KWBaker

Ernest Hemingway's prose is almost as well-documented as the writer's impressive appetite. We've covered his famed hamburger recipe before, but for this Provisions installment, we sought to examine another one his favorite pasttimes a recipe it entailed: fishing, and the Bacon-Wrapped Trout. To accomplish this, we tasked our buddy Chad Brealey of Salt, Fresh & Field, who took his trusty Tenkara Teton rod to the streams around the foothills of the Canadian Rockies with a simple mission: to catch and cook a trout — just the way Ernest Hemingway would have back in the 1920s. The recipe belongs to Ernest, but the words are from Chad.

ull away the bravado of the bull fights, the search for German U-Boats in the Gulf Stream and African big-game hunting, and you'll learn Ernest Hemingway was a simple trout fisherman. Hemingway's most self-actualized character, Nick Adams, was never bogged-down with gadgets and gear made to impress anglers. He fished with grasshoppers caught by hand and kept them in a glass jar around his neck. He didn’t thump out 95-foot casts or rely on a machined reel that could slow a running labrador. 

Fly fishing is simple, confined to a tapering, flexible rod, a length of line and a clear leader attached to a thinner tippet. And tied to the end, is a fly: an assemblage of feathers and fur. Dry fly fishing is widely considered the pinnacle of the sport, perhaps for the fine matrix of elements that must line up perfectly for success. But, since most of a trout's life is spent looking for food under the surface of the water, using a fly that imitates a nymph — the larval stage of many aquatic insects, and the dominant, year-round food source for trout is most often what brings trout to hand. 

Hemingway stripped the world bare and rebuilt it with his own lens. Often graphic and cutting, but always simple to the core. In a similar manner, a Tenkara rod peels away layers of gear-ladened complexity and provides a fishing simplicity that is surprisingly addictive. At the outset, the Tenkara style requires a mind shift away from the mechanics of traditional fly casting, hauling and line control, shifting focus instead on reading the water, and the drift of a fly through the current. 

I took my simple fishing outfit into the mountains. The stream was as I remembered. It cut a clear, thin line through an old bison plain at the foot of an slope that had once burned. There were still blackened snags on the highest ridge overlooking the clearing. The grass was low and the wind had not yet started to flow down the valley.

Like most wild food, trout you have caught yourself should be simply prepared with minimal ingredients and fuss. While writing as a young reporter for the Toronto Star, Hemingway penned an essay called Camping Out around 1926. In it, he explained how to deal with proper shelter and how to protect from biting insects. He also provided a recipe, of sorts, for wild trout wrapped in bacon. It’s unadorned and simple.

Recently, I went into the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Calgary, Alberta to assist Trout Unlimited with non-native Brook Trout suppression program. Brook trout are beautiful fish, but not actually trout. They are technically Char and, therefore, piscivorous — or rather, fish eaters. They were planted in the area decades ago and have since come to dominate the small streams in the area at the expense of the native cutthroat trout. Specially licensed anglers have been deputized to help cull the Brook Trout populations and by rather pleasant happenstance, Brook Trout are delicious. 

The stream was set up perfectly for the Tenkara, and we landed seven fine Brook Trout in under two hours — with an equal number lost. We cooked them on a ridge above the stream — a vantage point that was once a lookout for local First Nations hunters. 

The stream looked cold and clean. I tied a soft hackle fly to my 5x tippet, cupping my hands over my eyes to shed them from the glare. The brook trout were there, woven into the tangle of fallen branches and brush, feeding at intervals on insects floating through the seams of current. They favored the dark waters where they could hide from ospreys. I caught one fine brook trout from the slack current behind a log and killed it quickly with a rap on the head with the handle of my knife. 

