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<em>Vale, Pia Regina</em>: Queen Elizabeth II, RIP
John Byron Kuhner pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as an exemplar of pietas -- not piety in the strictly religious sense, but dutifulness, after the fashion of Aeneas, hero of Vergil's Aeneid, the epic journey of the founder of Rome from the ashes of Troy. It is generally acknowledged...
Nigel Farage speaking in Tulsa, May 13, 2021
Brexit leader Nigel Farage will speak in Tulsa, part of America's Comeback Tour, presented by FreedomWorks
V-E Day 75th anniversary
The German war is therefore at an end. After years of intense preparation, Germany hurled herself on Poland at the beginning of September, 1939; and, in pursuance of our guarantee to Poland and in agreement with the French Republic, Great Britain, the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations, declared war...
Coronavirus notes: 2020/03/16
News and opinion on the coronavirus plague, in reverse chronological order (mostly): Here is a coronavirus COVID-19 dashboard and interactive map showing current numbers of cases from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Here is the spreadsheet that feeds the map. As of 7 a.m....
Happy Brexit Day!
Today, January 31, 2020, at 5 p.m. Tulsa time, midnight Brussels time, the United Kingdom will cease to be a member of the European Union, the long-awaited fulfillment of the June 23, 2016, referendum, in which 17.4 million Britons voted to reassert their country's sovereignty and independence, free from the...
UK Elections 2019
The United Kingdom will hold a general election tomorrow, Thursday, December 12, 2019. All 650 seats in the House of Commons, the popularly-elected house of the national legislature, will be on the ballot. Voters cast a ballot only for their local Member of Parliament (MP), but the leader of the...
Will Boris's Brexit deal pass? Should it?
Just two weeks ahead of the October 31, 2019, date of the UK's departure from the European Union, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come back from Brussels with a new treaty that removes indefinite EU control over UK regulations and customs, eliminates fears of a hard border between the UK...
Rand McNally on the Internet Archive
On the Map Scans Facebook group, someone posted a link to the Internet Archive's copy of the 1980 State Farm Road Atlas, which was a rebranded Rand McNally Road Atlas. That got me wondering about finding earlier editions, and I did a search for items published by Rand McNally. The...
Australia Day and the black-armband view of history
Two Augusts ago I was in the stands at Brisbane's Exhibition Grounds waiting for the evening performance at the "Ekka" -- Queensland's state fair -- to begin. The crowd stood at attention as a cowgirl on horseback rode around the arena waving a huge Australian flag. The band played and...
OKGOP Director of Communications quits over Trump remarks
Brett Farley resigned his post Saturday as Director of Communications for the Oklahoma Republican Party after the party chairman refused to issue a statement calling on Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential race. Writing on his blog, Farley said that he sent a message Saturday morning urging OKGOP chairman...
Oklahoma historical congressional district maps
I've been watching politics for a very long time, going back to my childhood, so it's funny to observe the media's new-found concern about gerrymandering -- the practice of manipulating election district boundaries to benefit one party over another. The media's concern seems to have emerged with the growing dominance...
Independence Day 2015
Happy Independence Day! Take 10 minutes to listen to a reading of the Declaration of Independence, from the Monticello website, read by Thomas Jefferson Williamsburg re-enactor Bill Barker. founding.com has an annotated version of the Declaration of Independence, with links to explanations of the the specific historical context behind the...
"Any society has to privilege some ethical viewpoint"
The headline quote is from the Grauniad*, the left-wing British newspaper, from an editorial pooh-poohing concerns about the marginalization of Christians in the officially Christian United Kingdom. Here's the context (emphasis added): They claim then that it would violate their consciences to do or say certain things which society as...
Scotland's independence referendum
Polls are now closed in Scotland, but it will be several hours until all the votes are counted in the referendum to decide whether its 307-year-old membership in the United Kingdom will be dissolved in favor of independence. The question on the ballot is simple: "Should Scotland be an independent...
Margaret Thatcher, RIP
A world-changer has left this world for a better one. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died today at age 87. I don't remember when I started paying attention to British politics; sometime in the mid-'70s, I imagine. I had a shortwave radio, and I loved tuning in to...
Happy Gun Appreciation Day!
Yesterday was Gun Appreciation Day, with huge rallies at state capitols across the nation to remind officials that millions of Americans are determined to protect their right to keep and bear arms, a right with roots in the English Common Law long before the passage of the 2nd Amendment that...
Happy St. David's Day
I had planned to post this first thing this morning, but computer problems prevented, and then grim news seemed more important. We all could use some music and laughter about now, I think. The four countries of the United Kingdom are of such great antiquity that they can't mark a...
Roundup 2011/12/28
I got some potpourri for Christmas, so here's some potpourri for you -- an assortment of interesting articles from the last couple of weeks. Photo by Lathyrus on Flickr Warner Todd Huston: The newspaper typo that began NORAD's tradition of tracking Santa on Christmas eve in 1955. James Lileks invites...
Non-partisan elections: Can't tell the players
In this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly, Ray Pearcey deploys an apt analogy against the Save Our Tulsa non-partisan election proposition on Tulsa's general election ballot this Tuesday. If you are a baseball fan you've had time to recover from late night World Series games, so I want you to imagine...
Readings for Independence Day
A blessed Independence Day to everyone. When the 4th of July falls on a Sunday, it's a rare opportunity to gather in our churches on our nation's birthday and give thanks for the blessings of liberty for which our forefathers fought and died. Not that we should worship or idolize...
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