Posted on 01/03/2008 6:35:58 PM PST by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
Locke indeed. The warrior poet.
I’ve been looking at safes lately. My biggest issue is that it really needs to live upstairs and this house is a rental. Which means someday I’ll have to move the dang thing. Not thrilled about that.
Speaking of knives...
I’ve been spending entirely too much time perusing the ColdSteel website over the last few weeks.
I’ve been... Bad.
me?... give me a few skulls to crush, some $#!theads tuh kill, and um happy...
*sniff* too bad those days are gone...
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... ColdSteel...
That’s why I’m sooo happy to be on the software end of things instead of still dealing with users and hardware.
I’d rather deal with users and failing machines than some of the stuff you’ve been through though.
ColdSteel has many nice products.
They have some nice knives. And swords.
A nice historically authentic 9th century Viking sword, for example. Like my ancestors likely carried.
I’ve been... Bad. :-)
I got one of them, too. Then I looked at the list of TV shows, and realized I don't know anything about any of them. Of course, the only network TV I watch is "Stargate Atlantis", and that's because I got hooked on the franchise.
However, I have downloaded a couple hundred gigabytes of old-time TV, BBC documentaries, and current movies that sound interesting. When it comes to old-time movies, they say "they don't make them like they used to." After watching a 1930's Flash Gordon flick staring Buster Crabbe, all I can do is proclaim a heart-felt "thanks-be-to-God".
It took all my willpower to watch the entire 94 minutes of this hokey dreck. Still, it was more rewarding than my first (and only) viewing of Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men". As a courtroom drama, it had plot holes you could drive a LAV through. Even worse, it was a profound-but-stupid insult to anyone who ever wore an American uniform. I couldn't make it through the end credits, but if they credited any sort of military consultant, someone was badly cheated.
LOL!
I have a soft spot for those, though. We had a bunch of 'em on video when I was little, so I have a sentimental attachment. Gotta love how they all seem to use cast-off costumes from other shows, no? Bad guys in space wearing Robin Hood uniforms...mmmmkay?
It's kind of hard for Hollywood to conceive of future worlds (SF) or alternate ones (fantasy), and still come in on budget for a grade B movie. We have to remember that Hollywood had to churn out tons of B and C-movie products every week. This was their bread-and-butter to keep people coming into the theaters. A big-budget blockbuster could be held over, but everything else had a limited shelf life, and the product line needed to be refreshed on a continuous basis.
And I have the same complaints about B-grade westerns, too. That's a topic that you'd think they had a better handle on.
I'm watching all seven seasons of "Adam 12". Some decent writing (couldn't do much acting in 24 minutes), but I remember the series from its original TV run. I just didn't remember all the fabulous classic cars (and some junkers) when I watched it the first time.
Or that, thirty years ago, petroleum was assumed to be the greasy remnants of dinosaurs and leafy plants.
Or that, thirty years ago, Time Magazine was seriously discussing a global ice age that would kill us all.
We truly know so very few things, and it aggravates me when we pompously declare that we do so know such-and-such.
Tell your boss that we are defined better by what we don't know than what we do know. Remind him, if he's medically inclined, that it wasn't so long ago that ulcers were incurable, endoscopic surgery was only for cleaning out athletes' knees, and corn prices were so low it was more profitable to plow fields under than to let the corn grow. Nowadays, of course, most ulcers are cured with antibiotics, many common surgeries are done with minimally invasive techniques, and farmers are selling corn at record high prices to feed cars, not cattle.
And the world is NOT overpopulated, nor is it headed that way.
Explain to him, kindly, that current population levels, usually measured by babies born per 1,000 population, mean very little. What matters more in the long run is fertility rate, measuring how many babies a woman will have in her lifetime. If the number is less than two, she hasn't replaced herself and baby daddy; that is the definition of a dying population. If the number equals or is somewhere near two, that is the definition of a stable population. 3 or more is a growing population; 4 or more is an exploding population.
Print out this table and tack it up on your desk, next to the betta. Also, go to the library, check out the book America Alone: The End Of The World as we Know It by Mark Steyn, and, when asked about it, point out that it talks about demography and destiny, and how your map shows that we First Worlders are on the short end of the stick.
Me, I would probably make cracks about sewing a nice burqa, making sure I only used toilets that didn't point east, and needing a good place to wash my feet ... but you wouldn't dream of doing the bad things that flash into my brain on a minute-by-minute basis ...
Good to see you’re doing well, and posting as cogently as always!
There are approximately 2.3 billion acres of land in the 50 United States; 20%, or some 443,000,000 acres, is classified as potentially arable. 14% (62 million) of this is cropland used only for pasture, while 9% (40 million) of total cropland was classified as idle cropland. 34 million acres of the idle cropland (about the size of the state of Iowa) has been permanently idled, paid for by US taxpayers.
