SWCAMBORNE

Lets say your world has a broken longitude or a melted ice cap.  Now you can get a replacement part at the “JCB World Parts Centre”

As you can tell from the French spelling the center (centre) is in the UK.  I checked and they are back ordered on equators but rocky coasts are in stock.

Thanks to Tom B for sharing a bad family joke for this entry.

When life gives you lemons make lemonade.   The announcement that Frank and Jamie McCourt are separated is lemons for a Dodger team that is struggling to beat the Phillies for the National League Pennant.  But other teams have used adversity to build their resolve.  The Phillies are wearing the initials HK on there uniforms in memory of Hank Kalas and the Angels wear the initials of Nick Adenhart.  So I’m proposing that the Dodgers wear this patch to turn their misfortune into lemonade and help them win the World Series:

Frank and Jamie Separated

What do you think?

One of the reasons I wanted to go to York with Rebecca was to take a day trip to Whitby and hunt for fossils.  The coast near Whitby was where some of the first dinosaur fossils were found.  If the theory of evolution has a home other than Darwin’s head it is Whitby.

We drove up from York across the Moors and parked near the Whitby visitor center. We went in to confirm that we wouldn’t get caught by the tide if we went fossil hunting and then we walked through the village and out onto the shingle.  I’m calling it the shingle because it sounds cool and exotic not because the usage is correct

We went looking along the cliffs and found nothing but some cool rocks and some flints.  We were about to give up and go back when we saw ammonites in the rock at our feet.

The pieces were too big to cut out but we looked around some more and I found a stone with a tiny shell print in it and Rebecca found a bigger one.  We walked back into town and stopped in a jewelry store that had some ammonites in the window and asked where we could buy some.  The owner sold us two right there for less than $10 each.  I’m counting them as a find in the biblical sense.

The jeweler guy goes out to the cliffs a lot looking for Jet a petrified wood that is made into black jewelry.  He implied that ammonites get in the way of Jet hunting.

To see a whole set of pictures of the expedition click here.

On our UK trip we had a very nice time seeing family in London.  We didn’t have to time to see the Midlands aunties and cousins this trip.  Next time I promise.

We took this great group photo while the Tower Bridge was being raised to allow a small sailboat through:

All of the good photos are on this flickr link but there are a few more below

Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in the army many of my fellow enlisted men kept “short-timer calendars.”  When you went under 100 days until you got out of the army (or Vietnam) you could call yourself a “two digit midget.”  Well time have changed and the much anticipated event now is getting to the Medicare Buffet.  Today I broke the thousand day barrier.  In 999 days I will be eligible for the National Health plan.  I am a “three digit midget.”

On the day my friend Peter turned 65 he had knee replacement surgery.  I’m already starting a list of my own.  In 1993 P. J. O’Rourke said “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” He was right.

The countdown timer on the upper right of my blog should be a warning to all of the people who are trying to finance more free health-care.  We can’t afford free.  Peter’s knee and my allergies and 30 million more maladies are coming at you.

One of the great pleasures of visiting the UK is that it is almost the same as the USA.  But in the margins there are subtle differences which generally make me smile.  Some of these differences showed up in the signs:

Is this a street?

Where do the regular pelicans cross?

This may just be an illustration of the Urban/Rural divide

The sign above this display of reproduction statues reads:

“Please keep your receipt….. This does not effect your statutory rights.”

It is a pun in a sign in a retail store.  I have never seen that in a store in the USA

and finally:

a nonsequitur?

My Brother Jim shot this cell phone picture of a mysterious stone construction somewhere on the Maine coast:

Why ask Why?

Other Stone piles (OOMS)

More piles

We live in a time when words like local, handcrafted and organic all add perceived value to products.  We also pay large amounts of money for vintage wines that are produced far away by strangers.  This apparent conflict creates an opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a bar that sells  high end artisan mixed drinks.

Go after the niche that expensive wines now own.  All drinks would be locally crafted with fresh, organic ingredients.  The prices would be high enough to compete with high-end sushi.  Things like fresh basil martinis and organic mint juleps

This idea would combine the slow food movement, the local crafts movement and the creative arts in a package with the desire to drink large amounts alcohol in a socially acceptable manner.

One of the arguments about health care reform is that if the government pays they will ration what is available.  This is certainly the case in the UK as this story in the October 8th Daily Mail shows:

The NHS is the UK’s National Health Service and they are not going to allow doctors to prescribe a new drug for Rheumatoid Arthritis because it is to expensive.  Will that happen here?  It already does to some extent.  But the bigger problem is that if drug developers can’t make money investment will dry up and development will stop.  On the other hand if we don’t change the way we are paying for health care now we will go bankrupt.  My post about Medicare finances.

Along with the historic wedding photos Kathy and Brian had another good idea at their wedding.  Instead of a guest book they had the guests send them postcards.  They supplied a big stack of historic Arizona postcards and some pens and the guests were asked to choose a card, write Brian and Kathy a message on it and leave it in a basket.

This is an excellent use of postcards which need new uses since no one is sending them any more.