• Two Brook Trout per person (of whatever size you're able to land within legal parameters)
• Sprigs of thyme (as much or as little as you like or have on hand)
• Corn Meal (hand-full)
• Bacon - about two pieces per fish. (I used a very thinly sliced German Rohess Speck)
• 1 Lemon - quartered
• Cracked Black Pepper 
• Salt - I used Maldon smoked sea salt
• Cast iron pan (large enough to fit the trout)
• Knife - to clean fish and to eat with
• Cutting board or flat rock or somewhere to prep
• Heat (fire, camp stove, grill, whatever you can source)

I made a small fire and cleaned the trout, leaving the entrails for the mink to find. After preparing the fish with corn meal, thyme and thinly sliced bacon, I introduced them to the heat of the pan where they sizzled and spat. After five minutes, I turned them. The eyes had become opaque. Five more minutes passed, and I took the pan off the fire and ate the fish with my fingers. The sun was at its peak and a grey jay took the stripped skeletons to the top of a nearby fir tree. A raven made a croaking sound and the wind swirled the last of the campfire smoke in my direction.

1. Clean the trout but leave the head on. 
2. Pat dry inside and out.
3. Dash a bit of pepper and salt into each cavity along with a couple of sprigs of thyme.
4. Roll in corn meal
5. Wrap two pieces of bacon around the trout from behind the gills to the tail.
6. Pre-heat the cast iron pan enough that you can directly hold your hand comfortably 2 inches over the pan for only a few seconds.
7. Place bacon wrapped trout on the hot pan. Sit back and look around for 5 minutes. Squeeze some lemon over the trout. Enjoy a beverage. 
8. Turn the trout over. Squeeze a bit more lemon over both fish. Continue enjoying the scenery for another five minutes. 
9. Take the pan off the heat and either eat directly from the pan or transfer to a board or plate - if you happen to have brought a plate with you to the mountains.
10. You should be able to easily peel back the backbone and ribs, enabling you to enjoy the nicely opaque flesh. 
    
    
    Images: Salt, Fresh & Field and Key West Art & Historical Society

Chad Brealey is a modern hunter-gatherer, and a gentleman of the wilderness.
He shares stories about getting outside and gathering your own food on Salt, Fresh & Field. 

Silicon Valley has never been considered a bastion of good style.

But perhaps that could change, thanks to MTailor, a new app designed by a couple of Stanford techies that scans your measurements with 20% more accuracy than a human tailor.

And thanks to our friends at UrbanDaddy Perks, who are getting you 10 bucks off your first custom shirt from them…»
 

By definition a dive bar has no definition.

If you ask someone to define a dive bar, their answer won’t be about a dive bar it will be about their dive bar. Whether it’s the drab basement bar where they first sucked down a one dollar High Life, or some one-light-bulb hole in the wall where they continue to drink away the post-work hours, everyone’s vision of a dive bar is inherently personal.

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “I can’t tell you, but you feel it.” I imagine Dickinson was describing love (or just as likely despair) with this line, but her sentiment is just as true for a dive bar. Yes, there’s a certain atmosphere that all dives share. The outdated decor, the dusty bottles, the stone-faced bartender, the stench of stale domestic beers, a dirt cheap prices (often because the beer is just so damn bad.) We’re all familiar with these dive bar tropes, but what really makes a bar a dive is a feeling. It’s the sense that the world outside has disappeared, and for however long you sit on that raggedy polyester stool everything else can wait. It’s just you, a sweating bottle of beer, and your compatriots. Even if those compatriots are just the thoughts in your head.

But is this something that I’ve actually felt myself or am I just pretending? Have I experienced this feeling or am I merely regurgitating some scene that I once saw in a movie? Is there even such thing as a real dive bar anymore?

That final question is one that more and more bar-goers have been asking lately here in New York. In the face of rising rents and the general homogenization of the city, many of NYC’s most beloved dives have come under threat or been forced to shutter altogether. Mars Bar, Miladys, Blarney Cove, the Holiday Cocktail Lounge. And that’s just those that have actually closed for good. Max Fish was forced to relocate. Holland Bar was at risk in 2008, but managed to survive. And then there’s The Subway Inn which could seemingly close at any moment.

