Last week I went to H&R Block and paid them lots of money to deal with my taxes. While it was happening I remembered reading that the total amount of time that Americans spend dealing with their taxes is more hours than General Motors spends annually manufacturing all its cars. I believe it. I’ve already written about a simple way to make all the tax money the government currently gets by a tax system that EVERYONE uses, not just the poor and middle class. In it you only pay taxes on things you buy, and then only on non-essentials. Income itself would be untaxed.

Just a couple of days ago, on March 4th, one of the great inventors of the century died. That was Gary Cygax. He invented what has been called the greatest board game since the 1800’s, and started the rôle playing board games industry practically single handed. Of course I refer to Dungeons and Dragons.

Here we are again in the Easter season, and the stores are filled with Easter Bunnies, Easter cards and Easter Eggs, trying to be as big a commercial success as the other season that also used to be a pagan religious event, Christmas.

There are still many Christians who believe that it is part of the original Christian religion to observe Lent, "Holy Week," "Good Friday," to buy hot cross buns at the bakery, to have colored eggs, to dress up and go to Church on Easter Sunday, perhaps to attend an Easter sunrise service! They haven’t examined their belief system, or its origins.

When I was an evacuee during WWII I lived with many sets of foster parents who included Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Church of England, Plymouth Brethen and a few other very minor Christian cults. Half of the families were convinced that the English version of the Bible that they used was literally true. All of it. I even suspected that some of them thought that Jesus had existed, for the personal benefit of their trifling sins, and spoke English.

Easter brides and June brides have one thing in common, commercially that is: diamonds. In the Madison Avenue book ‘You prove you love me by giving me expensive things.’ And diamonds are always pretty expensive. I thought that maybe a word or two about what they are and why they are so respected, apart from obvious market manipulation, might be a good Easter tide thing to do.

Many years ago my wife Shirley had a wristwatch whose battery died. It was a watch with a back designed to be opened with a special little wrench. Having worked in a clock and watch mending shop years ago as a teen-ager I figured out a way to get the back off. We had no battery the right size, so off we went to our local Sears to check out tiny batteries.

This is a quickie, because of something that I have just heard about that is happening locally.

I have not watched TV since 1958 in England when it became clear that it was developing into a system to mould public opinion at the will of some authority or other. That is now blatantly obvious. It is also true that when asked a couple of years ago if I could only have one book with me on a desert island I would choose “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.

Since the posting about diamonds I’ve had people asking me if there was any other precious stone I was interested in from the historical point of view. Well, yes there is, but it is a precious jewel, not a precious stone. Here are a few pointers about pearls. The first part is about how the pearls are made by the creatures that make them. If you are only interested in celebrity pearls just scroll down to The Abernethy Pearl where I mention brief histories of some of the pearls famous to pearl lovers, including the Elizabeth Taylor Pearl.