Imagine that.

What really burns my Bundt cake was the writer’s whining that he and his neighbors are having to set up a neighborhood watch and *gasp* protect themselves!! He cried that the politicians had “left them to fend for themselves” as if somehow, that was a bad thing (couldn’t find the letter online, or I’d post it here, and the paper in the can is ‘community property’).

Look, I want cops to patrol the streets when they can. In fact, I’d like to see them actually patrol on foot as that gives them more times to evaluate the situation than driving by at 30 MPH. But they can’t be everywhere at all times and the fact is they only are paid to do a job that we, as free citizens, are morally required to do at all times.

We leave it up to the police to actively seek out trouble. However, when trouble finds us, the only ones who have any sort of responsibility for our protection is ourselves. This is part of being a free citizen. Liberty is not inherently safe – for that you’ll need a police state, and then the dangers come not just from criminals but those you submit to as well.

I like the idea of a neighborhood watch. I happen to know my immediate neighbors are all armed, so we kind of have one built in, but there’s nothing wrong with being relied upon by someone who might not be as able to defend themselves. And your neighbors are generally closer than the cops anyway.

“Sergeant Bill”, on the surface, seems to have taken upon himself to kit up with a Crown Vic, play policeman, and bust a boatload of meth heads. With the willing co-operation of the town mayor, CoP, and three of the five cops employed by the town. At least 17 lawsuits (claiming millions) are in the works, the mayor is facing impeachment, and the town needs a few billets filled on the police duty roster. (No word on whether any of the folks he “arrested”, without any warrants mind you, were actually meth users, dealers, or producers.) If Billy Boy actually has cleaned out the town of it’s drug problem, I would almost say he had done a sadmirable job. But the real cops in that town, and the mayor, should all stand for bastinado.

Joe Horn, however, is just a guy protecting his neighborhood. I would have done it, too. Except i wouldn’t have called ES until after the echoes from the gunfire had died off. Some criticism has come his way since he shot the career criminals in the back. Some others counter with the fact that the perps were illegal aliens committing a B&E in broad daylight so therefore didn’t have any right to keep using up our oxygen. I am not going to stick my face in that hornet’s nest, feel free to hash it out in the comments. All I know for sure is that Mr. Horn is the kind of neighbor I want on my street. Assuming he doesn’t get killed by jackasses in retribution, I’m thinking there isn’t going to be any more burglary within a mile of Joe’s house.

Teen hops two six foot fences and ignores numerous warnings at Six Flags, GA and gets the Highlander Loser treatment.  Who wants to bet his parents sue that there was not enough warning that the area under a 50 mph roller coaster was dangerous?

Dickie Scruggs gets 5 years at the Federal Penitentiary and Day Spa.  In my perfect world, he’d have to spend the rest of his life working as a Public Defender, or better yet, as a low ranking attorney in the DA’s office.  Five years in the pokie means he gets three hots and a cot on the taxpayer dime when in reality, he is not a dangerous person.

The Arctic Ice is melting and will be all gone this summer!  Oh NOES!  It’s Global Warm…oh, wait, it a cubic butt ton of undersea volcanoes getting all explodey under the ice.  Move along, nothing to see here.

Local to me, today a new law goes into effect such that if you are driving and talking on the phone, you need to be using a hands free device.  Opponents of the law say that the holding of the phone is not what causes problems, but rather, the fact that a person is talking at all is the distraction.  I wonder if that is the case, why don’t drivers get arrested for talking to their passengers?  What makes a phone call so much more distracting?  Me personally, I have a much easier time staying focused on driving while using a headset than I do while holding a phone.  Not sure why.

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And a final bit of Randomness that has nothing to do with the news, and more to do with gardening at home.  We all know that containers are a great way to grow plants, but attractive clay containers are expensive, and heavy.  Foam or plastic containers may be lightweight, but they are cheap and look like it.  One way to get attractive containers and avoid the weight and the cost is to make your own.

Here’s what you do.  Go to the local crap store and buy two very large identical plastic pots (say, 18″ or more across the top).  Now go to your local building supply store and get a large bag of Portland Cement, NOT Concrete.  For those not in the know, cement is the part of concrete that, when mixed with water, gets hard and binds the gravel in concrete together.  Next, go to the garden store and get a bale or bag of peat moss and a bag of pearlite.

Now, in a tub or wheel barrow, mix equal parts cement, peat moss, and pearlite together.  Add water and stir until the mixture has the consistency of brownie mix (thick, but flowing).  Now, take your plastic pots and cover any drain holes with masking tape.  Then, put a good thick coat of veggie oil all across the inside surface of one pot, and do the same for the outside surface of the other.  Take the pot that has been greased on the inside and fill it about 1/3 full of your “concrete” mixture.  Take the other pot, the one with oil on the outside, and place it inside the first pot.  Push down and watch the concrete mixture rise up the sides.