And yet, a search for “Dive Bar in New York” on Yelp reveals over four thousand listings. The disparity between actual dive bars, and the commoditization of dive bars gets back to the look vs. feel distinction. There are now countless bars, new and old, but mainly new, that masquerade as dives. Or rather, they masquerade as the sort of bars that people, primarily of my generation, mistakenly identify as dives. What we seek out now is a warped version of a dive bar, one that has been standardized until any semblance of actual grit or character has been washed away.

Call it the Instagramification of the neighborhood watering hole. Our notion of a local community bar has been contorted thanks to the expansiveness of the Internet. From upstart indie magazines to individual Instagram photos, the dive bar aesthetic has become a commodity. My generation (those who still have memories, albeit hazy ones, of their twenty-first birthdays) might relish dive bar look – the seventies pinball machines, the faded upholstery, the archaic jukebox, and any other kitschy ephemera that might garner a few more likes on Instagram – but we don’t realize that a bar’s character is less important than its characters.

This attitude is in line with our general push to Brooklynify everything. It might look pretty, but it’s all surface level, and along the way we’ve forgotten that too much of a good thing just makes us sick. Now, I should take a step back here, because I am not trying to come at this topic as some archaic curmudgeon or blind hater of Brooklyn. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t frequent craft beers bars and cocktail boutiques with denim aproned bartenders and Edison bulbs tuned just so. But, we’d all be lying if we didn’t pretend like this “Brooklyn aesthetic” (because yes, once someone opens a “Bed-Stuy Cafe” in Amsterdam it is a full-blown aesthetic) has become a stock template for all things tailored toward the young, urban-dwelling populace.

Woodsy furnishings. A copper bar. Cocktails with literary names. Mismatched chairs. Faux quirky accents like thrift store books or board games. It’s paint by numbers of a Brooklyn bar, and it’s trying so desperately hard to replicate the character of a dive bar. We even call these places dives. But this is not character, it’s the appearance of character. What a dive bar has, or really had, is character.

Bars like Milady’s and Mars were both the center of a community and a member of that community. They had this organic, palpable character that bars simply do not have today. A new bar might be able to mimic the Milady’s look, but they’ll never recreate the spirit of a Saturday night down on the corner of Prince and Thompson. The contemporary bar is designed more for a audience pleasing Instagram photo than a meaningful conversation. Truthfully though, I cannot imagine many twenty-somethings who would even be able to sit by themselves and have a drink without the aide of their cell phones. We’d rather refresh Twitter than talk to our neighbor these days, even if that neighbor is our best friend, and this is the real issue. We’re so glued to the world’s that exist in the palm of our hand, that we miss the world right in front of us.

And so the death of the dive bar might not phase most people my age, but it should, because we need dives. A dive bar allows us to escape, whether into our own heads, or into the arms of our friends. In a city like New York, with so many people, yet so little interaction, a dive bar should be a cornerstone of any neighborhood. Now more than ever, with the endless demands of this digital world, we need these places where you can shut down, and connect with someone on a real level. Sometimes you just need to leave the pretension behind, have a watery beer, and just shoot the shit with a stranger.

Or better yet, with your friends.

When one of the regulars at The Holland Bar died in ’96, his friends at the bar pooled their money for his cremation. They didn’t do it for any reason other than that they were friends, and they were friends because of the bar. It brought them together, as only a true dive could.

James Beard Award-winning chef Sean Brock shares a recipe for the Julian, a variation on the Old Fashioned.

