Holiday Movies

Now that we've watched it two years in a row, I guess A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas is officially going to be a family holiday tradition.

Another quickly developing tradition: Picking out a couple of movies I expect to be pretty bad and watching them. This year's selections:

Slipstream: I'm not sure why I never noticed this 1989 flick before. It was mentioned in a (very negative) review of the new Star Wars movie as being the previous movie that the reviewer had walked out on (I can't find that review at the moment; when I do I'll come back and link to it -- update, here it is). Somehow the filmmakers managed to get Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton, Ben Kingsley and F. Murray Abraham to appear in this turkey.

Dear God, it's bad. How bad? I can't even begin ...

The premise is that around the turn of the century (almost 17 years ago now), an environmental disaster turned the winds loose, wrecking civilization as we know it, making long-distance ground travel impossible and flying very dicey (it seems to me that it would be the other way around, wouldn't it?) and now everyone is anti-technology and Mark Hamill is a bounty hunter and Bill Paxton is a small-time outlaw, and ... well, it all just goes downhill from there. The only really memorable or good line comes from Paxton, in the background, while two other characters are talking in a museum. If you watch the movie, and I don't recommend that you do, you'll know it when you hear it.

Deadfall: Another star-studded disaster, but the reason for it is, well, reasonable (see below). I found this one in Vudu's digital bargain sale bin for $2.99 and after reading an old Los Angeles Times review decided that it's always worth that price to see "a way-over-the-top Nicolas Cage."

Why star-studded? Well, it was directed by Cage's brother, Christopher Coppola, who, like Nicholas, is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola. Presumably that name was the reason James Coburn, Henry Fonda, Talia Shire, Michael Biehn, Mickey Dolenz, and Charlie Sheen made themselves available for it.

It's bad, but not in the way that Slipstream is bad. It feels an unsuccessful attempt to turn channel David Lynch for a combination film noir/caper movie. The "way-over-the-top" Cage moments don't save it, but "well here's to Sam F**king Peckinpah!" makes it worth $2.99.

Ironic Stomp Box Project

The last part I was waiting for arrived (see previous post about late packages), so ...

Wooden Box -- $1 at a yard sale

Piezoelectric Pickup -- about $1.90 (1 of 5 to a $9.49 package) from Amazon

Decorative License Plate -- $6.99 from Amazon

Not happy with the sound yet. Not sure if I need to repurpose a different kind of pickup, move the existing one, or perhaps put some other stuff in the box to create more of a racket, or maybe cut out some emptiness underneath the plate.

I probably should have paid more careful attention to this video:


I'll get it right eventually.

It's Not The Late Package That Bothers Me

I just kind of assume that Amazon Prime "free 2-day shipping" packages may run late this time of year.

The holidays usually are a package delivery clusterf**k. In fact, this year I see a guy in a golf cart pulling a trailer around the neighborhood delivering packages every afternoon. I'm guessing that he's some kind of neighborhood-level sub-contractor for US Snail or one of the private sector parcel companies -- dump a load with a contractor and go get another load instead of the main truck having to go house to house. Which says to me that volume is even higher than in past years.

What DOES bother me is that I'm repeatedly getting this after my Amazon order ...

... even though I'm still getting this before my Amazon order:

"Prime, yada yada, Want it Wednesday, Dec. 20? Order within X hrs Y mins and choose Two-Day Shipping at checkout."

This time of year, they should switch things up and go with something more like:

"Prime, yada, yada, Want it Wednesday, Dec. 20? Order within X hrs Y mins and choose Two-Day Shipping at checkout and we'll do our best, but you know, the holidays are usually a package delivery clusterf**k so it may not work out like that."

How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

I've received several marketing emails recently with a message header identical or similar to the title of this post, so it seems like a hot topic. As the author of more than a hundred thousand blog posts (more on that below -- this is the 3,712th post at KN@PPSTER alone, and my recollection is that I'm the author of all but two), I feel qualified to weigh in.

Some marketing gurus say "the shorter the better" (people don't want to read long posts -- show them some sizzle and then move them along to whatever you're selling).

SEO gurus tend to say "the longer the better" because that way a post will vomit up more terms for the search engines to lock onto and rank the page for.

