W on Global Warming

Got to give W credit on the Global Warming thing. He seems to have it right. I've said all along that mankind's puny little efforts are nowhere near significant enough to alter climate. After reading this article , I think we had better be more concerned on how we are gonna avoid freezing our asses off and stop worrying about Global Warming.

Bubba, Bubber, and Brother

Bubba jokes are everywhere. Stories about Bubba abound. I often hear comedians, especially northern comedians making light of the name Bubba, but what I never hear is anyone acknowledging where the name Bubba comes from. Maybe everybody already knows this and just thinks it is not worth mentioning. But I don’t think that a lot of them do.

Where I come from, brothers especially older brothers are called Brother. My sister called me Brother. Since she called me Brother, so did my mom and dad. When I worked at my dad’s shop, he called me Brother, so everyone who came by the shop started calling me Brother. That was the only name they had ever heard me called, it was all they knew. One of the most embarrassing aspects of that whole thing was that I knew my wife’s father many years before I knew her. He met me at the shop and, just like everybody else, he called me Brother. Now talking about an awkward situation when your father-in-law calls you Brother. I suspect that would have elicited a lot of lodge pole pine family tree jokes. He quickly replaced Brother with Kenneth when I started dating his daughter and continued to call me Kenneth until his death.

My lady friend Linda calls her brother Ricky, Brother, but she also calls her oldest son Andy, Brother and her younger son John, Brother. Any time Linda starts a sentence off with the name Brother, I have to wait and see what context it is offered up in to determine who she is talking about. I say all this to make the point that Brother is a very common name in my part of the south. Now little babies when they first start to talk don’t pronounce Brother very well. The best of them usually manage something like Bubber. Others are more apt to settle on Bubba. Often the parents will correct them until they learn how to say Brother correctly. This is what my parents did. But many parents think that the mispronunciation is cute. It is a matter of taste. Whatever the case, these names stick. Just as I was Brother to a whole community until I was 24 years old, and just as Ricky, Andy and John are still Brother to Linda, so there are Bubbers and Bubbas through out the south. You don’t have to be a redneck to be called Bubba or Bubber, all you ready need is a younger sibling with average pronunciation skills and laid back parents.

Cussing

My grandmother died when I was eleven. Later on, my grandfather married a woman named Nora. One year for my birthday, Nora gave me a little wooden bank. On its side the bank had the following poem:

“Cussin ain’t the nicest thing
And friends to you it sure don’t bring
But if you really have to say them
Here’s a way you’ll have to pay them.”

The next verse was something about numbers of cuss words and nickels, dimes, quarters, you get the picture. It was a small bank and if I had followed the pay scale it would have filled up everyday before lunch, provided I could have come up with the money. You see I was cussing before I can remember. I grew up in an adult world where most of my male role models were just back from World War II. Most of my friends and classmates had the same kind of environment. We all learned cuss words right in with getting potty trained and learning to tie our shoes. We all cussed.

When I got to the fifth grade, I had a woman for a teacher who should have never been allowed into a school. She openly showed preference to the children who lived inside the town limit versus the ‘country’ kids. She was particularly fond of the kids who went to the Baptist church. She was Baptist. Among the many ‘truths’ that she routinely bestowed upon our little pre-adolescent minds was the fact that “pro-fan-i-ty” was the tool of the ignorant person, the person who knew no better way to express themselves. Now I wasn’t dumb enough to cuss in her presence, but that constant harping about how only stupid people cussed did have its effect on me.

Some how I managed to get through all that indoctrination and remained only slightly warped. I went on to finish elementary school, graduate from high school and complete two year of junior college. Cussing all along the way and knowing deep down that I was stupid and would never amount to anything, but continuing to plug along because I did not know what else to do. Then I got to Auburn. Instant ice water bath. Auburn hit me between the eyes like a mule’s kick. I was immediately in over my head, failing everything I was taking at mid-term. I was just about at my wits end. Seemed like the ole Baptist bitch had hit the nail on the head. But fortunately, I was taking physics. I say fortunately, not because I was doing well in physics, I wasn’t. In fact I was failing it right along with my other courses. No, the beauty of physics was that it was being taught by one of the smartest men I had ever met. In addition to being smart, this man cussed. He ranked right up there with my dad and all those other WWII vets. Gradually I began to realize that my physics teacher was about 10 thousand times smarter than my fifth grade teacher. I figured out that while I was in a world of hurt at Auburn, it did not have anything to do with my cussing. I began to work harder, study more and gradually things started to improve. I even managed to get a C in physics that quarter. Eventually I went on to graduate from Auburn.

Sometimes now I look back and wonder where I would be today if my first physics professor at Auburn had been a minister or deacon. If you have school age children, make a point of knowing what their teachers are saying to them. The things that your children's elementary school teachers tell them will have an effect whether they are true or not. Remember, your kids may not be fortunate enough to have a foul mouth physics teacher when they get to college.

IVOTD4W

I live in Central Alabama. I've lived here all my life. The county where I grew up is mostly democratic, but for the past 30 years I have lived across the river in a republican county. Everywhere you turn are those little black "W The President" bumper stickers. Because this county is so strongly republican I was not too surprised to see a custom license tag the other day with IVOTD4W on it. I suspect that most of my neighbors could truthfully have that very same tag on their vehicle. Considering some of the things that have become known lately, I wonder if those folks are having second thoughts about their tag? Probably not, like I said this is a republican county and one thing I have learned about the republicans and the democrats during my lifetime is they are loyal to their party's candidates. I think it was Huey P. Long that said the only way he could fail to get re-elected was if he was found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. I'm not sure even that would stop the folks around here if the candidate were a republican.

Three Government Workers

This is from today's Joke Of The Day :

A fellow stopped at a rural gas station and, after filling his tank, he bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola and he watched a couple of men working along the roadside.

One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was about 25 feet behind filling in the old.

"Hold it, hold it," the fellow said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this digging?"

"Well, we work for the county government," one of the men said.

"But one of you is digging a hole and the other is filling it up. You're not accomplishing anything. Aren't you wasting the county's money?"

"You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there's three of us, me, Joe and Mike. I dig the hole, Joe sticks in the tree and Mike here puts the dirt back."

"Yea," piped up Mike. "Now just because Joe is sick, that doesn't mean we can't work, does it?"

Most of My Mail is From Credit Card Companies

Or at least it seems that way. Every day my mailbox is full of new credit card offers. Listen up credit card companies, I've already got my quota. And what is the deal with the change of terms letters? Most of the mail that I get that isn't an offer for a new credit card is a letter from an existing credit card provider saying that attached is important information about changes to my user agreement. Warning me to read it carefully and file it away with my important papers. Bullshit. What is attached is a new 7-page user agreement. I am sure that there were some changes made between it and the old agreement but who knows what they are? Who has the time or the old agreement to do the comparison? What difference does it make anyway? Am I gonna take them to court if they have changed something I don't like?

It's not just snail mail either. Yesterday I got an email from the company that issued the MasterCard that I actually use advising me that my MasterCard was being upgraded. I looked that email over pretty carefully and the best I could determine the only change was a different account number. How is that an upgrade?

I had a co-worker one time that canceled his membership in the NRA because they kept sending him unsolicited mail. I've thought about canceling all my credit cards so I won't get those annoying change of user agreement letters. That probably would not help. I suspect that those companies I canceled with would start sending me applications to get one of their cards so the amount of credit card mail would stay the same.

What This Country Needs

Thomas Riley Marshall who was vice president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 said, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." Times have changed since Mr. Marshall’s day. Today I can think of two things this country needs and neither of them is a good five-cent cigar.

First we need massive tax cuts. I don’t mean this hocus pocus carp that they come up with where they estimate expenses will grow by 8 percent next year and they are only going to increase taxes by 7.5 percent so they are giving us a tax cut. No, I mean an honest to God cut. A significant cut. Reduce Income tax, excise tax, gasoline tax, tobacco tax, and any others the feds collect. Cut all of them. Take in a smaller percentage and less dollars. Why you ask? Well, Think of it like this, if you had an alcoholic brother in law that took all the money he could get his hands on and bought whiskey with it, would you have your paycheck directly deposited into his checking account? Giving money to the federal government is just as ridiculous. They do much more harm than they do good and they suck up the nations resources like a dry sponge in a pan of dishwater.

After the tax cutting is done, we need to move on the second thing this country needs, which is a massive cut in government spending. This cut will have to be much more severe than the tax cuts because we are already spending a lot more than we are taking in. The feds need to cut government spending back to a point where the money they collect with their new greatly reduced taxes provides a surplus. In fact I suggest that we pass a constitutional amendment that requires the federal government run an annual budget surplus and that it be required by law that the amount of that surplus get larger every year. That way we will be providing something positive for our children’s and our grandchildren’s future instead of leaving them a bankrupt nation. That will also make congress more effective since they won’t continually have to be voting to raise the debt ceiling.

Without money, most of the questionable government programs will go away. The good people in all those worthless government jobs will change occupations and become useful, productive citizens. All and all, I can’t think of any two things that would help this country more than a big tax cut and a bigger spending cut.

Read The Bills Act

Congress keeps voting on and passing legislation without really knowing what it says. An organization called DownsizeDC.org has provided members of congress with a draft of legislation called the Read The Bills Act. I have read what they propose and it makes sense to me. I have written my congressman and senators and asked them to sponsor and pass this bill. I think it is little enough to ask that they at least read what they are voting on, before they vote on it.