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• Leatherman Raptor ($70)
  
• Moleskine Japanese Album ($14)
• Prestige Medical Bandage Scissor ($6)
• Prestige Medical Kelly Forcep ($8)
• Fuji Instax Mini 90 Neo Classic ($150)
• Mossimo Watch ($15)
• Otterbox Defender Series Case for iPhone ($39)
• Apple iPhone 5s ($562)
• Littmann Cardiology III Black/Black/Black ($164)
• Unification Alpha Pager

Pediatric ICU Nurse in Detroit, MI

With the exception of the camera, this is what I wear on my person everyday at work. The Leatherman medic shears are perfect for cutting through any amount of tape, linen or clothing in an emergency. A cheap watch with rubber band and large face lets me easily count seconds and can withstand frequent exposure to aseptic cleansers, alcohol, and bodily fluids. The iPhone gives me immediate access to my hospital’s pharmacology services, calculator and distractions for young patients. I always carry some sort of camera in my bag for fun and the Moleskine Japanese albums accordion-style pages are a great place to stick and display the 2x3 Polaroid prints.  

Green cabin in Tongass National Forest, Alaska.

Submitted by Joseph Coniff.

Subscribe to the Cool Tools Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 |See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page

Lifehacker founder and ThinkUp co-founder, Gina Trapani introduces us to a few web based apps that offer elegant design and features well worth their minuscule price-points. Fans of an uncluttered web experience will rejoice to hear what Gina offers up in this installment of the Cool Tools Show.

Show Notes:

Gina’s Website

Gina’s Twitter

Gina’s latest venture, ThinkUp

Forecast.io (Free)

“Forecast.io takes several different weather services and, based on your location, it will make it’s best guess, given multiple data sources, of what the weather is in your position and how long it will be partly sunny or at what point it will start raining. So if you wanna walk your dog and you don’t want to do it in the rain, Forecast.io is the place to look. It’s a very, very smart and well-designed weather app.”

Draft ($4/month or $40/year)

“Draft emphasizes that you get better the more you write so it gives you these great stats about how many words per day you’ve written, what hour of the day you’re most productive, what reading level you’re writing is at. It really incentivizes you to write more and so if you’re doing that with Draft, the subscription is definitely worth that. It’s just a few bucks a month.”

KidPost (Free during Beta period)

“Kid Post sends a daily email to whoever opts in to your Kid Post, like Grandma or Grandpa, and it rolls up the photos from all those other services and it sends them out to everyone and includes the photos inline. So everyone in the family who is checking their email gets to see just the photos that you post to these different services automatically.”

Push Bullet (Free)

“Push Bullet mirrors my phone’s push notifications, things that have come pushed to my phone, to my desktop. So if any one of my apps shows me a notification, I see that on my desktop which means I don’t constantly have to be switching between my phone and my desktop.”

ThinkUp ($5/month)

“Facebook and Twitter and Google, they have a lot of information about us because we’ve been using these networks for a long time and I wanted to build an app that was like “what kind of information do they have about me that helps them know more about me. I wanna know more about myself. What am I talking about? Who am I friends with? What are the messages that travel far? How many times do I say ‘thank you’ to people?” so ThinkUp is my attempt at that.”

A new device from the Burglinghame, California-based startup Breathometer, called the Breeze, is a breathalyzer that lets drivers with smartphones learn if they are intoxicated before getting pulled over by police. It even lets them summon an Uber if they blow over the legal limit.

"This is really about consumer awareness and being able to make the right decision and learn more about yourself," said Brian Sturdivant, vice president of marketing for Breeze, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The Breeze is a 2.25-inch-long, 1.88-inch-wide wireless device, weighing less than one ounce, that pairs via Bluetooth LE to a smartphone app, according to the Chronicle. It is available for both iOS and Android devices for $100. 

The iOS version of Breeze syncs with Apple's new HealthKit platform, which allows consumers to catalog their blood-alchohol level (BAC). If users blow higher than an .08 BAC, the app triggers a "get home safe" screen with a button that launches the rideshare app. In California, drivers are defined as drunk with a BAC of .08 percent, but are considered "likely" to be impaired with a reading between .05 percent and .07 percent, the Chronicle notes.

Breeze reportedly also provides "intoxicated" users with the option to search Yelp listings for cab companies, uses a person's phone book contacts to let them phone a friend in case they need a ride, and provides the option to search for hotels and restaurants where they can sleep their intoxication off or sober up with caffeine and food. 

