Even SMALL CLAIMS COURT Invites You to Introduce Live Testimony in a Public Hearing Decided by an Impartial Finder of Facts.
You don't even need to go to law school to know this. It is basic due process. There will apparently be more jurisprudential integrity in a small claims court than in a proceeding considering the impeachment of the President of the United States.
I've been working on my house today, which is part fun, part tedious. It gets more fun when I consider what I’m saving financially by doing the work myself. I just make up a number of $40/hour, whch is less than it would probably cost me to hire many kinds of workers. I can’t in good conscience pick a higher number because I’m not as efficient as a specialist who has all the right tools ready.
Here’s my totals from today. I earned $80 (two hours) putting up two window blinds. What the heck . . . I also cooked, cleaned, configured some software, did some bookkeeping, laundry and a few other odds and ends. All in all, it was about 4 hours of work, so I just paid myself $160. 
PLUS, I’m writing this post rather than hiring a writing. And I’m going to read to myself tonight – otherwise I might have had to pay someone to read to me. And just before falling asleep, I will fluff my own pillow and operate my own dream theater.
Perhaps I’m getting too obsessed about saving money as a result of visiting the website of Mr. Money Mustache. That is a place where "Frugality is the New Fanciness."
This morning I pretended I lived in a world without any plants. I pretended I was an inventor.
My first client asked me to invent something she called “plants.” She was entirely concerned with function, not aesthetics. She had some very demanding requirements. Each of these living things would be rooted to one position for their entire lives. They would not be able to move. I said, “Oh, like sponges . . . ” She corrected me: “No, sponges are animals like you!” She handed me information showing how plants differ from animals, though there are many similarities too, since all plants and all animals have common eukaryote ancestors.
At first, I was relieved that my task was to design only plants, not animals, because this would save me a lot of work. There will be no need to design locomotion, vision, migration or hunting behaviors. There would not be a need for any sort of biologically expensive brain that would offer neural plasticity, the ability for an individual plants to learn. A bit more thinking made me realize that this was going to be incredibly difficult. How does one design the ability for organisms to survive day to day when they are stuck in one place? The more I thought about this project, the more daunting it seemed. [More . . . ]
In 2018 Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones published a truly sobering article that deserves repeated attention:"Did Drinking Give Me Breast Cancer? The science on the link is clear, but the alcohol industry has worked hard to downplay it."
The statistics would be difficult to ignore, if they weren't downplayed by those who find these numbers inconvenient to an activity they enjoy:
Researchers estimate that alcohol accounts for 15 percent of US breast cancer cases and deaths—about 35,000 and 6,600 a year, respectively. That’s about three times more than the number of breast cancer cases caused by a mutation of the BRCA genes, which prompted Angelina Jolie, who carries one of the abnormal genes, to have both her healthy breasts removed in 2013. . . . But alcohol-related breast cancer kills more than twice as many American women as drunk drivers do. . . . [A] woman who consumes two to three drinks a day has a lifetime risk of about 15 percent—a 25 percent increase over teetotalers. By comparison, mammography reduces the death rate from breast cancer by about 25 percent. “Alcohol can undo all of that at about two drinks a day,” [Harvard Epidemiologist Walter] Willett says.
In addition to increasing the risk of breast cancer, the CDC reports that drinking increases the risk of cancer to the mouth, throat, larynx, esophagus, colon, rectum and liver.
Over the past few months, I've been posting on my newly ignited passion for rock hounding, sculpting rocks and rock tumbling. SE Missouri is a great place to find beautiful rocks. I find most of my rocks in creeks 1 or 2 hours south of St. Louis. After tumbling them, I've handed them to many friends and acquaintances as mementos and for no reason at all. People love smooth polished rocks--I'm tempted to call it a human universal.
As I've created increasing numbers of tumbled rocks, I've learned that for a minimal cost, one can create necklaces and other jewelry with them. This is a photo of my first creation. I gave it to a dear friend who is moving away from St. Louis and it brought a big smile to her face. I'm late to this game--lots of people make jewelry. As with all handmade gifts, this is equal fun for giver and receiver.
Here are two other necklaces I just put together. Nature generates some awesome patterns. I couldn't see these patterns on the raw rock. Not until it was tumbled. Some beautiful rocks look ordinary when tumbled. Some ordinary rocks look beautiful when tumbled. You never know.
