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Monthly Archives: December 2013

Rainfall for 2013: 69.2 inches

The abbey has a new rain gauge accurate to 1/100th of an inch Some parts of North Carolina have set records for rainfall this year. Acorn Abbey’s gauge has recorded 69.2 inches. The breakdown by month: January: 10.15 February: 3.8 March: 3.75 April: 5.4 May: 5.1 June: 8.9 July: 11.825 August: 5.85 September: 1.7 October: […]

Christmas in Danbury

Carolers Carolers at the Arts Council reception Moravian star in front of the old Stokes County courthouse The old Stokes County courthouse Charlie’s surrey Charlie Inside the Stokes museum Mantel in the museum Inside the Stokes museum

New leak tells us what we already knew: Google is evil

From an NSA presentation leaked by Edward Snowden Bloggers at the Washington Post have reported on an important new leak by Edward Snowden. This one reveals that the National Security Agency uses Google cookies to identify and target computers on the Internet. This should surprise no one, but we need all the information we can […]

Vole control: the fire

A vole flees the fire in the wildflower patch. There were two voles hiding under the brush pile when Ken lit it on fire. As soon as they perceived what was going on, they ran to another brush pile a few feet away that was waiting to be burned. “Poor things,” said Ken. But we […]

Vole control

A vole runway Ken said that, when he was pulling up dead stalks from one of the wildflower patches yesterday, a vole sat and looked at him for a while, as though to say, “What are you doing to my neighborhood?” Of all the many little creatures that live around (and off of) the abbey, […]

Keeping an eye on the FCC

President Roosevelt prepares for a fireside chat. A couple of days ago, I posted an item on the importance of keeping an eye on the FCC. The item was focused on the future of over-the-air television, which may not affect your world very much. Still, we all need to keep an eye on the FCC, […]

Sousveillance?

Source: Stephanie Mann, age 6, via Wikipedia Periodically I check out the web site of David Brin, a science fiction writer and futurist, to see what’s on his mind. Brin is the author of the brilliant and classic Startide Rising (1983), which won both the Nebula and Hugo awards the year it was published. But, […]