Since I used to drive my personal car out to construction job sites a lot, I have picked up an awful lot of nails in my tires over the years. You can drive thousands of miles on a tire with an ordinary nail in it. I’d lose maybe two or three PSI per week, but I just assumed there was a bad valve or something and pump…

You don’t have to confront water moccasins, they will confront you. I was a surveyor in Florida for a couple of decades and I ran into lots of snakes in the woods. Everybody’s afraid of rattlesnakes, of course, but when rattlesnakes see you they will almost always try to get away; the exception is when you are…

I came home from work one day and found a two-ton section of an Australian Pine located next to the trailer I was renting had sheared off and landed right where I used to park my car at night. It cracked the driveway slab.

Don’t know about that $30-$40 per gallon” business. It’s real easy to Google it, here is the first thing Google returned:

I’d be OK with that provided the mileage tax were inversely proportionate to the EPA mileage rating for your car, so a Miata driver pays 60% and a Prius driver pays 32% as much per mile as a Silverado driver. If the Miata driver and the Prius driver have to pay as much per mile as the Silverado driver, then a mileage…

It’s also an incentive a.) to buy a car with better mileage, and b.) to drive in such a way that you get better mileage.

Draw a “STOP” sign on stiff poster board and carry it in your car, so if a Tesla is tailgating you you can roll down the window and hold it out facing backwards. Technical guys could build a device that would raise up a “STOP” sign in your rear window at the press of a button. I once saw a car that had some kind of…

Especially in Florida! I grew up in Cleveland and I remember the winter wind coming off Lake Erie, so I can imagine how the prospect of standing in a line outside for a long time in November in Ohio might dissuade a citizen from voting. On the other hand, standing around outside in November in Florida - at least, if…

I think it mainly depends upon whether a single accented syllable or an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable fits better into the rhythm of the rest of the sentence you’re composing. Another consideration is alliteration; if the rest of the line is full of sibilants maybe “since” should be your choice,…

Is it “the bare minimum” to know how to read and do basic four-function arithmetic? Or is that also something that there isn’t “any imperative” to learn?

I went to their website and did not find the price. I guess it’s one of those “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” type of things.

My car has an auto-dimming mirror that you can turn off, but when you start up it’s on by default. It’s useful when somebody with their brights on comes up behind you, but the rest of the time it makes it impossible to see anything else except headlights in the rear-view mirror. So I reach up and turn it off every…

I hate that. I’m not your old pal. You’re at work, trying to sell me something. Or if I am your old pal “Bill,” can I borrow a dollar for the snack machine? Pay you back the next time I meet you.

When I got the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine, I wasn’t looking at my arm and I literally didn’t actually feel the injection at all. I looked over, and the nurse was putting on a band-aid and I said, “Did you inject it already?” Since I was looking when I got the second shot three weeks later, I did feel it, but…

I used to work out of trucks like that, and I had to keep a mileage book. She’ll get 10-12.

“Big”? Park it next to a typical new F-250. You don’t need a ladder to get into the cargo compartment of a ‘96 Silverado-class truck. That is to say, they’re actually useful; you can work out of one of those.

I’d miss air-conditioning, I guess, but no one makes a car like the DS any more.

Opinions about pop music aren’t facts; but here’s my alter kacker’s opinion: I’m sure Outkast are very nice, but compare With the Beatles to Revolver to Magical Mystery Tour to Abbey Road. Can Outkast boast an arc as broad as that? In six years? Who ever listened to the new Outkast album and said “I’ve never heard…

Actuaries are not particularly interested in causation per se, they’re just trying to figure out the odds of a payout.

So you have helmets lying around the house?