'End Piracy, Not Liberty'

Ok, now you're just makin' stuff up

The heretofore harmless "flash mob" phenomenon -- groups of people arranging to meet at specific times and places to burst into song, break into dance, etc. -- appears to have been co-opted by anarchists, criminals and other ne'er-do-wells.

That's life. It's the way culture evolves.

Last Thursday the folks who run BART, San Francisco's commuter rail line, were expecting just such a mob, reportedly to protest July's fatal shooting involving a BART police officer. In an effort to disrupt the protest, BART cut cell-phone service (including 911 service) on its train platforms for three hours.

If you ask me, that was a lousy idea -- BART had smarter options. What I find stranger, however, is the fallout. Take this reaction from Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"It's very clearly a major First Amendment problem whenever a government agency takes it upon itself to simply prevent people from being able to speak."

Gene Policinski of the First Amendment Center seems to agree:

"If government was seizing printing presses to keep people from understanding or learning something, I think traditionally in this country that would just be beyond the pale. The question is, does a momentary disruption of cell phone service constitute that kind of level of government interference with speech?"

BART's Linton Johnson, responding to the criticism, offered this:

"There is a constitutional right to safety. A lot of people are forgetting the fact that there are multiple constitutional rights and are focusing solely on one."

I hardly know where to begin here. I guess I'll start with the text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I'll grant that we need to re-examine human, civil and constitutional rights in the context of a high-tech society but, the way I read the First Amendment, we aren't guaranteed cell phones and 911 service.

The freedom to speak and the ability to communicate are two very different things.

What's more, in this Nanny State of ours -- and let's face it, no state is nannier than the People's Republic of California -- government always will err on the side of public safety. That principle-of-power often is exploited and abused, of course, which explains how we end up with CCTV and other measures taken "for our own good."

Most of the time there's nothing good about it. BART could've (and perhaps should've) secured its platforms another way, some less oppressive way, but it didn't -- that's how it works these days. It's inescapable and here to stay. We'd best stop pretending otherwise.

Now, going back to BART's astounding contention:

"There is a constitutional right to safety."

That's just bizarre, even for California. Even for San Francisco, which has burdened us with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Emiel Goldman Berman Feinstein Blum, it's truly bizarre.

Would somebody please show me where the hell in the Constitution we're guaranteed a right to safety? Anyone?

I know where these rumors get started -- namely in the anti-Liberty, pro-entitlements crowd -- and its home office undoubtedly is SF, PRC. But no matter how common it is, it's unfiltered bullshit.

In this debate, one argument strains credibility while the other side has none at all. I'm fooled by neither.

Fifty years ago today, I was...

...playing with a toy shovel, heaping beach sand into a small plastic bucket. That's what a boy of (almost) four years old does when he's vacationing in Florida with his family.

My father kept interrupting my shoveling that day, repeatedly calling my attention to the ocean and the eastern sky. I seem to recall two large ships visible near the horizon. I have a very clear memory of a U.S. Navy B-17 making several low-altitude passes just offshore.

What I remember most, though, is my dad hoisting me up and pointing excitedly at a wispy trail of smoke arcing over the Atlantic to our southeast. Leading that trail was a bright orange speck.

On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard became the first American in space. I was there -- albeit at a tender age and from a distance of 50 miles -- to see that Mercury-Redstone 3 propel Freedom 7 into history, and I remember.

Urban Resources: NOAA Weather Radio

Those of us who live in areas vulnerable to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and similar natural hazards swear by our weather radios. The technology behind this urban resource has come a long way since I bought my first receiver at Radio Shack in the '70s.

NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) is a nationwide network of transmitters broadcasting weather forecasts, conditions and alerts directly from the closest National Weather Service office. In addition, NWR broadcasts information about non-weather threats -- earthquakes. chemical spills, AMBER alerts, 911 system outages and more.

The biggest difference between today's NWR receivers and older weather radios is something called Specific Area Message Encoding technology, or SAME, which makes it possible to program a receiver for a particular county or locality. Once set up, the receiver will respond only to broadcast alerts within the area programmed.

