Blog Drama Approaches Crescendo

I have some weird news for you.

A few months back, someone I know voiced suspicions regarding the existence of Mish Weiss. As I recall, this was before the strange twists and turns in her story. According to Mish’s blog, she was fighting leukemia, and things didn’t look good. I don’t think we had learned of her long-lost daughter, who later gave her a bone marrow transplant. At that time, it made for moving reading, but it wasn’t unbelievable.

Out of respect for my friend’s instincts, I did a little research. I couldn’t find any record of a Mish Weiss in New Jersey, which is where she says she was born. I did find evidence of Mish which predated the leukemia story, and it didn’t seem to have anything to do with cancer or drama. I also considered the friends Mish named on her blog. At least one of them, Cary Veech, seemed to check out as a real person. And I knew Leah from my own blog, where she had been commenting for a long time.

My conclusion was that the story was probably real. I figured a fake this detailed would be beyond the reach of a bored blogger starving for attention. I believe what I said was that prayer didn’t cost me anything, so it wasn’t a great loss if it turned out my suspicious friend was right.

I didn’t know as much about the story as many other people. I didn’t keep up with any of the crew on Facebook or Twitter. I just checked in on Mish and posted prayer requests from time to time. I really wasn’t concerned about whether it was real; I figured I would err on the side of caution and not worry about it. Others inquired more deeply.

Now if you go to Leah Friedman’s blog, you will see a bizarre post by her friend Cary. He claims he has locked everyone out of the blog, and he says he and Leah have a relationship, and he can’t get her to confirm her identity, or even that she exists. So there goes one real-life friend who seemed to confirm the story.

I learned something weird today. Supposedly, Mish had an online friend who was an FBI agent, and who claimed he was joining the Mossad. That’s a little hard to swallow. The Mossad is an intelligence agency belonging to another country. That makes it exceedingly unlikely that they would accept American citizens belonging to another intelligence agency with interests that sometimes conflict with Israel’s. A commenter on Leah’s blog says this person, who calls himself “Mason,” has removed his Twitter account and pretty much vanished. This is all secondhand; I have not kept up with this the way others have, so I can only report what they say.

Another comment says no oncology department in Jerusalem has any record of Mish Weiss or anyone resembling her.

On top of that, Mish’s blog is now private. I have no idea what’s going on. I haven’t been invited yet.

So what is the truth? No idea. If it’s a con, it’s very well done. I admit, the story has gotten awfully good lately, which is cause for skepticism, but remarkable things do happen. You can’t just assume unusual stories aren’t true.

I guess we’ll get the answer this week. If Leah and Mish are on the level, they can prove it very quickly, and they will. If not, not.

Do I feel angry or betrayed? No. Like I said, a little bird has been whispering in my ear about this for a very long time, so I knew there was a possibility I was wasting my time. I don’t care. Praying for other people improves me. I got my blessing out of it, regardless of whether the story is true. If it’s a sham, the punishment will not fall on me.

In a way, I hope it’s a lie, because it means there is no sick girl languishing in a hospital bed in Jerusalem. I don’t feel stupid; everyone believes a good lie. It’s not going to make me bitter or damage my faith. I don’t have faith in people; I haven’t for a long time. I have faith in God.

I know my friend the skeptic will be excited to read this. I won’t out that person. They can pipe up in the comments if they wish. If Mish is imaginary, figuring it out so early was pretty sharp, so unnamed friend, my hat is off to you.

More

It gets even weirder! Now Leah’s blog has been changed to invitation-only!

Medical Insurance = License to Cruise

What a fantastic day. I didn’t always think I was having fun, but in retrospect, I realize I was.

I decided to organize God’s Own Garage, because it was starting to get cluttered, and I still have to stick a 2400-pound milling machine in there. I really opened it up. It felt wonderful. An orderly room is like a beautiful woman. It gives you pleasure just by existing.

Then I decided to clean the mildew off the Harley’s saddlebags. It grew during the roof-problem era, when the garage was damp. I got on the web and looked, and I saw a lot of stupid ideas for killing mildew on leather. Then I realized I already had something that would probably do the trick: iodophor sanitizer. Unlike bleach, it won’t damage the leather, and as far as I know, iodine kills EVERYTHING. So I cleaned the mildew off with rubbing alcohol, hit the leather with iodophor, and followed up with leather conditioner. And the bags looked great. I was shocked.

I never thought that bike was all that good looking when I bought it. The black tins disappointed me, but at that time, you bought the Harley the dealer showed you, or you did without. Today I realized it’s actually a very nice looking bike. It has grown on me.

One thing led to another, and I found myself trying to get her started. I had to drain all the fuel back when I installed the new petcock, so the tank was literally dry. I figured it was time to fire her up. But I had no gas. I did something really stupid. I had a truly ancient container of gas on hand. I decided to put a quart in the tank. I figured it would get me to a gas station, and if it wasn’t the greatest gas on earth, it wouldn’t matter, because I’d be diluting it twenty-to-one with new gas.

