Ted’s essays

targets

This was a great day with my then new AR-10 shooting Remington Gold Medal Match ammo. I have been trying like the dickens to replicate or improve on the accuracy with tailored hand-loads, but having no luck. Of course hitting these targets at 200 yards is a challenging act to follow. Heck, I hope I can do it again real soon.

hair magic

I’m still not believing it, mind you, but my skepticism weakened a notch yesterday. I wrote about hair as part of the human sensory system back in November – see hair November 8, 2013. There were a number of sources, links and personal experiences combined in that article. I decided then to quit having my hair cropped short… and, in fact, have not had my hairs cut since then. Well, I haven’t embraced the untrimmed facial hair thing (yet?). Nevertheless, my hair is no longer (un-pun unintended) sidewalled above my ears, but more or less covering them – as you can see in this photo taken this morning. Theoretically the cosmos can communicate better with us via our hair than […]

paint job for pennies

The $383.00 Paint Job . . . 1949 Cadillac, completely covered with 38,295 pennies! They were affixed one by one using Silicone. They added over 200 pounds to the vehicle’s weight. The entire project took 6 weeks. The pennies are American, and include an 1817 “Big Cent”, two Error Pennies, and four 1943 Steel pennies; (but who’s counting?). And, it won’t scratch. Better still, this would make it nearly impervious to EMP disruption … particularly if the engine is all original with no electronics.

step stool

My wife, shorty, has step stools all over the place. The old plastic one on her side of the bed broke. It was old, brittle and not worth patching to last another little while. What it really needed was a replacement. Of course I couldn’t build a light-weight version, this one can second as a jack stand for auto repair. It won’t break – that’s for sure. I will feel no hesitation about using it myself. The sides are “only” quarter-inch plywood scraps, the top a 5/8ths scrap of an old water-bed frame and furring strips at all the junctions. I figured it would be reasonably light, but strong enough. I confess I’m back to my old ways … as […]

what Is The Good Life?

Editorial By Wendy McElroy Every person has a different answer. Nevertheless, there are basic guidelines or advice that I believe benefits anyone looking for “the good life.” Certainly they benefited me decades ago when I needed a door through which to exit the endurance contest that had become my existence. Some of them are presented here in simplistic form and in the hope they may be of interest if not of assistance. The first advice is closely associated with the first ‘Western’ philosopher about whose life and thought we know a substantial amount: Socrates (circa 469 – 399 BC). He said, “know yourself.” Unlike contemporary philosophers who often dwell on linguistic analysis or other arcane matters, the classical Greek […]