PROMPT: Patriotic

Posted on February 16, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?

I am. I wish my country the best, am pained to see ailments of what have always been the country’s greatest strengths (the government being limited and at the command of the people and the law [rather than the other way around] and the courage to boldly lead by building the new technologies and adapting to the world that came to be,) and will not stop bitching about it unless and until the situation rights itself. When I was a young man, I served in the military and waved flags. Now, as an old man, I’m not eager to see America go gently into that good night.

I realize that may sound excessively Pollyanna about America’s past and pessimistic about the present / future. I do realize that the country has always had its flaws, as humanity always does. (And loved it all the same.) There have been missteps and mass movements that would later come to be viewed as wrongheaded and self-defeating. But we always had checks and balances, an Enlightenment norm for tolerance, and a respect for decorum and gravitas in our leaders. Now, as I see the “Putin-Orban Manual for New Populist-Nationalist Dictators” being played out, I wonder if the shark hasn’t been jumped on all that was good, honorable, and impressive in the America in which I grew up.

PROMPT: Law

Posted on February 12, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

View all responses

If such a situation were to avail itself, I would make a law so that no one person — even a high elected official — could change the law unilaterally. (Administrative policies for the bureaucracy not being laws, said high elected official could go to town on them.) Why? Because one person being able to change law is an affront to democracy and to the very concept of rule of law, and if we make it the object of fantasy to be able to do so we are cooked.

We had such a law in the US. It was called the Constitution, and it was glorious. It said that only the legislature (a body consisting of many representatives) could make law, and only the judiciary could interpret and evaluate the legality of a law. And it was okay that the executive was the least democratic of branches because it was to stay in the lane of enforcing the laws as they were written (and shaped by judicial interpretation,) and if the executive started getting too big for his britches, the legislature would turn off the flow of money.

So, my great fantasy is not to be able to unilaterally change law, but to have three functioning branches of government who stay in their own lanes, applying checks as (and only as) described in the Constitution.

PROMPT: Complain

Posted on January 30, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

What do you complain about the most?

View all responses

The state of the modern world. Increasingly, I feel humanity has jumped the shark.

Years ago, I heard someone wise use the term “information inflation” to describe the fact that we were so awash in information that each piece of information became virtually valueless. [Not to mention that with so much information it becomes harder to distinguish quality information from junk information or quasi-information.] I think we are now treading water in an ocean of [mostly shit] information and quasi-information, and the exhaustion is setting in.

This makes people crave simplicity, which would be great except that we often try to simplify the complexities that must be accepted to have a bit of tolerance and humility.

[The one thing I learned in years of education involving policy is whenever anyone says, “This problem would be so easy to fix, all you’ve got to do is ____________.” that person has no idea what he is talking about and is completely blind to the challenges, complexities, feedback effects, and externalities of the issue at hand.]

PROMPT: Disagree

Posted on May 10, 2025 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

View all responses

These days? Trump — hands down. Beyond a few of his stated policy objectives, there is more and more I disagree with every day. (I emphasize “stated” because there is so little that’s coherent in his actions to prove he is really interested in advancing said objectives.) For example, I do agree that the swelling deficits (budget and trade) are something that should be treated as unsustainable. I’m not of the “a current account deficit is just a capital account surplus, so turn that frown upside-down” ilk. However, erratic and untargeted tariff policies that hurt successful sectors (e.g. agriculture and services) and which will only put the toothpaste back in the tube (bring [human] factory labor back to the US on a huge scale) by crashing the US into Third World status are not the way.

I disagree with this inexplicable monomaniacal obsession with heavy industry, while injuring those sectors that have done well in recent decades.

I agree with… Powell, that there is a high chance of stagflation if the Fed takes a loose money stance. The problem is… Trump. Ordinarily, it would be good to dump some money on an economy that is struggling. But the problem is that Trump is like a salesperson that would like to sell customers something, but he also enjoys chasing them around the store with an axe. The problem is that people and companies don’t make big purchases when they are afraid and the future is uncertain. (This is why even getting investment in robotic factories isn’t happening.) There’s uncertainty because of the tariffs. There’s uncertainty about whether companies will have to pay bribes to Trump, personally. There’s uncertainty about whether the legal and institutional frameworks that have so long made America an appealing place to invest and innovate will survive. So, if the Fed injects money but consumer confidence and investment are flat because of said uncertainty, then that money will be purely inflationary. [Remember, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. More money needs to meet more demand for stuff.]

I disagree that one can have one’s cake and eat it, too. Specifically, tariffs need to be either for revenue generation or for policy negotiations, they can’t be both, but Trump talks like he doesn’t understand this. If tariffs are going to be the new primary source of government income, they need to bring in money sustainably. If they are a negotiating tool to lever policy, you need to be ready to negotiate them away in return for your own objective wins.

I definitely disagree with the ignoring of Supreme Court decisions. It’s particularly disconcerting to see him ignore 9 – 0 decisions, which means that even his own appointees could not find a hairsbreadth of wiggle room in the law by which his actions could be viewed as lawful.