I had to use a MAPP torch to get the silly thing started, aiming the nozzle into the carb. When it started running, I thought my problems were over. I decided to take a short spin to see if it was in shape to get me to the gas station. And the bike died three blocks from home. Worse, the place where it conked out was a good two feet lower, and you really can’t push an 800-pound bike uphill. Even a slight grade is bad news.

I walked back to the house, got the torch, and drove to the bike. Got it started. Then it died again. Finally, I had to call my dad. He was the only person available on short notice. He graciously abandoned his dinner, drove to a gas station, bought a gas can, bought a gallon of good gas, and brought it to me. Thank God, it did the trick.

I got the bike home and fiddled with it, and I went for another spin. The acceleration was weak, and it tried to stall at low speeds. I figured it was either the gas or corrosion in the slow jet, which happens when a bike sits. I went and got gas, and on the way home, the bike got worse, surging and farting. Surging is embarrassing. It makes you look like an idiot in traffic. Like you have no idea how to work a throttle.

I got home and ordered some new slow jets on the web (the dealer near me probably charges fifty bucks each for a two-dollar item). Then I decided to play Dr. House. I thought there might be crud in the carb, but I did not want to take it apart and hit it with carb cleaner. But I realized I had a bottle of STP fuel injection cleaner and some Sta-Bil. I figured carb crud had to be just like injector crud. And if the bad gas had water in it, Sta-Bil would get rid of it. I made an STP and Sta-Bil cocktail, poured it into the tank, and hit the started. The bike ran! I got a screwdriver and adjusted the idle speed, and away I went.

It ran like a dream. Great low-end torque, good acceleration, no backfiring, no hesitation, and no surging. It probably didn’t run this well new. Against my better judgment, knowing I was very rusty, I decided to go for a longer ride. I put on my helmet and horsehide jacket and boots, and I tooled through Coconut Grove and onto I-95.

Riding at highway speed is very intimidating when you’re a new rider, and every rider who has been off his bike for months feels like a new rider when he gets back on. So I was nervous. I felt stiff, and every seam and reflector in the road seemed determined to knock me off the bike. I stuck with it, having no choice, and I went all the way to Northeast 95th Street (over 10 miles) and got off. I rode by the house where I grew up, across a busy intersection from Mike’s old house. I rode down by the bay, where we used to waste our time gigging inedible fish.The bike never gave me a second’s trouble.

On the way home, I felt loose, and my Motorcycle Safety Foundation training came back to me.I threw the bike around a little, just to get used to moving the weight. It was wonderful. I had really missed riding, without even realizing it.

Also, I came up with a name for the bike. It made me laugh. Can’t tell you now, though. I’ll spill it eventually. Not all of you will get it.

I plan to ride more in the future. I was always reluctant to ride, because I was worried about having an accident, and I was too cheap to get medical insurance. Actually, I was afraid they’d make me get an exam, and I didn’t want to show up fat and out of shape, and I never seemed to get into the kind of shape I thought would impress the insurer into giving me a ridiculously low rate. When I finally got insurance, all they did was ask questions. I could have told them I was a giraffe. They would have bought it. So I said my blood pressure was 75 over 40 and I had just won a gold medal in the Decathlon.

Not really.

Anyway, I have insurance, so I’m not as scared of the road. Oddly, the thought of paying medical bills scares me less than the possibility that I will be turned into a giant meatball.

It was a magnificent day, all the way around. I realized my milling dreams were doable, and I got the Harley on the road. I can’t ask for more than that. I’ve been thinking I should ride it to church. It’s a long trip on the interstate, on a low-traffic day. Perfect for riding.

I’d look like a freak with that jacket however.

The pastor’s son has a chopper. I guess I would be excused.

I had a problem with the insurance people. Somehow they got the idea that I had smoked fairly recently, and they jacked up my rate. It’s a lot of money. A hundred bucks a month. I called and complained, and they said I could get a blood test and prove I didn’t smoke.

I’ve been thinking about it. I may just let it go. I keep thinking it’s wasteful to spend that kind of money for an occasional cigar. Then I think about the more fundamental issue: freedom. Do I really want to live like an uptight, irrational, self-righteous, liberal smoke Nazi, just to save money? Wouldn’t I be letting them control me?

For a long time, I thought I might want to give cigars up altogether, because I had read a few things that worried me, and I was concerned about using a product which had been a curse to my family. But last week I read up on it, and here is the truth: smoking a couple of cigars a week is one hundred percent harmless. It’s not addictive. It won’t hurt your heart or lungs. It won’t give you cancer. The Jews believe asceticism is evil, and I think they’re right. Maybe it’s wrong to live like a fanatic in order to keep the insurance company from ripping me off. Liberty–even small, nonessential liberties–is worth something. Pleasure is important. Christians forget that. You’re not supposed to be a slave to it, but if you deprive yourself more than you should, you just store up temptation for the inevitable day when your willpower breaks, and you weary yourself of trying to be good, and you reject gifts God intended you to enjoy. One purpose of the sabbath was to teach man he occasionally had to get off the hamster wheel, stop punishing himself, and enjoy things.

