Wombat

71. still buying green bananas.

I like the part where they got their lumber from salvage and "other construction sites?" Hmmmmm. Also, while the hay for insulation may be a really green solution, it also is an invite to all sorts of creature infestations and, of course, fire. Owen: You should evaluate these things carefully.....

The fundamental problem with most tin foil hat designs is that none of them provide a proper earth ground. One must use several lengths of high grade silver chains which contact the ground, or can be attached to your cold water pipes. Unobtanium-239 would be preferred, but I'm not sure it can be fashioned into a chain. Others might have more information on that. Beware of the water pipe solution because there have been reports of reverse signalling through urban water supplies; private wells are ok, if properly monitored. Be safe out there. They're watching and listening.

Not sure if they do it anymore, but many American railroads mounted surplus jet engines on modified flat cars and used them to clear snow from the tracks, mostly around switches. I saw one in action in Syracuse, NY in the early 60's. I never heard of one running away and taking off down the tracks, nor setting fire to the cross ties, but maybe I just missed it.... Given an opportunity, some will mount any power source on any vehicle, with mixed results.

Could be one frame from a movie? Just guessing.

The wonderful part of Joseph Plumb Martin's accounts of his experiences is that it is the only known day-to-day sort of account from the enlisted man's point of view. One of the wonderful things about his observations about the follies of the military is that they have a lot in common with more modern accounts coming from WWI and II in terms of what the soldier's life is like. I have actually paid my respects to his grave in Stockton Springs, Maine on the Penobscot River. A simple stone marks him as "A Soldier of the Revolution" Hope you enjoy the read.

You need to realize that had this happened to you outside the hospital, it would be called a massive trauma which you would ordinarily not have survived. As it is, the surgeons and Nurse Gladys have made sure you did survive, but you really need to be good to yourself and do what your body is telling you to do -- REST! BEHAVE AND LISTEN TO NURSE GLADYS! Best of luck in your recovery.

That is a truly interesting video. Thanks for finding it for us!

I hope he has the same sort of experience I had as a boy when we went on a Boy Scout field trip to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate NY. I was only eight or so, but being there made what happened there all the more real and got me interested in history. Just to add to the day, there was a man working there in the restoration projects who was a history teacher in a nearby high school and he gathered a bunch of us to go on a walkabout outside the fort, down towards the lake. We dug about as he instructed, and found arrow heads and musket balls ourselves! What a day it was, and I wish the same sort of thing for your son. One day I should very much like to visit England and France to do the same thing there.

Yeah, this stuff really gets very old very fast. (the older I get, the older it gets). The irony of this stuff is that it usually doesn't happen when bending down to lift; it happens after that when the joints try to go back into column and hit a nerve on the way or a disk gets squished even slightly. So a sneeze at the wrong moment really is enough to set it off! Time and the obvious loving care from your pooch (and perhaps the missus) will set it right, and then, yes, you have to do all those damned exercises to help strengthen the stabilizing muscles. I'm told that for this purpose, low intensity, many reps (like 60 or so) are the way to go to build endurance. Take care, sir, and feel better.

Just watched a documentary on Bikini today, and it reported that even after the two blasts, Able and Baker, it took 8 hours for Saratoga to go down! She would at the very least allowed her crew to leave her in an orderly manner. What a lady!!!

An extraordinary discovery! The preservation after nearly a century should give historians and others lots of info about how the soldiers lived in those God-awful trenches. I agree about not showing the skeletal remains; like Pompeii, it would add the human element to the scene which is what makes it important in the first place.

I have done due diligence and searched everywhere I can think of but I can't find out how to map the buttons on my Evo joystick. In other versions of cfs, there is a place to place keyboard assignments on joystick buttons, but I cannot find it anywhere here in OFF. Am I just blind, or is is not there? THX

Thank you, sir. Never would have found that by myself.

My wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a happy, prosperous, new year!

Now that's just wierd. I understand the explanation, but that's just wierd.

Neat shot! It has a surreal quality to it.

Happy Birthday, young man.

Ah yes. The self-inflicted problem of "How do we fill 24 hours up with what we call news?" My tagline has been, "ALERT! CAT IN TREE IN PODUNK ILLINOIS! OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED! WE'LL KEEP YOU UP TO DATE AS THIS DANGEROUS SITUATION DEVELOPS!" This video is somewhat reminiscent of the time back during the late '80's when Public Broadcasting here in the US was running show after show about some aspect or another of the Serengeti. One Sunday afternoon in the funny papers, cartoonist Gary Larson ran a cartoon of a large French Poodle sitting on a mound surrounded by the bones of other animals with the caption, "POODLES OF THE SERENGETI!!!" It's always nice when your opinion is expressed by someone who has access to mass dissemination.

And people wonder why it is that so many are being diagnosed with ADD. Most of it is because of the "Instant gratification" provided by today's electronic ether. And about those popups on tv which tell me what I'm watching ( I know) and what's up next (I don't care and I have a guide) And the list goes on and on. There are flickers of hope, however. My kids really do limit the amount of electronic activity for my grandchildren in favor of books, sports, old fashioned conversation etc. and some are even discovering that FaceBook is hazardous to your personal privacy! Whoda thunk. end of rant...for now

Thanks folks. There'll be lots of family and some friends for dinner, you know, those things I am most thankful for. Also, thanks to the weather here in Maine, travel for some was postponed to today, so we have told Washington to stuff their proclamation and we have proclaimed Friday as Thanksgiving day here. I do so love telling Washington where to head in!

Classic, indeed.

How politically incorrect! How inappropriate! How potentially hurtful! Yes! I love it when stupid questions get the answers they deserve.

I wasn't up on this ridiculous ruling; don't pay a lot of attention to soccer. It is patently preposterous; what's next -- no flags or other symbols of nationality? It's another tradition stomped to death on the altar of political correctness. I think I may have been born 40 years too late sometimes.

After the divorce, my then teenaged son got it into his head that HE was suddenly the head of the household at his mother's house. While she and I couldn't live together, we both continued to be parents. One evening, as I was picking them up for the weekend, #1 6-foot son, in his stocking feet tried to tell his mother how things were going to work. She looked at me, I looked at him, grabbed him by his shirt front and because he was in socks, he went to his knees with considerabe force. I then informed him that no one had conferred knighthood on him yet, and that this sort of behavior would cease. It did, and things smoothed out and today, it's the subject of laughter as he raises his own teenager. There is a lot to be said for a modest show of force; it both tells him/her that their behavior is out of bounds, and that it won't be tolerated. I wouldn't be concerned about your justifiable irritation so long as it doesn't become the norm.