GUNCRANK DIARIES

Excuses, Alibis, Pithy Observations & General Ephus

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The Painful Truth

As a nation, we are morally responsible for our policies, so vote carefully, my friends. There’s a lot riding on it.
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Democracy Is Terrifying

As I sit typing these words, our country is in the throes of the most acrimonious presidential election in recent history. As far as I can tell, it is...
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The Batavia Massacre

The sordid story of the Batavia Massacre serves simply to illustrate that, if left to our own devices, human beings are indeed reliably bad.
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That Others Might Live

Human society rightfully venerates its heroes. On a certain primal level, this is a survival mechanism. For the species to endure, bravery and selflessness...
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A Bell 222 helicopter served as the science fiction gunship in the 1980s TV series “Airwolf.”
Airwolf

In 1984, TV producer Donald Bellisario thought the 222 looked pretty sharp and chose it to be the science fiction gunship in his exciting new TV series...
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Forging the Future:...

Aluminum is a ubiquitous material in modern society. In 1956, when Gene Stoner and a few others designed that first AR-15 rifle around aluminum receivers,...
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Hunting...

I came of age in the 1970s hunting behind the levee in the Mississippi Delta with my dad. Though I took it for granted at the time, this was the coolest...
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Boys And Their Toys

What would happen if a bunch of men were entrusted with a whole pile of nuclear bombs? They would dig an enormous hole and create the world's biggest gun.
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Making Good Choices

Most people start out with about the same amount of raw material. As a result, everybody is the sum total of the choices they make in life. Some of those...
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Sinus Secrets

“Doc, I have sinus,” says almost everybody. At that point, I typically smile and inquire about how long someone has felt bad and explore the sordid...
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What Uncle Sam...

Army aviators will do absolutely anything to fly, and to keep flying. In some cases, that means a little selective truth management.
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Will’s Redneck...

If random armed rednecks are a deterrent to crime, that seems like an opportunity to me. Enter: Will's Redneck Rentals.
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The Price Of...

As a card-carrying man, I have little use for safety stuff. I have an antique lawn mower I inherited from my grandfather. Everything on it is pressed steel,...
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The...

When you work in an urban emergency room, so much of the unfettered tragedy you see there is the result of poor impulse control or just rank stupidity. Now...
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Going Home

I’m on my fifth career. You really cannot start medical school at 32 and convince anybody that’s what you always wanted to do. I like to tell folks that...
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Softly Screaming

It is this dirt, this accursed Tennessee soil. We venerate this place because of what it has seen, what it has endured. While it is gorgeous and peaceful...
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The Lost Art of...

We live in the weirdest world these days. According to the curious moral calculus of the Information Age, it is okay to blow somebody to bits with a...
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The Joys of...

Being a patient in an American hospital is innately dehumanizing. We try to keep it dignified, but that’s often more a voyage than a destination. It’s...
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The 70s Were...

CAUTION: Read at your own risk! No activity mentioned in this article should be duplicated, replicated, or copycatted for fear of injury or death ... seriously!
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Machine Learning...

I recently saw a very sweet lady in the clinic who had gotten her finger stuck in a sewing machine. I encounter folks at work who run afoul of sundry wild...
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“I Give You...

Eve Gordon was the most compelling public speaker I have ever heard. A small-statured elderly woman with a pronounced limp and an impeccably gorgeous...
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Besties

Kylie and Lauren had not seen each other in more than a decade. They had been roommates and Chi Omegas at the University of Mississippi for four years....
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Rudolph The...

Our great nation was built by rugged individualists who bent the world to their will. These days, it seems populated by professional victims whose day jobs...
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Learning to Sew

The human animal is such a curious beast. To learn to do something, we must practice it. They say it takes 10,000 iterations before we can get really good...
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Number 2

Mike was the first of my comrades to “see the elephant.” This term has nebu-lous origins, but in martial parlance, it means to have experienced war. In...
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Snake Stories...

My walk-in medical clinic is the best place in town for meeting people. Everybody ends up there at some point. My quaint little southern community has no...
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The Bangalore...

Capt. McClintock’s contrivance has come to be known as a Bangalore Torpedo. You may also hear it referred to as a Banger, a Bangalore or a pole charge.
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Don’t Go Off...

As a young man, I admit to having harbored a fairly stylized mental image of criminals. My vision of the typical run-of-the-mill burglar was a...
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Militant Math

The Israelis call Oct. 7, 2023, Black Sabbath. On that one day, Hamas terrorists murdered roughly 1,400 people. They further took 240 hostages. The...
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Self-Inflicted...

"Listen, stud, I tell people they are going to die from lung cancer about once every six weeks, and I deal with the stress of my job without cigarettes. You...
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