I don’t think John the Baptist was a true ascetic. His diet was limited when he was in the desert, but no self-respecting ascetic would even consider eating honey. It’s an extremely decadent food. And we have no idea what he ate when he was in Jerusalem, where he had access to real grub. You can’t compare him to true ascetics, like the Buddhist and Hindu nutjobs who wander the jungle for decades in diapers, living on dirt. We know Jesus and the disciples enjoyed food and wine, and Jesus even let a woman perfume his feet.

I still have time to think it over.

Garbage In…

Church was fantastic last night. It doesn’t seem to matter what the subject of the sermon is; it always turns out to be just what I need. On this occasion, the pastor started out by asking us if we had ever known anyone who just could not tell the truth. I exhaled loudly. I could not help it. He really hit a nerve. This is a problem I’ve been dealing with a lot lately.

The sermon was not really about liars. The bit about lying was his way of moving into a discussion of Philippians 4:8, which I will now paste:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Here’s the NIV; I think that’s the version he used.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

It was a weird transition. It went like this. He said when people lie to us, we are likely to sputter something like, “That’s not TRUE. That’s not RIGHT.” And from there, he went into the rest of the verse. I don’t know why he started that way, but he really woke me up when he asked that question. It got my ears working.

The basic message was that the things we think about determine what we are and what happens to us. I think that’s accurate. And I have found it to be true.

One of the big problems with participating in the Internet is that you are exposed to society’s collective id. You will be confronted with cruelty, perversion, and hatred, the likes of which you would be very unlikely to encounter in real life. I don’t have to give you examples, unless you just bought your first computer. And we also come across a lot of negativity and sin when we watch TV, read books, go to movies, or listen to music. It has an impact. It can make a Christian feel left out. It can trigger the herd instinct and make you want to conform to the standards of the unsaved world. If you spend too much time thinking about these things, they will degrade your faith and steal the pleasure you take in life.

In order to be a realist, a Christian has to be an idealist, because we live in more ideal world than the rest of humanity. To most people, the world is an unfair place where there is no hope of justice. It’s a place where there is no arbiter to right wrongs. There is no one to pray to. Often there is no reward for doing right, and doing right may actually bring punishment. But Christians know God hears them, and that he is stronger than the world, and that very often, he will intervene in their lives and make them work. This is why leftists often attack us with the claim that we live in a fantasy world. Their world has no meaning and no order, and they assume ours is the same way, so when we persist in praying and trying to do right instead of abandoning morality to achieve our goals, they think we’re idiots.

Example: if a teenage girl gets herself pregant (and women DO get themselves pregnant, unless it happens without their consent), a leftist will propose a mechanical, worldly remedy: tear the baby apart in the womb and suck it out with a hose. Because raising kids is hard for unwed mothers, and unwanted babies never amount to anything, and so on and so on. A Christian, on the other hand, will say God rewards people for repenting and taking responsibility for their sins. A Christian will say a girl who turns to God and refuses to harm her child will have doors opened for her, and that her curse will turn into a blessing.

You can’t think like the godless and expect to have faith. You have to believe that morality works. It’s easier to think that way if you don’t spend your evenings watching porn and listening to rap and generally exposing yourself to primitive, immoral thought.

A few years ago, a friend of mine suggested I watch the Horatio Hornblower TV series on DVD. He said it was good entertainment, and he also said it presented wonderful morals. I took a look, and he was right. After you watch one of these shows, and you witness the hard moral decisions the characters make, you feel improved. And there are plenty of other examples of good moral models in entertainment and literature. Many older movies carry good messages. That’s something I’ll think about in the future, when I decide what to put into my mind.

They gave us rubber bracelets last night, with “THINK 4:8” stamped on them. The pastor told us to print out the verse and post it where we could see it. I think I’ll do that. I’m not a bracelet guy, but I am okay with putting scripture where I can see it. I find that thinking about this verse gives me strength. It makes me want to be a better person.

One of the benefits of marriage is that it gives you someone to whom it is your duty to improve yourself. But not everyone is married. Not everyone has kids. Maybe it’s possible for single people to find the motivation in verses like this one.

Modern culture is nothing but mental pollution. It’s crippling. Like sprinkling poison on your food. I need to recognize that and use this knowledge to shape myself.

Things are going so well for me, I don’t understand it. I spend more and more of my time in a peaceful, optimistic state that comes from knowing God and letting him work in my life. Things are working out. My problems are shrinking. I almost feel as if it’s unfair to talk about it, because it’s hard to believe that it’s reasonable to expect other people to get the same results. I don’t want to be like a freak success story in a diet commercial, claiming everyone who tries the product will be like me and lose 90 pounds in three weeks. But what is happening, is happening. I can’t keep it a secret or lie about it.

I keep looking over my shoulder, wondering if it’s supposed to be like this. Christians do have problems. When you go without a real problem for a certain length of time, it’s hard not to get antsy. I remember what Robert Duvall said in the movie Tender Mercies: “See, I don’t trust happiness. I never have. I never will.” Maybe it’s okay to trust it, when it’s built on a solid foundation. I seem to remember a verse or two that support that notion.