Blogger opinionators of all kinds tend to say "it depends." I concur.

"Blog" is nothing but a publishing format/content management convention -- reverse-chronological posting of content. Its early usage was for personal journals, but these days the format/convention is everywhere, in use by publications of every type imaginable. Wordpress and other blogging applications have become full-featured content management systems.

So, how long your blog post should be is a function of what you're trying to accomplish.

I've published (as mentioned above) more than 100,000 blog posts at Rational Review News Digest  (more than 11,000 in its latest Wordpress database, which will turn one year old on Friday, the day before the publication itself turns 15 years old in its current format). Those posts have a preferential length of 150 words or less and a semi-hard limit of 200 words. Why? Because they are excerpts from and links to Other People's Content and we want to stay in "fair use" territory.

At The Garrison Center, my posts invariably run between 400 and 500 words in length because I'm actually writing for the newspaper op-ed market and that length range has, in my experience, proven itself the "sweet spot" for working that market.

Here at KN@PPSTER, anything goes as the spirit moves. Sometimes I link to something I like with a short comment and the post comes to fewer than 100 words. Other times I reprint an old article or essay of mine that was originally published elsewhere and the post comes in at 3000+ words.

So, form should follow function. If you have a good reason to pay attention to post length, by all means do so. If not, don't sweat it.

2017 Goals I Probably Won't Achieve, May Not Achieve, and Already Have Achieved

Probably Won't:

My goal at KN@PPSTER is to average one blog post per day.

This is my 319th post of 2017.

I suppose I could try to knock out 46 posts in the next 12.x days, but I'm not going to do that just to be able to say I got in my 365 for the year.

May Not:

Among my resolutions for 2017 were to log 1,000 miles of bicycle riding and 300 miles of walking on the Charity Miles app, a cool app that lets you turn workouts into charitable donations via sponsors.

Unfortunately, shortly after I announced that goal, the app stopped working on my phone. As soon as I opened it, it would close with an error. After some research, I decided to go with Strava to log my miles ... and then I got lazy, both with the logging and the biking/walking.

I don't know the real numbers, so I don't know whether or not I'll make the goals. My educated guess is "no" -- that when the year closes out, I will have walked (as workouts) between 180 and 200 miles and biked between 600 and 700. So I'm planning to recycle that goal for 2017.

The other day, I decided to re-install Charity Miles on my phone. The latest version is even nicer than the original, and it's working on my phone again. So now I'm running Charity Miles and Strava when I walk or ride.

Already Have:

My goal for The Garrison Center was to have its op-eds picked up by mainstream newspapers and non-libertarian political publications at least 1,000 times in 2017. That number is already in the rearview mirror. In fact, I think there's a better than even chance that it will hit 1,100.

Civics Education, Homeschool/Unschool Style

So yesterday, I put on the live stream of the Federal Communications Commission's session in which they were going to vote to end "Net Neutrality." I was somewhat surprised when my 16-year-old son came in, recognized what it was and why I had it on, and sat down and watched. I knew he'd been following the issue, but not how closely.

Of course, his commentary on the hearing itself ranged from "is that woman ever going to shut up so they can vote?" during one of the commissioners' interminable speeches (which included a Cheshire Cat metaphor leading into a verbal stumble culminating in the the memorable phrase "however they conjugate that")  to "oh, for crying out loud, how long can this take?" when the room was cleared for security theater purposes.

But I'm guessing that most 16-year-olds don't take it upon themselves to sit through FCC hearings in the first place, so his irritability with the slowness of proceedings doesn't strike me as odd. I'd even say it's evidence for what every parent wants to think ("my kid isn't most 16-year-olds"). He's been pressing us to let him take the GED so he can start college. And his elder sibling is gainfully employed while mulling EMT training versus nursing school.

Childe KN@PPSTER to The Dark Tower Came

I was stoked to see The Dark Tower on the big screen. Then it actually came out and 1) I was busy, 2) the reviews were terrible, 3) etc. Finally sat down and watched it at home last night.

Warning: One exceedingly minor spoiler which you probably either already know about or won't care about.

One-sentence review: Solid movie, for what it is.

