Snow Blind

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Number four in the sister-recommended Monkeewrench series. It's a page-turner!

The grabber here (after a couple of flashback prologues to be explained later) is the murder of two cross-country-skiing cops in a Minneapolis park. The lurid detail: they've been stood up and entombed in snowmen.

Meanwhile, a dangerous wife-abuser abducts his parole officer, and is off to a remote part of Minnesota, where his ex-wife has taken up residence in an unusual community of women. The local sheriff is a newly elected woman with minimal law enforcement experience. She lives on a remote and spooky farm, and … what do you know? … the abuser just happens to pick her farm in which to take shelter on his quest to mete out more abuse.

So, yes, it's a little contrived. By which I mean, a lot. And, despite the series name, the Monkeewrench gang doesn't play a big role here. But, as I said above. It's a page-turner, because the mother-daughter "P. J. Tracy" writing team is pretty good.


Last Modified 2024-01-26 6:44 AM EDT

URLs du Jour

2017-04-12

■ Proverbs 27:7 can be read metaphorically if you wish:

One who is full loathes honey from the comb, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.

■ KDW at NR has a modest proposal: Censure the President.

Our so-called constitutional conservatives treat the national charter the way a certain kind of Christian treats the Bible: They like to carry around copies of it, to wave it at their rivals, to talk about it, and to treat it as a kind of magic item — but if you should suggest they actually read it or apply it, well, that sounds awfully idealistic.

Congress should either claw back its war-declaring power, or as KDW puts it, they should "stop calling themselves “constitutional conservatives,” because those who knuckle under now are no such thing."

■ To move briefly to a happier topic: Marian Tupy edits www.humanprogress.org, an optimistic data-driven site devoted to "correcting misperceptions regarding the state of humanity through the presentation of empirical data that focuses on long-term developments." At Reason, she presents Data as History: Charting the Last 2000 Years of Human Progress.

Considering that Homo sapiens only emerged as a unique species of hominids some 200,000 years ago, our experience with prosperity is incredibly short, amounting to no more than 0.1 percent of our time on Earth. The remarkable novelty of our present abundance may, perhaps, explain our unease with it ("all good things must come to an end") and our eschatological obsessions ranging from overpopulation to out-of-control global warming.

You hear about "white privilege" a lot. Probably people should talk more about "present privilege". We're all pretty fortunate to live in the world that "intellectual enlightenment, classical liberalism and free exchange" built.

■ Coming soon to an institution of higher education near you: Texas student commits suicide after Title IX kangaroo court.

A male student who was accused of sexual harassment committed suicide just days after the University of Texas at Arlington ignored its own policies in order to punish him. The accused student’s father, a lawyer acting as the administrator of his son’s estate, is now suing the school for violating his son’s Title IX rights.

It's a Kafkaesque horror story.

■ Who should we blame for this United mess? Well, according to "Cranky Flier": Don’t Blame Overbooking for This United Mess. It's a "regular part of doing business", and he has data to show that (overall) airlines have gotten "smarter and better" at it.

On the whole, the airlines make more money overselling flights than they lose paying out compensation. And this actually does help keep fares lower. If airlines couldn’t oversell flights, they would generate less revenue overall and have to find a way to recoup those costs. You can connect the dots on what that means. Of course, if enough people were impacted that the pain was too great, then either the airlines or the feds would do away with overbooking. But considering how many people benefit from being on an oversold flight and volunteering to get paid (over 550,000 in 2015), it’s not something that a lot of people WANT to go away.

I'm looking for a good answer here… I know we're not supposed to blame overbooking, but

[Overbooked]


Last Modified 2024-02-02 4:51 AM EDT