Octopodial Chrome

Here in Colorado, a SWAT team stormed a family’s home and stole their 11-year old son. Why? Because a paramedic was annoyed that the boy’s father wouldn’t take him to the hospital for observation (the father has medical training and determined that it wasn’t necessary; the kid had fallen on a driveway and struck his head). Even if this were a case of negligent parents, of course, using a SWAT team was absurd: a pair of deputies sent to the family’s door would have sufficed. Instead, the SWAT team punched a hole in Mr. Shiflett’s door, threatened his daughter and generally were jerks.

Why? Sheriff Lou Vallario (may he never be elected again) complained that the man was a constitutionalist. I didn’t know that respecting the Constitution was grounds for treating a home-schooling family like a terrorist cell.

Major Andrew Olmsted was killed in Iraq trying to convince three insurgents to surrender on Thursday where he was training Iraqi police. He left instructions for a final post to his blog to be made. He sounds like he was a pretty cool man. The real shame of war is how many interesting and worthwhile people are killed: Tolkien and Lewis survived the Great War, but how many hundreds or thousands died who were equal—or perhaps even better?

Every year Australia has a 544-mile footrace from Sydney to Melbourne; it attracts the best of the best, runners from all over the world, heavily sponsored and highly trained. In 1984, a 61-year-old farmer won it. His secret? He didn’t realise that he was supposed to sleep—so he ran it straight through! A must-read story.

Gever Tully describes five dangerous-but-essential things parents should let children do:

• Play with fire
• Own a pocket knife
• Throw a spear
• Deconstruct appliances/break the DMCA
• Drive a car

My folks pretty much let me do all that (well, the DMCA didn’t exist back then, but they let me have mix tapes), and look how well I turned out!