Alabama Legislature Gets Something Right

I used to work with a guy that liked to say that even a blind hog could find an acorn occasionally. I am not a big fan of the Alabama Legislature; most of what they do is useless. However their bill strengthening the right of a citizen to use deadly force when being attacked is a good move. If I were a real optimist, I might think that this is the start of good things to come from the legislature, but I suspect it is just a singular acorn.

Out Of Control

The folks in Washington have lost it. There is no fiscal responsibility left. To say that they are spending money like a drunken sailor would be an insult to drunken sailors everywhere. Spending is definitely out of control.

You Know What Really Pisses Me Off?

Well there are a lot of things, but right now I am only thinking of one, pseudo lawyers. You know; they are the ones that are on every message board, Google group, Yahoo group, and mailing list in the world handling out unsolicited legal advice. All of them have some other primary occupation but when it comes to groups, they constantly offer cautionary legal advice. Like, "if you do that you will be opening yourself up to litigation."

Well listen up pseudo lawyers, I've got news for you. All you are doing is restating the obvious. Ours (USofA) is the most litigious society ever known to man. Anything, and I do mean anything, you do in this country is subject to getting you sued. So stop it already. If there is anyone out there that does not already know that any time you stick your head up above the crowd you are an instant target for a law suit then let them find out on their own. Quit with the redundant cautionary ramblings. It only wastes bandwidth and really pisses me off.

My New Rule Of Thumb

I am a gambler at heart. Not to say that I go to casinos or place sports bets or anything like that. Living, as I do, in central Alabama that would require more effort than I am willing to expend. Even buying a lottery ticket requires a tank of gas and 5 hours driving. No, when I say I am a gambler I mean a risk-taker. But more importantly, I am a risk observer (i.e. a handicapper). Some things like a bet on a roulette wheel have high odds against the player. I know that and I don't do. Other things like buying a lottery ticket are even higher risk, but everytime I go to Georgia or Tennessee I pick one up. I like the day dreaming that goes along with the ever so slight possibility of winning. Things, like betting the sun will come up, are pretty much a sure thing. These “pretty much sure things” enable us all to come up with rules of thumb to simplify our lives. In the case of the sunrise, most everyone observes that and acts accordingly. My sunrise rule of thumb is the same as everyone else’s’, “It’s gonna happen, count on it.” My rule of thumb for roulette is: “It ain’t likely, don’t mess with it.” And my rule for lottery tickets is “it’s damn near impossible but pick one up anyway and day dream until after the drawing.”

Lately I have been working on a new rule of thumb. It involves something that is not as certain as the sunrise but looks to me to be close. My new rule of thumb is: "If the government does it, I am against it." With government understood to mean city, county or parish, state and federal.

Now I know that a lot of you are already thinking, yeah but what about roads, what about police, what about fire protection, what about ______ (fill in the blank with the one thing you think some branch of government does that you can’t live without). Well first let me say that this is a rule of thumb. Not fool proof, just works MOST of the time. Second let me say that I am fairly certain that roads and police and fire protection could be provided with no assistance from the aforementioned governments if we just had the desire and fortitude to try. As for the thing you put in the blank, I leave that to you. Can you figure out a way that it could be done without the government? If not, it is an exception to the rule.

So there it is my new rule of thumb. "If the government does it, I am against it." Its not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate but it seems to work for me the majority of the time.

Give The Devil His Due

Or more correctly, give a CNN reporter credit for a good idea. This article by Karen Kwiatkowski does just that. I liked it the minute I read it.

Write Your Senators and Representative in Congress

If you like everything that your federal government is doing, congratulations. You are indeed fortunate that your elected officials are doing just what you want. On the other hand, if you are like me and see a lot of room for improvement, why not take a moment and let them know how you feel. I found this website which enabled me to send a message to my congressman. It appears that it would work for anyone. So if there is something that you would like changed, drop them a line, or call them or whatever. If you think everything is alright just like it is, I guess you can contact them and tell them that as well and while you are at it, contact me and tell me what meds your doctor is giving you. I might want to get a perscription for myself.

More Gardening

It is kind of overcast today and has sprinkled rain so it seemed to me to be a good time to add to my garden. I had some potatoes in the pantry that were beginning to sprout. I wanted to fix hash browns for breakfast so instead of just peeling the potatoes, I cut off the sections of three that had sprouts. That left me enough potato to have my hash browns but left the little spouts with something to get them going. I planted them in the garden. Next I got down a little plastic bag that had some Indian corn in it. This is some that was off of a dried arrangement that my daughter had. It is a couple of years old so I don't know how it is gonna do, but I put two kernels in each hill. Finally I took some of the little pods of pepper off last years pepper plants and planted them in six little pots. If they do well, I will transplant them into the garden later on. I've already got the wire cages set for my tomatoes but I am going to wait until Good Friday to set them out.

Slippery Slope

I am a firm believer in the slippery slope argument. I said it when the government first started targeting smokers. I don't smoke, never have, except on one or two occasions when I was drinking at a party, but that is a story for another time. But I knew that regulating smokers would lead to unreasonable constraints on the rest of us. Anytime the government starts regulating something, even if it seems at the time to be perfectly reasonable, sooner or later it leads to regulatory abuse. It is just the nature of governments.

Las Uvas de la Ira

Recently I've been listening to some podcasts. I don't have an ipod or other mp3 player so I have been depending on desktop software for playing the podcasts. This past weekend I downloaded a podcast listener called Golden Ear. Its kind of neat, the screen looks like an old Bendix table model radio. The software comes with a list of podcasts. One of the podcasts listed was "Really Learn Spanish." It is done by a guy named Johan van Rooyen who at one time lived in Spain and taught English. I listened to his first podcast this weekend. He gives points on learning spanish that you would not normally find in a formal course. One of his suggestions was to start reading "blockbuster" novels in spanish. His argument seemed convincing to me. I googled 'blockbuster novel' and one of the first hits I got was Grapes of Wrath. Now I have read Grapes of Wrath in english and watched the movie a couple of times so I thought, why not let that be my first spanish book. I found "Las Uvas de la Ira" (Grapes of Wrath, in spanish) on Amazon and ordered a copy. This time next week I should be reading Las Uvas de la Ira.

Time To Re-Think The War On Drugs

Another well written analysis of the counter productive war on drugs.

Uncommon Expressions

My good friend David Coleman, who died a few years back from cancer, hailed from the same part of the state that I do. Even though he grew up just a few miles from Miller’s Garage, I never knew him until after we had both moved to Birmingham. For awhile, David and I worked in adjoining cubicles and when things were slow, we would compare notes about expressions we heard growing up. Expressions that you don’t hear now or at least you don’t hear them in Birmingham.

One of David’s favorites was the use of the word ‘count’ to mean quality. As in 'Now that cornbread is some count'. I’ve also heard people say it 'some account', but you have to listen closely to hear the 'a' sound and most folks just said, 'count'.

Another word that had a special meaning in Coosa was the word 'curious' pronounced cours. As best that David and I could determine, it meant that someone had strange ideas and was highly opinionated. Overbearing was also an adjective that seemed to be linked to 'cours.' The usual usage would be 'he’s a cours old SOB.'

Some expressions defied analysis. One particular one that I remember hearing someone say when they were frustrated with a situation and did not know what to do was, 'I don’t know whether ToShitOrGoBlind.'

When I was very young, I remember hearing old people use the word ‘hope’ instead of the word ‘helped.’ As in ‘He hope me fix my fence.’ Don’t know where that came from, but David agreed that he had heard a lot of older people say it when he was young.

Today, with national TV, radio and the internet, expressions like these are seldom heard, but back when and where David and I grew up they were common place.

The Republicanskis and The Democratskis

Back when Ronald Reagan was president, I was working for a company in downtown Birmingham that had a coop program. For those of you that don’t know about cooping, it is where a student, throughout his or her college career, alternates between classes one term and working for a company the next term. When I was going to Auburn, I thought cooping was a great idea. There were only two objections. My father, who along with my mother was paying for my education, said that it would prevent me from working for him during the summers and he did not think that the cooping would be worth as much money as I could bring in at Miller’s Garage. The other objection was from the Coosa County draft board who said that if I choose to coop, I would have to use their plan, which was one term in Vietnam, followed by another term in Vietnam until my tour of duty was finished. Needless to say I did not enter Auburn’s or the draft board’s coop program.

Anyway, as I said before, the company where I worked in the mid 80’s had a strong coop program. One summer term, we had a female coop from UAB and a male student engineer from Mississippi State. Student engineer was what they called summer temporary employees that happened to be engineering students. This particular student engineer had been in the coop program but his work terms had been completed and he still lacked enough credits to graduate. He was a good worker so some manager recommended that he be hired as a student engineer for the summer. Both of these employees ended up working in the department with me. Prior to that time, I had directed the work activities of our coops and student engineers, but my responsibilities had changed and they were reporting to someone else. For some reason, maybe because of my prior dealing with coops, these two students took a liking to me. We would go on break together and I would offer up my ‘sage’ wisdom. Everything went along pretty well until one day they got on to the subject of the Soviet Union and centralized government. I don’t remember exactly what was going on at the time, but something had whipped these two into a patriotic furor. They were ranting on the wrongs of the evil empire. When they finished, I agreed with them that it was just as bad as they said, but unfortunately, our political situation in this country wasn’t much better. In fact, I said, about the biggest difference I could see was that in the Soviet Union, the communist party picked a few of its members, put them on the ballot, everyone had to vote for them, and they ran the country. In this country, the republicans and the democrats, picked a few of their members, put them on the ballot, everyone had to vote for them, and they ran the country. I added that if the communists were to divide their party into the republicanskis and the democratskis, our systems would be nearly identical.