The KintlaLake household relies on a pair of SAME-capable Midland WR-100 units (MSRP $50, street price $30 or less). One sits on a table in the master bedroom and the other lives in our basement shelter.

The WR-100 can operate on either plug-in AC or on-board AAs. I've set a reminder in my Palm Pre to replace the batteries annually, and we keep fresh spares near each radio. Also, because we live in a corner of our county, we've programmed our WR-100s with SAME IDs for two neighboring counties as well.

Throughout yesterday, meteorologists were forecasting nasty storms overnight and, sure enough, our bedroom receiver began barking shortly after midnight. It makes me cranky (to say the least) to drag my ass out of bed and across the room to silence alerts for severe thunderstorm warnings, but I'd rather know than not know.

By 2am we were under a tornado watch. I was still awake when the tornado warning came in at 2:30am.

We woke the 16-year-old, grabbed the dogs and took refuge in the basement. The NWS gave our village the all-clear an hour later, and my wife and the spawn returned to bed. I brewed a pot of coffee and stayed up to watch local news.

According to reports, a tornado touched down several miles south of here and straight-line winds in excess of 100mph were recorded to our northeast. Our immediate surrounds got quite a blow but escaped essentially without damage -- just heavy rain and downed limbs.

Our weather radios gave us a heads-up to the threat, however, providing us with the information we needed to protect ourselves. Along with a shortwave receiver, a couple of multi-band scanners and a handful of GMRS transceivers, they're invaluable components of this family's comm system.

Urban Resources: The .pdf library

Today's savvy keyboard kommandos are familiar with Adobe Reader, the popular document-sharing software that allows us to read .pdf files. It's loaded on most new PCs, and even if it's missing, it's free to download and upgrade (here).

Most of us take Adobe Reader for granted, noticing it only when it shows up on its own. I approach this urban resource differently, creating and maintaining a digital library of .pdf documents.

As I post this, that library has grown to 7.2GB. I've amassed nearly 2GB of reference materials on bushcraft and survival, 800MB on firearms, 150 maps, 200 military manuals and more. I have 2.5GB of instructions and related information on virtually everything I own -- from computers to cameras, radios to razors, security to SUVs.

All of these documents are available to me offline, with or without an Internet connection. Loaded onto a thumb drive they're easily portable. Yes, they require a working computer to view, and no, they're not EMP-proof, but that's what paper is for -- it's wise, of course, to keep a printed library of critical information.

The easiest way I've found to search for .pdf files is via Google. I type a search string, followed by:

filetype:pdf

Because my simple searches often are polluted by torrents and other spam, eliminating them from the results (or at least trying to eliminate them) cuts down on the annoyance:

-torrent -rapidshare filetype:pdf

To sleuth .pdf files on a particular website, I go to the site and use Google Toolbar, entering filetype:pdf in the search box and choosing Search Site from the adjacent drop-down menu. The same can be done via the Advanced Search option on Google.

I've found Google Books to be another source of useful .pdf files. I confine my searches to items offering Free Google eBooks and, when viewing a publication, I look for a Download or PDF link in the upper-right corner of the page.

Other favorites: The Internet Archive and Scribd. Slideshare, although it hosts mostly PowerPoint files, is worth mining for .pdf docs, too.

It's about knowledge, and there's a lot of it out there. With a little creative surfing, it's possible to build a considerable library.

1942

The "throwback uniforms" worn by Ohio State during yesterday's win over Michigan were a tribute to the 1942 OSU team that captured the school's first national championship. At a break early in The Game, the crowd of 105,491 paused to recognize a handful of surviving members on-hand for the occasion.
The perspective of history reveals how very special the 1942 Buckeyes were (and are). Among them were five All-Americans: Chuck Csuri, Gene Fekete, Lin Houston, Paul Sarringhaus and Bob Shaw. Six other members of the team earned All-America honors in subsequent years: Warren Amling (twice), Jack Dugger, Bill Hackett, Les Horvath, Cecil Souders and Bill Willis (twice).

Horvath went on to win the 1944 Heisman Trophy.

Three of those players -- Amling, Horvath and Willis -- have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Amling, who also played basketball for Ohio State, is the only member of that Hall who also started an NCAA Final Four game.

