FLOW: a plumber’s weblog

Here’s a good quote: “The question isn’t ‘what causes poverty?’ but ‘what causes wealth?'” Read a good article.

Reader’s Digest (April ’05, p. 168) reprinted this from Outside magazine:

Q: How did elephants come to have trunks?

A: Scientists believe that the trunk developed through natural selection. As Hezy Shoshani, a biology professor at Eritrea’s University of Asmara explains, elephants grew bigger as they evolved. Of course, as they grew away from the ground, they still had to reach down for food. So the trunk was born–probably emerging from the upper lip and nose, to ultimately become the tool elephants use for browsing.

I’m taller than my father was. My son is taller than I, and he will marry this summer. I fear for his children. Since my boy is farther from the ground than I or his grandfather, but his kids will still have to tie their shoes every day (just as he, I, and my father did), Prof. Shoshani’s highly scientific rejection of creationism indicates that my grandchildren should have the beginnings of a trunk emerging from the nose and upper lip. 🙁

You missed it. “We had an amazing turnout. Everyone really enjoyed themselves.”

A common slogan I’ve never understood is “diversity is our strength.” It sounds to me more like a faith assumption or a desperate wish. Honestly, would you rather your football team be half female? Would your brain surgeon do a better job if half of his training was in Pakistan?

Would your neighborhood be a richer place if your neighbors married their children to dogs? Well, that certainly goes on among diverse people.

Show me a department of philosophy and religion at a liberal school who wants to diversify their staff by hiring a Fundamentalist who believes all of the Bible. Hah! I may represent typical American Christianity, but there’s no way they’d diversify their faculty that far.

A snake might be in your toilet. 😥

Namibia, formerly known as South West Africa, has been reduced to abject poverty and chaos since the white minority regime was replaced by the communist South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). This workers’ paradise (by Marxist standards) now has so much wealth, they can occasion this news story:

WINDHOEK. When outgoing Namibian president Sam Nujoma hands over power to his successor, Hifikepunye Pohamba, on March 21, he will reportedly receive a retirement package consisting of the same monthly salary as the new leader of the country, plus an extra gratuity equal to a year’s salary amounting to just over $71 000 dollars, plus a Mercedes Benz S500 (which currently retails locally for about $146 000), plus a four wheel drive station wagon, plus a light truck ten security personnel, plus three drivers, two private secretaries, two personal assistants, two office attendants, three domestic workers, three gardeners, two cooks, two waiters and two laundry persons to run Nujoma’s household, plus an office equipped with computers, telephones, furniture and other materials as may be determined by the cabinet, plus medical cover, first class seats on international flights and local travel – as well as entertainment, water and electricity expenses. All of the money will be tax-exempt.

Tsk, tsk. Kinda makes you nostalgic for the good old days, eh Namibians?

For people who have more money than brains, behold the Hatbox Toilet.

Here’s how you can tell that the Chinese are destined to rule the world.

I’m a right-wing extremist. Rush Limbaugh couldn’t even hold my flashlight while I’m formulating a conservative opinion of something.

But I also enjoy immensely learning what others believe and why, so I’m an avid listener to Air America, which recently began polluting the airwaves of Memphis. On Tuesday, the Al Franken Show played a most amazing clip of Bill O’Reilly claiming to have been an astronaut, and telling Buzz Aldrin that he (Aldrin) was the first man on the moon.

When Aldrin corrected him and said that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, O’Reilly responded that Aldrin was mistaken. Eventually he hung up on Aldrin and said that it’s too bad when a guy is the first man on the moon and therefore thinks that he knows everything.

Here’s an interesting web site: Discover the Network is dedicated to identifying the Left, who often try to pass for “moderate.”

At about 6:30 this evening I and a coworker finished up a big job. It involved removing an electric water heater and installing two gas ones in its place. We probably spent twenty four man-hours on it if you include the time it took to hunt down various necessary components.

I tallied up the receipts tonight. It looks like we cleared $210. My coworker will get $200, since it was my job and he was helping me. It isn’t his fault that I underestimated the job.

The customer got a bargain. I got a lesson in careful estimating.

On Dec. 18th I posted a link to an excellent video presentation honoring our military troops who would be spending Christmas away from home. That link is now broken. Use this one instead. If you haven’t seen the video, do it.

As most of the blues songs say, “I woke up this morning” to a really cold Memphis: 21 degrees. That makes us Southrons worry, as we are never really prepared for anything below 30. I began to lament my fate until I got on the web and read about the blizzard up in Yankeeland, as is depicted here:

When I walked out to get my newspaper, I was greeted with the Memphis version of January:

So here I sit with a hot cup o’ joe, fireplace consuming wood like a hornworm on a tomato plant, looking out at such a scene.

Y’all be careful up there.

See an animation of the aforementioned coffee.

