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Written by: Super User

Category: Blog

Published: 29 May 2016

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As an Englishman in the USA I have learned to be careful when ordering many food items. For example, go to any breakfast establishment and order tea and you will likely get iced tea. Ask for tea with milk and you may well get iced tea and a glass of the pale liquid produced by the mammary glands of cows.

Care is also needed when ordering pies. A pie in the USA is a pastry crust containing a sweet filling, usually fruit (as well as local specialities such as pecan pie):

For those who can't get enough calories in one slice of pie, there's always fried pies:

But again, still only containing sweet fillings.

Avid readers will recall my discussion of the Hostess Fruit Pie (famously noted as containing natural and artificial flavoring, as if there is a third kind).

Savory pies are a staple of British food, with a wide variety available at any supermarket or gas station. If you know where to go, you can get some exceptional pies, like Sweeny and Todd in Reading:

As a savory pie lover, the lack of pastry stuffed with minced beef, steak, lamb or other delicious options is frustrating. To be fair, there are some options, such as Boomerang's Handheld Aussie Pies, started in Austin by two Americans who had experienced the delicacy in Australia, and so decided to dress up like they'd just been shearing sheep:

The shortage of savory pie options is obviously recognized as a problem. BBC America has a guide, where to find British Savory Pies in the US. All of these pies are ok in desparate circumstances, but to get a real fix I need to go to the UK or to Australia. And so off to Australia I went. On arrival in Brisbane, Queensland, I had a 5 hour journey to Chinchilla, a remote coal mining and coal-seam gas area where the residents were extremely excited when McDonalds opened a store (previously the nearest store was 50 miles away). At the work camp I was delighted to find this fridge, full to the brim of savory pastry delights:

Better still, Merritt's Bakery, Chinchilla's own pie shop offered a fantastic option: a meat pie with integral mushy peas:

Why on earth anyone would get excited about McDonalds when this is available is beyond me.

And so to wash down all these pies? Australia's most popular beer: Castlemaine XXXX. Castlemaine Brewery was started in 1857 in Castlemaine, Victoria but moved to Brisbane. XXXX was first brewed in 1924 and has been brewed there ever since. Confusingly XXXX is called a "bitter" but is actually a lager. Seems like the US is not the only place where you have to be careful what you order:

On a visit to the brewery I tried all four of the above beers, XXXX bitter, XXXX gold, XXXX gold pale ale and summer lager and had trouble discerning any difference. One way to try a slightly different version of XXXX is "on-the-wood". Castlemaine Brewery still puts XXXX into traditional wooden kegs for delivery to a very small number of local places. One such place is the Breakfast Creek Hotel:

It was actually slightly different from the version in the brewery, but still not bitter!

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Written by: Super User

Category: Blog

Published: 05 January 2016

Hits: 1158

I saw my first "open-carrier" yesterday. It was on my way into Kroger. It looked a bit like this:

Naturally, I didn't take a photo because he was armed and of course I have no idea if he was a good guy or bad guy.

So the message had got out: As from 1st January 2016, Texas became the 45th state in the USA to allow "open carry". Yes, Texas, hub of the Western movies of the 60s is one of the last states to allow gun owners to carry their handguns in a holster on their hips or shoulders.

What about rifles and other "long guns" you ask? What if I feel the need to go to Chipotle but am worried about a rebellion breaking out while they are making my beef burritto? Well, good news for you as "long guns" have never been subject to restrictions. So you can do this:

Yes, carrying long guns was already allowed unless "in a manner calculated to cause alarm." Obviously seeing the above in Chipotle does not "cause alarm".

But, fear not. Only responsible individuals carry guns (see above for example of responsible individuals). In order to open carry, you have to have a Concealed Handgun License (CHL). No license is required for a long gun, because (I assume) they aren't dangerous and therefore don't need any additional ownership oversight.

To get a CHL in Texas you have to:

• Be a citizen or legal resident
• Not be a criminal, drug addict or alcoholic
• Not have certain "psychiatric diagnoses" (note the need to carry a gun into Chipotle or Kroger does not qualify)

and so on.