My observations brought some strong objections from the summer student and the coop. They gave me a pretty good verbal dressing down and left the table almost immediately. If I recall correctly, they never went on break with me again. That was 20 plus year ago. I still think of this when someone starts talking about national politics. I am more convinced now that I was then that what I said was correct. I wonder how those two young people feel about it now?

Easter Cold Snap

My mother's people were farmers. When I was growing up, my family had a garden. People who plant things are much more observant of the weather. One of the things I remember from those years was looking for the Easter Cold Snap. Around this time of year, in late February and early March, it gets spring like in central Alabama, but winter always seems to manage to get one more shot. Since Easter usually falls somewhere in this time frame, that last shot of winter is referred to as the Easter cold snap.

This morning when I got up to let the dogs out, I noticed that my front yard and cars were covered with a light frost. Seems like that last night we had our Easter cold snap.

Hyperinflationary Depression

In this piece, Bill Bonner predicts it, but doesn't do a lot to describe it. A Google search seems to indicate that it is what happened to the German economy between the world wars.

I am certain that anyone over the age of 10 reading this has heard the classic story about the German economy during that time, but for those that have not, here it is:

A man in Berlin went to the bakers to buy a loaf of bread. The quantity of marks required to purchase the bread was so great that he had to carry them in a wheelbarrow. When he got to the bakers, the wheelbarrow was too wide to get through the shop door so he parked it on the sidewalk. He went into the store and bought his bread. When he returned to the sidewalk to get the marks to pay for the bread, someone had dumped the marks on the sidewalk and stolen his wheelbarrow.

The main thing to remember is, with apologies to an old Oldsmobile commercial, "This Ain't Your Daddy's Depression."

Deer Sausage

I have several friends that deer hunt. Occasionally they offer me some venison. I always take it because I like deer meat. Last year one of my friends gave me several packages of ground up venison. I've use it in meatloaf, spaghetti, chili and mixed it half-and-half with ground beef and fried it up in patties for hamburgers. It worked well in all of these but I am an experimenter at heart. In my ramblings, I have acquired a sausage stuffer. The other day I got to thinking that it might be good to stuff some of that deer meat into a casing and smoke it. I did a google search and came up with www.sausagemaker.com. Not only did they have the casings, they had kits that included spices and a how to video. I ordered the sampler pak with seasonings for salami, pepperoni, kielbasa, summer sausage and trial bologna. So far I have only made the salami, but I am impressed. I used mostly venison with a little ground beef and ground pork. I followed the instructions on the tape and voila, I made some salami that I would say is better than what I can buy in the store locally. If you have access to some ground venison and like salami, I suggest you give it a try.

Seedlings Everywhere

The seeds that I planted on March 13 are coming up. This morning I went out and looked at the white oak patch and it is covered in tiny little seedlings. I probably won’t get a lot of stuff out of this patch. Seems most of my gardening results in food for assorted bugs, but the satisfaction of planting those seeds and seeing all those little leaves pop through the soil into the light of day really puts me in a better frame of mind.

A Nation of Screwups?

When I was growing up, I used to notice how older people were very critical of the way things were being done. They seemed to see most change as being a bad thing. I promised myself that I would not be like that when I got 'old'. I have tried to live up to that promise, but as I get older, I realize that while none of us particularly like change, and complaining about it is not productive, it is important to complain about bad changes.

It seems to me that in the past, I remember a time when people took pride in a job well done. Even if it was what some think of as a menial task, it was still important that it be done correctly. I sense that ethic is slowly being replaced with a ‘get by’ mentality. I site the recent screw up with the SAT tests as an example. I realize that mistakes are made, after all we are human. What troubles me is that after the initial mistakes were uncovered, apparently little effort was made to determine if there were any more problems.



Now it comes to light that additional, more extensive errors of omission were involved. I would have liked to think that as soon as the original mistakes were found that the entire process would have been reviewed. Apparently that was not the case. Maybe there was a review and it has taken this long for the facts to come out?

It’s not just the SAT test scoring either. Seems that everywhere I look, someone is screwing up. I am a drive thru person. I know fast food is not good for you, but its what I eat. Locally we have a couple of McDonalds, a Hardees, a Wendy's and a couple of Chicken places. I am heavily into McDonalds, but lately I have been branching out. In particular I have been trying Wendy's as some of their new menu items come highly recommended. Unfortunately, the folks at the local Wendy's seem to lack the capacity or the desire to take and fill a drive thru order. It has gotten so bad that I am tempted to go up to the order speaker and when they say can I take your order, tell them "just throw something in a sack and I will come pay you some money and pick it up, cause that is what you are gonna do anyway."

I know, I know, one less order of fries or a missing Frosty is not gonna stop the world. It surely doesn't match the damage done to those poor kids who had their SAT scores messed up, but to me, it is a local example of what is happening nationwide. We seem to be becoming a nation of screwups. Sure, we can do anything we want we just can't do it right. And when we or someone else discovers the screwup, we fix it, but don't ask ourselves what caused this mistake, are there other associated mistakes?

I guess I have become one of those old people that find fault. Looking back, maybe I just came into the process in the middle, maybe the decline had already started and those previous old people were just taking note of their generation's decline toward mediocrity.

Keystone, AL

When I was growing up, there was a little wide spot on US Highway 31 just north of Alabaster called Keystone. By the time I moved to this area in the late 1970’s, Keystone was gone, Pelham had swallowed it up when Pelham incorporated. North Shelby country has come a long way since then. Lots of improvements, and some changes that were not improvements. The three towns of Helena, Alabaster and Pelham have expanded until now they make up one big ‘geographic’ city, but with three city governments, three fire departments, three police departments, etc, etc. There appears to me to be a lot of inefficiencies in this arrangement. I think it is time to bring back Keystone. Merge the cities of Helena, Alabaster and Pelham into one city named Keystone. There is a vacant former Wal-Mart building right in the middle of where Keystone was located. Make that the city’s main building. Eliminate duplication, and hold new elections to fill the Keystone city government offices. Now to me, that would be a real improvement.

Good News from the Commerce Department

Last week the Commerce Department announced that core consumer price inflation is mild. I would feel a lot better about that if I didn't now that they exclude food and energy from their calculation. Also judging from what I hear about people paying for medical treatment they exclude that as well. So lets see, if you don't eat, drive, heat or cool your home or go to the doctor, you will have plenty of money that will last you for a long, long time. Do I really need the Commerce Department to tell me that?

Cable HiSpeed

I have Charter HiSpeed. My daughter had it installed when she lived here and I have maintained it since she moved. All and all I am fairly satisfied with it. Previously I had used dialup and then satellite. Cable is faster than dialup and not as much trouble as satellite. I do have one little peeve though. I keep seeing Charter's advertisement where they claim to have speeds of 3 Mbps. I even received a card in the mail a few days ago urging me to abandon dialup and step up to Charter's 3Mbps service. The problem is that their actual speed is no where near 3 Mbps. I just checked it a few minutes ago and the upload speed was 117 kbps, download was 371 kbps. Now don't get me wrong, 117/371 are quite respectable speeds but it seems to me that if you advertise 3 Mbps you should at least come close to that, say 2.5 or greater.

SunRocket

During the first week of this month I ordered phone service from SunRocket. They got the Gizmo, which is like a small router or switch and the phones right out to me. I had no trouble hooking everything up and have been using it now of a couple of weeks. So far so good. The quality of the connections seems to be excellent. I have had a few dropouts but nothing I can't live with. The best part is the price. $199 for 1 year unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

Check them out at www.sunrocket.com.

Proverbs 26:11

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Quotes by Einstein.

This page contains an excellent compilation of quotes by Einstein.

Some of my favorites are:

"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age."
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
"Only a life lived for others is a life worth while ."

I have heard some people attribute the definition of insanity,
" Insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results."
to Einstein but I am fairly certain he did not originate that saying.

I Made One 'A' At Auburn

Yes, in the two and a half years that I spent at Auburn, I managed to make an ‘A’ in one course.

It started eight years earlier, in 1959. That was the year I went to work at Miller’s Garage. It was the summer I turned twelve. Miller’s Garage was one of those country shops where you were just as likely to be working on a farm tractor or a pulpwood truck as to be repairing an automobile. Trailers, motor graders and one river ferry were also included in the list of things that we repaired, or ‘patched up’ as my dad would say. There was only one type of machine that was prohibited and that was the chain saw, but that is a story for another time. Often the repair involved welding, especially if the subject of the repair was a farm tractor or pulpwood truck. Since there was a good bit of welding to be done, the shop was well equipped with welding apparatus. It had an oxygen/acetylene set up for cutting, brazing and welding. A Lincoln ‘buzz box’ for electric welding and a Hobart DC welder mounted in an old bread truck for mobile work.

