Coffee When The Power Is Out

I'm sorry I didn't think to post this earlier, but I've seen several different folks-- Mr. Goldberg from NRO, Dymphna at Gates of Vienna are the ones I remember-- mentioning how much they would greatly appreciate hot coffee, but (of course) without power, they don't have coffee machines.

My folks live in a valley that environmentalists have prevented from having more than one power line to supply electricity for the area, and thus tend to have at least one power outage a month, generally for at least six hours.  My mom can't stand having grounds in her coffee, and was looking for an easier way to avoid them than adding a little cold water just before pouring a coffee pot.

You know those coffee pods you get in hotels?  That look sort of like huge tea bags?

Throw those into a pan of boiling water and you can have decent coffee.  Mom now has her children collect these (even the decaf!) when we stay at hotels. (better coffee in the lobby, anyways....)

A stove like this  is inexpensive, even with a spare bottle of propane-- bonus, it doesn't take up a lot of room.  Make a box of warm-and-eat soups, a gallon or two of water and a camp lantern and you've got a very basic emergency kit.  I'd suggest having a spare carbon monoxide alarm in the box, with the battery taken out until there's an emergency. (more people die from the gas than the cold-- don't ignore the danger.)

There's also the option of instant coffee, and if you can stand that stuff you could always use hand warmers to get it warm-- oh, wow, I just found this great run down of the many, many stove options.

If you can't get coffee pods, you could always try boiling the coffee in a pan, then pouring it through a filter into a cup. (can be done with less risk of burning if you seat the filter into the cup, pour about half a mug and then lift the filter out--- my mind just brought images of some caffeine deprived soul holding a filter over the mug as they pour....)

Worse comes to worse, drive around looking for an espresso joint with a generator hooked up.

They Don't Think It's Condescending-

because they think it's true.

I'm trying to get a post on human motivation pulled together-- it grew out of a conversation Elf and I had, on if folks realize they're being counter-productive, selfish donkeys that are willing to sacrifice anything, so long as it's not theirs. (Being the token optimist, I think folks think themselves justified....)

Until I get that post to where I think it's publishable, I'll simply say: of course they're offended by the old Reagan joke, but not about talk of "Jesusland," and are able to classify the entire Yang to their Yin as lacking in any reasoning ability, of being "completely predictable" in their "characteristically insane bravado."

...

So, saying "hippies stink" is horrible.  Calling everyone to the right of Hollywood insane is just cool.

Oh, and Republicans are masters of the emotional side of campaigns!  *snicker*

Can You See Something Like This Made Today?

Hehe, just found this-

Replacing stop signs by yield signs can also improve traffic flow without, in many locations, any safety downside, but that is hardly ever done either. In fact there are so few yield signs in my neck of the woods that drivers seem not to understand them. This is especially apparent at my town's one traffic circle. The place is festooned with yield signs, but it's a happy day when anyone yields to anyone. (Traffic circles are also great improvers of traffic flow, but are hardly ever seen in the U.S.A. — except, for some reason, in Massachusetts.)

Now, I greatly enjoy Mr. Derbyshire's writing, and on many subjects agree with him...

but...

Maybe he's got his cause and effect backwards?

Traffic is a bit like economics: you get totally different results if you go off of what is reasonable, what would be to the best interests of drivers in the long run, and what people actually do.


Kind of like how communism or socialism would be the most rational, charitable option for a social system-- except that people are involved.

Traffic circles are by far the best way to deal with most four-way stops-- except that they involve people.  Know those people who will burn rubber when the light goes green, even though-- half a block a head-- there are cars piled up at a red light?  That is who else is in the traffic circle.  And that's ignoring those with actual malice against your vehicle.... (Yes, I have known people who drive beaters expressly so they can bounce off of other vehicles.  Most of them don't have licenses, because they never did.)

Oh, another funny quote:

In 2000 … governments collected about $102 billion in gas taxes and user fees but spent about $124 billion in capital, maintenance and law enforcement — a subsidy of $22 billion. The roads were used for about 2.6 trillion passenger miles for a subsidy of .5 cents per passenger mile. Total [mass] transit subsidies were about the same, $23.5 billion. But transit was used for only 50 billion passenger miles, resulting in a whopping 49.2 cents of subsidy per passenger mile traveled.

I find it funny because Washington State is having a big to-do about..."re purposing" some lanes for mass transit only.  Not building new lanes to take pressure off, but repainting the lines.  Because that will cut down on congestion, right?

Don't know about New York, but I know that "transportation dollars" have a high tendency to go to bike paths, bike lanes, re-painting existing roads to "encourage eco-friendly practices" and is used as a petty-cash fund-- ignoring that transportation tends to be viewed in terms of how many jobs it can provide, instead of, oh, making the roads work well.


Honestly, I don't have much of a problem with the notion of paying for the public resources used, I just think 1) they should be fairer, and 2) thirty-six cents a gallon should be able to manage roads that don't develop inch-deep ruts three months after instillation.