I disagree with picking a raft of pretty-idiots / talking-heads for positions that require high levels of emotional intelligence and — you know — intelligence intelligence. If it weren’t for the fact that America has the most awesome and professional military in the world, I’d be especially afraid that Hegseth was going to destroy it. But while I think the US Military will be around long after he’s gone, I’m suspect he will have done damage to morale and operational efficiency.

I disagree with favoring dictators over longtime allies. [While I would agree that it’s good that Europe is taking on more of the burden of their own defense, I’m concerned that trashing relations to do so will not prove a sound approach.]

I disagree with all the attempts to play from the Putin-Orban Populist Dictators’ Playbook.

While I’m not at all averse to seeing cuts to the Federal bureaucracy, I do disagree with — you know — firing people before you understand what they do and whether it’s critical to health and safety, the necessary conduct of governance, or oversight against fraud and abuse.

I disagree that one should talk about making loophole end-runs around Constitutional prohibitions.

But, I ramble on…

Drones over Des Moines: or, UAV’s in the Heartland

Posted on March 21, 2013 by B Gourley

Source: Wikipedia; User: Dammit

National Geographic has an interesting and well-timed article in this month’s issue called The Drones Come Home. I say well-timed because of all of the attention that Senator Rand Paul’s recent filibuster received. Senator Paul was filibustering the nomination of John Brennan as CIA Director, but his true purpose was to bring attention to the lack of transparency on policy regarding the use of drone strikes on U.S. soil. You’ll recall from your Civics classes that the 5th and 6th amendments (supported by other laws) require legal due process be conducted before anyone gets, to use the mafia-esque term, “whacked.”

The impetus for all this discussion of drones is the Obama Administration’s 2012 direction to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to open the skies to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) by September 30, 2015.

It should be noted that the use of armed drones for execution missions is only the most dramatic of many legal issues that will arise with the proliferation of this technology. The National Geographic article devotes more space to the use of drones by state and local law enforcement than they do to that of the Federal government.

Some other new legal considerations will include:

Searches: I suspect that well before any government is terminating U.S. citizens at home with such devices, they will be using them for surveillance and investigation (i.e. spying.) The Constitutional standard is that law enforcement can act on any evidence that can be seen from a place they legally have a right to be. So if you’ve got a stolen car in your front yard, they can arrest you. However, if the police get an anonymous tip that there is a stolen car in your backyard under your deck, things are trickier. They can ask you to see your backyard, but you can say no. They can ask a neighbor if the neighbor will allow them to look from the neighbor’s property onto yours, but, if that’s unsuccessful, they’d better be able to impress a judge sufficiently to obtain a warrant.

However, what happens with UAV’s? Now the law enforcement officer can be parked perfectly legally on the street while his “eyes” are hovering over your backyard. Your property rights overhead are not established (unless you are getting a check every time Delta flies over your house–I’m not.)

Extensions: What about peaking in through your window with an aerial telephoto lens? What if it’s not law enforcement, but rather the Neighborhood Watch? What if it’s not even the Neighborhood Watch, but rather the crotchety retiree at the end of the block who has self-appointed himself neighborhood watchman because he’s bored to tears… and more than a little bitter?

Sovereign Immunity: Many governments have laws that prevent you from suing them. So what happens given a scenario suggested in the National Geographic article, the government’s UAV falls out of the sky and it’s rotor-blade slices open the jugular of your four-year old daughter as she is innocently playing in the sandbox in your back yard?

There are many who are concerned that this technology is not perfected. The military is having its share of problems, and they are spending billions on UAV’s. Imagine what will happen when local governments, corporations, and other cash-strapped entities begin flying more low-budget versions?

Personal No Fly Zones: Despite the tenuous legal situation regarding the “airspace” over one’s head. You know that, sooner or later, someone will try to enforce a no-fly zone over their property. So what happens when a person sees that Sheriff’s department UAV peeping through their window, and they blast it out of the sky with a 12-gauge shotgun?

Of course, there will be a whole new wave of issues that will arise as the autonomous UAV’s are perfected. By “autonomous” I mean ones that don’t need a remote pilot, but are more “fire-off and forget.”

Was the Fukushima-Daiichi Incident the Final Nail in Nuclear Energy’s Coffin?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by B Gourley

Today is the two-year anniversary of the tsunami that swamped parts of eastern Japan. Among the ongoing effects of this event was a re-chilling of attitudes toward nuclear energy–undoing a thaw that some swore was imminent. The tsunami hit the Fukushima-Daiichi plants and knocked out generators that were needed to run the coolant pumps with the power lines down. In the days after the disaster, the release of radioactivity and explosions of built up hydrogen presented some of the most prominent news stories.

Japan obtained about a third of its energy from nuclear prior to the event. All reactors were shut down in subsequent months, at no small cost to their economy. Eventually, a couple of plants were brought back on-line, providing only a fraction of the electricity of the country’s full fleet of 50+ nuclear plants.The Japanese had plans to add another 15 plants to their reactor fleet at that time, plans that have since vanished.

Even China, the world’s most prolific builder of nuclear plants as of late, had a brief moratorium on nuclear power plant (NPP) construction. However, China seems to have regained its ardor for nuclear power. France, of course, won’t be dissuaded either. However, for much of the rest of the world, doubts remain.

Pictures may be worth a thousand words.