At first I just observed what the other mechanics did with the welders, but I was itching to try my hand. About this same time, my grandfather was building a farm pond on his property. One of the mechanics told me that you could make an ‘excellent’ boat out of two 1948 Chevrolet hoods welded together. Miller’s Garage kept a considerable number of donor vehicles parked on a lot near the shop. Just so happened that there were two fairly decent 1948 Chevrolet hoods available. After some discussion, it was decided that I could learn to weld and make a boat at the same time. A suitable piece of sheet metal was located to fill in the Vee where the hoods came together and I started welding. Very soon into the project, my father began to have reservations. Not about the boat itself but about the amount of oxygen, acetylene and steel rods the project was consuming. There wasn’t much he could do about the gases, but he did substitute wire coat hangers for the mild steel rods. I couldn’t tell much difference. Finally after several days work, the boat was finished. We put about a quart of tar on the seams and took it to the pond. It held together and worked pretty well. I was now a welder, at least by Miller’s Garage standards.

Somewhere along the way I graduated to electric welding. I was allowed to apply hard surfacing to plows and other wear surfaces and once I even fabricated a trailer hitch for a local painters pickup truck. My welding had a style of its own. My dad characterized it as being “like a bull’s ass sewed up with a grape vine, it ain’t much on looks, but it is hell for stout.”

I continued working at Miller’s Garage during the summers, Christmas holidays and AEA. By the time I reached Auburn in the fall of 1967, I had done my share of rough welding. That first year at Auburn, one of the courses that I had to take was called Welding Lab. It was taught over in one of the old shop buildings and while it was called a ‘lab’ it was actually a course of its own. A graduate assistant taught the course. A pleasant guy whose name I do not recall. There was very little lecture. This was a hands on class. The first day, he took us out to the welding shop to show us what we would be doing. As a group, we followed him from one station to the next. He would set up a project (spot welding, brazing, etc.) and do one as an example. Then he would call on some student to try their hand at it. Of course he made it look easy and the student, not yet knowing what they were doing made a mess of things. Finally we came to the electric welding station. He took a couple of pieces of flat steel and told us we were going to attach them with a lap weld. Then he started to demonstrate, but someone had been using the electric welder and changed the settings and when he struck an arc, there was very little welding and a whole lot of sputtering and popping. It took him a few adjustments and false starts but eventually he got the machine set just right and made his weld. Then he turned to me, as I was one of the students standing nearby that had not had a turn at a project and handed me the gloves and the rod holder. You want me to weld, I asked? He said yeah, just run a bead on this flat piece of steel. Well I put on the helmet, hollered “eyeballs” so that everyone would cover their eyes, and proceeded to lay as pretty a two inch flat weld bead as anyone could ask for. When I finished, the lab instructor looked at the weld, looked at me, looked back at the weld and said. That is good, that is very good, in fact that is better than most of you will be able to do after you have finished this course. There were still projects to do and tests to take, but that day, I had made my ‘A’ at Auburn.

The Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac

One of my favorites.

IF

IF the congress passes a bill to amend the constitution so that W can run for a third term and
IF the states ratify that amendment and
IF W runs again and
IF is only opponent is Mike Tyson,
I'll vote for Mike Tyson and
IF his only opponent is Paris Hilton
I'll vote for Paris Hilton and
IF Hitler did excape the bunker intact and
IF he is living in South America and
IF he comes out of hiding for the election and
IF W's only opponent is Hitler
I'll abstain from voting.

Back to Gardening

For the last couple of years, I have not done any gardening. Year before last I did have a few tomato plants, last year nothing.

This past fall I planted a couple of patches of turnips. Last week I tilled up one of the turnip patches. The other I am gonna let go to seed, just to see what happens. I also tilled a small patch adjacent to where the white oak tree fell back in 2001.

Today I planted lettuce, spinach, radishes and onions. The lettuce and spinach are in the "white oak patch" along with some turnips I planted last week. The other items are in the "satellite dish patch". Later on I am gonna plant some tomato plants and pepper plants in that patch. Granted these little patches won't cure world hunger but they should make a nice addition to my menus.

One of these days, I am gonna plant some potatoes again like I did before I retired. Potatoes are a fun crop to grow and harvest.

A New US Capitol

Where I grew up, the county seat, the site of the county government, was located in a town near the geographic center of the county. Seemed like a good plan to me at the time. It still does. Now I realize that when the District of Columbia was hacked out of Maryland and Virginia to serve as the site for our nations capitol, it was pretty much centrally located. A lot has changed since then and I think that it is time for the capitol to be relocated. In years past, I’ve made a couple of trips across this country and recently I’ve been doing some map pondering and I have decided that the new capitol needs to be located near Hoxie, Kansas. Not in the town mind you, but near it. I think that the US seat of government should be moved to a parcel of land located in a cornfield just off US Highway 24, near Hoxie. What with terrorist and all, I think that the capitol should be small so it can be easily defended, say about 100 sq. feet. It should be surrounded with a 20-ft thick, 10-ft tall concrete wall with 3 feet of razor ribbon along the top. The wall needs one 6-foot walk gate that will be locked 24/7 365 and guarded by at least a dozen employees of Homeland Security armed with automatic weapons. A new DNA sample and retina scan should be required each time a government official enters the capitol.

Now since the workings of the US Government are the business of the people, the entire area should be under floodlights all the time. No less than 4 cameras should be trained on the complex and sending continuous real time pictures to 4 new 24 hour a day cable channels, C-Span 3, 4, 5 and 6. One other thing, since this will be the US capitol, I think we should make it the law that ALL business of the various branches of the government must be conducted in this new capitol and that the president, congress, supreme court, et. al. must be in the capital when they do their job. The rest of the country can be turned loose to do pretty much like we please. After all, even if the terrorists get into the country, they will be picked up long before they reach Hoxie. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I believe it is a good start toward curing many of our national problems.

A Rose by Any Other Name

Shakespeare had Juliet say “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Important point there, things are what they are regardless of what we call them. Living in these UberPC times, that is a fact that can be easily forgotten. If we call a garbage man a sanitation engineer, he still picks up garbage, although in my neighborhood he is actually a truck driver and lift operator. No one actually touches my garbage can now but me. I bring up this subject of name versus reality because I see it as the starting point of what I perceive to be a bigger problem. At first we started calling things by different names as if that made them better or different. I believe this lead us to taking a valid concept of self improvement, the talking about things we intend to do as if they had already been done, and bastardizing it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that positive affirmation in an effective self-improvement tool. I personally think it has worked for me in the past. But, it is only a tool. No hammer ever built a house unless some carpenter swung it. No ratchet ever tightened a bolt unless some mechanic turned it. A tool helps us accomplish a task. Somewhere along the way, that fact seems to have been lost. Now, many people apparently seem to think that all you have to do is say something to make it so. I suppose in their mind that works. I have heard that if you tell a lie long enough you begin to believe it. My point is that if you are a member of a football team that does not practice well, does not play well and does not win any games, it is silly to stand on the sideline and yell we are number one. It is even sillier to actually believe that you ARE number one. Saying it doesn’t make it so, working hard to accomplish it makes it so.

Another fact that we seem to have lost sight of is that doing it one time only makes it so that one time. Just because you were on top in the past, does not make you a winner today. Today as a nation, we spend a lot of time basking in the glory of our past deeds. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear someone bragging about how great we are. I think that the time for basking and bragging is over. We need to quit talking about how great we are and take a long hard look at what we have become. A popular challenge for someone who is resting on their laurels is “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” I think it is appropriate for us to ask ourselves the similar question, “what have we done lately?”

March Makes Me Think Of Graduation

The privet bushes in my backyard are putting on bunches of tiny new leaves, that means it is March in Central Alabama. It was during March in 1970 that I finally graduated from Auburn University. I had started to Alex City State Junior College in the fall of 1965 and transferred to Auburn in September of 1967 so I should have graduated in 1969, but I had to repeat several courses during my time on the plains.

I love Auburn. It is a great school and I would not take anything for having gone there, however I can’t say that I have a storehouse full of fond memories of my Auburn education. It was tough. My grades were marginal. Thanks to the Vietnam War and my local draft board, each quarter I was taking at least one more course than I could successfully handle. I had done fairly well at ACSJC and had a transfer grade point of about 1.67 on a 3 point system but I was always on the raw edge at Auburn. So much so that when I went to the Registrar’s office in early 1970 to apply for graduation, my Auburn grade point was a 0.98. At that time, the minimum grade point for graduation at Auburn was 1.00. My overall grade point, including my transfer work was comfortably over 1.00. Unfortunately, transfer grade points were assigned the value of 1.00 until after graduation.

At the Registrar’s office I talked to a very nice lady whose name has long ago left me. She looked at my folder, she looked at me, she looked back at my folder, and finally she said you know that you have to have a 1.00 to graduate. I said yes. You have a 0.98. I said yes, I guess that means I can’t graduate. She said not necessarily. You have a 1.67 transfer grade point. I said yes. So when the two are combined you have a (don’t remember the number, something like 1.24 I think). I said yes, so does that mean I will graduate. She said not necessarily. Your transfer work is only counted at 1.00 until after you graduate. I said I know, does that mean I won’t graduate. She said not necessarily. Based on your current grades you will probably have a 0.99 grade point at the end of the quarter. So does that mean I won’t graduate. She said not necessarily. By now I was frustrated. I looked at her and said, am I gonna graduate or not. She said, I think so.

