Rand Paul supporter stomps head of counterprotestor

Rand Paul supporter stomps head of an political opponent

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever." - George Orwell.

The difference: Orwell was AGAINST it!

---------------

What happened is that there was a PUBLIC event in Kentucky: a debate between two Senatorial candidates. In the video, Rand Paul gets out of his limosine and, behind him, a group of his supporters beats up a woman who's holding a sign they don't like.

At the end of the clip, the crowd chants "Rand Paul! Ra-a-a-nd Paul!" obviously pleased that they beat up a defenseless person who was only asserting a 1st amendment right. When the test came, the crowd abandoned the Constitution.

More info: http://bigthink.com/ideas/24684

Back Of The Envelope Planner

Among the great little tips in "Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better" is the hip-pocket planner, and oddly enough, it can be combined with this week's Change the Work Wednesday challenge: "write a post on ... ways in which you save paper."

The back-of-the-envelope
hippocket planner
can be an easy life hack.

Why write down a daily plan every morning? It's not that I necessarily follow the plan, but the act of planning  helps me prioritize, and physically carrying around a copy of the plan keeps me focussed. Modern life offers too many distractions that, without a physical object reminding me of what I want to do (freely chosen by myself!), I would too often end the day having done nothing that I really wanted.

The problem is what sort of reminder-token to carry about. I've tried all sorts of paper-based planners, from the elaborate Daily Timer(tm) to the humble stapleback freebie given away on holidays. They all work - sort of - and they none of them work - really. The big ones don't fit in a pocket and therefore aren't around when I need them to keep me focussed; the little staplebacks have the defect of carrying around old plans from early in the year.

Electronic planners also work too - sort of - when my tasks depend on relating with other people or institutions, it's good to have the discipline of entering it into google calendar or whatever. However, much of my work is less structured and more independent, and at the moment, it's just seems silly access a keyboard to record "do laundry" or "blog this". There may also be some psychological factors at play. My mobile device doesn't present itself to me primarily as a planner; I think of it as a cellphone/internet access device, so it doesn't serve well as a reminder of what I chose to do today.

Lifehacker suggests using a hippocket planner - something sized to fit the pocket in the back of your pants. Using a spreadsheet, I easily designed hip-pocket sized planning sheets, paperclipped them together, and discovered that they worked well. I always had them with me when I needed them ...

...pro tip: when I don't have my pants on, I'm usually not interested in planning ...

...and the size was just right for about a day of work. At the start of the next day, I review and recycle yesterday's plan, thus carrying around only what I need (anything permanent, like new phone numbers, go into google contacts for access via cellphone).
However, the act of specially printing out planning sheets is inefficient, since it relies on using paper that hasn't been previously used. In addition, the actual sheet design didn't add much to the functionality so it's a bit of a waste of toner.
The humble standard-sized envelope, when folded in half, typically bears a hip-pocket-sized area of blankness perfectly adequate for one day's planning. This serves several purposes. It gives the envelope a second use, thus saving paper. The thing is just as recylceable after being reused as before. And: it costs me nothing!

It would be better not to get the envelope in the first place, but I still get a lot of formal notices in the mail, so I might as well put them to use.

I've also found that, if I'm out of envelopes, an 8x11 sheet of paper folded in quarters will suffice. I go to a lot of meetings at which agendas and minutes are still printed out; these provide me with plenty of paper for planning purposes.

That's it for today - nothing really sophisticated - in fact, this is a step backwards in time, to "back-of-the-envelope" methods. Sometimes an old way works fine!

Imagine ALL American Citizens Voting....

... what a wonderful thing that would be!

I voted by mail. It's so convenient and eliminates the problem of something coming up on Election Day.

My friends, there are NO excuses. In a democracy, where we the people rule ourselves, voting is not a privilege; it's a DUTY.

I voted. Now you vote too!

Some get-out-the-vote resources:

• Rock the Vote
• Get Out Her Vote
• AIGA's great (and free) GOTV PDFs

In and Out of Hot Water

New Hot Water Tank!