Dante "Glue Fingers" Lavelli became a star in the NFL. Willis broke pro football's "color barrier" a year before Jackie Robinson did the same in major-league baseball. Both of those former Buckeyes are now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The head coach of this stellar squad was Paul Brown -- yes, that Paul Brown. Yesterday he became only the second OSU coach permanently enshrined in Ohio Stadium. (Woody Hayes was the first.) A large plaque honoring Brown was unveiled during yesterday's ceremonies. Its subscript reads, "Ohio's Coach 1932-1991."

For those of us who grasp the breadth of Brown's contributions, the title captures the man perfectly. From Massillon to Ohio State, the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals, he truly was Ohio's coach. On a personal note, my father often told me of cheering on his high-school classmates as they barreled toward their sixth straight state championship, a certain nattily dressed coach prowling the sideline.

The coach was a 32-year-old Paul Brown. The high school's stadium now bears his name.

It's all part of Ohio gridiron history and well known, I suppose. Now here's something that even the most rabid Buckeye fans probably aren't aware of.

On the back of OSU players' helmets yesterday was a sticker bearing the image of a military medal and the letters "CC." The initials are those of All-American tackle Csuri, who also was his team's and the conference's MVP.

Like many of his teammates, Csuri left OSU after the 1942 season to fight in World War II. While a forward observer with the 69th Infantry, helping to direct artillery fire during the Battle of the Bulge, communications went down and the barrage ceased. The young Army corporal volunteered to run dispatches through snow-covered terrain back to Allied headquarters. For his bravery under fire, Csuri was awarded the Bronze Star.

If his story ended right then and there, Chuck Csuri would be worthy of respect. It doesn't.

This celebrated athlete and decorated combat veteran returned to Ohio State after the war, in 1948 earning a Master's Degree in art and joining the university's faculty a year later. He embraced emerging technology, sought ways to apply it to his discipline and in 1964 created what's considered the first computer art.

Today, Dr. Charles A. Csuri is universally regarded as the father of digital art and computer animation. He's still a Professor Emeritus at The Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design at The Ohio State University -- at age 88.

As football stories go, Ohio State's 1942 national-championship team is a good one. Unwrapping the familiar tale, however, tells us more -- a whole lot more.

I can't help but wonder about the richness and texture that may hide behind all of the other stories I think I know.

The United Kingdom of Ohio

They call it "the surveillance society."

By one estimate there are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in use in the UK -- one camera for every 14 people.

It's all in the name of public safety, of course. (This from a nation that hasn't yet met a nanny it didn't love.)

Back on this side of the Pond, today we learned that $2 million of Homeland Security money has brought Mary Poppins to Ohio. The camera-integration project, approved by the Ohio Controlling Board, links cameras statewide to a hub in Columbus, where Ohio officials will be able to access real-time video feeds.

My wife and I actually got wind of this a couple of years ago. We heard credible reports that businesses were being quietly encouraged to install at least one camera and a DVR. A link-up scheme, though not explicitly proposed at the time, obviously was the goal.

And now it's here.

The deterrent effect of video surveillance is negligible. It serves safety and security primarily by facilitating identification of bad actors after they've committed bad acts -- no one should harbor the illusion that a blanket of video monitoring somehow makes us safer.

It doesn't.

Anyone who wants to waste time opposing Ohio's plan or trying to block its implementation should know that the civil-liberties ship sailed years ago. Those of us who surf the Internet or use mobile phones, swipe credit cards, subscribe to magazines or visit the ER already volunteer our personal information to the State.

No matter what you call it -- Big Brother, Nanny State or New World Order -- it's real, inescapable and here to stay. As I said yesterday, the best we can do is be aware of it and act accordingly.

A bit of navel-gazing

Although KintlaLake Blog has been around for two-and-a-half years (as of yesterday, actually), Blogger has offered statistics only for a few months. It doesn't tell me who you are, exactly, but I know (generally) how you got here, the country you're in and what you've been looking at.

It is, in a word, fascinating.

