You and me both! Without calloused hands a brilliant mind is wasted. I for one would love more time to grow the grain, bake the bread, and brew the beer. Maybe make some cheese as well...

Maybe revoking of laws, but creating new ones just makes more red tape, more need for lawyers, and less inclination for wallets to be opened for the guy with the great idea.

Uh, I am pretty sure farming was done for thousands and thousands of years without oil..

Sorry AC, you are entirely wrong. Your personal defense and protection begins and ends with you. This is true both for individuals and entities such as ships.

What is wrong is for some government entity to restrict the law abiding in what means of self defense they may employ. The pirates by definition do not care what the laws are. They will use what ever tool gets the job done for them. Their potential victims have every right to do the same. If some gross overreaction takes place then that is why courts exist.

You just described my nephew exactly. As a toddler he could not wear socks and refused to walk on just about any surface. Even now he refuses to wear any clothing with tags. He had absolutely no control of impulses. Once when he was around ten he was crossing the road and ran into a passing car. He is fifteen now and for the most part has learned to control his impulses, but still struggles to keep focus on his school work. Math in particular is almost impossible for him. His mother has given him some choice at to medicate or not because the side effects really bug him. Recently asked to start a minimal dose again so that he can get through his assignments. Intelligence wise he is not top of the charts, he is off them. He has been invited to several university live-in scholarship programs since middle school and has done extensive testing with various schools and organization for exceptionally gifted children.

There are some things that do help significantly without the need for medication. First soy will turn him into an ADHD poster boy even with medication. Gluten affects him as well, but it tends to make him internalize things rather than the expressive actions that disrupt others. A trip to McDonald's will have him walking on his toes, making explosion sounds, and contorting his fingers in ways peculiar to kids with sensory integration disorder & ADHD. I am one of the first to claim over medication of children, but there are truly some that not only cannot function without it but function to an amazing degree with it.

Exactly the rub... Who gets to say who is sane and who is a nutjob? I prefer to live free in a world were bad things might happen, bad people might exist, and those responsible might be held accountable. There are no guarantees and I think it is foolish and offensive to shackle society in the guise of its own good. Technology has already degraded the value of the 2nd Amendment to the point where it is essentially pointless. It is not likely any armed confrontation between the American populace and the U.S. government could have any semblance of the relative parity of the combatants of the Revolution. Still, I will keep my 30-06 even if I can't have an F16, M1 Abrams, or nuclear sub. I have much more faith in this guy and his kid with the cannon they have put thought into than I do with this guy's kid driving when he turns 16. Or does your government protect you from driving because drivers may be nutjobs too?

The areas mentioned in the summary as hardest hit is the Deep South, this is some of the most fertile land in the US. No, it is not the endless fields of grain like the Midwest, but its fields are cleared from a pine forest that stretches from Texas to the Atlantic. Fresh vegetables are simply everywhere. Wild game is everywhere. The whole of the region mentioned is inundated with feral hogs . Oh, and lets not forget that this is a region known for eating just about anything - Mmm, possum and armadillo.

If you want to think outside the box a little, just about every town in the US as a livestock feed store of some sort. With hunting season coming up deer corn is relatively expensive, but even the extra fancy glossy bag stuff is $6-7 for 40lbs. You can feed quite a few mouths with 40lbs of corn. Sure, it is not sweet corn, but we are thinking cheap. If you buy in bulk it gets even cheaper.

I don't see many people going with the livestock feed option, but instead of grabbing the frozen pizza, potato chips, and ramen noodles they could hit the section of the store with the 5-10lb bags of rice and beans. Combine this with some veggies grown in a few flower pots, some wild game, and you have a much better diet. Sadly, that is not nearly as convenient, and if there is one thing we Americans are it is lazy.

I will not claim to know the root of the issue, but it has something to do with lifestyle choices or the lack there of. It is not a question of money. There are very few truly poor Americans. They may have little of no earned income, but that does not make them poor. I know plenty of people on various flavors of welfare. Most you would guess by looking at them that they are typical middle class families. They all have current generation video game systems, cell phones, fashionable clothing, boats, motorcycles, ATVs, and they all smoke & drink. Maybe they could shift some of the money that I roundaboutly provide them with to healthier lifestyle choices so that I don't also have to pay for their oxygen tanks and scooters when they get older. I seriously doubt it though.

As the very happy owner of an '02 Jetta TDI with >204K miles on it, I can say that I have never had any unexpected mechanical issues. The rubber strut mounts wear a little too fast, one of mine is collapsed at the moment, oh well. I replaced my AC compressor at 150K, water pump with timing belt changes at 80 & 180K, and alternator a couple of months ago. I drive it hard and I am still on the stock clutch.

Just change the oil, the filters, brake pads, the belts - especially the timing belt, and drive it into the ground. You can expect every light on the dash to come on at one point or another, some you might decide to just live with because they will be on more than not. VW's are incredibly over engineered and not necessarily in a good way. The German automakers in general cannot figure out how to make a durable interior. My daughters '92 Accord with a thorough scrub looks practically new. My Jetta, uhm, not so much. Curses to the guy that dreamed up the coating on all the console and door plastic. I think at one point there were actually knobs on the various controls for the radio. I guess I should grab some new ones off ebay. The headlight lenses will get horrible UV fogging, but all cars seam to have this issue these days. I just grabbed some serious bling bling headlight assemblies off eBay and they are way brighter than OEM and look great.

Truth gleaned from a VW forum post: "VOLKSWAGENS.., They're like the hot girlfriend who isn't good to you and has all sorts of nervous breakdowns and you really should get rid of her.... but damn she's hot!!!"

-wade

No, but when I say to the sales guys "I will pay more if I can tether" I expect this little thing called capitalism to rear its little head and for somebody to take my money in exchange for the service that I am (wait for it....) willing to pay for! No, the incredible per kilobit fees that they threaten with in the standard "unlimited" plans do not count. Let me and the others like me pay for "unlimited+" and go upgrade your network to handle the load. When the next big thing comes along I will probably pay for that too and you can further upgrade your network. Wash, rinse, repeat...

Uh, that is day one.

You better have a fresh horse or horses waiting or you will be walking on day three or so. A fit human can reasonably cover around 20 miles per day for days on end if they are supplied well. The same human having to pack food and water or forage en route might be able to keep up half that pace. A horse roughly doubles what a human can do. They are big and then need LOTS of forage and water.

In the military I studied quite a bit about effective combat loads and the logistics of moving men around, and having personally walked 30+ miles with 60+ pounds of gear I can tell you that it is not a sustainable pace. There are accounts of great marches under duress or for tactical advantage, but they are "great" because if they did not work out they get called somebody's folly in the history books.

Except for maybe those who set up businesses catering to the tourists... ;-)

So very true.

I don't know where you live, but I OWN the property right up to the middle of the road. Just about everyone here with country road frontage does.