The Amazing Lileks

muses-- in the middle of a long map-of-consciousness post-- what did people day dream about before popular culture?

Stories.

I can be pretty sure about this because for the first ten or so years of my life, my main exposure to "popular culture" was one hour of Sesame Street a week-- max-- a few VHS westerns, some Disney tapes and stories. Fairy tales, retellings of Tolkien's stories, whatever-- that's what made our games go, and what I imagined when I daydreamed.

Anyone else got a go?

How Tacky Is This Twerp?

Just heard on the news-- KOMO, if you must know:
 "The President injected a few barbs into his Prayer Breakfast remarks."

Knew he was tacky, but that's taking it even further than being openly insulting to guests bound by precedent and honor to not speak out in their own defense.

Greatly lacking in couth.

Grow the frick up, ya frat-boy.  Things that are understandable in high school are really unbecoming in those old enough to be thinking of where their children will go to college.

Rifqa Bary

I don't like doing link-posts, but there's not much to say other than that the gal is doing alright.

Jawa update on Miss Bary's case, which boils down to "she's in Ohio, but she's in a foster home and doesn't seem to be in a lot of danger of being removed."

I'm going to keep praying for her, though-- I wish her good luck.  If she ends up as yet another PC casualty, I'll be sad-- and angry.

Guess What!

You know how driving while distracted is illegal?

You know how it's about as well enforced as, oh, failure to signal?

You know how the subset of distracted driving, talking on a cellphone without a hands free, has been popularly selected as its own ban-- no matter that it's redundant?

Yeah, well... it didn't actually make less crashes happen....

Imagine that.

Guess we should be glad that it didn't increase the number of incidents, as opposed to the piling of law after law to "protect" schools from shootings.  For a quick run down, without much research, it's illegal to shoot people, it's illegal for someone under 18 to have a handgun, it's illegal to have guns at school, and assault with a deadly weapon is yet another crime.

/end rant

"I forgot he was black for an hour."

A lot of folks seem to be thinking this is horrible for the wrong reason-- hadn't been thinking about it, but Jawa's clip of Glenn Beck crystallized it.

Look, if you've been here a while, you probably heard about last year's vicious attack on Mr. Wright's wife for daring to mention that she's "color blind"-- that her friends are her friends, that it almost never even crosses her mind what their skin tones are; maybe you heard me complaining about some idiots calling me sexist because I was flattered when some male friends told me I didn't "count" as a girl.

Thing is, some folks are complaining because the idiot ever forgot The Won is black.


That is deeply, deeply troubling.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

If you're setting at the family table, I'm not paying attention to your hair, your skin or your eyes; if I'm trying to figure out what's fair, your need for sun screen doesn't come into it; if I'm listening to a speech aimed at a national audience by a professional, I'm not going to think "but how much melanin does his skin contain?"

  If you're family, what you look like doesn't matter.

It's really sad that someone can only forget that for an hour if the hour is amazing enough; it's more than a bit sick that some folks are attacking that he forgot at all.

Obama's "Spending Freeze" In Perspective

President Barack Obama's detailed 2010 budget plan, due out Thursday, will propose to eliminate or consolidate 121 domestic and defense programs to save $17 billion, administration officials said Wednesday.

Now, the WSJ points out this is about .5% of this year's increases, and half of that is military cuts, but this is a much better yardstick:

They're spending 0.22 billion this year on new planes for the "senior gov't officials" to fly around in.  That's not all--Pelosi, for example, averages over a million a year in flight expenses all by her self.  (Well, with her family and friends-- why, exactly, are we buying booze for these guys?  Wish the Navy had bought me drinks when I was serving... of course, I had to fly commercial for everything but going from port to ship, too.)

Maybe Obama could cut down to an average of one party a week?

How about putting the Congress Critters on Tricare?  I really like that idea-- offer one insurance system for all Federal employees.  Maybe with an option for actively serving gov't officials to use military doctors.... (Trust me, once they go to a military dentist, they're unlikely to go back!)

Maybe work on some Congressional staffer cuts?  Give each office-holder a budget and tell 'em to go for it might work....

I really like the idea of removing the Federal Department of Education-- do we really need to be giving FEDERAL LOANS when we're already strapped for cash?  I mean, really?  Both of my parents managed to go through college without loans, Elf and I haven't taken Federal loans.... Come to that, why do we call them loans when they're not even designed to be repaid by the person who takes them out?

Slowly removing Federal involvement in agriculture and...oh, shoot, just go through this and ask yourself: do we really need a federal agency for that? (I say slowly because there's nothing that sets stuff up for failure as well as trying to correct things instantly; when you're trying to train a tree, you bend it, you don't snap branches off.)

RUSH LIMBAUGH WINS MISS AMERICA CONTEST!!!!

The judge dance contest, but it's a Miss America Contest!



*blames LMA*