I went on to pass everything that quarter and by my calculations I had a 0.99 grade point. I was standing in line in the coliseum waiting to get my diploma and wondering if I was gonna get up there and they were gonna say, wait, you have a 0.99, you can’t graduate. When the time came and they called my name and I walked over and got that diploma cover, I knew that I had made it. That was 36 years ago but when the new little clusters of leaves pop out on the privet bushes in Central Alabama, it all comes back to me just like it was yesterday.

Bye Bye BellSouth, Hello SunRocket

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an ad for SunRocket. It is a VOIP phone company, very similar to Vonage. They currently have a deal where they will provide you unlimited home phone service plus two Uniden cordless phones for $199 per year. I ordered their service and the phones came in via UPS yesterday. I hooked them up and have made several phone calls. So far I am very impressed. I have applied to have my home phone number transferred over to my SunRocket account. They say it may take as long as 60 days to accomplish the transfer, so sometime around the middle of June, I will be saying bye bye to BellSouth. Nothing against BellSouth personally, but since I have hispeed internet through cable, I can save at least $200 per year by switching my phone service to SunRocket.

I Wonder When We Will Get Like This?

Here is the Blog I am referencing. The article is currently on top, but for later on when new entries are added, it is entitled "Cement Bag" and dated Tuesday 7th March 2006. You probably noticed that I said I wonder "when" will we get like this and not "if" we will get like this. I say that not to be overly pessimistic, but to reflect my lack of confidence in the people in postions of authority in this country. They are not as bad as President Mugabe yet, but give them time. By the way, at around 3:00 PM CT today (11 Mar 2006), $1 US equals $99,202 Zimbabwe dollars so the amount she gave the man was the approximate equavilent of 40 cents in US currency.

How To Live A Long Life

Be born with good genes. This article from the AARP Bulletin tells how Dr. Nir Barzilai is trying to use info from folks with good genes to help the rest of us to live healthier lives.

Bush's Legacy

I come from a part of the country that thinks that "W" hung the moon. Personally I am a lot less enamoured with the guy. Whether you like him, dislike him or ignore him, one thing is for certain, his legacy is gonna haunt you, your kids, your grandkids and probably your great grandkids. I read the other day that under his watch, federal spending has increased by half. I took that to mean that for every dollar we spent before, now we are spending a dollar and a half. Unfortunately, it is money we don't have .

We are quickly becoming a nation of indebted servants. I know that the Congress is equally to blame since they are the ones that come up with the spending bills, but everyone knows what to expect of Congress. Mark Twain said it best. "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself." The trouble is "W" has yet to issue a veto. He can't seem to find a government expenditure that he does not love. I see where now he is asking for a line item veto. Maybe if they give it to him he can finally find something to not spend money on, but I fear that it is gonna be way too little, way too late. I wonder how all those black "W The President" stickers are gonna look to us when we are sitting in the poor house.

Mr Head quoted Lincoln.

When I was in junior high school, I had a very wise man for my eighth grade math teacher. He later became principal of the high school. His name was Albert Lee Head. Mr Head had a lot of quotes that he liked to use. One of his favorites was by Abraham Lincoln. Now Lincoln is not my favorite president by a long sight, but I too like this quote.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

The current administration has a lot of folks fooled on a lot of things, but looks like some of them may be waking up.

An Interesting Website

I saw this morning that the House had passed the reauthorization of the so called Patriot Act. I was interested to see how my congress critter Spencer Bachus had voted, so I did a little googling and found this website. You can use it to see what your congress critter is voting on and how he or she is voting. By the way, for those of you in my district who are interested, Bachus voted for reauthorization.

Old Letters

I am still sorting through the junk for my folk's house. Today I looked through a box of old letters. The earliest were from the early 1960's, the latest from after my father's death in 2002. Right now, I don't have time to read all of them but I did read several and it got me to thinking. Now that we have email, old letters don't sit in yellow envelopes in boxes in closets. They reside on hard disks in computers. Computers that are obsolete in 5 to 7 years and are replaced with newer computers with clean hard disks. I suspect that most of the old emails are lost with the old computers. I know that mine are. So while we have all those old letters from the last half of the twentieth century to remind us of how things were, most of today's emails will end up in a landfill somewhere on the corroding disk of an obsolete hard drive. Is that a problem, or an advantage? I'm not sure of the answer.

Lower your salt intake and die sooner

Seems that the benefits of lower salt intake may have come from the same camp that gave us the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Here is a WebMD article from CBSNEWS.com that gives the details.

The Economy Is Like A Drunk At Closing Time

Back in my younger days when I went to bars and sometimes stayed late, there was an expression that the proprieters used to signal closing. They would say to the hangers on, "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." I think that pretty well sums up the state of the US economy. There is really no specified direction that it has to take from here, but most people agree that it is definitely not in a steady state position. Kevin Duffy has an interesting take on what may happen next.

Dead Horse Theory

My apologies to the original author of what follows. I found it as a text document with no references. It's just too good not to post. If you are the author, let me know at khmiller@yahoo.com and I will give you credit or update this post as a link to your site:

Dead Horse Theory

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However, in government, education, and in corporate America, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.

9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.

10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.

12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And of course....

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

In the future I will abstain from voting

Lately I have been seeing the road signs indicating that its politicking season. Time for the May primaries and the November general election. Immediately when I see those signs I begin to ask myself, who am I gonna vote for. Today I have the answer, none of them. That’s right, I am not gonna vote for any of them. Why you ask? Because they are all a bunch of parasites. Good honest, hard working people don't run for public office because they are out working hard. The folks that do run are mostly lazy carpetbaggers or manipulative psychopaths. Which one am I gonna vote for the carpetbagger or the psycho? It’s my duty as a citizen to vote you say. Bullshit, I say. I have no duty to sanction the actions of people who's only interest is to line their own pockets with money forcible taken from others or the actions of control freaks that want to manage every action of their fellow man right down to how much water he can use to flush his toilet.

No the time for my participation in the farce called the political system is over. I'll still show up at the polls to vote on specific proposals like a tax increase, or a state lottery but the days of me standing in line to chose between two losers who probably both ought to be in prison instead of in office are done.

What Causes AIDS?

The CDC says that it is caused by the HIV virus, but the CDC is run by the government so you can pretty well figure they are wrong. Rebecca Culshaw offers some insider insight on this subject.

Multiculturalism GoodBye

Looks like the Dutch are taking the Popeye approach to multiculturalism, ( "I've stands all I can stands, I can't stands no more.")

Harry Browne 6/17/1933 -> 3/1/2006

Harry Browne was a great pragmatic libertarian and we are going to miss him.

Another Reason To Drink Tomato Juice

Here is another reason to drink tomato juice.

Kinda What I Expected

Having spent a significant portion of my previous career crunching numbers, I am always skeptical of determinations of any kind made solely on the basis of numbers. Granted, some numbers count. If the number in the right hand column of your check register is less than zero, you had better quit writing checks. If the pointer on your speedometer is on 70 mph and you are not on the intersate, then you need to be concerned with the presence of cops. Other numbers that today play a big part in our daily lives my not be as clear cut in their meaning.

The POTUS That Cried Wolf?

When I was young, we were often told the story of "the boy that cried wolf". I'm not sure but I think it is was one of Aesop's fables. Anyway, I am certain that most of you my age or older know the story. For other's, basically the little boy was a shepard who figured out that if he cried wolf really loud, the townspeople would rush to his assistance. He did that several times when there really was no wolf just for the excitment. Then when a wolf did come along and the little boy cried wolf the townspeople thought he was still pranking and did not come to help. The wolf ate up all the sheep.

Now what we have with the POTUS and the UAE controlling some US ports is similiar, but we haven't reached the moral of the story yet. Sure POTUS has been "crying wolf" about arab terrorist ever since 9/11/2001. Unfortunately for him, the American people are still rushing to kill every wolf. In the case of the UAE, POTUS tells us that this is a friendly wolf, and he didn't cry wolf, some alarmist did, but all this "wolf crying" has kinda conditioned us to be a national of people that jump up with pitch forks in hand at any wolf, no matter who is doing the crying.

I'm sure that eventually we as a nation will figure out the moral of the story, if you cry wolf when there is no wolf, don't expect much help when there actually is a wolf but in the mean time it is gonna be difficult for any wolves to operate ports in the USofA.

Brad Edmonds Tells It Like It Is

In his article, 'Government Makes Things Worse' , Brad Edmonds tells it like it is. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of Americans do not understand what Brad is saying. When Harry Browne was running for president in 2000, he asked people to name their favorite government program. I saw a video of him asking people and virtually none of them could name one government program that they liked. I know that the tape was edited and while Harry admitted as much, he insisted that the tapes content was representative of what he found everywhere he went. Think of it, the government takes around one half of every dollar you make, when the total up all the different taxes and fees, and they can't come up with even one program that people can say is their favorite or even one that people like. Maybe you are different, maybe you have a favorite government program. If you do, I would certainly like to hear about it.

Acres Of Diamonds

Years ago, when I was in Amway, I was introduced to Russell H Conwell's speech, Acres of Diamonds . Today, I was reading an article by Gary North and he had a link to Temple University's website that has the speech. I read it again and throughly enjoyed it. If you have never read it, do it now. If you are like me and it has been a while since you read it, read it again now and enjoy it again.

