Running Iron Report

My go‐to podcast of late has been Spycast, a media production of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Last weekend, I went out to Zimmerman Butte, our local shooting area to dial in a brand new Sig Sauer Red Dot sight on the AR‐15. Followed this pleasurable activity with another — I sat in the truck and smoked a … Read More

After a delay in recording brought on by the horrors of technology, Craig, Jim, and “Oil Can” Rathbun are back in the bunkhouse on the historic Figure 8 Ranch to bring you another episode of the Running Iron Podcast.  In this episode Lane Jacobson, owner of Paulina Springs Bookstore in Sisters, Oregon, sits down for a wide‐ranging discussion about books, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and his vision for what a great small‐town bookstore looks like.

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On a clear day from Winter Ridge, high above the broad expanse of Summer Lake in south‐central Oregon, it is possible to look far into the eastern desert at a low‐slung formation called 5 Mile Point. It was way out there, in 1937, that archaeologist Luther Cressman began excavating the Paisley Caves.  Today, the U.S. Forest Service maintains a tidy cabin up on Winter Ridge, at the place where John C. Fremont came out of the woods in the winter of 1843 and first beheld the breathtaking reach of the Great Basin.

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My wife Marilyn and I enjoyed a chef’s dinner out at the Suttle Lodge at Suttle Lake in the woods west of Sisters last Saturday night. In addition to being an outstanding culinary adventure (“A Meal From One Pig” prepared by the chef from the Grand Army Tavern in Portland) it was a most convivial evening. We enjoyed a fine … Read More

A social media  lynch mob killed a book last month. The vampire vigilantes slew a dream, too, in a lustful feeding frenzy that must have given a whole set of keyboard bloodsuckers an almighty powerful dopamine dump. Won‘t last, of course; they’ll soon need to feed again. From the New York Times: Last January, Amélie Wen Zhao posted an ecstatic … Read More

It is Tuesday, which is the day I’m supposed to publish another piece here at Running Iron.  Sadly, my attention has been drawn away this week to other writing projects, which means I have nothing to offer.

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By David Wrolson, aka “Breaker Morant” The Lighthorsemen is a movie about the Australian Light Horse regiments and their famous charge on Beersheba in Palestine in World War I. The taking of Beersheeba turned the Ottoman Turks out of their defensive line in Palestine and marked a turning point in the campaign in the Middle East. For the purposes of … Read More

Nobody can talk to anybody because everybody has been sucked away on the algorithms meant to charge the dopamine response in their brains, and they are almost incapable of entertaining information that comes from outside of the bubble that AI has created for them based on their own preferences.  The effects of digital isolation are so bad that an entire industry now exists merely to re‐teach human beings how to sit down in the same room and have a conversation.

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“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without … Read More

If you feel like your values and your very nature are under assault — they are. Two things happened on the same day last week that provide ample evidence that values and life‐ways we cleave to here at Running Iron Report are under concerted and deliberate attack. The American Psychological Association has released new guidelines for psychological practice with men and … Read More