First, I was stunned to see that KintlaLake Blog has had thousands of page-views since July. An overwhelming majority of readers (81%) check-in from somewhere in the USA; there's also a respectable audience (5%) in Canada. The rest of you are scattered across the globe -- the UK, Western and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, Australia and New Zealand, China and elsewhere.

It didn't surprise me to learn that most of you found this blog via a search engine like Google, Yahoo! or bing, or through a referring site such as American Bushman or Facebook.

(Over the last couple of days, incidentally, one of the most common search strings leading readers to KintlaLake Blog has been christine o'donnell fundamentalist wacko. I love it.)

What did set me back a bit were the most popular posts. The top ten:

Sharps: Camillus MIL-K-818D
Sharps: Bark River Gunny
Sharps: RAT Cutlery RC-4P MB
Sharps: Fiddleback Forge Bushcrafter
Impressions: KSF Complete Sharpening Kit
EDC revisited
Addendum: Kephart kerfuffle
Sharps: Neck-and-neck
Sharps: Heartland blades
Sharps: A modern-day Soldier

I wouldn't have expected an article about the humble Camillus "Demo" knife to generate significant interest, really, but it did -- to the tune of twice as many page-views as any other single post. Go figure.

Anyway -- wherever you are, however you got here and whatever keeps you coming back, your interest gratifies me.

Ridin' around with Bubba

As my family and I pulled out of a local restaurant's parking lot last evening, the amber "check engine" icon began glowing on the instrument panel of my Chevy TrailBlazer -- no reason to panic, of course, just something to notice.

I reached for the rearview and pressed the OnStar button. A few seconds later a person named John answered, asking how he might assist me. He tapped a keyboard while I explained the appearance of the light, and then he put me on hold for a half-minute or so.

When OnStar John returned to the line, first he confirmed my exact location -- and I mean right down to the off-ramp that I was taking at the time -- before telling me that the exhaust-gas monitor in my vehicle's emissions-control system triggered the dashboard alert. He suggested that I attend to the problem within the next seven days, even volunteering to connect me immediately with my dealer.

I politely declined his offer, thanked him and said goodbye.

As for the emissions-system bug, I'll chase it myself before calling a dealer. I've already connected my CarChip, setting it to extinguish the idiot light. If and when the fault recurs, the indispensable gizmo will record the OBD code, arming me with knowledge to present to a mechanic (if it even comes to that).

Often, I've learned, these are nothing more than electro-mechanical hiccups, transient glitches that pop up and then disappear. We'll see.

And then there's that whole I-know-where-you-are thing.

"The past was dead, the future was unimaginable." (George Orwell, from 1984 Part 1, Chapter 2)

Now I'm not one to walk around in some paranoid Orwellian fog -- I embrace technology's risks as well as its gifts. It can be disconcerting at times, but we coexist with "Big Brother" every day. Everything we do can be monitored; our every move can be fixed and followed.

Sure, my mail goes to a post office box. I know how to interrupt power to my truck's OnStar and EDR systems and I can disable or confuse my mobile phone's tracking features.

I also know that for those of us who want to enjoy the benefits of this tech-thick society, attempting to live life completely "off the grid" is, at best, a fool's pursuit.

Don't kid yourself -- it's way, way too late for us to waste time trying to "disappear." We'd be wiser, in my opinion, to spend our energy learning what ol' Bubba knows about us (and how He knows it, and whom He tells) than on trying to prevent Him from finding out.

'Palm reading' of a different sort

Mobile phones are at once necessary and evil. I embrace the technology because I must.

As a long-time user of Palm devices, my Centro has filled my personal bill perfectly, marrying my needs for a PDA and present-day communications. For two years, I've wished for nothing else.

On Sunday, Mrs. KintlaLake and our spawns went to the cell-phone store, where "new every two" met "buy one, get one free." All three of them decided that it was time to trade up.

Do the math -- I got a new phone, free.

The Palm Pre Plus wants to be an iPhone, but it's not (not yet, anyway). And while it does say "Palm," it's not that, either.

It is, however, way-cool.

The new webOS platform omits much of what I love about Palms, including the desktop interface. I've set up a data sync with the old PC-resident software (using a third-party application) and I'll maintain my Palm TX as a master PDA, but dammit, I miss the old OS already.

