Odds ‘n Sods:

Roman recommended: Your bike – the coolest part of your disaster kit

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Non-Retreat Locale: Riding Along With the Cops in Murdertown, U.S.A.

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Vin Suprynowicz chimes in: The enormous disconnect between ‘mainstream’ professional reviews and viewer response to ‘Atlas Shrugged The Movie, Part I’. Bottom line: Statists hate this movie and the novel that it was based upon. The fact that that a 54 year-old Libertarian novel is presently ranked #6 overall on Amazon, and #1 in Political Fiction no doubt has the posteriors of the statists chaffed to a shade somewhere between pink and red. (Which, by the way, also describes their politics.) Oh, and reader P.I. noted that the reviewers at the Rotten Tomatoes web site gave it a miserable 8% approval rating, while the general public rated it at 85%!

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Not only is this ad a gross distortion and fear mongering, they don’t even know the difference between a “clip” and a “magazine”. Take note of the “little girl” target poster that the Brady Bunch commissioned especially for the commercial. What sick puppies, they are!

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One of my recent consulting clients was bemoaning the fact that his rural Kentucky retreat property was at the base of a mountain and had a northwestern exposure–definitely sub-optimal for siting photovoltaic panels. But he mentioned that there was a fairly large year-round creek with a waterfall on his property, just 200 feet from his planned home site. Anywhere that there is that much “fall” is a great candidate for micro-hydro power! He will soon be buying some 6″ diameter PVC pipe that will originate with a screened creek diversion and a Harris Pelton wheel DC generator. The creek diversion will be 54 vertical feet and 119 lineal feel from the Pelton wheel, so I expect that it will really hum. (Large diameter pipe is best, to minimize friction losses.) There is nothing quite like an alternative power system that generates electricity 24/7/365.