Terry Pratchett was a fantastic and prolific writer who's works take up an entire shelf in my library. In his fantasy flat earth an elevated semaphore system, the Clacks, served as their advanced telecom much as long-haul HF radio once did for us.

Behind the Farmer’s Market on Buford highway is a thing of graceful, quiet competence hidden behind a rusting steel facade of pumps and pipes and kerosene. I call it Fuel City, a cathedral of sorts for engineers, and while calming and beautiful in its own right, this isn’t entirely about pumps and tanks and gasoline.

If you don't park your Harley the earth will overheat, the glaciers will melt and untold polar bears won't get their ice-cold Cokes like they're used to. The sky isn't falling, but it is heating up. Except for one small and inconvenient truth:

It's just not true!

I took the elevator up to the 23rd floor, but nobody lives there at all.

It's a place made from pencils and fluorescent lights, two people who pass in the hall.

Maybe Shakespeare had it wrong. In Henry the VI, he was suggesting that before a revolution we've got to be shed of those pesky solicitors who understand the Law.

What do they want?

The protesters have no coherent message and they're really not supposed to have one.

One in two hundred Georgians is behind bars. If you count the people who got probation instead of jail, that number skyrockets to over one in fifteen.

Life is strange, but she doesn't think so and said as much: "Richter, you're the freak my man." said Life.

Having been single for four years now, my long road of self-discovery has turned up a few real gems, and a few odd lumps of what I sincerely hope is just a form of sticky, black coal.

I have small binder that I call The Book Of Secrets: Notes from the 1980s, small pieces of paper, six photographs, a Kamikaze headband from my first solo flight, an empty bag of popcorn.

Although you'd never guess it from their names, Jean-Francois Boudet is French and Premysl Sedivy is Czech.

A Guac recipe.

You know, I try not to listen in on telephone conversations unless I'm in a switch center and the techs are placing bets. Will she? Won't she?

OK, so I mostly built a concrete Ofuro at Shoal Creek, and had gotten rather used to the whole idea of a nice, hot soak after a long day of helping loony airplane builders:

I write about relationships for the same reasons I write about flying: it's something I do, enjoy, and don't completely understand.

Scientists use instruments for various things, and one of the more common visions is that of the astronomer looking to the night sky with his telescope.

Ah, Mussels. I love 'em. Cindi won't eat them, having survived (barely) a bad mussel in Italy in the fog of the early 90s, Vince won't eat them either since they're shellfish, but I sure as hell will.

Sounds complex, but it's a two-pan wonder and is done start to finish in 15 minutes. Looks impressive, tastes incredible.

The National Portrait Gallery really is worth seeing, but not so much for what's there, but for how and why it's there.

It's not widely known that when Thoreau wrote Walden he was within walking distance of town. Not exactly the howling wilderness, Thoreau's woods were almost, well, I'd have to say Suburban to portray things accurately.