Rising Health Care Costs

I read and hear a lot about rising health care costs. Everyone says we have to do something to help people pay for their health care. I understand that the president covered it in his SOTU address a few days ago. He wants to come up with medical savings plans or something like that. I've got a better idea. Make all medical expenses a tax credit. Lower everyones federal and state income tax by $1 for every $1 they spend on doctors, medicine, and even health care insurance premiums. In fact, why not do the same thing for food and nutrition costs. After all, there is nothing that the federal or state government does for us that is as important to us as our own health. Better that we take the money we are paying in as income tax and pay for things that will keep us healthy or cover the cost of treatment when we get sick.

Some folks are so poor that they currently can't afford to pay for health care. They should not be paying any income tax already. If they are, give it all back to them. If that isn't enough, then they should qualify for the earned income credit.

I know that this plan would take a bite out of what the government(s), federal and state are collecting in income tax revenue, but as I said before, nothing that the government(s) do for us is as important to us as our own health.

Fried Catfish Nuggets

Last night for supper we had fried catfish nuggets. Earlier in the day I had gone to the store to get some paper towels and a few other items. When I went by the meat counter, I noticed that they had a package of catfish nuggets. Sometimes they have them, sometimes they don't. For those of you who don't know what a catfish nuggets is, basically it is a random piece of catfish left over from when the fish was dressed. Some of these were no bigger than your thumb. Some were well over 100 grams or around 4 ounces.

Now I have been catching, cleaning, cooking and eating fish all my life, but I decided to do a little checking on the internet to see if I could pick up any tips. Combining my own experience with what I found on the internet, I came up with the following.

I made up a mixture of about 2 parts yellow corn meal to 1 part bisquick. To that I added some salt, pepper and magic dust, which is a rub made from a recipe I found on the internet last year. I made up enough of this coating mixture to throughly coat the nuggets I had. I put the coating mix and the nuggets in a ziploc bag, shook it good and placed it in the refrigerator. When it got time to cook the nuggets, I put about 1 qt of cooking oil in a 4 qt pan, heated it to 350 degrees F and dropped in a few nuggets. It took them about 4 minutes to reach a golden brown. I cooked a few at a time so as not to cool the cooking oil down too much. We ate them with french fries and slaw and if I do say so myself, they were pretty good.

Nay Sayers

I was just out on www.al.com reading the messages in their gasoline prices forum. One particular thread caught my eye as it had to do with using acetone as a fuel additive. Some of the veggie oil groups that I subscribe to have had similiar threads recently, so I was interested to see what the locals had to say. When I started reading the thread, I was immediately surprised at the negativity expressed by the individuals that responed to the initial posting.

The original poster, screen name wileykoyote, reported that he had been adding " 1 ounce of acetone to every 3 gallons of gas. On average, I get about 18% better gas mileage using acetone." He also included a link to the website that got him started.

http://www.lubedev.com/articles/additive.htm

One of the nay sayers responded with "All I know for sure is that truck drivers use acetone to clean the tar and road film off their trucks. It is a very strong chemical that could damage someones engine."

Another said "Unless I had a cheap car to try this on, I'd err on the side of safety. I get a good 35-50mpg highway anyways, so the couple of cents I save by putting acetone in my engine would not be worth the repair if it ate through the gaskets or something along those lines."

I'm not sure where the couple of cents figure comes in. If you figure an 18% increase, at 50 mpg and $2.13 per gallon, which is what I paid locally last week, then 100 miles would cost $4.26 to drive without acetone as an additive and would cost $3.61 with acetone as an additive. That would be considerably more than a couple of cents for just 100 miles of driving. Now I am not saying that wileykoyote's results are typical, or even accurate, but it really disheartens me that someone would offer up a possible suggestion for improving fuel economy in a forum that should attract persons interested in just that sort of thing and all he gets is ridicule.

I'm not sure when or why it has happened, but somewhere along the way, the American people have traded in their can do spirit for a defeatist mindset. If some government official, lawyer , doctor or MIT professor doesn't say its alright to do something, they immediately raise a red flag. I fear that with that kind of mindset, we were as good as we will ever be, yesterday, and that tomorrow we will be worse than we are today.

Another Miller's Garage Alumni is gone.

Got a call yesterday from a friend who told me that Wally Burks had died. He was 68 years old. The friend didn't know the cause of death, but speculated it might have been a heart attack.

The first year the garage was open, in the metal building up the hill, Wally started hanging around, helping out when he was needed. At that time, he was roofing houses, but the work was sporadic. It was 1959 and the country was in the grip of a recession. Gradually he did more and more mechanic work and less and less roofing until he was mechanicing full time. I have often heard my father say that he couldn't fire Wally cause he never did hire him. Wally just started working and Daddy started paying him.

I had not seen Wally in over 30 years but he is one of the people in my life who I will not ever forget.

Let Me Sleep On It.

Have you ever said that? Told a real estate agent or a car salesman that you would like to sleep on it, ie. wait overnight to make a decision? Have you ever gone to bed pondering a problem and woke up the next morning with the answer? I know I have. Seems some investigators have discovered that this is actually a good ideal and yields positive results.

Global Warming

Global Warming predictions are based on COMPUTER MODELS. Weather predictions are based on COMPUTER MODELS. The folks that predict the weather are lucky if they can get tomorrows weather correct. What makes you think that someone has a COMPUTER MODEL that can predict anything that is gonna happen next year or 5 years from now. This article seems to indicate that hard historical evidence casts doubt on some of the existing predictions.

Driver's License For Illegal Aliens

I just finished reading this article and it caused me to ask myself a question, "what difference does it make if an illegal alien has a drivers license?" If they don't have one, does that stop them from driving? If they do have one, aren't they still an illegal alien? I'm always reading about illegals getting detained and released without deportation. By all accounts, the borders of the United States are like a sieve. Will these be any less of a problem if it gets harder for an illegal to get a driver's license? Why then is it so damn important to try to keep illegals from getting drivers license? What good does it do to deny them a drivers license? Is this whole thing a strawman?

It seems to me that the people that we have elected to run this country ask all the wrong questions, come up with the wrong answers to those questions and then implement flawed strategies to work their incorrect solutions. If they manage to do something correctly, its appears to be mostly by accident. I've said it before and I will say it again. I would not let the folks in government operate the basement apartment of an outdoor toliet for me.

Greenies Into The Trash

I have bought some Greenies for our dogs in the past. In fact there is one in my kitchen right now. However, after reading this article on CNN's website, I am gonna throw it in the trash. Why take the chance?

How to Handle the Lobbyist Problem

The Abramoff scandal has focused the nations attention on the problem of lobbyist running all over Washington, spreading money around and getting legislation and loopholes that favor their particular special interest group. Senator John McCain and others want to come up with new legislation that will supposedly correct this problem. Good luck to them, but I have an alternate solution. Federal deregulation. That's right, eliminate federal regulations on most everything and turn law making back to the states. That way these lobbyist will have to cover 50 state legislatures instead of one congress and 50 governers offices instead of one White House. What money they have to spend will be split 50 different ways and probably won't do as much damage. Much of their time will be spent travelling instead of greasing politicians. I know; it sounds to simple to work, but often times the simplest solution is the best.

The Damnedest Thing

I have been driving since I was 12 years old. I have owned dozens of different types of automobiles, and driven many others that belonged to friends, relatives, companys I worked for or customers of Millers Garage. During that 47 years I have driven nearly 2 million miles by my estimate. Since a great deal of that involved trips of less than 50 miles, I think it safe to say that I have started a vehicle tens if not hundreds of thousands of times in my life. But yesterday afternoon I experienced something I had never experienced before while starting a vehicle.

I was on my way to Columbiana in my white ford van and I stopped by the local Raceway to get some gas. When I had finished getting the gas, I got back into the van and turned the key to start it. It started immediately, but the starter did not disengage from the flywheel and while the engine was running, the starter was still turning. Now that has happened to me before so I immediately switched off the key. Then the damnedest thing happened. The engine died, but the starter kept right on turning. Apparently the starter solenoid had stuck in an actuated position. I rasied the hood and located the starter solenoid on the inner fender well next to the battery. Then I went around to the back of the van, located a jack handle went back to the front of the van. All the while, the starter was grinding away. I gave the starter solenoid a good whack with the jack handle and the starter stopped. I got back into the van, turned the key to start it. It started right up normally and I went on to Columbiana. Don't know what caused the starter solenoid to stick like that but I can assure you that it is a very unnerving experience.

Investment Advice

I have been interested in stocks and investing since my uncle gave me a stock certificate, one share of Libby McNiel and Libby, back in the early sixties. I don't remember what happened to that share I doubt that I sold it.The commission would have cost more than the stock brought. Anyway, after I started work in 1970, some of the folks I worked with were buying stocks. That was before the advent of the 401k. I took most of the little bit of money I had saved and bought 20 shares of Southern Company. Later on, after I was married, I bought 20 more shares. A few years later, around 1980 I got a divorce and sold my Southern Company stock and several other things. That pretty much put an end to my stock trading. Then, sometime in the late 90's, one of the guys I worked with opened an eTrade account. He convinced me that it was lots of fun and a good way to make a little extra money. Buy low, sell high. You know the story. Anyway, I took $3000 out of my meager saving and opened an eTrade account. Through careful study, judicious trading and my usual luck, I managed to turn that $3000 into $1600 in less than a years time. So much for stock trading. It was along about that time that another of my co-workers and my boss made me an offer, jokingly, I think. They offered me $50 to tell them before I bought a stock. They were going to short it before I bought. Since everything I bought went down, they figured to make a killing. Sure thing, can't miss. Unfortnately for them I lost interest in turning dollars into half-dollars, so we never did strike a deal.

