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Month: June 2012

Friday links

A certain “victim of the American drug war” has wisely said goodbye in her own inimitable style to posting about her experiences as a snitch. Apparently, she’s been in this mood for a long, long time — though I suppose it’s “statist” of me to say so. Speaking of statist, a gifted Virginia schoolboy has been suspended for touching the American flag. We may live in a police state. But at least we can still drink our troubles away. Idaho is going to permit Five Wives vodka to be sold after all. But only after a famous lawyer threatened to…

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Influences

I was eight or nine. I was bored. With nothing of my own to read, I tried a book from the grown-ups’ shelves for the first time. My parents weren’t readers. They had just two shelves of hardbound books, which, lacking pictures, had never interested me. That day I found a lone paperback. Although it, too, had no illustrations, its cover was bright and strange enough to attract me. I had never heard of Arthur C. Clarke. I had no concept of science fiction. I didn’t know there were such things as grownup stories about spaceships or time travel. How…

35 Comments

Pyromid is back!

Well, sort of. It’s now called EcoQue, which may be a horrible name, but at least hits its prime audience right on target. Okay, okay, what’s a Pyromid? Or an EcoQue? (I hear some readers asking.) It’s this, among other things: … The cleverest, best-cooking portable grill ever. And for a decade or more it’s been half-impossible to get. —– Back in the 1990s at some otherwise-unremembered preparedness expo, my then-Significant Sweetie, Charles Curley, and I saw a Pyromid being demonstrated. It folded down flat and slipped into a tiny case. It unfolded in a flash. It cooked on an…

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Nothing but a cool jumping cat

As Joel blogs on his bad days, “I got nothin’” today. I’m tired, whacked, gloomy, and was awake half the night pondering The Meaning of Life and other imponderables. So here’s a cool jumping cat gif for ya, courtesy of A.G. I’m filing it under “dogs” because I don’t have a cat-agory. Consider me inclusive and non-discriminatory. If you’ve arrived with NoScript, you may need to allow Feedburner to see the gif at work. Or go here.

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Monday links

Back from a good — but busy and tiring — weekend. As Dave says, the Mother Earth News Fair was even bigger and better than last year. My friend and I were there only a few hours in a very full weekend. Some links and a couple of funnies for you: Part one of a four-parter on how DC cops SWATTED a vet because they thought he might have some unregistered guns. (Several people sent me this one, thank you.) The FBI and ATF bust yet another harmless but idiotically careless victim. Check out the middle name on that young…

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Friday links

I’m off for a weekend of wild abandon, debauchery, and carousing. Well, a weekend of going to garage sales, hitting Costco, and spending time at The Mother Earth News Fair, courtesy of Earthineer and Backwoods Home. Which is as close to debauchery as I get, these days. So I leave you with these links and will see you in a few. You may already be on the “do not fly” list — and who knows how many other lists in how many other dark governmental places. But now — something new! You can petition the White House to add you…

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