Friday our hot water tank died.
I learned a lot from working through this experience, so I hope our story will be helpful to others.
This particular emergency was not completely unexpected; when we bought this house we knew it was far from new. There were no dates on it, but it had a general vibe of late-1980s. We knew there was some sediment, as the drain water ran reddish, but it delivered hot water so we didn't worry.
Friday night we decided to turn the furnace on. We'd put it off as long as possible, but it was time. It fired up nicely, and after a while I went downstairs to check something and saw water on the floor around the tank. It was also on the low pedestal that the tank sat on, so I knew it wasn't from the laundry. The water was definitely warmer than the air around it. These clues led me to believe the tank was leaking.
I flipped the breaker switch off, and shut off the water. We resolved not to panic and call for emergency service; we'd all been born poor and didn't mind living without hot water for a short time.

Shopping

We shopped around, using the internet to research water hearing options.
We looked at an on-demand tank. This seemed to be a really great option, but when we read Seattle City Light's FAQ that costs it out, it didn't seem to justify itself unless we had gas already piped in, especially since it would be a bit more expensive up front.
At Home Depot, we saw advertising for a heat pump. This seemed very attractive way to greatly cut our energy use, but it had a very large up-front cost. Even with a 30% tax credit and up to $500 in rebates, it was $2000 up front plus $300-600 in modifications for an exhaust and so forth. I didn't feel comfortable fronting up to $2500 and hoping to get half of it back, especially when we could get a cheap tank for $248 and holding the other money in reserve for something like a roof.
I looked at installation. Both Home Depot and McLendon's quoted about $700 for tank and registration.  Instead of paying $450 for installation, we figured we could hire our friend who'd done the kitchen in our mother-in-law apartment for a lot better price, both for us and for him.
I'd hoped to get delivery for a small rate but when I called Home Depot and asked about delivery, I was forwarded to an installer. I tried again, with the same result. McLendon's was more straightforward; they didn't do delivery, just referred to an installer. We ended up doing our own delivery, using the mother-in-law's pickup.
First we had to do the actual purchase. When we went to pickup the low-level model, we noticed there were two heights. The taller tank was only an inch skinner and about $50 more. I asked the associate if there was any other difference, and he said no; some people just preferred the taller tank but they were equally functional.

The Purchase

We discovered later a financial incentive for staying with the taller tank. Our old tank was tall and the new one was short, and as a result, we had to buy a couple of new connectors. This wiped out the $50 savings. On the other hand, we now have some extra copper pipe if anybody wants some!
The Home Depot salesman successfully upsold us to a higher quality tank. The lowest quality level had a 6 Year warranty; the top quality had a 12-year warranty but cost about $200 more. He stated that the 12-year tank had additional features, notably a feature for dealing with sediment. Also, for $99 we could get a lifetime warranty. "Whose lifetime?" I asked and he said, "Well, anyone's. Yours."  The decisive factor was his statement that the more expensive tank lasted longer because it had better insulation and therefore used less electricity. I figured in my head that if the more expensive tank saved $2/month in electricity, it would pay for itself in 100 months or 8+ years. So ... we went for it.
The salesman suggested we do something to keep the hot water tank from resting on the cement floor, since it tending to suck up heat. We looked at some foam disks for this purpose, but decided to use some similar foam left over from the basement kitchen. (And as it happened, we simply re-used the blue foam pedestal that the old tank used.)  We didn't go for a drain pan since the cement floor would not be damaged if the tank did leak.
We got the tank onto a flatbed pretty easily and rolled it to the cash register. We got a 10% discount for opening a new credit card account (in addition to our existing credit card for the wash machine). We had to remind the cashier about the $99 lifetime warranty but that wasn't a big deal.
 I also got a Snickers Bar to replace the one I'd borrowed from the mother-in-law apartment fridge ;-)