The goal here is to have enough concrete to fill the inside pot to the top while leaving about an inch or so between the bottoms of the two pots (so the casting will have a base about an inch thick).  Shift the pots around so the sides will all be the same thickness and either place a weight in the pot to keep it in place, or set it on a flat surface and run two perpendicular ropes across the top and anchor the ropes to the ground.  In about 48 hours, you should be able to slide the pots apart (with a little effort and wiggling) and find yourself with a new, very lightweight pot.  Just gently drill a small hole in the bottom for drainage and it’s ready to go.

You can also get creative with this, and using wood forms, you can make box planters of any shape.  I’ve made planters with PVC pipes cast through them where the PVC pipe had small holes drilled every 4-6″ and the holes faced inside the box.  Fashion a standpipe with a hose fitting and you can water the box nice and quick.

Update: Fixed some links

This is beth alpha cucumbers, gioia della mensa tomatoes, cream sausage tomatoes, sungold tomatoes, helios radishes, and tropepo rosso onions.  The orchard baby corn will be harvested in the second week of July, and the sugar baby watermelons about a week after that.

The golden crescent beans are starting to put out pods, they are destined for vegetable soups.  The red rice beans have been planted at the base of the corn and will twine up the stalks.  The daikon radish nears harvest time, and new pots of carrots will be started soon.

The peppers are all flowering, with several HUGE fruits already on the red bell plant.  The poblano plant holds multiple little green strawberry-shaped peppers.  The strawberry plants themselves are getting larger every day, should start to bloom soon.  The various melons are running around and over everything in their path.

We haven’t shopped for anything other than potatoes in the grocery store produce section in weeks, and it’s been wonderful.

The short story, a science teacher from a not-so-wealthy school, wants to get his kids interested in science. His idea, take an issue even kids are aware of (the rising cost of fuel), and instead of preaching of the evils of Exxon or thumping for corn Ethanol, he introduced the kids to an alternative to both: Bio-Diesel from Algae. And to prove it works, one of the kids got his dad to donate a diesel VW van for an experiment that involves using the fuel the class made to drive to the Sears Tower and back.

He used a creative way to call attention to an issue, and instead of just prostelizing, he showed the kids how to use science and creativity to find a solution to a problem through the sweat of their own brow.

We need more teachers like this.

So, this morning I’m talking with a friend at work. Said friend (we’ll call him “Sally”) is a flaming Democrat. Sally tends to be fairly even headed and not a complete socialist twat, but he still has that core belief that for every problem, the is an equal and opposite government program to fix it.

To Sally, the government is a benign entity that only can be corrupted by Republicans. If only Democrats were in charge, nothing bad would ever happen, hence, it is totally permissible to submit every last facet of your life to Uncle Sam’s caring and compassionate scrutiny.

Yet he thinks that the government shouldn’t butt into your home life. Go figure.

This morning’s conversation with Sally entailed my consideration of the addition of a swimming pool to my house. Imagine my fury when I found out that, as a free citizen of the United States of American and resident of the State of Florida, I must ask and gain permission to modify my property as I see fit!

Permits. To build a fucking swimming pool. I was incensed at having to have an inspector come out for my patio addition, and this has finally pissed me off to no end.

Here’s how I see it. If I modify my house, and something happens because I did not ‘meet code’, the fault is mine and mine alone with the payment for the damage coming out of my pocket. If I purchase a house, it is between me and the seller to agree on what constitutes the purchase and what I expect the terms to include and, being that I don’t trust him or her to indicate where there might be problems, I hire a third party who’s very existence relies on providing accurate assessment of the house’s structural integrity.

If I wish to rent a backhoe, dig a 16.3′ hole, cement the walls, fill it full of water and install some pavers, it’s none of the government’s damned business. And if you purchase the home from me, it is up to you to ensure you know what you are buying. You have to do the work to ask me who built the pool and verify that it meets the standards of what you’re willing to accept. You. Not some overworked government lackey who, if they fail to perform their job correctly, feels no punishment and therefore no incentive to do a better job.

Sally, on the other hand, feels it’s not his place to make those decisions. In Sally’s world, the government should make the process easy and risk free. Now, Sally is from another state where he says that the inspectors are quality people who, apparently out of the kindness of their heart, will not allow construction to continue if there are failings in the workmanship. That’s all well and good, but I’ve watched these inspectors ‘inspect’ my house. It took the gentleman less time to ‘inspect’ the new addition than it did for him to park in my driveway. In fact, he leaned over the fence, saw some construction, then left. The only thing he signed off on was the back of the check for the permit.

