fire

Chris Knight's avatar

If only there were some real Eagle Scouts among Los Angeles’s leadership.

There is a lot that I could say about the wildfires in Southern California right now.   I suppose first and foremost is that the situation might the the worst example yet of ignoring reality for the sake of “feelings”.  The requisite water resources, personnel, and methods of delivery for all intents and purposes did not exist.  It had been eliminated in favor of progressive programs and policies.  Like f’rinstance a tiny fish that apparently is not endangered at all.
That alone qualifies the L.A. fires as being a man-bred horror straight out of an Ayn Rand novel.
The thing of it is, fire is not really all that complex a concept.  We learned much about fire in fourth and fifth grade at school, including what is required for fire to start and what to do if God
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Chris Knight's avatar

It’s probably going to get yanked as soon as you try to view it, but rest assured: this will be showing up on YouTube for many years to come…

Well, there it is: Michael Jackson’s hair catching fire during filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, in footage published for the first time by US Magazine. This is something that had grown to legendary proportions long before Jackson’s death a few weeks ago. And at the time this was a huge story.

Seeing this at last, the only thought that really comes to mind is “My God…” This was a far more gruesome mishap than I can recall ever hearing it described. Amazingly, Jackson was still dancing for several seconds, completely unaware that his head was ablaze....

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Chris Knight's avatar

While going through some older videotapes I found this, made during the first Christmas that Lisa and I were married. This was at her parents’ place in Calhoun, Georgia and is a chronicle of the third turkey that I’d ever fried. Since then I’ve done many more (and have become much better at it, I think). Lisa was running the camera and the guy you see sitting in the chair with the University of Georgia cap is her dad:

I might make another video about turkey-frying as we get closer to Thanksgiving, this one doing a step-by-step from marinading the bird, to actually frying it. But this one gives a pretty good idea about the process and the extreme danger involved 🙂

EDIT 11-18-2007 10:25 a.m. EST: I’ve decided to stop publicly showing this video, because I’m taking a lot of heat for how “burnt” the turkey looks. And in ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

This morning I was going back though the past few months of blog posts looking for something I’d written pertaining to education. In the course of searching I found the video of WGSR’s Star Talk on June 14th where Mark Childrey interviewed me about my plans to address the July 9th meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education while dressed as a Jedi Knight. It was all to protest the “Standard Mode of Dress” (legalese for “school uniforms”) at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools that the board had approved.

As was reported here a few weeks later, the board wound up rescinding the earlier vote to implement the policy after POTSMOD (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress) turned the meeting into a media spectacle with picketing by students, black armbands and not just a Jedi but an “escaped convict” too 🙂

Well, I watched the video ...

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