If this is what Christianity is supposed to be like, I can understand why people like the Apostles were so in love with it and why they wanted other people to try it. Maybe the yoke really is easy, and the burden really is light.

I suppose I should trust the person who said that.

St. Nick Arrives Early

Yesterday I celebrated Christmas in June. The tooling for my mill arrived. I spend some time fondling and pawing it. Now I can’t wait for the mill itself. Should be here in maybe ten days.

Here’s what I got.

1. Clamping set. They practically give these away. Comes with a nice bin sort of a thing you can hang on the wall or the side of your mill.

2. Set of 8 cutters. Four are 2-flute, and four are 4-flute. I wanted carbide, but people told me I was nuts, so I got cobalt.

3. Set of 5 fly cutters, with HSS blanks I can turn into cutting tools. I know you’re supposed to make your own fly cutters, but here’s a funny thing I’ve learned: it takes tools to make tools. Some things, you can bang out with a cordless drill and a butter knife. Others require you to be fairly well tooled up. You need a mill and God knows what else to make fly cutters.

4. R8 collets.

5. Wiggler set.

6. Edge-finder.

7. Indicol holder.

8. Parallels.

9. 1-2-3 blocks.

10. Woodruff key cutter.

11. Acid brushes.

12. Corner-rounding cutter.

That’s the bulk of it. I forgot to get a square and V-blocks. If you have suggestions, let fly. Enco has so many squares, I have no idea which is best for the money. I figured I’d get a pair of import V-blocks without clamps. They’re not too pricey. For squares, the 4-piece Brown and Sharpe set has been suggested to me.

I have a Jacobs Super Chuck I bought off Ebay. I was going to get a new one, but everyone says the quality is not as good, so I went used. It has a humongous taper in it, from a Moore jig borer. Looks like I’m going to have to get wedges to knock it out. I tried using a punch.

The vise arrives next week. I hope it lives up to what people say about it. It didn’t save me much money over a Kurt, but it’s bigger and a little tougher, so I thought it was a good choice.

I think the best thing I bought was the cheap shop apron. I am really tired of ruining my nice $4.95 shirts.

As if You Needed It

I guess only machinists will find this funny.

Today my 1-2-3 blocks arrived via UPS. I had never seen 1-2-3 blocks before, except in videos. I took a look at them, and I heard myself think, “I thought they would be bigger.”

105

Mish Weiss is not doing too bad, for a person who was not expected to be around at this time. Her white blood cell count keeps going up. If her platelets catch up, it will be a whole new ball game.

Of course, the battle never stops. Now Leah Friedman is having problems. She has two artificial heart valves, and she has a fever of 105. Please say a prayer.

While you’re at it, look at this email I received this morning:

Guys,

Please pray for the family of Major Kevin Jenrette. I found out he was killed today by an IED in Afghanistan.

Kevin was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. A loving husband and father. A devout Christian. A dedicated servant to his country.

Thanks for giving this blog a purpose.

Confirmation?

A huge pile of machining stuff will arrive today. Enco shipped the vise separately, so I don’t know when it’s coming, but at some point during the day, I will find myself in possession of things like parallels and 1-2-3 blocks. I can’t believe I did this.

There has to be a reason for this. It’s so strange; it doesn’t seem natural. I hope the purpose eventually becomes clear. In the meantime, I can’t wait to get started.

I started reading Josephus yesterday. He wrote a short autobiography, a history of the Jews, and a history of the wars between the Jews and Romans. The bio was like something Barack Obama would write. “I first realized I was a gift to the world when my mom told me the nurses in the maternity ward had used my halo as a reading lamp.” I skipped it and went to The Antiquities of the Jews.

This is interesting stuff. Josephus was the son of a priest, and he was born at around the time of the crucifixion. He had to be familiar with the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, as well as any other bits of history and wisdom the priests passed down to their sons.

Josephus says the angels had sex with women and gave rise to a race of evil people.

The modern Jewish position is that angels can’t do things like that. Most Christians agree. The book of Enoch, Josephus, and the book of Jasher contradict the current view. So who is right? Maybe the answer can be found in a principle of Jewish theology, which says–I hope I’m stating this correctly–that older authorities generally outweigh new ones.

Josephus presumably had some reason for making his assertion. A Jewish priest who was proud of his scholarship wouldn’t throw an item like that out without some basis. He must have received his information from those under whom he studied.

The Talmud is supposedly nearly impenetrable without experienced guidance, and presumably, a lot of orally relayed information that was known in ancient times has been lost. But it makes sense to assume that it can be accessed indirectly through the writings of people like Josephus.

I have to wonder what he left out.

Anyway, this tends to confirm my own suspicions, and it certainly helps the Bible (both testaments) make sense.

I better get started, wiring up the garage for the mill.

Reward Repentance With Self-Righteous Excoriation

I just saw Obama speaking at Buchenwald with Angela Merkel beside him.