Thoughts:

What it is not is a novelization of The Gunslinger, the first novel in Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

Its Wikipedia entry claims that it "serves as a canonical sequel to the novel series, which concludes with the revelation that Roland's quest is a cyclical time loop." Which is a smooth way of saying "we bit off more than we could chew for one movie, and with sequel/TV series potential there was no way we were gonna kill off the kid, so we changed a bunch of stuff and used a plot loophole in the books to justify it."

But what the heck, that explanation works. Same universe. Same characters. Similar, but not identical, plot. Yeah, time loop, that's it.

Some fans got their knickers in a twist when the filmmakers cast Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, who is definitely white in the novels. One person who wasn't upset was Stephen King. I didn't have a strong opinion until I saw the movie, and now my opinion is that Elba nailed the role.

Matthew McConaughey as The Man in Black, aka Walter Padick, aka Randall Flagg: Perfect.

My first personal visual image of what Flagg would look/sound/act like was, for some reason, James Woods. I've got nothing against Jamey Sheridan and he did a fine job as Flagg in The Stand, but it didn't click with me. As soon as I heard McConaughey's name in the casting, I was like "why didn't I think of that?" And he owns it, completely. So long as McConaughey lives, there should never be another King film adaptation with a Flagg incarnation played by anyone else.

So, okay: What I really wanted was an eight-film blockbuster cycle that was resolutely faithful in every detail. But I doubt I was ever going to get that, and this version does deliver both as a story of its own and as a nicely done slice of the Dark Tower pie.

An Alexa Skill That Ought to Exist ...

... but that doesn't seem to, and that I don't have the chops to create myself:

Scheduling lights relative to sunrise/sunset

I recently bought a Eufy smart bulb for our living room light (actually as an early Christmas present for Tamara, who hates having to tromp back and forth to turn it on and off -- now she can just say "Alexa, turn on/off the living room light").

It's pretty cool. In addition to verbally ordering it to turn on, off, and up or down to various degrees of brightness, I can schedule it to do things by the clock. But what I want to be able to do is schedule it to turn on one hour before sunset, and off (assuming it's on) one hour after sunrise.

I tell myself I want to be able to to this for reasons of energy efficiency, but who am I kidding? I want to be able to do it because I think it would be cool.

Word PSA

capital, noun: The city or town that functions as the seat of government and administrative centre of a country or region.

Capitol, proper noun: The seat of the US Congress in Washington DC.

Correct -- Capitol Hill
Incorrect -- capital hill

Embarrassing Constitution Fail

Surprisingly, via the Tenth Amendment Center. From a reprint of a piece by the Mises Institute's Ryan McMaken (also usually not terrible) on the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act:

Reciprocity, properly defined, is a matter of agreement among the states. It does not involve the federal government.

Well, except for that pesky ol' Constitution, Article IV, Section 1:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Congress is doing is prescribing the same effect for concealed carry permits as for drivers' licenses, marriage licenses, divorce decrees, etc.

The piece also includes the "Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the states" fail (parts of it, including the Second Amendment, clearly do), but that's an old and expected one from the paleo side. And of course under the Second Amendment a "concealed carry permit" requirement is by definition an unconstitutional abomination.

You Know, George Clooney Could Have Slept on my Couch ...

... all he had to do was ask.

Just sayin' ...

Alabama: Best Bad Thing for the GOP?

Personally, I was surprised that Republican Roy Moore lost Alabama's election for US Senate to Democrat Doug Jones last night. In fact, I didn't really expect to be especially close. I guess I didn't give Alabamians enough credit for having basic good sense and morals. So, given that this was a race that I didn't predict well, feel free to take my further opinions with a grain of salt (as if you wouldn't anyway). But here are those opinions:

Once Moore won the Republican primary, Moore losing the general election was the best outcome the GOP could hope for.

The party organization could have gone all-in behind a write-in Republican alternative, but that would likely have handed the race to Jones anyway, while enraging the Trump base and making other prospective Republican candidates around the country doubt their party's commitment to their success. Their only viable option was to offer tepid, back-and-forth party support while some individual party leaders tried to get out a "Roy Moore is not us" message.

