It was one o’ them days today. But it was sunny. It was Stress, Incorporated. But Sol was beaming down on blazing green grass. And you know, that springtime green, it does blaze. So I drove the dogs out to a place in the woods where a landowner has set a picnic table in a grassy clearing beside a beaver pond. And I enjoyed a sandwich made to order at the grocery store down the road, which has a fine little deli. Ah. That helped. Driving home, two teenagers with shovels scooted out of my way. They were on the…
Category: Practical Freedom
A broad category of things we can do, or things others are doing, to increase personal freedom
Alas, one (normally) educated community didn’t get its Eastertime passion play this year. Because some gov-o-crat thought a passion play was a sex show. But keeping everything equal, religious folks apparently dished out some maltreatment of their own. Today’s good news. Cop tries to shoot harmless dog. Shoots self instead. (As you can imagine several people sent links to this.) Anybody seen a Leveraxe? Now, that looks like one cool tool, if it works as advertised. Funny how even a tool nearly as old as civilization can get a major makeover when the moment’s right. Unfortunately the Leveraxe isn’t on…
When last we spoke (or at least when last we spoke about flowerpot-n-candle space heaters) I reported dismal failure. Attempting to use one of the devices in a uninsulated 8 x 10 room with big windows produced zero results. In fact, the temperature dropped half a degree while the “heater” was running despite outside temperatures not appreciably changing. So today I tried again, moving the heater into a 7 x 7 windowless room with decent insulation. The room was 58 degrees when I started. And … 12:00 noon — 58 degrees 1:00 p.m. — 58 degrees 2:00 p.m. — 58…
I’m going to try these. This week. The simple one. With tea lights. The slightly more complicated one. With one candle and metal. Anybody hereabouts done anything like these? Will report further after I hit the hardware store — assuming they still have flower pots hiding in the back room after having stuck all those Christmas ornaments in the flowerpots’ usual place.
As mentioned earlier, I’m not holding a fundraiser or hoping for Christmas gifts this year. I do hope you’ll my Amazon links for all your online Christmas shopping. —– Beyond that, I hope you’ll consider sending holiday bounty to EDITED Joel’s Eyeball Fund. Use the bolded link, scroll down, then click the donation button on the right. Our entertaining hermit buddy is managing his glaucoma, but he’s going to need expensive cataract surgery. And right now he can’t even afford his winter’s oatmeal. I’ve removed two other donation recommendations, one because its campaign is over, the other because it has…
I’ve been using the U.S.-based company Cotse.net for email and proxy services for many years, ever since I learned about it from S. Cotse gives good service at a good price. I’ve been a happy customer. There’s nothing at all wrong with Cotse. Except that it’s based in this increasingly thuggish surveillance state. Which has already driven more than one privacy-protecting company to shut its doors. I’m seeking a back-up service. I’ll keep Cotse, but I want to be using a Plan B if the feds drive them out of business, too. So I’ve been reading articles like this one.…
Ever since Pamela Jones shut down Groklaw and announced she was not only abandoning the site but quitting the Internet entirely in light of the Edward Snowden revelations, I’ve been thinking about this. At the time, though I found her reasons poignant and pertinent, I thought she was overreacting. Now, I don’t know. Personally, I’m not on the verge of quitting. A big part of my life is here. And all of my career (such as it is) is here. That’s been true since 1986 when a client bought me my first 300-baud modem and set it up so I…
I’m lucky enough to have several friends who keep bees. At one apiary, they strive each year to come up with a clever label. In 2012 (which, as you recall, was the year the world ended), they had the Bee of Doom descending: But this year they outdid themselves. Their most productive hive was also the most protective hive. Although the humans eventually “won” and took the honey, the bees put up a battle worthy of … well, see for yourself: Note the extra “stingers” on those bees. —– I’ve blurred the name and location of their apiary for privacy…
I just finished a really terrific new book: Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom by Ken Ilgunas (a young man I suspect we’ll be hearing more of over the years). I had heard somewhere that it was the memoir of a kid who got freaked out by his student debt and went debt-free by living in a van. Sounded interesting enough. But it turns out that’s only about 1/10th what this book is about. It’s about a young, coddled, clueless suburban slacker who decides to grow himself up. It’s about the insanity of starting adult…
The question for today: Where does your state rank on the 50 States Freedom Index — and do you care? (Readers from Wales and South Africa and Germany, et al — if you want to play, you could use the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, the Fraser Institute’s Index (.pdf) or some other index that rates countries.) Some states, like NY, CA, and IL are so generally hellish that it seems the rankings mean a lot. Others, like WY and WA (that have oddball tax structures or something else non-standard about them), tend to produce rankings that don’t mean as…