Did I hear him right? I believe he listed the Germans’ evil deeds, including “using rape as a weapon of war.”

The memory of the Holocaust has to be kept alive. No doubt about it. But there is such a thing as tact. What does this amateur hope to accomplish by speaking in such pointed terms? The Germans have nearly turned repentance into an industry. The Holocaust ended sixty-five years ago, yet they are still gracious enough to promote its remembrance by allowing foreign heads of state to speak from the sites of concentration camps. Am I crazy, or could Obama have taken a more constructive tone?

It’s like Louis Farrakhan had a baby with Karl Marx and Steve Urkel. Obama can’t do anything right. Isn’t this exactly the kind of nationalist “arrogance” he himself complained of?

It’s hard to believe that any President would have the gall to be self-righteous about the Holocaust, while allowing Israel’s enemies to build nuclear missiles.

We’ll Teach Those Jews

Am I the only one who is loving the ongoing outing of B. Hussein Obama? He emphasizes “Hussein” when he addresses Muslims, so I guess everyone else is entitled to do it, too. I am distressed by Obama’s hostility toward Israel and his habit of embracing Muslims who support terrorism, but I am enjoying seeing his true nature exposed.

I realize Obama is inexperienced, naive, and undistinguished, but he shocks even me when he says the Iranians should be allowed to have nuclear power, as long as they use it responsibly.

This is like putting Charles Manson on the street via work-release. “Murder one more family, and we’re going to start doubting your sincerity.”

It’s a very simple policy. Let the Iranians have fissile material, and wait to see if they nuke the Jews. If they do, consider sanctions. I’m trying to be sarcastic, but that’s very close to Obama’s actual policy.

Reagan said “Trust, but verify.” Obama says “HOPE.”

Here’s what’s behind all this. Obama’s past as a young Muslim almost surely has something to do with it, but the main problem is that Obama is not a Christian. Sure, he went to “church,” but it was a political and social organization, not a true house of God. Jeremiah Wright very clearly hates Jews and loves socialism, and he thrives by telling black people nothing that happens to them is their fault, that everything they do is justified, and that the rest of us should give them stuff. None of that comes from the Bible. It has nothing to do with faith or obedience to God. It can’t be reconciled with the Old Testament, nor can it be reconciled with the words of Jesus or the Apostles.

Obama doesn’t pray sincerely in Jesus’s name every day. He doesn’t study the Bible. He ignored the National Day of Prayer. He supports late-term convenience abortion, as well as withholding support from abortion victims who are born alive. In all likelihood, he’s an atheist. Most liberal elites are. His church attendance was probably purely cynical; an act to pacify voters. Politicians have to be married, and they have to go to church. It makes winning elections easier. You can try to tell me it’s not right to judge another person’s faith, but you would be wrong. A person’s actions can be a very reliable index of the contents of his heart. Christians are required to consider such matters. It’s not forbidden at all. By Obama’s fruit, we can know him.

If you’re not a Jew or a Christian, to you, Israel is just like any other nation. It might as well be New Guinea. And if you’re a politician, you do what politicians do. You figure out which side your bread is buttered on, and you act accordingly. Israel doesn’t sell us oil. They don’t buy a lot of our goods. They consume aid dollars. And they make a lot of other nations angry, and that anger bleeds off onto us. So cut them loose. If there is no God, it’s the sensible thing to do.

Obama also knows that he has three blocs of voters to whom anti-Israel rhetoric plays well: blacks, Hispanics, and Jews. Blacks have a heavy-duty anti-Semitism problem, Hispanics are not too far behind, and Jews are afflicted with self-hatred and a crippling desire to appease. And modern leftists tend to be anti-Semitic regardless of race. To support Israel would be an act of considerable political courage. Obama doesn’t have that in him. He’ll continue doing whatever he thinks will please the most voters.

Our support for Israel is based on three things. Judaism, the Judaism-independent Jewish fear of facing a new holocaust without a refuge (Jews want Israel to continue to exist, while paradoxically supporting its dismemberment) and Christianity. Obama probably sees our support for Israel as a sort of cultural relic. An unfortunate lingering symptom of our mass delusions. Backward Americans believe in a fictional God, and for this reason, we maintain counterproductive and untenable ideas about Middle East policy. The right thing to do–the thing Saul Alinksy would do–is to make Israel understand that it’s unimportant. Not special. Because we’ve moved past all that silly religious nonsense. From now on, we’ll support Israel in the same way we support Ecuador and Laos. It’s all about fairness, right? Like socialism.

Obama is busting his butt to make us understand that Israel is not special. He is rubbing our noses in it. His people call it “even-handedness.” If the Iranians have nukes, it’s bad, but America isn’t Israel, so we can survive a Jerusalem atom bomb blast. The Indians and Pakistanis are always on the brink of nuclear war, and we don’t do much about it. I think that’s how Obama views the Iranian threat. American Jews aren’t raising a fuss; they seem to consent to it. So that’s how it’s going to go.

