chriskelley.org

Category: miscellaneous

  • Dealing with disappointment

    For me, the hardest part about dealing with disappointment is the post-disappointment self flagellation.  I usually don’t dwell for too long on the source of the disappointment, either the thing I wanted that I didn’t get or the thing I didn’t that I did.  Rather, my inner perfectionist rears its ugly head and I beat…

  • The post I meant to write about Ferguson

    This post started out life very differently than it’s appearing here now.  It was all about the false choice we are being presented with (support the police/damn the rioters or support the protestors/damn the cops) and the lack of critical thinking being displayed on both sides in Ferguson.  It was a pretty long post, one…

  • Shall we play a game?

    Yesterday, my son and I and a friend of his spent a few hours at GenCon.  It was a bit of a lark, since I hadn’t even heard of GenCon a week ago – a priest at my church mentioned that she was taking her sons for “all games, all weekend” and my interest was…

  • The human mind can be a powerful tool for good, but only if you know how to use it.

    This quote from “The Trivium” has been rattling around in my head lately: Only human beings have the power of intellectual abstraction; therefore, only human beings can form a general or universal concept. Irrational animals have the external and internal senses, which are sometimes keener than those of humans. But because they lack the rational powers…

  • The rhythm of history

    I finished a few books in the last week  (Economics in One Lesson, Liberalism in the Classic Tradition and A Renegade History of the United States) so that clears up some space to start a few more.  In addition to a deep interest in history (especially the revisionist sort) I am also getting more interested…

  • Finishing Last

    This past weekend I had the chance to compete in a 3 gun match outside of Lexington at Blue Grass Sportsman’s League.  It was my first 3 gun match since November of 2012 and it showed.  Despite being a pretty competitive in pistol only competitions over the last few years, I was anything but competitive…

  • Thoughts on Liberalism

    I checked one more book off my reading list on Monday: Liberalism by Ludwig von Mises.  It’s a relatively short read, albeit a little difficult since it was originally written in German and then translated and also because its written in the more complex grammatical structure of the earlier half of the 20th century (side…

  • Happy accidents

    I’ve made a rather unconcious, but very positive change over the last 24 months. It all started when in a fit of budget streamlining I cancelled my cable subscription, much to the dismay of my kids. It was a small decision, driven mostly by the idea that I could save $50 a month for something…

  • GoPro Video from my IDPA match yesterday

    My lovely and talented wife got me a GoPro for my birthday this year and I’ve been using it to record my IDPA matches – they are fun (for me) to watch and there are few things I see where I can improve. I’ve been shooting IDPA for more than 5 years now.  I actually…