If he had won the race, he would have spent the next 11 months making the Republican Party look like a raging bunch of assholes (which, in fairness, they are), and the Democrats would have joyously assisted him in promoting that image (if for no other reason than to deflect attention from their own raging assholishness). Holding the one Senate seat in Alabama would almost certainly have cost the GOP one or more Senate seats and a number of House seats in competitive elections next November.

Of course, he's still threatening to spend some time making Republicans look like a raging bunch of  assholes. He's refused to concede the election and is jabbering about a recount. But now that he's lost, the party organization has an excuse to wash its hands of him, and has already started making a show of doing so.

He lost, and the Democrats have gained one Senate seat, but they lost a horse's ass they could have beat through 2018. The horse's ass went down with a broken leg last night. Unless Moore shows some epic "rigged election" whining chops (and, assisted by media who hate him, hey, maybe he will), the horse will shortly die, and beating a dead horse isn't nearly as effective as beating a live horse's ass.

Cold comfort to the Republican Party, I'm guessing, but like I said, it was the best they could hope for.

One Result of Roy Moore's Prospective Senate Election Victory

Democrats will lose their seeming monopoly on the rallying cry "won't someone please think of the children?"

Looks Like @DaveWeigel Has Arrived

I'm guessing you really have to be somebody for the New York Times to run a story about the President of the United States attacking you by name.

Addendum Note: Weigel has a new book out on, wow, prog rock. I'll definitely be picking it up at some near future point when my book budget rebounds from the Game of Thrones binge. Never would have figured Dave for a Yes man (rim shot).

Heartland Continues its Anti-Property-Rights Agitation on Behalf Keystone XL

At one time, The Heartland Institute seemed like a fairly reliable defender of property rights, pursuing its stated mission to "discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems." Or maybe I just wasn't noticing their deviations from same.

But the position they promote on the Keystone XL Pipeline puts them front and center among those -- usually regarded as on the statist left -- claiming that economic "efficiency," "development," and "growth" trump property rights. As with Paul Driessen's column yesterday, "Keystone Is Anti-hydrocarbon Zealotry in Microcosm."

The Nebraska Public Service Commission (NPSC) recently voted to approve the state’s segment of the 1,200-mile Keystone XL Pipeline. While that would appear to allow construction to move forward, more obstacles loom before KXL can finally bring North Dakota and Canadian crude oil to Texas refineries.

Commissioners who voted against approval have raised objections, some landowners still object to the pipeline crossing their lands, other landowners were not aware that the new route will cross their properties, and environmentalists plan more lawsuits to stop TransCanada’s plans to finish Keystone.

See what he did there? The rest of the column focuses on everything except that passing reference to private property owners who don't want to sell to TransCanada, or who don't even know yet that TransCanada has its eyes on their land. Both groups either already have, or soon will, find out that the state government is in cahoots with TransCanada and prepared to steal their land from under them.

Driessen's conclusion: "Keystone XL is a vital addition to America’s pipeline system. It’s not perfect. But it is essential for a healthier, safer, more prosperous United States. Building it will create tens of thousands of jobs."

Unstated but essential component of Driessen's position: If land owners don't want the pipeline on their land, screw'em, just steal it.

Pursuant to his position, Driessen also recommends the imposition of draconian police state measures to shut up those dirty hippies who are inclined to protest: "Require permits and multi-million-dollar surety bonds for every encampment, to ensure safety, lawful activities, and cleanup of human and other wastes. Prohibit wearing of ski masks and collect IDs, fingerprints and photos of every activist."

Of course, that last bit follows inexorably from the first bit. If building the pipeline is more important than property rights in land, it's surely also more important than freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Class enemies must be liquidated before utopia can be realized, see?

Added a few hours after the initial post: Compare Heartland's bits on Keystone to its response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London. Hint: Exact opposites.

But Then There's the Flip Side

Sometimes I get it wildly wrong. Here's the lead paragraph from my Garrison Center column of January 16, 2017:

“Elections have consequences,” outgoing US president Barack Obama once told Republican congressional leaders, and “I won.” He was right. One consequence of the 2016 election, in which the Republican Party maintained its House and Senate majorities and got a president of their own party, is the near-certain, near-future repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare.”