Pining aside, I can't seem to put the new phone down. Its flickable touch-screen has me hooked, and the ability to run multiple apps at the same time makes me wonder how I managed before.

What's more, I've downloaded several cheap (or free) apps that turn the Palm Pre Plus into a GPS, a compass, a flashlight -- even a seismograph. (Yes, it has a "Big Brother" auto-locate feature, which fortunately I can turn off, and a built-in accelerometer.)

It's still not a real Palm, but real cool will do.

Just who do you think you're talkin' to?

My family and I stayed close to home over the weekend. On both Saturday and Sunday we did, in fact, do laundry and watch football.

It was nothing special, unless relaxing is special (and for us it was). We didn't even prepare a meal.

Last night's "dinner" involved a swing through the local McDonald's drive-thru. When I placed our order, I noticed that the disembodied voice, while cordial and competent, bore a strange accent.

It was American, not foreign, striking me as the yah-sure-you-betcha-dontcha-know lilt typical of the upper Midwest and northern plains. Curious, I asked the young woman who handed me our bagged food if the friendly order-taker was in that building.

"Um, no -- they're in North Dakota."

Sometimes it feels like I've lived too long.

Oh, I do get it -- efficiency, centralization, customer experience and all that -- and I know that this stuff is nothing new. Even the Ohio Department of Taxation outsources its customer service to a private company in the state of Washington. I suppose it's some comfort knowing that I'm talking to employed Americans and not some offshore operation.

Still, the fact that my fast-food order must make an 1,800-mile electronic round-trip seems wrong somehow. The physical distance, enabled by technology, is short compared to how far we've strayed from the whole concept of neighbor-to-neighbor service.

Yesterday's experience reinforced -- and in some ways redefines -- my personal perception of "local commerce."

In a few hours I'll return to the working world, taking my pay from a small, independent, truly local business. And while much of what it sells is made outside the U.S., when a customer buys an oil filter, a wheel bearing or whatnot, they'll be talking to a living, breathing local in the same building.

In this imperfect commercial world, I can feel good about that.

Volleys & votes

My father-in-law is in the habit of mumbling observations from behind his morning newspaper, usually in response to what he's reading, occasionally to the ideological drumbeat of Faux News blaring from the kitchen television.

Sometimes he lobs comments at things that other family members say at the table, and he takes particular delight in buttonholing me. Such was the case last night, when Mrs. KintlaLake and I were talking idly about my old and seldom-used GPS unit.

"So whaddaya gonna do when the satellites go down?" he grumbled while twirling his spaghetti.

"I'll use paper maps, of course, and a compass if one's handy," I replied quickly. "See, it's unwise to rely on technology, but personally I have no problem with learning how to use it."

"Hmph." He felt the dig and stopped twirling.

I reminded him of something that happened not long after my family and I moved in, a day that I'd innocently dead-bolted the door between the attached garage and the house. It seemed a reasonable thing to do when leaving the place unoccupied.

When my in-laws returned from the grocery that day, they used the electric garage-door opener to raise the overhead door but were unable to get into the house -- because neither carries a key.

"So what happens if you come back and the power's out?" I asked.

"Whaddaya mean?" He wasn't making the connection.

"How would you get into this house without electricity?"

There was a pause while the light dawned. "I guess we wouldn't."

I hesitate to chalk up this sort of thing to his advanced age or incurable narrow-mindedness. His unwillingness to think things through is simply expected now.

Not long ago he popped off about "the damned casino issue," otherwise known as statewide Ballot Issue 3. If Ohio voters approve the measure at the polls today, it'd clear the way for casino gambling in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and nearby Columbus.

"Oh, you mean the jobs issue," I responded, leaning on independent studies projecting that the four casinos would generate 34,000 temporary and permanent jobs, plus $1 billion dollars in revenue and $500 million in taxes annually.

"No, it's about casinos and I'll vote against it. It's a bad deal for Ohio," he said, parroting TV commercials telling him that all of the money would go to out-of-state casino operators -- TV commercials funded by those very same out-of-state casino operators.