Iran will get the bomb. It’s probably too late for Israel to stop them. It’s not that hard to hide things in tunnels, and the Iranians know what happened to Hussein’s above-ground nuclear site. Bush didn’t have the guts to do anything, probably because of the way Americans betrayed him over Iraq, and Obama doesn’t care. He is probably worried about the possibility of an Israeli raid, which would be “an outrageous violation of sovereignty” or some such nonsense, but he surely accepts the inevitability of an Iranian nuclear arsenal. When the first test goes off, Obama will mumble a few words about what a bummer it is, and then he’ll get back to socializing industries. And we’ll see what happens.

The Bible says nations that slice up Israel will be judged by God. We are among those nations. We are in God’s crosshairs. Not a good place to be. But the more sophisticated we perceive ourselves to be–the less we realize that God is real and that we need him–the deeper into this mess we are going to plunge.

Give me Your Opinions

I ground a lathe tool. I just eyeballed it; I am hoping the guys who say the angles aren’t critical are right. It only took me forty-five minutes of intense effort. Think it will work?

76.Something

I might as well put up the stuff I wrote before I found out Mish Weiss was having a new medical crisis.

I received a funny answer to an Ebay inquiry. I asked a guy selling a mill if he had photos of the ways. He got back to me today: “I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of the table or ways but there is really no reason to as they will appear as new with the exception of a light use patina. No gouges, holes or any sign of wear.”

I love it. I don’t need to see the ways, because he has seen them. That’s what I call service. You don’t need to verify the condition of this guy’s merchandise to keep him from cheating you, because he’ll verify it for you. I’m sure he would be completely honest.

If you think Ebay protects you from crooks, think again. If you read the fine print in the Paypal “fraud protection” stuff, you will find that it boils down to “It is just barely conceivable that we will refund an inadequate portion of your money if you get royally screwed. But we will do our best to avoid it.”

Say you buy a milling machine for a thousand dollars (one of those imaginary low-mileage Bridgeports I keep hearing about), and you have it shipped for twelve hundred, which is a realistic figure (unlike the mill price). If it’s junk, you get a full refund. If you ship it back at your own expense. What a deal! And depending on the language in the ad, you may not get your original shipping fee back. And unless you’re very careful about checking the fine print before you buy, you may end up getting an item with no protection whatsoever.

I’m not sure what the EbayPal folks think “Buy With Confidence” means, but it definitely doesn’t mean you can buy with confidence, unless “confidence” means “confidence that I have no recourse if I get screwed.”

The new insulation in the garage worked. The result, when the AC is on, isn’t so much a lower temperature as a gentler temperature gradient. It used to be cold on one side of the garage and warm on the other, over by the garage doors. Now it’s cool all over.

With no AC, the picture is still very promising. I went in to the garage this morning; the outside temperature was around 85. Inside the garage, it was under 77. Amazing. I always thought the roof was the big heat source, but I guess I was mistaken. I was afraid heat would come in through the roof, and the insulated doors would hold it in, turning the garage into a Bridge-Over-the-River-Kwai-type oven. But that didn’t happen, so the roof must be the lesser problem.

I’m wondering if there is some kind of cheap rigid insulation I could staple to the roof. Putting rolls of fiberglass up there would be a month in hell, but there is probably some board-type product that goes on with staples and does an okay job. I know there are spray-on products. I can just picture that crap raining down on my tools.

Maybe it’s overkill. The roof is white, so it reflects a lot of heat, and hot air likes to rise, so maybe the open space over my head is not a big problem. A guy who worked in commercial real estate once told me that square footage was more important than a room’s height. I don’t know if that’s true.

After I get done praying for Mish, I’m going to go out there and just…not sweat.

Prayer Needed

Mish Weiss had a terrible nosebleed and is still not doing well, even after the blood was replaced. Please pray.

The Great Wall was Nothing

I have succeeded in creating an insulated garage. Kneel before my tool prowess.

Now I have to see if it gets any cooler.

Fiber is my Middle Name

There is a lizard in the kitchen.

Yesterday I harvested a bunch of Orinoco bananas from the yard. I cut the stem and left the bunch outside. Banana trees are full of sap similar to latex, and I knew it would drip out of the cut and turn into glue wherever it landed. This morning I brought the bunch in and cut the hands off on the kitchen counter.

While I was cutting, I thought I saw something shoot out of the bunch and into a cluster of canisters. Big roach? I dismissed it. Probably my imagination.

As I cut, I saw movement under the bunch. I lifted it, and there on the counter I saw a lizard tail, squirming and jumping. But no lizard. Gross. I figured I had cut the lizard up with the knife, and that the rest of it would eventually fall out of the bunch. I eventually realized the lizard was not in the bunch. He must have been the mysterious moving object. I probably trapped his tail under the bananas, pulling it loose.

So now he is in the kitchen somewhere, grousing about having to grow a new tail. His old one is in the garbage disposal.

I actually got a few mangoes this year, and boy are they good. The best mangoes imaginable. It’s almost like eating ice cream.