Fast forward to last week. I have been reading a lot about gold. Last week I decided to test the waters so I bought a little bit of gold. That was the day before the biggest single drop in the gold price in years. I wonder if those guys still want to buy my investment advice, I need to recoup some losses. ;>)

Mini Coopers

About the time I was graduating from High School and starting to college, the SCCA was still having races on city streets. Not too long after that, they moved onto offroad courses. I never knew why, I heard it had to do with insurance considerations. My family attended one of the last city street races down in Montgomery. It was run on streets located near the western bypass.

My father and I really enjoyed it, not sure how my sister and mother felt about it. One of the memorable sites from that race was that of the little Minis taking the corner located near where we sat. At that time, around the mid '60s, front wheel drive cars just did not exist in central Alabama. To watch the little Minis speeding through that corner with their left rear wheels hiking in the air as they made the apex of the turn was fascinating. Over the years, I have owned my share of British cars, mostly MGBs, but never a Mini. When BMW revived the Mini, I have to admit I felt a little tingle, but I was not moved enough to purchase one. Last week, I saw a 1967 Mini on the Atlanta Craiglist. I was really tempted but I currently have my quota of vehicles and I think my next vehicle I trade for will definitely be diesel powered, but my heart still skips a beat when I see a Mini on the street.

Everyone Has A List

It seems to me that the way the world around me now operates is by the dictum "I believe that _____ is wrong and should be against the law and that the powers that be must enforce that law." Pretty simple on the face of it. The problems start to crop up when people compile their lists and fill in that blank. Some things are virtually uniformly agreed upon, murder, robbery, arson, rape. Other things seem to appear on lots of lists, but not all, prostitution, smoking marijuana, sex with animals, downloading copyrighted materials off the internet. Others items have an asterisk beside them on some lists indicating that they are ok if the powers that be run them, gambling is one that pops to mind.

But there are some real differences between lists that have folks scratching their heads trying to reconcile them. One list will have abortion on it and another will have interfering with a woman's right to choose what happens to her body. Or one list will have possession of a firearm and another will have interfering with an individuals second amendment right. Some lists have prayer in schools while others site interfering with freedom of expression. It gets real contentious very quickly.

I think that maybe the solution lies not in reconciling the lists but by adding a second dictum. We need one like, "I believe that _________ is wrong therefore I choose not to do it." Use the first one for the universally agreed upon items, or at least items where over 90% of the lists agree. Then use the second one for other list items. Now that would simplify thinks greatly. Who knows, if we add and start using this second dictum for contentious list items, we might actually be able to satisfy Rodney King and all learn to just get along.

Inquisitive?

I don't get a lot of comments on posts on my blog. I figure that is because (A) not many people read them and (B) those that do don't see anything worthy of comment. It doesn't really bother me. I think of the blog more as an outlet for me, than as reading material for others.

What I do find interesting, is that of the three people who have commented so far, two have used the word inqusitive to describe my blog. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what inquisitive means, but I looked it up anyway. Sure enough it means just about what I thought it meant. It's a good word, but not one I use everyday. Also both the people that used it were directing me to their blog. I went to the first one, read it, sent the guy and email and he never responded. Tried to go to the second one and it does not seem to exist. My question is this. Is there some kind of blog promotion software or web site that is the source of these nearly identical comments? Or, is inquisitive in fact the universally recognized best word to describe my puny little blog?

Can the President legally have Ted Kennedy Killed?

Does this mean that the president can legally have Ted Kennedy killed? After all Ted is or was on that TSA no-fly list with 80,000 other American citizens who are suspected terrorist. What about the 4 year old boy that is on the list, can he be ordered killed also? What about the other 79,998 people on that list? Can the president order them killed as well? Someone wrote the other day that the list had about 30,000 names on it a year or so ago. Now there are 80,000. That would seem to indicate that the list is gonna grow. Can the people who are added in the future be legally ordered killed as well? Can I be ordered killed for asking these questions? Can you be ordered killed for reading them? I don't know the answer, do you?

Iraq is not Vietnam, Part II

In this followup to his original article, Jim Cox extends his comparison of the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. Once again, he determines that "Iraq is not Vietnam; Vietnam is spelled with a `V' and is in Southeast Asia, Iraq is spelled with an `I' and is in Southwest Asia." If reading this doesn't send chills down your spine, you are obviously too young to remember the Vietnam era.

Is It Worth It?

Read this and then tell me if you think that what we have accomplished in Iraq or what we stand to accomplish over there is worth it.

The War isn't working

I'm not talking about the one in Iraq, I'm talking about the one in Alabama, and Illinois and Texas and the other 47 states. I'm talking about the War on Drugs. I was talking to a guy from central Alabama this morning and he was telling me what a big problem crystal meth is in his county. Tonight I was talking to a lady from north Alabama and she said they are experiencing the same thing. When I was young, back in the 1960's, before the War On Drugs, some folks smoked pot, a lot of them drank beer and Boones Farm wine that they brought in from out of state and that was about it. I think it was in the early 1980's that this country declared a War On Drugs. I would be afraid to guess how many billions of dollars have been spent on this thing. So far, it has proven to be about as effective as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920's and 1930's. The chief effect has been to line the pockets of a lot of criminals.

Every time I bring this up, one of my friends will say something like, well, what would you have us do, just make the stuff legal and let everyone buy it. Well I've given it some thought and decided that is exactly what we need to do. Legalize drugs and then start a government program to encourage people to use drugs. If it is as successful at its stated goal as the War on Drugs has been at its goal, in 20 years time we will have virtually wiped out drug use in this country.

Two Letters From Jeff Sessions

I've been sending emails to my congressperson, Spencer Baucus and my senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby through the organization DownSizeDC for the last several months. Most of them have had to do with various things the current administration in Washington is doing in the name of fighting terror. In my humble opinion, they are mostly wasting money, trampling on the Bill of Rights and creating a lot of useless redtape. Today, I got two identical letters from Jeff Sessions office. Both of them were dated January 10, 2006. In them he basically told me what a good job he, the congress, and the president are doing fighting terror. For some reason it reminded me of a old joke I heard a long time ago.

Seems there was this guy standing on a street corner, waving a yellow polka dotted flag in the air. A policeman walked up to the guy and asked him what he was doing. Oh, I'm scaring away the elephants the guy said. The policeman said there are no elephants around here. The guy looked at the policeman and said works good don't it?

Another Miller's Garage Story

In addition to fixin cars and cussing, the folks at Miller's Garage were known to take a drink now and then. At that time, Coosa County was dry, so all of the alcohol had to come for either a bootlegger or a moonshiner. For those unfamiliar with the difference, bootleggers sold bonded liquor, beer and wine brought in from wet counties. Moonshiners sold homemade stuff. The folks at Miller's Garage would drink either, but preferred the moonshine, provided it came from a trusted supplier, i.e. no dead possums or car batteries in the mash. Even with trusted suppliers, the quality of the homemade whiskey varied significantly. In particular, there was one kind that they called "wolf" or "steam run wolf". I never new exactly what that meant, but there was some reference to first batch or first run made from hog shorts that was offered up in explanation as to what constituted wolf whiskey. I do remember that when someone was drinking wolf, they smelled especially bad. Being underage, I never did drink any of it, but from what I was told, it tasted worse than it smelled. This brings me to the story in question. One of the mechanics had gotten hold of some wolf. It was so bad that my dad would not let him keep it inside the shop so he put it out in the little shed where we kept the steam cleaner. At that time, there was a black man named Boyt Corbin that lived near the shop. I don't know if Boyt did not have a car or did not have a drivers license or just enjoyed walking but nearly every day, he would walk by the shop on his way to the nearest country grocery store. After a while, he would walk back by on his way home. On this particular day as Boyt walked past, the mechanic with the wolf whiskey hollered at him, Boyt, come here I've got something for you. He and Boyt walked around the edge of the shop and after awhile the mechanic came back in bent over in laughter. He had taken Boyt out to the steam cleaner shed and given him a drink of the wolf whiskey. Then he asked Boyt how was it? Boyt said it was just right. Just right? That is the worse stuff I have ever drank. Yessir responded Boyt. It is just right. If it was any better, you wouldn't give me any of it, and if it was any worser, I couldn't stand it.

A Miller's Garage Story

My daughter, who is a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, sent me a link today to a story about some supply problems her company is having. For some reason, it reminded me of something that happened one time at my father's shop. From 1959 until 1984, my father ran an automobile repair shop in central Alabama. It was appropriately named Miller's Garage. His shop was known for two things, good repairs at a reasonable price, and salty language. One day a guy, who was a part time paying most time credit customer, came by and told my dad he needed some brake shoes for his car. He wanted to know if dad had any in stock. My dad said he did. The guy asked how much are they? 25 dollars was my dad's reply. 25 dollars, whew, that is too much, McClure sells them for 22 dollars. To that my dad, said, OK got get them from McClure. The guy said that he had gone to McClure's first but they were out of them. My dad looked at him and said, Hell, if I was out of them, I could sell them for 22 dollars too!