When I pressed him for more, he explained that he didn't feel that it was right "to set up a way for poor people to gamble away money they can't afford to lose."

By that logic, I thought, presumably he also opposes alcohol, tobacco, eBay, QVC, Wal-Mart and individual investing.

"The way I see it," I said, "part of the price of life in a free society is allowing some of our fellow citizens to make unwise choices -- to make choices that we wouldn't make ourselves."

"You really think this is a free society?" he shot back.

"Not if we keep voting against it, it's not."

When a touch-screen ballot machine asked me this morning for my vote on Issue 3, I didn't hesitate -- I pressed "YES." It's about jobs.

More than that, perhaps, it's about actually thinking things through.

Charlie Foxtrot

Getting an Internet connection working here at our new digs -- er, home, I mean -- has strained our patience.

Notice, however, that I said "here" -- finally, we're online. Hard-wired for me, wireless for the missus.

Right now my setup is a temporary one, but it works.

Doin' the shuffle

If you have kids, you've seen the pose -- head bowed, shoulders slack, full attention focused on an object cradled with both hands, totally oblivious to surroundings.

I've come to call this behavior "text shuffling."

The KintlaLake spawns are certifiable text-messaging addicts. After waging a long and lonely battle to manage their dependency, about all I accomplished was to ban texting at the dinner table.

Other than that, virtually any time we summon or try to speak to them, we're interrupting a texting session. It's strange and more than a little disappointing. I continue to crack wise and poke fun at them over it, but resistance is futile. I've abandoned the fight.

I embrace the technology myself, and I've found text messaging a most handy way to send and receive bite-size bits of information quickly and easily. On average, I suppose I send 20 or so a month.

(For the record, I text in complete words and sentences, with proper punctuation. Most of the time, anyway.)

The instant that a convenience becomes a fixation, however, it's a problem. This obsessive immersion in technology -- whether it's text messaging, e-mail, GPS, video games or "social networking" sites -- comes with a price.

Social aptitude suffers and the ability to communicate atrophies. (I'm talking about the face-to-face kind, not the disembodied electronic variety.) Basic skills can't be applied because they never were learned. And most disturbing, I think, is the isolation, the walling-off of the physical world -- especially for impressionable young people, that can be crippling.

Embracing technology may be essential to functioning effectively in today's society, but being present is essential to survival. Sadly, we're raising a bumper crop of kids who are largely absent.

They don't operate in the great span of this world, sentencing themselves instead to a very small, self-absorbed space. They miss moment after rich moment, somehow managing to overlook the simplest and most necessary things.

Bearing witness to a generation's entropy has its lighter moments.

"I wish there was a way to text without typing," our older spawn said last week. "Y'know, so you could hit someone by just talking."

"Something like voice-texting?" I asked.

"Yeah, like that."

"The technology already exists," I said. "It's called a phone call."

That was way, way too easy.

As I watched the 17-year-old text-shuffle silently out of the room, something about his posture and sloth-like movement struck me as familiar...the bowed head, the singular focus, the sacramental devotion to the object cradled in his hands...I wondered...


At some point, the whole celibacy thing might become an issue for him, but hey, at least he's got a transferable skill.

Palm reading

I'm a certified (perhaps certifiable) "neat freak," and my penchant for orderliness extends to the way I organize information. That's why I've been a fan of Palm PDAs since I bought my first PalmPilot over a decade ago.

A Centro has been riding on my belt for about six months now. Naturally, it does everything I expect a Palm to do. This is the first time, however, that I've owned a device that combines a high-zoot PDA with a mobile phone, and I'm really into it.

As for the ubiquitous BlackBerry, I'm not envious and never have been. When my wife upgraded from a Motorola flip-phone to a BlackBerry Pearl just after Thanksgiving, I messed around with it a bit and it didn't play nice with a Palm veteran like me.

Mrs. KintlaLake tried to love little 'Berry but simply couldn't. We never did figure out how to swap files easily.

Last night, my wife traded the Pearl for a Centro of her own. She's much happier already, even though she's not a Palm geek, and sharing data -- contacts, appointments, reminders, photos -- is a breeze.