But to Sally, the requirement to ask permission from my masters is a small price to pay to “protect the children.” Sally wants liberty for cheap, wants it easy, and risk free. When I challenged him on the effectiveness of these inspections (after I got him to admit the government suffered no consequences for a poor job) his response was “we have to do something!”.

No, Sally, we don’t have to do anything. The human race has managed to stay afloat for millions of years without government licensing of pools. In fact, lakes have been around since well before man decided to invent Marcite and yes, people drowned, but it wasn’t because of shoddy construction or failures to maintain the proper alkalinity.

What permitting entails is two fold. It is a source of unearned income for the state and a tool that can be wielded against businesses in a political manner. Don’t want to donate to my campaign? You want to argue about my latest bills in the works? It’d be a real shame if we increased the permit costs for your line of business. People might not want to build if they go up. You’d meet hard times if that were to happen.

This isn’t about safety. If it were, pools would not be permitted at all with the high rate of drownings (Think Of The Children™). This is about another way to control the populace. It’s just one in a long line of small violations against our freedoms that “feel” like they do something, but accomplish nothing except to erode our self-reliance.

The Founding Fathers would roll in their grave if they knew this is what we’ve become. Of course, that would assume they’ve applied and received their “Post Mortem Rotational Motion Permit” good for 5 years.

Operation Drill Bit

• That’s why we’re rolling out, “Operation Drill Bit”…
• Here’s what we need to do…
• Go to Lowe’s or Home Depot or whatever mom & pop hardware store you like, and buy a drill bit to send to your congressman or woman…
• In fact, buy at least 3…
• One for your Representative in the House
• And one for each of your two United States Senators.
• Tell them you are sick and tired of gas prices, and of watching this great country borrow money from the Chinese to buy oil from the Saudi’s
• Click here to find the address for your senators and congressman.
• Click around on their web pages until you find their Washington, D.C. office… Don’t send anything to a local or district office.
• Include the message: IT’S TIME TO DRILL OUR OWN OIL NOW!
• Let’s flood Washington with drill bits to let them know it’s time to drill ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico and other domestic resources.
• We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!!!

Click here to locate your Senators and Representatives using your zipcode

Our Mad Rocket Scientist has posted here before on Urban Gardening, for those of you who haven’t seen it there’s tons of good information in there on getting started no matter how small a space you might have.

We here at Casa de Ligne have a smallish 1/4 acre, taken up mostly by house and pool, but we’re thoroughly exploiting the space we do have for maximum yield. In the area between the bbq patio and the house, we have four 2×6 foot planter boxes, filled with a delightful mixture of compost, good topsoil, and peat moss. And we’re growing things sized appropriately to that space: sugar baby watermelons, orchard baby corn (five feet tall at full growth), beans (which will use the cornstalks as a trellis), many different peppers, zucchini, four kinds of cucumbers, seven varieties of tomatoes (most of these are actually in large pots), radishes, and a stupid number of specialty melons, both climbing up trellises and pretending to be just low-growing greenery with pretty flowers around the landscaping out front.

So, while our growing efforts aren’t strictly necessary from an economic standpoint, they are highly enjoyable, much less expensive/more tasty than shopping at the grocery store, and pleasing to pay homage to those who sacrificed so much during WWII, both abroad and at home.

If anyone would like a Victory Garden seed sampler, just leave a comment and I will be delighted to provide. The sampler will include at minimum:

1. Beans
2. Cucumbers
3. Tomatoes
4. Melons
5. Corn
6. Peppers (hot and sweet)

And if you have questions about care/feeding of any of the above, sing out, as well. Knowledge is power!

This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Remember to check out the other Patriotic Journeyers: Drumwaster, The Bastage, Inessential Musings, and The Edge of Reason

Mr. Losh, you sir, are our hero of the day.

Most ten year old boys are playing baseball, video games or just hanging out with friends, but, not Moshe. He’s cramming for final college exams.

…

Within a year, if he keeps up his grades and completes the rest of his requirements, he hopes to transfer from his two-year program at East Los Angeles College to a prestigious four-year school and study astrophysics.

One of his primary interests is “wormholes,” a hypothetical scientific phenomenon connected to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. It has been theorized that if such holes do exist in space, they could – in tandem with black holes – allow for the kind of space-age time travel seen in science fiction.

“Just like black holes, they suck in particulate objects, and also like black holes, they also travel at escape velocity, which is, the speed to get out of there is faster than the speed of light,” Cavalin says. “I’d like to prove that wormholes are really there and prove all the theories are correct.”

This kid is our Daniel Shipstone.