The Ultimate Answer to Kings: A painful new lesson in heating technology

They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means "The Ultimate Argument of Kings," and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. "We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it's about: You'll do as I say or I'll send my goons to kill you."

I thought about that for a long time. If there's an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I've got bullets - he's got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that's not going to happen. So if there's an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain't bullets.

It finally came to me - and that's when I left the city, abandoned a goodly percentage of my goods, and gave all that was behind me a good, stiff Randian Shrug.

The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

A painful new lesson in heating technology

Literally painful. But since I owe The Independent Spirit a post in the worst way, you'll have to go there to read about it. Sorry 'bout that.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...: would love to read the post but the independent spirt has not worked for about a month. I get a stop running this script pop up, and then the computer freezes.; October 8, 2011 at 11:18 AM
Joel said...: That's curious. I'll pass it on. I remember there being complaints about that some time ago, but didn't know it was a chronic problem. Works fine for me, even when I'm not logged on.; October 8, 2011 at 11:30 AM
Big Wooly said...: Works for me on a Vista laptop with Chrome.
Used one of those Buddy heaters (the small one) for 2 years while I lived in a short bus. Kept it 45-50ish on the inside on the coldest nights during the winter in Pa. Had almost the same set-up, sans the filter. Went thru about a 20lb bottle of propane per week. Did have the damnedest problems with the hose, though. The big-box stores only sold a "safety" hose. If it flowed too fast, like it got cut or disconnected, it would automatically stop the gas flow. Theoretically if you were careful with the sequence of shutting off valves and disconnecting the hose, you could swap to the spare tank in a couple minutes. Problem seemed to be if you put pressure back into the hose too fast it would think it had a leak and shut off the flow. At freezing-dark-thirty. Then you would have to wait for the pressure to leak back out of the hose and start over. Oh, those were fun times indeed!; October 8, 2011 at 2:54 PM
ljh said...: It's an IE issue; throws a pop-up window whining about the site's script (whatever the hell that is). I switched over to Firefox & no problemo.; October 8, 2011 at 10:17 PM
Don said...: had the same problem with my laptop at home work computer pics it up fine since apt got broken into and laptops gone now guess wont need to fix it; October 9, 2011 at 10:56 AM

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Saturday, October 8, 2011

A painful new lesson in heating technology

5 comments:

Why the hell did you scroll all the way down here?