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Monthly Archives: July 2012

Pfotenhauer's new web site

This house, from a photo on Pfotenhauer’s new web site, clearly is a customized version of the same plan that Acorn Abbey was build from. I had an email from architect Rodney Pfotenhauer today saying that he has a new web site: here. I know there are a lot of Pfotenhauer fans who come to […]

Microsoft's obituary

Above: the best OS Microsoft ever wrote Microsoft is dead. Vanity Fair has written its obituary. I’ll have a link to its obituary a little later in this post. I actually can remember a time when I did not hate Microsoft. It was 1983, when I bought a TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer. Microsoft wrote […]

Smart? Or Smug?

Just over a month ago I did a terrible, consumerist thing. I leased a 2013 Smart car ForTwo. I can’t say that I feel remorse — I believe it was a good decision. But I do admit to a certain amount of guilt, especially at taking on a lease after having lived debt-free for so […]

A Song of Ice and Fire

I don’t have cable or satellite, so I was not able to watch HBO’s Game of Thrones until it came out on DVD. It was quickly apparent that Game of Thrones is good fantasy — a rare thing. The HBO series is based on five books (so far) by George R. R. Martin: — A […]

50% of us hold only 1% of American wealth

California, 1936 Right-wingers cracked up on right-wing propaganda make much of the fact that almost half (around 46 percent) of Americans pay no federal income tax. It is true. The Wall Street Journal often calls these people the “lucky duckies,” and all right-wingers just know that the lucky duckies are getting a free ride off […]

I'm not complaining

Corn on the cob in a few more days After several brutal summers, the summer of 2012 is going pretty well at the abbey. While 60 percent of the country is in drought, the abbey lies in a narrow no-drought area of western North Carolina. There was a period in early July when the temperature […]

Tuggle's Gap: a nice idea, but …

One of the many reasons I don’t eat out much is that there aren’t many places to go. One comes across places that you really want to like — like Tuggle’s Gap restaurant near Floyd, Virginia, near the Blue Ridge Parkway — but almost always you’re disappointed. As late as the 1970s, there were still […]

Democracy perverted, again

Rep. Becky Carney, D-Mecklenburg, who cast the “mistaken” deciding vote to legalize fracking in North Carolina For months, tens of thousands of grassroots voters in North Carolina have been working to convince the legislature and the governor that fracking is a bad idea. We apparently succeeded. And yet we woke up this morning to find […]