The CEO of Breeze's competitor BACtrack, Keith Nothacker, whose breathalyzer device is very similar to Breeze (and sells for $130), told the Chronicle that his company made the conscious decision not to let their app contact an Uber if the client is intoxicated, because it would send a message of "if you're drunk, just use this" that would give users a dangerously false sense of security.

Nothacker also said it is not very difficult to summon an Uber, even when someone is drunk. "Everybody has Uber on their phone, and if I want to call Uber, I have that app," Nothacker said, noting that "It's a great marketing spin. But we want people to make smart decisions ahead of time. Intoxication begins with the very first drink."

There's a new SEC record for fattest player to throw a touchdown pass. Move over, Jared Lorenzen.

Read more...

UPDATE: USA COOLEST YEAR ON RECORD...


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This article was originally posted on powerlineblog.com and written by John Hinderacker.

In New Hampshire, Scott Brown has pulled into a statistical dead heat with incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Brown is not a staunch conservative on every issue; if he were, he would not be competitive in purple New Hampshire. But one issue on which Brown is strong is immigration. That, plus the fact that by all accounts he has crushed Shaheen in their debates, has propelled him into a strong position. If Brown wins in New Hampshire, the GOP will have an insurance seat in the battle for control of the Senate, even if something goes haywire in Kansas or Kentucky. So both parties are pouring resources into the Granite State.

Conservative bellwether Jeff Sessions is backing Brown strongly:

Open borders billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is spending one million dollars to defeat Scott Brown. He knows that a Scott Brown victory is a massive defeat for Obama’s extreme immigration policies. Scott Brown’s opponent in this race, on the other hand, is a reliable vote for Obama’s immigration policies and his desire to bring in millions of new low-wage workers to compete for your jobs and wages.

The President’s immigration policies will reduce your pay, increase your tax bill, and squeeze millions of Americans out of the middle class.

We need to help struggling Americans find good jobs and rising pay – not import more low-wage workers to replace them.

Your donation to the Brown Campaign can help level the playing field.

This election is the epicenter of the fight to stop Obama’s immigration agenda. This is where we draw the line. This is where we make our stand.

Scott Brown has pledged to fight for American workers and American jobs. He has pledged to serve the working people of New Hampshire. He has pledged to protect our border so we can keep out threats- whether they be deadly terrorists or deadly viruses. …

President Obama announced his plans to nullify America’s immigration laws and issue a sweeping executive amnesty after the election. This action would give work permits, photo ID’s and Social Security numbers to millions of illegal immigrants – taking precious jobs directly from struggling Americans.

But you have the power to fight back. You have the power to send a bolt of lightning that will send shockwaves through Washington DC. You have the power to tell Obama and his open borders extremists: NO.

At this moment in history – at this grave hour – the single most effective thing you can do to stop Obama’s executive amnesty is to help elect Scott Brown.

Read the rest of the article here.

Canadian military reservist Nathan Cirillo was killed at gunpoint this week by a jihadist gunman in his nation's capital, leaving behind a loving family and several adopted dogs for which loved ones say he harbored a deep devotion.

Those dogs, media sources report, remain waiting for Cirillo at his door, peering out his gate alongside makeshift memorials left for the fallen soldier. According to sources cited by the Daily Mail, Cirillo was known to be dedicated to helping dogs, owning two of his own and recently nursing a stray back to health. Canada's CTV News reports that two dogs were seen by passersby leaving flowers in Cirillo's honor peeking through the gate of his home in Hamilton, Ontario.

Both sources note that Cirillo's Instagram account was filled with photos of his dogs, both those who lived with him and those he temporarily adopted to help them recover when found as strays or ill. He described them as "family."

Cirillo leaves behind his mother and a 6-year-old son, who the Daily Mail notes Cirillo was raising on his own after the boy's mother was "no longer in the picture." It is believed that the boy, Marcus, will now live with his grandmother. Cirillo was 24.