I don't know much about "best," but but I'm widely regarded as an expert on what works for me. The Centro definitely does -- and now it's a family affair.

A week, at random

The past week has been plenty eventful, but after last Monday's mad dash to the ER I haven't put together a train of thought that might, in my judgment, be worthy of a post.

Life is composed of small bits. Here are a few.

Politics
Ever since the major parties' presumptive nominees were decided, I've taken a purposeful break from this subject. I remain aware, just disinterested and more than a little fatigued.

That's bound to change as November approaches.

I'm still wary of Sen. Obama's reliance on entitlements and the threat he poses to our Second Amendment rights. Sen. McCain, preferable by comparison, concerns me -- I'm not convinced that his political résumé is much more than a paper trail, and I've noticed that his personality has a bad habit of trumping his judgment.

Don't talk to me about no-shot minor-party candidates, however righteous they may be, or the prospect of my abstaining on Election Day. Either approach would be akin to taking a principled drill to a lifeboat that's already leaking.

Canaries
The prices of crude oil and gasoline continue their climbs, setting new records almost every day, and the equity markets can't seem to stop sliding in the opposite direction. Ordinary working Americans will tell you that nearly everything costs a lot more than it did a year ago.

As if increasing home foreclosures and the so-called "mortgage crisis" weren't disturbing enough, last week IndyMac Bancorp collapsed, one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history, and promptly was bailed out by the feds. Now Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is expected to ask Congress for the ok to buy unlimited stakes in the two biggest mortgage-finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- a pre-emptive bailout, ostensibly to help restore confidence in the American financial system.

Let's be clear about what's happening here: The U.S. government, itself crippled by self-inflicted deficits, presumes to buttress an economy that's spiraling out of control. As taxpayers and consumers, you and I will both foot that bill and pay an inestimable price.

Thud. Did you hear that?

Thud. Something smells funny in here.

Thud-thud.

I think it might be time to leave the mine.

Bounty
Our garden is thriving. It's early, considering how late we planted, so I can't yet boast about harvesting bushels of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Still, the small plot has yielded more than satisfaction and therapy.

This year's crop of raspberries is a tart and tasty memory, but our blackberries are starting to produce. Sprigs of fresh spearmint have garnished glasses of homemade lemonade, and various young herbs have seasoned our meals.

While awaiting this year's bounty, we're already planning next year's garden -- a much larger plot in another area of our property. This fall we'll need to till and prepare the soil, and it'll require considerably more work than our current "kitchen garden." Ideally, we'll keep seeds from the produce we consume and start them indoors in the spring.

I predict that it'll be worth the effort.

Gadgetry
My appreciation of simple things is no secret -- not in this blog, and certainly not in our household -- but last week I actually spoke these words to my wife:

"Don't worry about me going overboard on the whole primitive-skills thing, honey. Not until I finish programming my new cell-phone, anyway..."

I've been using Palm PDAs for ten years and mobile phones even longer. When my carrier contract came up for renewal last Sunday, I upgraded to a Palm Centro. Until now I'd resisted Treo-temptation, but having my familiar PDA and my phone in one nifty little package is, well, damned convenient.

I may burn in hell for saying this, but I'm really diggin' it.

Smaller bits
On Wednesday a neurosurgeon told our younger spawn, who'd expected to spend only a month convalescing from his bicycle accident, that he's sentenced to another two months in his corset brace. For a 13-year-old, I discovered, there's a fine line between disappointment and utter devastation. We're engaged in acquainting him with the difference.

We hosted a gathering of out-of-town relatives and friends on Saturday -- a typical Middle American cookout, nothing fancy. My kettle of beer-soaked bratwursts and August-vintage refrigerator pickles joined an array of meats, salads, beans and confections on a groaning buffet table. Sweet corn supplied by a local farmer, too. Fresh food, good company, great music and relaxed conversation made for a near-perfect day.

My wife and I went for a motorcycle ride yesterday, regrettably one of the few times we've ridden together this season. I won't try to explain either the logic or the joy of a meandering, stream-of-consciousness ride along rural roads on an oppressively muggy morning, never straying farther than ten miles from home, but it was as liberating as anything we've done in months.