A thoughtful reader sent me a pointer to The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
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I’ve only got a few items on my list this year. Among the most reasonable, I’d like to take Elaine to the Bahamas for a week provided I can find a great deal on hotel and air – and there’s enough high speed internet so I can post along the way. She’s got it on her list.
The next practical item is sending a decent-sized check to the local food bank. I figure that will go out in two installments: One around Christmas to impact local hunger in January and then another around my birthday in February.
Following that, a load of concrete to pour a foundation for a small addition to my office and to put in the base for my ham radio tower. That would need to be topped with a Cubex quad antenna. Been hankering to put one of them up ever since a childhood ham radio pal (we’re still friends after 50+ years) made one out of bamboo fishing poles he got in Chinatown in Seattle…which gives you an idea how long ago the 1960′s were.
Next on the list – which is looking more and more impractical all the time – would be a zero-timed 3.3 to 3.7 liter Porsche engine ‘built’ to about 400 HP or so to repower the normally aspirated 930 that’s my one rolling collectable. Totally impractical and way too spendy, since such power plants go for $15K, but a fellow can dream and engine builders gotta eat, too.
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The important stuff I’ve already got: The wife, the house, the stores of goods just-in-case, and the human repellants to go with it all. (You figure it out.) Our health is good, outlook’s bright and we’ve been able to give give a good measure back to our local community.
Ever since I was a kid and the Christmas Catalog arrived from Sears, and I spent hours trying to decide “Hmmm…which toy do I really want…if money were no object?” I’ve been watching my attitude change, ever so slowly. Evolving from toy catalog electric trains at age 8 to Porsche parts, ham radio gear, and used airplanes & sailboats on eBay doesn’t seem like a whole lot of self-mastery to show for 60+ years. I did say ever so slowly, did I not?
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As soon as breakfast is over, I’m going to go build a huge fire and once its down to plenty of coals, I’ll get out the big Dutch oven and make some all-day spaghetti sauce cooked outdoors. Might even build a small side-fire and try doing the noodles open fire style. Welded up a tripod for water boiling and such – should work just fine.
Simple stuff. A outdoors dinner to share with visiting guests; a different kind of ‘fun’ than the trains, radios, and such. Yet probably the most enduring.
Putting Down Camels
You saw where 6,000 camels will be killed in Australia after over-running a town in the Outback. A reader in Oz sends this:
Hello George Enjoy your column.
You mentioned the camels invading the outback town (looking for water). The town by the way is close to the centre of the continent in our vast desert regions. Estimates are that there are some 1.5 to 2 million camels in the Australian outback. They are not native to Australia and as such are technically an introduced species and now a major pest. While their introduction had something to do with transport early last century in a hot hostile environment their numbers have risen dramatically having escaped into the bush.
The problem is that despite their feet being equipped for travel in soft sandy environments they still have an adverse impact on the delicate plants that survive in our vast desert regions. Two million camels trampling and grazing around the outback are reducing sparse desert regions plants to nothing more than dust. You remember our shocking dust storms here in Aus a month or so back – not saying the camels are responsible but you get the idea.
Australia already occupies a precarious position as a very dry continent with little margin for error. Any erosion even camel caused can have irreversible effects on our environment.
Unfortunately camels do need to be culled. Utilising the animals for food has merit but the remoteness and logistical difficulties of herding such large animals make this largely impractical and un-economic. Helicopters with experienced trained marksman are probably the only answer. And no they don’t use helicopter ‘gunships’ – our animal cruelty laws would not allow the use of indiscriminate automatic gunfire with the likely outcome of wounding but not killing the animals. “
Dammit! I must really be dense not to see that killing is humane, while wounding is not. Ah, the fine humanity of it. See how screwed up I got by being born in a country founded by free-thinking religious outcasts rather than living in a former penal colony where such distinctions seem clear?
Dreams, Memories, Reflections
Step up here, Jung man – tell Dr. George what’s on Ure mind?
“Hi, George,
It’s almost midnight on Turkey Day, but this morning, I had one of my possible predictive dreams…they happen occasionally, some coming true, some not. However, I just got a chance to read your Saturday column and my dream earlier today dovetailed with your column, while reading your column, my dream came back to me.
Basically it was this:
I saw a front page of a newspaper, in color…In bold 48 point words. “Partners drop the dollar.” (Meaning US trading partners drop the US $ as the reserve currency.) Also, there was a byline, but I have forgotten it now.
Also, strange in the dream were Easter related items…bunnies, cards, like the timeline would be slightly before Easter. I have not looked up the date of next year’s Easter nor did I know to try to see the date on the newspaper in my dream.
Also, there was an odd invention, that all I can say was a Cinderella type paper doll that you shake out so that its golden dress drops out to the floor, shoes on the legs, but legs with joints at the knees so this fold up type paper type toy could be stood up when all unfurled.
Anyway, just wanted to say, that my own predictive linguistics will be looking for an event closer to Easter…which Easter, can’t say.”
Let Dr. George see if he can help: Easter is April 4th next year. Oh – and that Cinderella with the golden dress dropping to the floor? Miss April maybe?
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Send your comments to george@ure.net
The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week
Increasing Your Personal Efficiency
Without going overboard into the Human Potential Movement, I thought this week I would address a question I get asked with surprising frequency: “How do you get so much done?” The answer is really pretty simple – yet it’s one of those invisible decisions that people generally don’t spend any time thinking through. I have at least 14-weeks a year of productivity (based on 40-hour workweeks) that most people don’t have the sense to reclaim as their own. Since the holiday period is when many people get enough time off work to spend at least a little on introspection, I thought this week I’d share a few thoughts on how we can each increase our ‘personal efficiency’. I don’t claim to be perfect at it – just a little better than average. But thanks to the fact that effort compounds over time almost like interest, it’s a worthwhile study. We then apply this to some disturbing and quite possibly irreversible trends in today’s headlines.
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Maxa-Cookie Manager
Been a while since I’ve updated you on how many cookies and web bugs have been removed from my main computer by the Maxa Cookie Manager from Maxa Tools: 1,602 web bugs and 54,131 cookies so far. It’s amazing.
Take it for a free test drive by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will set you back $35 bucks, but Christmas is coming… Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster.
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world….so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time…
“Live on $10,000″ A Year
With another round of layoffs due to start later this month…a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades…might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we’re all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you’ve still got $10-bucks is my e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left… Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It’s just $10 bucks here…
Pass It On
The business model of this website is base Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)