SWCAMBORNE

Yesterday I was at my local Wal-Mart buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet, Missy the Brave and was in the checkout line when the woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

What did she think I had, an elephant?  So since I’m retired and have little
to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog, I was starting the
Purina Diet again.  I added that I probably shouldn’t, because I ended up in
the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an
intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in
both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it
works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or
two every time you feel hungry.  The food is nutritionally complete so it
works well and I was going to try it again.  (I have to mention here that
practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.)

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food
poisoned me.  I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter’s ass
and a car hit us both.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing
so hard.  Wal-Mart won’t let me shop there anymore.

Better watch what you ask retired people.  They have all the time in the world
to think of crazy things to say.

Thanks to Gene B for forwarding this lovely story which I only modified slightly.  I don’t often post email jokes but this one was to funny not to share.

“Either men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like beasts.”

Max Lerner

Here is an example of competing interests, power groups and unintended consequences.

On our recent New England trip we observed that in hotels built before about 1980 the stairs were a usable alternative to the elevator.  At the Inn at Essex a three story hotel in Burlington, Vermont the stairs wrap invitingly around the elevator column. They are wide, carpeted and well lit.  As a result the stairs are easy to use. In the newer hotels we stayed at the stairs were always at the end of the corridor away from the elevator and often led to the outside of the building not the lobby of the hotel.

These changes were implemented by architects and builders to make buildings safer.  And it may have worked but at a cost.  The plans of all new hotels have to be approved by departments of public safety and they have been adapted to maximize safety.  As a result in new hotels the stairs are built in ugly fireproof columns at the ends of the corridors.  These new safer stairs are less user friendly, they discourage exercise, waste time and consume more energy than the stairs in old hotels.  The focus on fire safety regulations has made the stairs in new hotels almost unusable, so people with rooms on the lower floors don’t walk to the lobby.  They wait for the elevator wasting time, electricity and getting fatter.

So healthy living, convenience and energy conservation are compromised to slightly improve fire safety.  I say it is a bad bargain and one that needs to be rethought.

it is time to make hotel stairs people friendly again!

I have framed this argument as a hit on regulation but there is another way to look at it.  A clever builder could design people friendly stairs that meet fire code and a hotel chain could promote the idea.  It would give them a slight competitive advantage for a time and would encourage all hotels to make stairs workable again.  Another win-win safety, conservation (now called lower carbon footprints), exercise and convenience. Stairs return to hotels.

A lot of people have peanut allergies.  Some people are affected by small amounts of peanut oil in foods that were just processed near peanuts.  A menu for them is a dangerous place.  Why not make a peanut detector that would sniff food and tell the owner if it had peanuts in it.

• It would have to be handheld
• easy to use
• cost less than $200

The market would be millions of them.  I suspect that there is a chemistry breakthrough required to make it happen.  And as a result there will be a very rich chemist when a detector/indicator is invented.  Right now there are lab kits and dogs that can detect peanuts in products but they don’t meet the above criteria.

We drove by a store in Vermont called the “Clothes Horse.”  It was a women’s clothing store and it’s clever name made us smile.

But then we asked the obvious question: What is a clothes horse?  I thought it was a coat rack for storing clothes.  Nurit thought it was a person who over dressed.

I looked it up.  It turns out we were both right.  It can be a place for storing clothes or a “fop.”  Perhaps a store called Fop?

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotheshorse

A few weeks ago we went for a walking trip with Country Walkers on the coast of Maine.  It was a great group with terrific guides and near perfect weather.

We stayed at two different hotels and the first of them The Camden Inn perfectly matched our taste.

I have posted some more pictures on Flickr and a few other stories related to the hike on my blog already;  Belted Galloways, Travels in NE, Man Not Crushed by Rock, and I’ll be posting some more.  Particularly about the great product/business ideas that the very smart people we hiked with had.

After the hiking trip we hung out in New England for another week and saw family and friends and visited some excellent small museums.  We learned a lot and I’ll try to condense some of it and put it on the web site.

On the administration page for WordPress the program I use for this blog is their beautiful tag line:

Code is Poetry

Brilliant!

“A warm heart is not always a light heart.”

Edith Cavell

Nurse WWI

This link is from Richard Baehr one of the smart people on the Country Walkers hiking trip in Maine.  Rich writes articles for AmericanThinker.com  a political blog that appears to be more thoughtful than most.   It is an excellent counterpoint to The Huffington Post or the Daily Kos.  Having said that I see that it reflects my confirmation bias.  I don’t hate conservative ideas enough for Huffington or Kos and I don’t hate liberal ideas enough for Limbaugh.  American Thinker might be the middle thoughtful ground.  I thought I had found it on Politico.com.  Their articles are somewhat balanced but the bloggers on Politico tend to be ranters. Anyway if you want to try reading a political blog (and maybe commenting) try AmericanThinker.com

I was the only one in our hiking group with the courage (stupidity) to pose for the good picture.

Fortunately Nurit did not have the strength to push the stone over.   By the way it is a “glacial erratic.”  Look it up if you don’t believe me.