The rest of the column -- an "explainer" on the meaning of the word "insurance" -- is pretty sound, but yeah, I had a massive brain fart and fell into the (momentary, quickly dispelled) belief that groups of politicians actually mean what they say over and over, year after year, until they get the opportunity to act on it.

A Serendipitous Garrison Flashback

So, Michael Flynn put in a guilty plea on charges of lying to FBI agents last week. The charges were laid pursuant to Robert Mueller's investigation of alleged "Russian meddling" in the 2016 presidential election. For some reason there are two elements here that most people don't seem to be noticing:

1. Flynn lied about conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Aha! Evidence of Russian meddling in the election! Except that Flynn met with Kislyak after, not before, the election.
2. The conversations appear to have related not to Russian meddling in the election, but to Israeli meddling in a United Nations Security Council vote.

Per the New York Times:

According to prosecutors, on Dec. 22, Mr. Flynn discussed with Mr. Kislyak an upcoming United Nations Security Council vote on whether to condemn Israel’s building of settlements. At the time, the Obama administration was preparing to allow a Security Council vote on the matter.

Mr. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry.

So anyway, I'm beginning my annual re-counting of The Garrison Center's media "pickups" for 2017, and this morning I came across a Garrison column I wrote two days after that meeting, concerning "foreign meddling in US presidential elections." Guess which country it fingers.

Congrats to @Jason_Stapleton!

I listen to The Jason Stapleton Program nearly every day and it's one of my favorites. Not because Stapleton is always right (in fact, he's sometimes terribly wrong*, IMO), but because he usually has an interesting and reasonably sane take on the issues and is an excellent talker. Easy on the ears, doesn't come off like a case of audio road rage, etc.

Anyway, on yesterday's episode he finally made a major announcement he'd been promising for some time regarding the show's future. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is -- listen for yourself.

* My favorite "Jason Stapleton is terribly wrong" moment was when he got caught up in a feud that really only existed in the imagination of paleo podcaster Tom Woods, and decided to tangle with Woods's supposed nemesis, Libertarian National Committee chair Nick Sarwark. Nick picked Jason up by the back of his underwear and gave him a nuclear wedgie while dragging him down the hall to the toilet for a swirlie, then booted him in the ass and admonished him to go back to the kids' table while the adults were talking. Metaphorically speaking, of course. It wasn't pretty. But it was beautiful.

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

I was looking out back this morning at the ruins of a cheap -- $99 -- teepee-style tent that I bought a few years ago. My off-the-cuff calculation of the current market price of the Bitcoin I spent on it: $30,000. In the area where I live, I could probably buy an acre or two with a livable trailer home on it for that.

I turned around and looked at the $200 TV -- 1080p, 32-inch -- I also bought with Bitcoin more recently. Current market price of the Bitcoin I spent on it, around $3,000. Which means if I had held on to that Bitcoin, I could buy a larger-screen, 4K TV with it right now.

In 2016, I paid for my Libertarian National Convention package with Bitcoin, and that Bitcoin is worth quite a bit more now than it was then, too.

If I had kept all the Bitcoin I ever had, I would not be a "Bitcoin millionaire" today. But I'd probably be close to being a "Bitcoin hundred-thousandaire."

I've seen some people expressing regrets over similar calculations lately. I'm not one of them.

It's true that I've tried to "buy low, sell high" when using Bitcoin. I'd get a little, and then when the price went up, I'd buy myself something nice with it.

But my main interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has never been speculation as such. It's been participating in the use of a new medium of exchange with properties that I like.

So no, I'm not bothered by the theoretical "loss." I made out OK, and had fun being a fairly early adopter who actually used the stuff for one of its key purposes.

Why "Alexa?"

According to Amazon's Senior Vice President of Devices, David Limp, there are two reasons why the company's voice service is named "Alexa":

The problem was choosing a word that people didn't ordinarily use in everyday life. "Computer" wouldn't cut it. So after testing various names, the team landed on a word Alexa, that used soft vowels and an "x." It sounded fairly unique.

But the engineers also liked the name for that somewhat geeky Star Trek-ish reason. It was "a little reminiscent of the library of Alexander" which was at one time the keeper of "all knowledge," Limp said.