Now, what would happen if some of the bright boys at Texas A&M (love those Aggies) came up with a plant high in biomass, that grows a half-inch an hour every hour of the day, that grows in almost every environment in this country, that produces copious biomass?
Of course, G-d, in His infinite wisdom, has already created this plant --- it's called kudzu. (We Southerners and Texans know all about kudzu; I post the Wiki link for y'all that have never seen this stuff.)
You don't have to beg it to grow, just throw it down and step back a ways --- it'll come to you. It grows on trees. It grows on bushes. It grows on the naked ground. It grows an average of a foot a day --- that's a half-inch an hour. It makes its own fertilizer. It grows in Pennsylvania, and Oregon, and Florida, and all kinds of places in between. Its non-woody parts are edible as people and animal food, as a legume it improves nitrogen-poor soil, it's one of the fifty most important ingredients in eastern medicine. It produces a nectar that attracts all sorts of bees and butterflies --- yay for the honeymakers! Its flowers are pretty, smell nice, and are edible.
Why can't we plant this pest (with proper precautions) on 3.4 million of the permanently idle (and paid-for) cropland, build a couple of processing plants, and do some large-scale experimentation on the best way to create a lignocellulosic ethanol? As I understand it, lignocellulosic ethanol (biomass like switchgrass and kudzu) generates 85% less greenhouse gasses than gasoline; starch ethanol (corn ethanol), on the other hand, produces 18% to 29% less greenhouse gasses than gasoline. Not only does it generate less bad gas when burned, apparently the manufacture of lignocellulosic ethanol makes as much as 16 times more energy than it needs to break down the biomass. That should make the plant's meter run backwards, and pump energy into the power grid.
And, best of all, taking a major pest weed and turning it into money is the American way. Kudzu lines the roads in most Southern states, and could be harvested once a week without a problem Cutting it back doesn't upset its regrowth overmuch, and replanting is not hard.
I know, it's making your eyes cross --- but, hey, you asked for numbers, and I'm waiting for my pain pill to kick in and send me to la-la-land ... you're stuck with me! And just think how your boss' eyes will cross when you lay down some of those numbers on him!
That's pretty much what Locke would say. Just sayin'.
Do you have a stash of knives we don't know about?
A hatch in the back yard?
Willie Nelson --- yes, that Willie Nelson, The Crazy one, the Wanted Outlaw, The Red-Headed Stranger with Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain (despite the fact that his Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground on An Uncloudy Day almost crashed into Whiskey River, then blamed the erratic flight on the Night Life) --- is also into biodiesel. From Wiki:
In 2004, Nelson and his wife Annie became partners with Bob and Kelly King in the building of two Pacific Bio-diesel plants, one in Salem, Oregon, and the other at Carl's Corner, Texas (the Texas plant was founded by Carl Cornelius, a longtime Nelson friend). In 2005, Nelson and several other business partners formed Willie Nelson Bio-diesel ("Bio-Willie"), a company that is marketing bio-diesel bio-fuel to truck stops. The fuel is made from vegetable oil (mainly soybean oil), and can be burned without modification in diesel engines.
Now, Rosie probably knows Willie, but I don't know if Jen does ...
And, yes, I have to do one more ...
"The Good-Hearted Woman looked away from the arena floor when Pancho & Lefty took the seats on either side of her. 'I was a Highwayman,' they announced in chorus. 'Remember Me?'
"She nodded, smiling. 'You Were Always On My Mind.'
"One of them nodded toward the scene before them. The two young men stood on either side of a steer it had taken them almost a minute to stretch between head and heel ropes.
"Pancho, on her left, patted her hand. 'I say this To All The Girls I've Loved Before,' he sighed.
"Lefty rolled his eyes and said, in concert with Pancho, 'Mamma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.' Lefty glared at his friend. 'Can't you come up with a better line?'
"The woman stood up, laughing. 'You told me that twenty years ago, Pancho. Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away?'
"Many hours later, she sat, alone, in her cozy rented studio apartment, enjoying her Bloody Mary Morning. She ran the fingers of her free hand over the Silver Stallion statue on her writing desk, then took out her favorite stationery and fountain pen. With a flourish and a crooked smile she wrote, I've Loved You A Thousand Ways ... on the Pretty Paper ...
Quoting 2J, I'll see ya when I see ya!
I’m sure the reason I wasn’t Jack was that I can actually have a conversation with my parents.
I took it again and changed “I know my way around the Internet” to “I can design a website” and got Ben.
[shudder]
on the road again...
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