I will never understand why people raise the big round bland varieties, like Hadens and Tommy Atkins. My trees are Carries. Infinitely superior. The mangoes never turn red; maybe that makes them less appealing to growers. The best varieties are green and yellow, but they don’t catch they eye in a produce aisle.

Last year the squirrels cut all the mangoes off, without exception, and the possums ate them. Green. We still have squirrels and possums, but the mangoes have been spared. And it looks like I’m going to have a good first-year crop of ponkans, which are loose-skinned tangerines. What a relief. I was starting to wonder if I would ever get fruit other than Persian and key limes.

I also have a big pepper crop, including a lot of Trinidad Scorpions. How many of my neighbors have those? Very few, I’ll wager. They would combine well with mangoes. And my dragonfruit cactus has several tiny fruit on it. Those things are fantastic. What kiwis would be, if they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When they mature, they should be about the size of a navel orange.

The tool news is good. I finally have everything I need to do basic machining. Or at least it’s on the way. I went with a Parlec vise instead of a Kurt D675. The price difference is small, but the design has some improvements, including a bigger screw, a wider opening, and more clamping pressure. Machinists speak highly of them, so I don’t think it’s much of a gamble. The manufacture is Taiwanese, and the design is American.

A new Kurt is a little over $400. People said I should buy a used one, but the prices are insane. You can get one for $200, if you don’t mind holes and worn jaws and missing paint. That’s just stupid. If a product sells new for $400, a good used example should be $150, and a risky piece of junk like the ones on Ebay should cost $75. Some used tools tend to be very reasonable; I got a beautiful Jacobs Super Chuck for $50, and you can get a nice Albrecht for twice that. But used Kurt vises are generally a ripoff.

I bought fly cutters, a small set of import end mills, the chuck, an arbor for the chuck, collets, parallels, 1-2-3 blocks, edge-finding stuff, a 1/8″ corner-rounding mill, a roughing mill, some blanks for the fly cutters, a clamping set, and a few other doodads. A lot of this stuff was dirt cheap. The vise is what killed me.

I emailed the mill dealer and asked if I should go for the optional work light, but he said they’re overpriced and not as good as a light with a magnetic base.

I drove myself crazy yesterday trying to find good deals. I keep feeling guilty for buying a mill. But I know that’s stupid. It will have no effect on my financial future, and it’s something I’ve dreamed about for decades.

I have to finish insulating the garage today. Then maybe I can try to grind some turning tools. It looks like I should get a few new tool holders for the Phase II tool post. Otherwise I’ll have to switch tools all the time, which will be a pain. The post came with five tool holders, and two (the 201 and 202 holders) look exactly the same. It would be nice to have a few extras, but right now, I am equipped to use the lathe. I even have Ridgid oil for the mill.

I forgot to buy V-blocks. Guess I will put them on the list with the tool holders.

I was an idiot to buy that old lathe. If I ever get a chance to replace it, I’m going Taiwanese. Unless it surprises me and turns out to be a jewel.

The mill should arrive next week, I guess. That means moving the compressor and running 30 feet of conduit over the garage rafters. Fun. A compressor is a hard thing to move because it rests on little feet a good distance apart. You can’t shove pipes under it and push. I have a Genie Lift, but it’s not really right for a compressor. I may have to give up and scoot the compressor on the concrete.

I have an idea for a writing project. I was thinking I might write a bunch of essays explaining why I’m a Christian. I am not a bona fide teacher or leader. The Bible describes qualifications for clergymen, and it’s not me. Established married men, with good habits and so on. But anyone can give a testimony. Something to think about.

Better get in the garage and get the insulating over with.

If it Moves, Outsource It

I am loving this. Reader Sally V. sent a link to a hilarious story indicating that outsourcing may be part of the solution to our health-care problems. In other words, as we have seen in other industries, when Americans charge too much, somebody else undercuts them and provides something better and cheaper.

Let’s see. Cars. Tech support. Machine tools. Electronics. Appliances. Cement. Can you believe we import cement? If we can profitably import something that heavy and cheap, we are in deep trouble.

What does that leave? Lap dances? Government? I guess you could say Barack Obama is outsourcing government to Tehran and Gaza, but the decisions are still filtered down through a lot of overpriced dead wood here in the States. It would be cheaper to have Abbas and Ahmedinejad run the country directly. No more $50,000 dinner dates for Obama and his wife.

Here’s the story. Guatemala has hospitals as good as our own, staffed by doctors trained in the US and Europe. They don’t have our Democrat-supported, parasitic tort problem. They are more efficient, because efficiency is too much to ask from the richest country in the world. And they need our business, and they are not taking our fees and dividing them up among strangers who don’t pay their bills. Or maybe they are, but the bite is much smaller.

You can fly there and live like a king while you get top-notch treatment, and when you come home with a nice tan, you’ll still be ahead by thousands of dollars. It’s cheap, even if they overcharge. What’s not to like?

