Cpt. J’s got robbed at gunpoint y’day. This is hearsay, but a homeless type walked in with a gun around 6:00 PM while the place was empty, and locked up the cook and barmaid in the utility closet. He apologized, a nice touch, and made off with $200. A customer later walked in, realized something was wrong and called the cops.Yeah, yeah, I know. Where does a homeless guy get money for a pistol and ammunition? Besides, there is no call for this behavior like there is in other countries where they let people starve. It was for drug money, since nobody really, really has to go without food around here.
Mind you, the system is a little screwy, in that you must have an address to get food stamps (who came up with that one?) and if you feed the homeless directly, you are required to check their ID (same question). However, on that one I agree with JZ, who points out that these "free" programs come with so many strings attached that the homeless would rather sleep under the bridge than get converted to that brand of liberty.
I’m finishing up the Ayn Rand booklet. What I read years ago was published before the end of the Apollo program, so her opinions surprised me. Like myself, she spotted Apollo as the end of an era, possibly the peak of American progress. She doesn’t mention the shuttle but did recognize the attackers of space travel would come up just such a useless contraption.
She saw that the uneducated masses would view moon shots as a waste of money that should be better spent on social programs. That crowd is always in the majority, never appreciating anything that sniffs of progress. Rand said it right concerning the difference between such masses and the few, how if the bleeding hearts had it their way our astronaut material would have to be reduced to “emptying bedpans and teaching mental retards to read”.
[Author’s note: Rand has no special ability to analyze America and is no better educated than other university grads I’ve met. However, unlike most, she has seen first-hand how rotten things get when government becomes nothing more than a self-serving tax monster, and she has witnessed it to a greater degree than most Americans ever will. She laments, as I do, the destruction of this once-great nation into complacent idiots, welfare cases and gossip-mongers. She knows what she’s talking about—she’s from Canada.]
I investigated the new Revue camera, it is heralded as an assistant device for Alzheimer’s Disease. It snaps a picture every 30 seconds and when certain events occur, such as entering a darker room. It is nothing more than a time-lapse camera with a light sensor, and regardless of its other capabilities, such as voice recording, it is not worth $820. What was interesting is pen manufacturers are placing plant DNA into their ink, making it possible to track down the user. Secret ballot, my eye.
Um, that reminds me of the old DejaVu camera that records the last 30 seconds of everything. I wonder what became of it. Not that it was cheap itself at $400. Give me that Arduino. What the market wants is a cheap $100 camera that doesn’t look like a camera. Think what you want, I’ll be it would sell millions.
But you want some real trivia. Okay, you’ve heard about the bad Chinese drywall. What is bad about it? It contains sulfur, which leaches into the environment, not to mention the odor. From the “why didn’t I think of that” department, there is a new laptop on the market with two screens. One is the monitor, the other is the keyboard. But much more than a keyboard, since it is programmable. Think of the possibilities.
There is a new cholesterol drug on the market that apparently has remarkable results in 18% of cases. What’s new is that it works on the stomach, where all others work on the liver. Called Zetia, this one is worth a look. To me, 18% sounds good when 100% of the rest do nothing for me. Like most, my cholesterol has been climbing steadily since my mid-20s.
[Author's note 2015-08-06: I was later (in 2013) prescribed this medication, Zetia. It is unnecessarily expensive, but it rapidly brought my cholesterol completely under control. But you must continue to take this forever. It is a control, not a cure.]
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