Plus you have to do a course. This used to be 10-15 hours long, but it seems that instructors filled in a lot of the time with non-gun related things. For example "Concealed handgun instructor Michael Cargill said he’s filled some time in the required 10-hour course with lighter material, such as videos of a bruiser chimpanzee that springs from car trunks at the touch of a button to thump people." I suppose he could have filled the time in giving the students more time to practice and learn about handling an inherently dangerous machine, but good news for him and other instructors: In 2013 Texas cut the required instruction down to 4-6 hours. To make things even easier, in 2014 Texas reduced the application fees and no longer requires an applicant to provide a Social Security Number.

At least Texas keeps a careful eye on CHL carriers to make sure that even though they weren't bad when they first applied, if they go bad later they will not be able to renew their license (every 5 years), right? Well, actually no: there is no requirement to retake a test when renewing a license.

Think Texas goes easy? Of the 45 states that allow open carry, 26 of them don't require any form of license at all. So thank goodness Texas has some controls then? Well, not really. Texas has reciprocal agreements with other states allowing their license holders to carry in the state of Texas. And, just when you thought it couldn't get any crazier, you can get a CHL from some states, even if you don't live there. This excellent Mother Jones article describes a resident of Washington DC who got his from Utah. He then went to a four hour CHL course in Maryland and passed, despite never having shot a gun before.

What's next for Texas you ask? August 1st 2016 sees the introduction of "campus carry". All public universities in Texas will be forced to allow CHL holders to carry their guns almost anywhere on campus. They will allow a few restrictions but blanket restrictions are not allowed, so classes and dorm rooms will be allowed in almost all cases. Private universities in Texas are allowed to enact the same rules and, surprisingly, all have declined.

In response to the plans, a group at University of Texas in Austin created a movement called "cocks not glocks", which involves openly carrying dildos, like this:

Why dildos? They are one of many items that are banned on campus. The list also includes crock pots, electric woks, rice cookers, toasters and bread makers. When the new civil war starts, no-one will be able to make a quick loaf to throw at the enemy.

'Texas campus carry day", August 1st 2016 also happens to be the 50th anniversary of one of the most infamous college shootings. On 1st August 1966, Charles Whitman climbed the tower on UT's Austin Campus:

He shot and killed 16 people and injured 32 others. Charles Whitman was a marine who was court-martialed for gambling and (ironically) possession of a firearm on base. He became addicted to amphetamines and before he climbed the tower he stabbed his wife and mother to death and wrote a note asking that an autopsy be performed on his body to understand what was wrong with him.

Apparently, the introduction of campus carry will help avoid another Whitman incident, because, according to Wayne LaPierre (NRA Executive Vice President) "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Unfortunately it seems determining who is good and who is bad will continue to be impossible.

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Written by: Super User

Category: Blog

Published: 31 December 2015

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And so to Plymouth, MI. It's always good to get to travel up north in winter, to get the maximum experience of wind chill.

First stop after Detroit Metropolitan Airport? White Castle of course. Founded in 1921 in Kansas, they are still located mainly in the mid-west (our nearest one is 713 miles from here) so this was an opportunity to find out why Harold and Kumar were so crazy about them:

Turns out they taste pretty good, even if they are somewhat different from regular burgers:

Yes, they are what are now called sliders. In fact White Castle trademarked the term "slyder" and used it from 1985 (until 2009), way before the term was commonly used. People do love White Castle. This couple got married in a White Castle in New York City, which I thought was unusual:

But then I found this video, talking about a history of people getting married in their local White Castle!:

Plymouth, MI has a few notable people. Top of my list was Tom Hulce, Pinto from National Lampoon's Animal House:

Plymouth, MI is as cold as Alberta was this time last year. Being so close to Canada, they do have Tim Horton's here. However I decided to try Biggby's, and why not go large:

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Written by: Super User

Category: Blog

Published: 31 December 2015

Hits: 1182

Despite the technological advances that have happened here, there are a few things that are oddly old-fashioned and painfully inconvenient in the US. For example, transferring money between bank accounts is complicated and often involves mailing checks from bank to bank. Another example is having a tire fixed.

In the UK this has long been a quick and easy process. Kwik Fit prides itself that "you can't get better than a Kwik Fit fitter":

Go to a Kwik Fit for a tire replacement and you will be in and out in 15-20 minutes. Now try the same at Firestone. The same process takes at least 90 minutes - on my last visit it took 2 hours, only because he forgot to rotate the tires (even though I asked) and once rotated he forgot to adjust the pressures (even though I asked).

But it could be worse. You could choose to buy used tires at somewhere like this:

 Lots of people do!