I checked out medical tourism back when I was having gall bladder pains. I am not actually cheap, but I do resent paying more than I should. And American medical costs are obscene and unfair. Overseas treatment is a very good deal. You can go to places like India, for example. That may sound scary to you, but before you judge, maybe you should ask yourself how many turbans and dots you’ve seen at your local hospital. The Indians are not stupid, nor are they lazy or ignorant.

I guess medical people who read this will post self-serving comments, claiming I’m unpatriotic or that I need to support our ailing system with my dollars or that overseas care is risky. But the fact is, American doctors and hospitals charge much more than they’re worth, and they are not really better than foreign providers. I didn’t cause this problem. They did. Why should I put up with it? Buy your Mercedes honestly, if you want to keep me coming back.

I’ll give you an example which I have mentioned before. I had a kidney stone in 2003. I went to the emergency room. They gave me either an MRI or a CAT scan; I can’t recall which. I was there for maybe twelve hours. Cost? Over five thousand dollars. Treatment? None. They treated the pain (incompetently) and sent me home. I had to get leftover pills from someone else’s old prescription in order to get through the weekend.

Now, you can say I’m not a doctor, and that I don’t know what I needed. But that’s a stupid argument. Sometimes you have to be a doctor to know whether medical tests are justified, and sometimes you don’t. If I sprain my finger and someone tries to biopsy my liver, I am perfectly qualified to say he’s a crook or an idiot.

You don’t need expensive scans to diagnose kidney stones. Many, many thousands of patients have been sent home without even an x-ray. Doctors told them to wait and see if their stones passed. When they didn’t pass, the patients got surgery. In the meantime, they got antibiotics and painkillers. Today, they can give you an abdominal x-ray known as a KUB. Kidney stones show up on x-rays. I had a KUB in 2003, and it cost $250.

Where did the decision to get a KUB come from? A know-nothing disgruntled patient with no MD? No. It came from my urologist. After my hospital visit, I followed up with him. He gave me Percocet and Levaquin, and he told me to go home and pass the stone. After that happened, a lab looked at it for $40. He looked at the result and suggested a second expensive scan to make sure I was okay. I asked if that was absolutely necessary. He said a KUB would also be okay. The message was, “You can have a $5000 test or a $250 test. Either will work. Gosh, which would you rather have?”

If I hadn’t asked about the necessity of the scan, guess what would have happened? Five grand, down the toilet. For no reason whatsoever. I probably didn’t need the KUB, for that matter.

The urologist ended up charging something like $300, total. He even gave me sample antibiotics, for nothing. The hospital and drugstore got all the rest. And the hospital did very little for me. They even did the KUB. Maybe he got a kickback, but the fee went to the hospital.

I had a second kidney stone later, because I stupidly insisted on drinking huge amounts of tea in combination with dairy products. This time I called the urologist first, because it happened on a weekday, and I didn’t have to go to the ER. He has a receptionist who is so nasty she probably needs therapy. After thirty seconds on the phone with her, I decided not to get treatment. And I was fine. Saved six grand. Risked absolutely nothing except a little discomfort.

The purpose of the scan was to make money for the hospital, pure and simple. And it’s very typical.

Here’s a fun story. The brother of one of my college buddies became an ENT, and early in his practice, he learned he shouldn’t tell people not to get surgery. People came in for second opinions, and he told them they didn’t need to be cut up. The local doctors sat him down and told him he was not going to continue interfering with their cash flow. After that, he changed his ways. He’s not the only doctor in the US who has colleagues like that.

Medical care is too expensive. That’s the plain truth. It could be cheaper, but providers don’t care enough to make their prices fair. So if I can get better treatment in Guatemala, for less money, I’ll do it. Contrary to what gadget-crazy doctors may say, you don’t always need The Most Expensive Machine in the Hospital or The Machine That Goes “PING” to cure your constipation or warts or strep throat. They overtreat us because it makes them more money. If they can’t spend my money wisely, I may as well go to a nice hospital on the beach and recuperate with a pina colada in each hand.

The great thing about this plan is that liberals can’t interfere with it. They are not allowed to meddle with anything that makes health care cheap, even when it goes against their agenda in some fundamental way. Example: they won’t touch Canadian pharmacies. The excess money drug companies charge here in the states presumably goes to subsidize the lower prices they charge in places like Mexico and Bangladesh; it’s welfare, which liberals love. But if they try to explain that to greedy retirees who want cheap pills, they’ll get absolutely nowhere. Medical tourism is probably unstoppable, and it’s a great thing. It could destroy the monopoly that makes American health care overpriced, and it will probably improve the quality of care. Competition has a way of making things better. Look at the difference between a 2009 Ford and a 2009 Toyota, and compare it to the same difference in 1980. Ford still loses, but the margin is much smaller.

America is in a steep decline, but the free market is as strong as it has ever been. It is an eternal, fundamental principle of the universe. Like thermodynamics, it has an existence independent of our own. It existed before we did, and it will exist after the earth disappears. In the end, it always wins. If it sends me to sunny Guatemala instead of the Miami Heart Institute, so be it. I will manage to cope.