The doctrines and practices, or the character and spirit, of the Pharisees
Rigid
observance of external forms of religion, without genuine piety;
hypocrisy in religion; a censorious, self-righteous spirit in matters of
morals or manners.
I doubt I'll ever use this word. I am not even sure how to pronounce it, but it's good to know that we have a word for self-righteous assholes.
Via Dustbury
Good movie about Robert the Bruce. It starts off about the time of the execution of William Wallace (Braveheart). The English are depicted as the bad guys (naturally), but one has to be amazed at how disagreeable the Scots are. During this period of history I suspect they spent more time and energy fighting amongst themselves than they did in fighting the English.
Rumor has it that some new drugs are sending idiots to the emergency room.
Krokodil - aka Desomorphine. Popular in Russia and the Ukraine because it can easily be synthesized from codeine, and codeine is readily available there.
Wasping - seems to involve combining bug killer with crystal meth. What a good idea.
Kratom - (Mitragyna speciosa) is a tropical evergreen tree in the coffee family native to Southeast Asia. . . . it has been used in traditional medicines since at least the nineteenth century. Kratom has opioid properties and some stimulant-like effects.
Khat - or qat (Catha edulis) is a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Khat contains the alkaloidcathinone, a stimulant, which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite, and euphoria.
Among communities from the areas where the plant is native, khat
chewing has a history as a social custom dating back thousands of years
analogous to the use of coca leaves in South America and betel nut in Asia.
Much of the trouble seems to come from unknown substances that get mixed in with the drug during processing / preparation. If drugs were legal we wouldn't have so many problems caused by unknown substances.
A while back California Bob was feeling the pinch from Proposition 13 and decided to see what the housing market looked like in the old home town of Grand Rapids Michigan. He found this dilapidated old mansion on a five acre estate close in to downtown. It looked like a bargain at $500K. Michigan Mike went and took a look and reported that it was just what you might expect of a bargain: it would take a heck of a lot of work to make comfortable. Nothing came of this, but somebody else thought it was a deal, bought it, fixed it up and now it's on the market at a price somewhere north of a million.
While this place is under discussion, someone notes that it was originally built by Frank Stone of Clipper Belt Lacingfame. Never heard of him? Me neither.
Factories used them to drive their machinery, notably machine tools. These belts were made of leather, and the ends of these belts needed to be spliced together to make a continuous loop to drive the machines.
SHOP TIPS #316 Pt 2 Using the Clipper belt Lacer tubalcain
Frank came up with a system of hooks and a tool to affix these hooks to
the ends of the belts. It's as simple minded as can be, but it did
require a certain amount engineering. In any case, it became popular
enough that he made a fortune and was able to build his house. Flat belts aren't used for power transmission anymore, except for those antiquarians who keep the old machines running so the iPod generation can see how it used to be done.
The Clipper company is still in business, though is now known by a cryptographic combination of letters: Flexco. Can't be much of a business if the only people using flat belts are operating museum pieces, but that's not the case because there is another market has been growing steadily for the last hundred years and that is conveyor belts.
Mining operations make heavy use of conveyor belts. Most are fairly short, but some of them run for miles. So Flexco has a solid customer base and will likely be around for a long time.
He drove a big ol' Pontiac, looked something like this one (above), though it was a little scruffier. He'd also taken the back seat out, supposedly so that when the trunk was loaded with moonshine, the back end wouldn't sag, which would have been a dead give away to them dad burn revenoors. He was out drinking and shooting shotguns with a friend of his one Saturday night and he let the weight of the shotgun rest on his trigger finger. It went off, aimed right at his foot. Didn't lose his foot, but screwed it up pretty bad.
So I go looking for pictures of moonshine runner's cars and I find this one in a collection of photos.
I've never seen a radio like that one. I thought the staggered double row of knobs on the upper right side of the faceplate were knobs, but Jack thinks they are pushbutttons used to select the channel.
Coincidentally, Posthip Scott sends me this photo of a fancy antennae.
It's a little hard to make out until you look at the full size image, but there are a whole series of wires strung around the ends of the X frames. I am not sure what these antennaes were for, but this was still early days of radio, so they probably didn't know either.