I am indebted to my friend David Gish for this link.

There’s a coffee available for $300/lb called Kopi Luwak. It’s made from the excrement of an animal called a paradoxorus, who climbs around in coffee trees and eats the berries.

“Bottoms up!”

I came across this photo, which I like very much:

Well, I guess that I don’t like the photo all that much, but I certainly like the captions.

Two facts should stand out when considering the Second Amendment. First: it is not a grant of a right. The government does not create rights. Instead, it is a prohibition against the federal government infringing on a right that already exists. Second: the purpose of an armed citizenry was to make government tyranny impossible. Our right to guns is not based on the need to protect ourselves from local punks, it is based on our right to be free from government tyranny.

Jefferson said “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force [he meant government] may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Rights come from God and they are intact even when government uses force to deny the free exercise of those rights. The right to keep and bear arms is one of those rights.

I grew up in Houston, Texas. It only snowed once every six years or so, and that snow would melt within a day. This makes me sensitive to people who’ve never seen snow and how it can paralyze a city. Therefore I submit this photo, shot from my front yard.

We lived through the snow and ice.

Eight degrees is nothing to sneeze at; but I successfully avoided all frozen pipe calls, kept my old truck running, escaped the ditches and oncoming cars that awaited me on every side of the slick streets, and kept the fireplace at home stoked and radiating. And the crisis passed.

Now, one week later, it’s 70 degrees in Memphis and the forecast says it will continue for several days.

Eat your heart out, Indiana.

And what does a Fundamentalist get his son for Christmas? Here is Wesley with his new T-shirt and Taurus PT-132 semiauto:

We had a great day at the Barley household this fine Christmas. I was going to go to work, but The Voices said to stay home and clean the guns. So we’re doing our part to spread the message of the angels: “Peace through Superior Firepower.”

Yes, we Barleys live in a world where “gun control” means hitting your target. The Kingdom of God will be a time of universal peace. This isn’t it. In a fallen world such as ours, thugs need more than a smile and an assurance of unconditional positive regard. They need the fear that comes from knowing that their prey might be armed. And if they guess wrongly and attack us, we hope to assist the city of Memphis in its beautification program by eliminating a little of the trash at no charge to the taxpayers.

And should you dislike the idea of shooting an attacker dead, I suggest that, in the event that you happen to be attacked yourself, that you call out for a social worker to counsel the poor, disadvantaged punk who’s about to feed upon you. If that doesn’t work, maybe you should hope like heck that there’s a trained handgunner nearby.

In the final analysis, we are the richest and most free nation on earth because our military forces defeated those who would have enslaved us. People in hellholes across the third world work hard and live carefully, but they still don’t enjoy blessings such as ours. Other people, such as their government or bandits, make it impossible for them to flourish and grow rich.

We are a free people only because other people, evil people, cannot overpower us and steal what we have produced. Such people are out there. Make no mistake, they’re there. The newspaper is filled with stories of such people. The primary restraint against them is firepower.

I have my health and my family. There are a number of millionaires who’d gladly trade places with me, because I’m richer than they. But I can continue to be rich only if evil men are restrained by the fear of deadly force. God bless our military, and God bless all the responsible gun owners who stand ready to defend themselves and their families this Christmastide.

A big ol’ storm has paralyzed the midwest, and Memphis isn’t doing so well, either. When I crawled under a house yesterday morning, everything was fine. When I emerged some hours later, the city was covered with sleet, with more coming down all the time. By the time I set out for home (a fifteen-minute drive under ordinary conditions), it was dark and just at the time when rush hour is worst. It took an hour and a half to get home. Nobody was driving over 20 mph, and most of the time, when we were moving at all, we were going about 5 mph. All of the streets were packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic, as the Interstates were impassible.

Thus it is in the South. We don’t know how to drive in ice and snow, and it just doesn’t pay to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars preparing for a storm that might occur once every three or four years. We have no snowplows, very little salt and sand, and apparently a governmental workforce that isn’t too enthusiastic about getting overtime hours.

Today the roads were iced over. You could drive 40 mph, but you couldn’t stop! So folks were still creeping along like a snail on his way to see his mother-in-law. Combine that with a backlog of plumbing jobs I had to get to and you can imagine why I see little attraction in the song “It’s the *most* wonderful tiiime of the year.”

Ah, remember the halcyon days of working for a plumbing company. I put in for my vacation months in advance; I broke it up so that the days would adjoin my regular days off. I’d put another log on the fire, put my feet up, and let the Company fend for themselves. Christmas was a great time.

Now I can no longer tell the Company to go jump in the lake. I am the company. So I fight the single-digit weather and the icy streets, solving one problem after another, because folks rely on me and turning them down would be the equivalent of throwing them to the wolves.

But it’s still too doggone cold.