Posted in Uncategorized on July 31, 2006 | No Comments »
At long last, new material at my other blogs: Yacob and Laban is about Jacob and his untrustworthy uncle. It’s also an odd sex farce in which Jacob wants to have sex with one woman and ends up having sex with four. And it’s a strange magician story: Jacob uses carved rods to make animals [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged wealth on July 30, 2006 | No Comments »
Get Rich Slowly � The Wealthy 100: A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present is nice because it ranks wealth through history by percentage of the US Gross National Product. By this standard, John D. Rockefeller was the richest American; his wealth was 1/65th of the US GNP when he died. Bill Gates [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2006 | 8 Comments »
BBC NEWS | Vegas puts lid on soup kitchens:
Soup kitchens serving the homeless have been banned in the US city of Las Vegas with fines coming into force for anyone caught giving hand-outs in its parks.
Council officials decided to curb the charity practice, with possible fines of $1,000 and six months imprisonment, after complaints from [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2006 | No Comments »
In response to the news about my dad, the circumnavigator, Chris McLaren sent a link to Zheng He, who may have sailed around the world before Magellan and is almost certainly among the many who sailed to the Americas long before the brutal rapist-slaver-murderer whose exploits are celebrated every October 12 by European Americans. [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 28, 2006 | 2 Comments »
Emma and I could make a home with three or four of these: Wired News: Home Office? It’s in the Yard. They say you can set them up in four days. Add electricity, a water line, and a composting toilet, and you’r’e set.
Going directly to the Cedarshed site, I also see a gazebo that would [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 28, 2006 | No Comments »
The following is condensed from an email from Sojourners:
Call your US Representative today at (202) 224-3121, the number for the Capitol Switchboard. Once you reach an operator, ask for your Representative’s office. Once you reach the office, say you support an increase in the minimum wage to at least $7.25/hour .
The vote could happen [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 26, 2006 | 1 Comment »
I was thinking about people who love hierarchies and wondering if “hierarchist” was an established word. When I googled it, Google didn’t offer a definition, so if you believe in official words, it’s not. But Google did give a number of hits. The first that looked interesting was Cultural Theory of risk (Wikipedia).
The quick take: [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 25, 2006 | 4 Comments »
Emma found this riddle on Belle Alley:
You are driving in a car at a constant speed.
On your left side is a valley. On your right side is a fire engine traveling at the same speed as you.
In front of you is a galloping pig which is the same size as your car; you cannot overtake [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged save the world, small homes on July 23, 2006 | 9 Comments »
Here’s one of the few things I’ve learned in 50 years: Rent is money you give to someone who’s richer than you.
If Emma and I weren’t happily playing caretaker at a place we love, we would probably get a park model home (a remarkably house-like 400 sq. ft. trailor intended for parking, not hauling) like [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on July 21, 2006 | 2 Comments »
Since I haven’t seen the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie yet, and since I know and like its writers, and since I suspect it’s set in Hollywood pirateland, not historical pirateland, I’ll let the accuracy debate go on without me.
Well, no. For the record, if you do a pirate movie today, it should have [...]