Cirillo was a reservist in the Canadian military and was working his regular shift protecting the National War Memorial outside of the Canadian Parliament on Wednesday, when a man now identified as Michel Zehaf-Bibeau opened fire on him and attempted to enter the Parliament building. Cirillo was unarmed at the time.

Zehaf-Bibeau was eventually killed before causing any more harm by the Parliament's Sergeant at Arms, 58-year-old Kevin Vickers. Vickers, a longtime veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is being widely celebrated in Canada as a hero; without his quick reaction to the crisis, Zehaf-Bibeau may have killed more innocents.

In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper honored Cirillo and made clear that he viewed Zehaf-Bibeau's attack-- widely believed to have been inspired by jihadist ideology-- as a political attack "on our country, on our values…as a free and democratic people.” He added that Canada will continue to monitor individuals that appear at high-risk for jihadist activity; Zehaf-Bibeau himself was seen as a potential threat and had his passport delayed to prevent him from leaving the country, reports show. One Canadian reporter noted that there is evidence the government had been monitoring Zehaf-Bibeau, as he showed signs of inclinations towards radical Islam and could potentially join members of the Islamic State.

Texas is using a secret ingredient to fight any future Ebola cases. Here are a few clues: it is red, probably in many kitchens in the South, and spicy. The ingredient is Tabasco sauce.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center sprays dummies representing patients with the sauce instead of “Ebola virus-laden fluids.” If the doctors and nurses “feel the tingle of Tabasco on their skin, they know they’ve been contaminated.” Executive Vice President Dr. Bruce Meyer said the sauce "gives feedback immediately." According to ABC News:

Tabasco sauce is made by Louisiana-based McIlhenny Co. from red peppers called Capsicum frutescens, which are made spicy by the chemical capsaicin. When skin comes in contact with this chemical, the brain's pain and temperature receptors get activated at the same time, causing that tingly, hot feeling. The hot pepper chemical has also been used in other medical settings, including dermatology and neurology for pain and itch relief.

The Capsicum peppers can aid in “weight loss, GI conditions, postoperative nausea, and rhinitis.” WebMD also reports it can be used for heart and blood vessel conditions, such as “poor circulation, excessive blood clotting, high cholesterol, and preventing heart disease.” Experts are now testing the peppers in connection with migraines and osteoarthritis.

Two nurses in Dallas contracted Ebola after treating Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Experts believe the ladies were contaminated while removing their protective gear.

"When you have gone into contaminated gloves, masks or other things to remove those without risk of contaminated material touching you and being then on your clothes or face or skin and leading to an infection is critically important and not easy to do right," said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.

On Friday morning, doctors declared Nina Pham, 26, Ebola-free. 

MORE Americans Renounce Citizenship...


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HILLARY UNLEASHED: 'DON'T LET ANYBODY TELL YOU BUSINESSES CREATE JOBS'...


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Sauna built by the Beaver Brook School, clad with pine boards, coated with pine tar, roofed with steel.

Photo by Noah Kalina.

There's much talk out there about how a rise in the minimum wage will create more jobs, not fewer as the conventional analysis would have it. This new, and surprising, take on it relies on an effect which is undoubtedly there, the marginal propensity to spend, but that's often true [...]

So why is Chianti so unappreciated? Including my pick of the ten best Chiantis. A few years ago I was talking to the sommelier of a high-end Italian restaurant in New York, and he complained that the hardest wine on his list to sell was Chianti. But why? He had no real explanation, [...]

On November 30th the Swiss will be asked to vote on boosting the share of central reserves devoted to gold. Opinion polls indicate they will vote yes.

Chef Timmy Malloy of Local's Corner in San Francisco gives a lesson in filleting a fish.

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This year, like last year, we did our fair share of dining. We hunted for barbecue in Texas, ate all the burgers in L.A. and went inside the new American supper club. We found that, like television, restaurants are in the best form they’ve ever been. These are 25 of our favorite restaurants in America, chosen by our editors and writers across the country for their newness, their hospitality and the quality of their food — though not always in that order.