Installation

Wrestling the new tank into the service room was straightforward, and the box was nicely designed to be cut up. Now we have cardboard up the wazoo! We drained the old tank, using a couple of plastic buckets, and disconnected the water pipes using the monkey wrench I'd gotten from MITS just last week (...it's a classic tool of the old school; real good metal made in the last century, and possibly lasting to the next one.)
Our friend Jeffy-Bob and his wife Lorraine showed up, with their weiner dog. He did a bunch of stuff with the electric wires that I don't understand. One of the copper pipes had been soldered, so we considered re-soldering it, but didn't have a soldering gun with us. This gave me an excuse to go check with some of the neighbors to see what tools they had. Unfortunately most of them were out to work, but I did finally meet the people working on the brown house across the street and over one. They seemed like nice handy people and we'll have to get to know them better. By the time I got to them, Ginger came over to say that Jeffey-Bob had decided to use a pressure fitting so no soldering is needed.
Disposing of the old tank was simple. It went into the pickup and, as luck would have it, Larry's hometown was having a free disposal day later that week! It'll soon be recycled into scrap at no cost to us.
The tank went in and started working immediately. We're very grateful that everything worked out. It was an unplanned expense, but not unexpected.

Learnings

I hope that this story is useful to anyone else with a water tank. It will fail someday, and it's nice to know that there is no need to panic.

Water Should Be No Headache

I'd been having headaches.

This is unusual for me; normally I'm unreasonably healthy and one headache a year would be more than usual. But I started feeling pain whenever I bent over to pick up something off the ground. Whenever my head got lower than my waist: pain. And then it got worse; there would be pain at almost any random time. I couldn't figure out a pattern; it wasn't mold, or food, or time of day that I could see.

Reluctantly, I went to the doctor, who assured me that I wasn't having a stroke. The symptoms weren't right. Most likely, it was something to do with sinuses. She suggested a nasal spray. The spray didn't do the job right away, but I was prepared to try it for a week or two.

I was discussing this over a beer with The Lovely Wife when she asked, "How much water are you drinking?"
"Well, plenty," I replied. "I had coffee all morning, and now I'm drinking beer."
She gave me That Look. Guys, you know what that means.
I got a 12-ouncer of water from the bartender, and chugged it. It was like pouring into a dry hole in the ground. The 2nd glass followed the first, practically rattling as it fell down into a dusty gullet. I felt a sense of well-being and soon, no headache. What a relief!
Looking back, I think the onset of this problem came from a change in my exercise habits; formerly I'd worked out almost every morning, which included careful rehydration. When that went away, I didn't compensate waterwise, and the coffee-and-beer habit took over.  Fixing the hydration problem was a most inexpensive way to cure the headache problem. Perhaps it may work for you as well.

I got thinking about this when my bloggy friend Reduce Footprints posted a new Change the World Wednesday challenge:

For this week's challenge, please participate in Blog Action Day and post something about water, on your blog, on Friday, October 15th. For more information and to register your blog, please visit the Blog Action Day site HERE.

I'm fortunate in that I really can have all the water I need, with minimal effort: turn the tap, and there it is. We take water so much for granted that we can short ourselves by accident.

But imagine people living in a place where access to water is tough. I realize that mere headaches may be the least of their problems:

"...Change.org estimates almost 1 billion people across the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s nearly one in eight people who are subject to preventable disease and death due to poor drinking water and unhygienic water for everyday needs. Approximately 4,500 children die each day from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation facilities."

Those number are serious, but abstract; I find it hard to feel the pain of 1 billion people. But can I imagine having a headache all the time; it may be irrational, but that concrete albeit lesser pain impresses the importance of issue in a more personal and effective way.

I support the next step is to Research the Issue, then Act!

Bag It, Bread It and Blog It!

A couple of shopping bags always lie under the passenger seat of our car, one holding a couple of plastic bags. This is a very easy way to be environmentally responsible at essentially zero cost. Every time we use these bags, we reduce the need to manufacture disposable bags, and to dispose of them afterwards. It costs us less than nothing to do this, because many stores give us a nickel off for each bag we bring in and use.  It's not fantastic wealth but why not go for it?  Our ancestors would call it "frugality" and engineers would call it "efficiency"; I just call it "common sense".

