With any luck at all...

With any luck at all ... you should now see a little “Amazon” link at right, toward the top.  If it's there, you can use it to shop on Amazon.  Anything you buy while you're there will send me a small referral payment – but won't cost you a penny more.  I'd sure appreciate your using that link to do your Amazon shopping – it will help me pay for the bandwidth used when you're reading my blog...

Update: reader Richard Clark noted that ad blockers were (potentially) blocking the logo I'd put up earlier (thanks, Richard!).  I've changed it now to a different technique that I hope avoids that issue...

The puppies are born!

The puppies are born!  The mom (Sissy) had nine puppies, starting yesterday midday and ending early this morning.  Mom's doing fine, and eight of the nine are in good shape; the last is wheezing a bit (still has fluid in the lungs).  Five girls, four boys.  One of these puppies will be ours, and possibly two (because this was an unexpectedly large litter, and we don't want our breeder to end up with a puppy that has no home).

Good doggie!

Good doggie!

What's the right thing to do...

What's the right thing to do ... with primitive indigenous cultures?  We've all heard the stories about the “Stone Age” people still living in places like South America or New Guinea.  Conventional wisdom is that we should carefully isolate such populations, and “allow” them to live as they always have.

This has always bothered me.  This policy, beloved by progressives everywhere, effectively condemns those populations to lives filled with pain and death that our medical prowess has long since banished.  If they break a leg, they may be crippled for life as we refuse to intervene.  The children of these cultures are deprived of an education that we consider to be the birthright of our children.  I could go on and on in this vein.  Why do we think this is the right thing to do?  I've never understood that.  How can “preserving” a culture be more important than welcoming these peoples to the advantages of modern civilization?  It seems cruel and horribly patronizing to me.

Rarely do I see anyone else making those points.  I spotted one such case this morning...

On the Martian plateau...

On the Martian plateau ... is Curiosity.  What a view!