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This year, Polestar has taken a small allotment of 750 V60 wagons and S60 sedans and made them better, stronger, and faster for worldwide consumption. And Gear Patrol got a first look.

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Mapping USA's diversity, 1960-2060...


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by Mike Dang

Last night, I went through my credit card transactions (as I like to do on weekly basis), and noticed that on Oct. 17, I was charged $8 by Delta in Atlanta, Georgia. That was this last Friday, and I was here, in New York, eating a fried chicken sandwich in Brooklyn at the time; the charge for the sandwich appeared next to it.

It was past eight, and Meaghan had just urged me to leave the office to go home, but instead I waited 20 minutes on the phone to talk to a customer service representative.

“How may I help you?” she asked.

“I just looked at the most recent transactions on my card and noticed this charge from Delta in Atlanta, Georgia and I wanted to make sure it was a legitimate charge.”

“Have you flown Delta before?”

“Yes, but not on Oct. 17—not this month.”

“Not this month.”

“Nope.”

“Well, I can’t tell you if this charge is legitimate or not, you’ll have to call Delta.”

“I see.”

“And if the transaction isn’t yours you can dispute it.”

“So I’ll call Delta, and if the charge isn’t mine, then I’ll call this number again and dispute it?”

“Oh don’t call back. You can dispute the charge online and it’s faster.”

“Okay great. Um, that’s my only question. Thank you.”

“Thanks for using our card, and have a good night.”

Thinking about getting on the phone again to fight for $8 seemed like it wasn’t worth it, but I was more worried by the idea that someone out there had my credit card information and would use it again.

I got on the phone again and called Delta, and after some investigating, we came to the conclusion that the charge was from when I flew on Delta a month and half ago during my Utah trip.

“Sometimes it takes a while for charges to show up,” I was told. Like five weeks.

I wasn’t the only person in the office during this time; our head of technology had been listening in.

“You reminded me that I haven’t looked at my transactions in a long time,” he said. “I’m pulling them up.”

Photo: CWCS Managed Hosting

4 Comments

It is said that the reason the USSR fell in the dramatic way it did was first, because it couldn’t price anything in the economy effectively, but secondly because the price of oil (a real price generated on the market) dropped in the 1980s sharply thereby significantly reducing the value of the Evil Empire’s petroleum reserves and a key source of revenue. Some believe that this downward push in oil prices was encouraged by the United States and facilitated by increased production from the Saudis.

Could something similar be happening now? What better way to pressure Putin?

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In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Indeed, it’s long past time.

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We have long covered what happens the in the shadowy alleyways where the NSA and corporate America have gotten together in their unholy unions. Sometimes these unions are voluntary. We have seen also that many of these relationships were not and that companies have no choice but to work with the NSA.

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Pentagon Says Does Not Violate Posse Comitatus...


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An armed Phoenix man foiled the robbery of Desert Schools Federal Credit Union by taking the keys out of the getaway car then shooting and killing one of the robbers.

The good Samaritan, Sean Quaid, owns a "neighboring business" and was alerted to the robbery when an employee inside the credit union called him on October 15. He went outside and found the empty getaway car sitting in front of the credit union, keys in the ignition and the engine still running. So he grabbed the keys.

According to The Arizona Republic, when the robbers came out of the credit union and saw the keys were gone they went back inside, believing a customer had taken them. After searching but coming up empty, the two robbers went back outside, pointed a gun at the driver of a 2001 Chevy Silverado pickup truck and demanded he hand his keys over to them.

After seeing the robbers point their guns at the man driving the truck, Quaid intervened again -- raising his gun at the two suspects. When one of the robbers, 29-year-old Lyndell Cherry, raised his gun in return, Quaid shot and Cherry "collapsed."

The other robber, 21-year-old Vincent Jones, then tried to make a hasty getaway in the stolen pickup, only to crash and get arrested by police. 

Cherry died of a gunshot wound at the hospital. 

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