By Andy Valencia Imagine you’re in an argument – you, your opponent, and some people listening. Your audience is nodding their heads when your opponent speaks; they’re expressionless when it’s your turn, and you’ve already used all of your best material. The honorable person will graciously acknowledge their defeat. What do the other kind of…
By Andy Valencia In college, a friend of mine periodically ran a game called “Assassin.” None of the players knew each other, and all were paired up: one target, one assassin. You were “assassinated” with a chalk mark, and the target could defend with chalk-filled small cloth bags. The rules favored the target once they…
By Andy Valencia f you’ve been a voter in Washington for more than a few years, you have seen a candidate calling himself “Goodspaceguy.” In fact, if you’ve lived here 10 years, or 20, or 30, or even 40 – you’ve been seeing him on your ballot. Since 1980, he’s run for public office 21…
By Andy Valencia What would you guess your political view is worth? What would it cost to change it? The 2020 election could have gone differently if just the right 100,000 voters had voted differently. Given that our federal government prints $1 trillion dollars every three months or so, you could easily justify spending $10…
Alert reader M.D. noted that our apple cake recipe, lacking any oil, milk, or water, might end up being unusably dry. Happily, reader C.H.L. wrote in about the recipe; she had discovered that there’s an entire genre of oil-free cakes. Finally, M.T. noted that these were likely rooted in the Great Depression times, when one tried…
There’s a joke going around that, in 2004, you had to be a computer wizard to find what you wanted on the internet. In 2014, anybody could do it. In 2024, we’re back to only computer wizards finding what they want. What happened? My list of culprits would include click farms, search engine rigging, and…
By Andy Valencia Way too many people are dying from their addictions. The latest United States annual report on drug overdose deaths puts the count above 111,000, but that is only a small portion of the misery present throughout our society. The federal budget allocates more than $42 billion dollars for drug programs. But how…
By Andy Valencia This is a family dessert favorite, developed by my late mother, Denise Valencia. “Pecan Court” is the location of my childhood family home. Apple Cake – From Pecan Court
Dear Editorial Team, The headline of your March 7 editorial is a good description of its reasoning – “Feckless.” You argue that public funds now “serve irregular immigration, people with addictions and/or mental illness,” unlike 20 years ago when “the concern was for members of our community with modest means – they held down jobs,…
By Andy Valencia Last issue, I talked about the strength of ham radio in providing communications during catastrophic disruptions of our traditional networks. But what does a ham radio operator do when the world hasn’t gone full Mad Max? If you have a handie-talkie (a hand-held radio, about the size of a cell phone), the…