I suspect a third: It's evocative of ELIZA. Don't know why that occurred to me, but it did and I just thought I'd share.

We've got two Alexa-powered speakers in our home: An Echo Dot and a Eufy Genie. I bought both on sale at ~$20 each.

The Dot is more powerful in certain ways -- it has Bluetooth to connect to a speaker while the Genie doesn't, it can make phone calls to my contact list, etc. -- but they're both good at the basics. "Alexa, what's the weather?" "Alexa, set a time for 10 minutes/alarm for 6am," "Alexa, play some Grateful Dead," and so on. I like them, but obviously your mileage may vary over privacy concerns and so forth.

WTF, Reason? (Mortgage Interest Deduction Edition)

The headline attracted my attention: Why We Should Kill the Mortgage-Interest Deduction Once and for All. It's a Reason podcast.

I assumed that the reasons offered would be similar to mine, which I'll explain below. But no. Here's the (print -- I haven't listened to the podcast yet) justification Anthony Randazzo, director of Economic research at the Reason Foundation offers:

Under current law, homeowners can deduct interest on mortgage loans of up to $1 million for two houses, plus interest on home equity loans worth another $100,000. That currently costs the federal government about $70 billion in foregone revenue, making it one of the biggest "tax expenditures" in the federal budget. The Senate tax bill would allow homeowners to deduct the interest on $500,000 of mortgage debt for a single residence.

But even that lower level is too much of a giveaway ...

A tax deduction doesn't "cost" the federal government anything, nor is it a "giveaway." Not taking money from someone isn't the same thing as money coming out of your pocket. If I don't mug you, my not mugging you doesn't "cost" me the $20 in your wallet. It wasn't mine to begin with.

Now, why do I want to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction (and how, which is equally important)? Because it is:

1. Social engineering; for the purpose of
2. Corporate welfare.

The government says "if you buy a HOUSE, you can deduct the mortgage interest from the income we tax. If you buy anything else, well, cough up."

The surface justification for this is that owning a home is an inherently good thing and part of the American dream and that therefore the government should tax people who do that a little less than they tax people who buy heroin or booze or lap dances (for examples) with their money.

Of course the real justification is that contractors, realtors and mortgage companies contribute lots of money to politicians so that they can get a tax code favor resulting in them being able to build, sell, and loan money on, more houses (at the presumptive expense of drug dealers, liquor stores and strippers and everyone else who doesn't get such favorable treatment in the tax code).

Now, as to the how of eliminating that deduction:

Personally I would prefer a top income tax rate of 0%. But failing that, if Congress is going to tax Americans $70 billion less than they otherwise would, I'd prefer to see the rates adjusted downward so that that $70 billion is left equally with everyone to spend on whatever they damn well please instead of artificially incentivizing people to buy homes.

Now: If it's the choice of keeping the mortgage interest deduction as is, or ditching it and putting that $70 billion in the government's coffers, I'm for keeping it. Anything that reduces government revenue is good, and I'm flabbergasted to see Reason suggesting otherwise.

"[U]ntil the late 1890s, individuals weren't expected to make rational choices when voting"

Interesting take on media, voting and the idea of an "informed electorate" from Will Rinehart at Cato Unbound.

There was a time when newspapers wore their partisan affiliations on their sleeves. If you look around a bit, you'll still find newspapers with "Democrat" and "Republican" in their names -- in fact, my Garrison Center mailing list includes 32 of the former and eight of the latter. "Objective journalism" is a fairly recent invention, and pretty much a fake one.

This is a Test ...

... of the Logan Act.

Best Month Ever?

I'm pretty sure it is -- for The Garrison Center, that is.

So far I have identified 122 "pickups" of Garrison op-eds in November by mainstream newspapers and non-libertarian political publications. The previous record, to the best of my recollection, was 115 in August.

Total identified "pickups" for 2017, through November 30: 969.

InshAllah and the creek don't rise, it will break 1,000 (my announced goal) before the end of the year.

In fact, it may already have done so -- during the last week of the year, I go back to December 15 of the previous year and Google every op-ed. I usually find several for each month that I missed when they actually ran.