We keep the bags under the seat ever since our car was prowled. I don't think there was anything worth stealing in my car but thieves are not always picky; after all, it's not their stuff their stealing. On the plus side, using the underseat helps keep the car looking neat!

One thing about keeping a stock of bags is that many of them have backstories. For example, "Old Blue" is a cloth bag I inherited from an apartment more than 10 years ago that has been with us on so many adventures that it deserves its own Hallmark Special: "If This Bag Could Talk!" It's now enjoying an active retirement hanging in the back closet holding the young 'un bags (and perhaps giving them tips).
Our current active bag (pictured) was a give-a-way from Dave's Killer Bread. The bread is excellent, and the backstory is too: Dave was a four-time loser who was getting too old to enjoy his time in jail, so he resolved to try another line of work. It turns out his bread is extremely tasty ... here's the story:

...all this, and the dkb bag is cool too!

Today's blogpost is inspired by this week's Change The World Wednesday challenge:

"For the entire week (yep, the whole week), refuse plastic bags at the store or anywhere else where they are offered. One whole week ... 7 days ... no plastic bags."

It was easy to meet this challenge now that we're in the habit of carrying our own; I hope blogging about this may encourage a few more people to try bagging it!

South Fulton Fire Shows America's Headed Wrong Way

I would suggest that the metastory on the South Fulton fire is that our great nation is taking a loooong step backwards in the name of the secular Friedmanist religion, whose motto is, "You're on your own, tough on you!"

Like its twin, the secular religion Marxism, Friedmanism promises an earthly paradise for all who follow its principles, a regrettably necessary fate for the losers who cannot live up to the New Soviet/Miltonfriedmanish Ideal, and an unshakeable conviction in the rightness of the Cause ... for any apparent "failures" in communities who employ their principles are easily explained as the fault of the flawed humans who implemented it poorly.

In this particular case, we may ask why the county doesn't have a public fire service? They had a plan to do so which, obviously, was not implemented. Why? I have not investigated deeply but I'd bet cash money that the county's people suffer from the same economic problems as nearly everywhere else: the export of jobs to low-wage countries.

As a nation, we can't go on like this and maintain a semblance of decency.

A Right To A Quiet Funeral: The First Amendment Protects Snyder Over Phelps

Funerals are both religious and expressive events. The surviving family have an unquestionable right to determine which, if any, religious rituals are performed, and to express their feelings and messages.

The attention-seeking Phelps family seeks to overturn this principle in the case of Snyder v. Phelps. They assert their right to intrude upon private funerals to promote their message; the Snyder family stands for normal, mentally healthy Americans in demanding that the Snyders have no such right.

The issues have been summarized as

1. Whether the prohibition of awarding damages to public figures to compensate for the intentional infliction of emotional distress, under the Supreme Court’s First Amendment precedents, applies to a case involving two private persons regarding a private matter;
2. whether the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment trumps its freedom of religion and peaceful assembly;
3. whether an individual attending a family member’s funeral constitutes a “captive audience” who is entitled to state protection from unwanted communication.

How this will turn out in the courts is anyone's guess. There are, unfortunately, some rather foolish people defending the Phelps' on First Amendment grounds. But this should not be a close case; the protesters claim that their right to speech overrides the speech and religious rights of the Snyders, which is absurd.

Military Interstate Children's Compact Commission gets new website!

The Military Interstate Children's Compact Commission (MIC3) has a new website: http://www.mic3.net/. 

Military families move between postings on a regular basis, and while reassignments can often be a boon for career personnel, they can be difficult for the children of military families. The average military student faces transition challenges more than twice during high school and most military children will attend six to nine different school systems in their lives from kindergarten to 12th grade. The Compact therefore seeks to make transition easier for the children of military families so that they are afforded the same opportunities for educational success as other children and are not penalized or delayed in achieving their educational goals.

MORE:
http://www.mic3.net/