The Old Man, The Little Boy And The Donkey

This is the way I heard it:

Once there was an old man, a little boy and a donkey. One day the old man decided to go to town so he and the little boy got onto the donkey and started toward town. After a while, they met an old woman in the road. The old woman said to the old man, you are much to big to be riding on that poor little donkey, get off and lead him. So the old man got off the donkey and continued on toward town. A little while later, they met another old woman. The old woman said, old man, that little boy is to big to be riding that poor little donkey, he should be walking. So the old man got the little boy off the donkey and they continued on toward town. A little further along, they came upon another old woman, she said to the old man, old man that little boy is much to small to be walking in this rough road, pick him up and carry him. So the old man picked up the little boy and carried him under one arm and continued to lead the donkey toward town. Further on, they came upon another old woman, she said, old man, that poor little donkey is getting his hooves bruised and broken by the stones in this road, you need to pick him up and carry him. So the old man did, he picked up the donkey and put him under his other arm. The old man walked on toward town with the little boy under one arm and the donkey under the other. Eventually they came to a foot log over a creek. The old man started over the foot log carrying the little boy and the donkey but he could not keep his balance and they all fell in to the creek. The donkey drowned, the little boy drowned and the old man drowned.

The moral of this story is:

If you try to please everyone, you will loose your ass and everything else.

Three Questions

Three Questions

We Get What We Look For

I am a fan of the Realage tips. I started receiving them via email a couple of years ago. I think this one is particularly important for us boomers.

Charley Reese on Global Warming

Once again Charley Reese puts into words my exact sentiments. I love the way he uses money to explain parts per million. So simple yet I had never thought of it in that way.

Festivus

Did you know that Festivus was invented in 1966 by a Reader's Digest Editor? All this time I thought it was invented by Frank Costanza. Next they will be telling me there ain't no Santa Claus.

Third Package was a charm

Are you familiar with the old expression, third time is a charm? Well I guess for UPS the third package was a charm. I went out shopping this afternoon and when I got back, both of the packages from last week and a third package (the charm) were sitting on my front porch. I for one am glad that everything arrived in time for Christmas. Which reminds me, if I don't see you in person before Christmas, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Why I am a Libertarian

A lot of people question me being a libertarian. After all, they say, the libertarian candidate never wins except in an occasional constable, school board member or city council race. I've tried to explain it to them, often with mixed results. This morning, I read this article by Harry Browne. He does a better job of explaining why I am a libertarian than I could ever do.

The USPS

While I am on the subject of shippers, I need to say a few words about the US Postal Service. I know that in the past, they have been suspect and I have been one of their critics. As a quasi governmental agency, many times they have lived down to my expectations. But something has happened. It was not overnight, but somehow over the past few years, they have made some great strides in becoming a service oriented organization. They have turned their website into one of the best that I deal with. They have made shipping about as easy and convenient as it can be for a non-business and their rates for the most part are quite competitive. All and all, I have to give them a thumbs up. They are definitely my shipper of choice for outgoing packages.

FedEx Ground is winning my business

This past week I have had multiple headaches with UPS. Suddenly after delivering a package to my house on Tuesday, on Wednesday they decided that my address did not exist. I have called them three times and am scheduled to get a call from them by 10:00 AM Monday to try to get it straightened out. In the mean time, FedEx Ground was scheduled to deliver a package to my house yesterday (Saturday). They could not make it and indicated on their website that the package would be rescheduled. I assumed they meant for Monday but I was wrong. The FedEx truck just left my house. They delivered the package this morning (Sunday). Now that is what I call service. Some of the companies I order from don't give me a choice on shipping, but on the ones that do, you can be assured that in the future I will be selecting FedEx Ground ahead of UPS.

Danger Will Robinson, Danger, Danger

Ever since the days of Lost In Space, I have been fascinated with Robots. When Heathkit came out with the Hero, I was highly tempted, but really could not justify purchasing one. Of course there have been kits and parts available, but I lacked the time or motivation to assemble one from scratch. Enter the Roomba . Finally a economical robot that can perform a much needed task in my home. Unless my plans change, after my budget recovers from Christmas, I am gonna buy one. I wonder if I can figure out how to program it to say "Danger Will Robinson."

The Second Vermont Republic

Now here are some folks that have come up with a peaceful way to get out from under the massaive, invasive federal bureaucracy. I may not agree with every detail of what they propose but I certainly applaud their efforts toward greater freedom.

Holly, Mistletoe and getting jerked around by UPS

I order a lot of stuff off the internet. Car parts, electronic parts, tools, etc. I have found in the last year or two that it is easier and sometimes cheaper to locate what I want, order it and have it delivered than to run all over Birmingham and find that everyone is out of what I need, doesn't stock what I need, or in some cases wants to argue with me and tell me that what I am asking for does not exist.

The bulk of the things I buy are shipped USPS, UPS Ground or Fedex Ground. They all seem to do a good job most of the time. I used to have a problem with UPS periodically loosing their way to my house. I live about 385 feet off the road down what my ladyfriend Linda refers to as a 'lane'. Its more of a bumpy, rutted dirt drive, but that is a story for another time. Back to UPS. They would deliver package after package with no problem and then I would get a post card in the mail saying they could not deliver a certain package because the address, which was the same as they had been delivering to, did not exist. I would call them, tell them that they had just delivered to that address a few days before. They would take down directions and next day the package would be delivered. That all stopped a couple of years ago. They assigned a driver to this route and he was the only one working it. Sometimes he would deliver 3 times in one week. He did get stuck a couple of times, my yard and drive are problematic when wet, but I managed to pull him out with my van and all was well with the world. A month or so ago, I started having a new driver, but still only the one. Apparently he had talked to the previous driver and knew where I was, although it should not be that much trouble to find as there is a big mailbox on the road with 640 in block letters on the side. All continued to be fine. That brings us up to this week. Tuesday a UPS truck pulls up with two people. I think they use a driver and a helper this time of year to expedite the increase in delivers. They delivered my package. I knew from an email notice that I had received that I had another package scheduled for Wednesday. It did not arrive. Yesterday afternoon (Thursday), I checked the UPS website and learned that my package "was undeliverable as addressed." I called their 1-800 number and was told that it was addressed to "640 Hwy 35" which was a non-existent address. I assured the guy I was talking to that it did exist and that UPS delivered here regularly. I gave him explicit directions as to where my house was located. He said the package would be rescheduled for delivery tomorrow (Friday). This morning I checked the UPS website and now my package has a note saying that "a delivery change has been requested" and that the "package will be delivered as requested." Of course the only change that I have requested is that they deliver the package as addressed. I suspect that this is the result of new drivers and the Christmas crush of packages, or at least I hope so. I really don't want things to go back to being like they were in the past.

As for the other two carriers, USPS is doing a good job. Occasionally they leave some thing in my mail box addressed to someone else, but not often. Fedex Ground? They have been good, but I have two packages coming in next week from CompGeeks in California and both were sent Fedex Ground, so we will see.

No Fly Zone

Let me first say that I have never been a real big fan of flying. I have done it several times, mostly commercial, once or twice in a private plane. Since I really don't care for it that much, giving it up was really not a big sacrifice for me, kind of like giving up brussel sprouts. Since 9-11, the world has been a no fly zone for me. I don't fly. It's not so much that I am scared of being hijacked and killed. I really doubt that is very likely. The whole nature of terrorism is to stike where you are least expected. That makes most any other target more at risk than airplanes. No, It is that I don't want to suffer at the hands of the government thugs. Originally this entry linked to an online story. That link is now dead but you can do a search and find all the articles that you would care to read about abuse of air passengers since the war on terra began.

The Internet

You know, when to stop to think about it, the Internet really is amazing. So much of what I take for granted today, didn't exsit 15 year ago. I just read this article from CNN. It really helps to put it all into perspective.

To many WWII movies

I guess I watched too many World War II movies when I was young. You know the ones where the good guys are in Nazi Germany and trying to get out. Everywhere they go, there are Gestapo Agents and Nazi officicals, someone wanting to see their papers. That is what I think of when Congress passes things like the "Real ID Act." Now, I read this . The first thing that I thought of is why do we need undercover agents on trains? Is someone in the government afraid that terrorist are gonna hijack a train and ram it into a federal building somewhere?

Robot in our future?

Personal robots could be the answer to many of the old age concerns of all us baby boomers. Maybe by the time I am old enough to need assisted living, I can trade my Toyota car in on a Toyota robot. Better yet, maybe I can keep my car and buy a robot that can drive me around.

I wonder if driving robots will have to have drivers licenses?

Charley Reese on Christmas

I love to read what Charley Reese writes. To me, he always says just what I would like to say only much better than I ever could. Here's some of his thoughts about Christmas.

Lao Tzu - The First Libertarian

There really is nothing new under the sun.

Baker's Yeast - Not Just For Bread Making

Think all baker's yeast is good for is making bread rise? Not so according to Bill Sardi in this interesting article. If you are like me and are concerned with the over use of antibiotics, you should read what Bill has to say.