Segway (aka Ginger, aka IT)

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 05 Dec 2001 13:00:00 GMT
Did you really think I could stop blogging for a whole week? Nah. I'm up before the crack of dawn, so I'm doing blogging to calm my nerves. Little things still cause sniffles and teary eyes. This will probably continue for a while. My three siblings are here and my mother's sister. The rest of the two families with older children arrive today (the two with younger children, e.g. mine, are staying home). We planned the service and picked a casket and cemetery space yesterday. My mom's friends are bringing us warm meals & snacks. God bless them. The funeral is tomorrow at 1pm. Obituary of William W. St. Clair, My Dad was printed in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, the local paper.

My sincerest thanks to those who have sent condolences.

I saw Dean Kamen's new Segway on TV in the airport on Monday, and read about it in the December 10 issue of Time. Wow! Radically cool! I want one!!!

John Heilemann at Time - Reinventing the Wheel - Includes links to a nice diagram and Dean Kamen's patent application.

segway.com is the official Segway web site. If you're still wondering what all the hype is about, watch a video. If that doesn't convince you, go back to your cave. [wes]

Segway News is Paul Nekada's blog devoted to Segway. [wes]

Lawrence Pyne at Field & Stream - National Forests Go to Pot - I read this on the airplane coming to Wyoming. It reports on drug production operations in the National Forests. People are growing cannabis and making methamphetamine there. Some folks who happened on their operations have been hurt. I wrote the following to the editor at backlash@fieldandstream.com:

I read with interest your story about National Forests being used to grow cannabis (aka marijuana) and make methamphetamine. Can't say it surprises me. The war on some drugs has made both so incredibly lucrative that criminals will go to almost any length to create their illicit products. The solution? Legalize drugs. Make their newly legal producers subject to the same environmental regulations as everyone else. This is the last thing the criminals who live off the illegal trade want. Overnight they'll be out of business. The most dangerous thing about smoking cannabis is the risk of being shot by the police. It's way past time to turn that equation on its head. A free country does not attempt to protect people from themselves. It let's them learn from their mistakes. Worked for me.

The Libertarian Enterprise has a new issue, "Nobody Trusts the Government". L. Neil Smith, Wendy McElroy, Andrew Johnstone, Keith Shugarts, and letters.

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Military Tribunals Put Our Justice System on Trial - and how!

Vin Suprynowicz - The high schools fail - Part of The Libertarian series. Nevada's high schools are turning out kids who are in no way prepared for college, not even their state colleges. And these are the kids with A's and B's on their high school report cards. The solution: take your kids out of the government schools.

In fact, the education bureaucracy has been de-emphasizing and then virtually eliminating memorization requirements for everything from multiplication tables to spelling methodology to the diagramming of sentences for decades, replacing solid and proven academic lesson plans with feel-good nostrums and the glorified equivalent of show-and-tell on the theory that students will fare better if they "feel good about themselves" than if they're occasionally brought to tears by having to confront the fact they're failing and just may have to knuckle down.

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