About

The free lunch. For the uninitiated, the phrase comes from the days of saloons in the US. The idea was that you would get a bit of food on the grounds that you purchased at least one drink. The value of the food was typically more than the value of one drink, but there was a reasonable expectation that patrons would probably have more than one. Probably several. Remember, this was before the Internet and there was not much else to do other than go down to the local saloon and knock back a few. And pillage. I think there was a lot of pillaging back then.

The term is mostly known these days due to the phrase "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." There is some controversy as to who said it first, but it is most likely Robert Heinlein. I come to this conclusion both because I cannot find an older reference and because he would return from the grave and run me through with a sword, grumbling the whole time, if I did not say so. The phrase is a perhaps cynical but reasonable statement on the assumption that there is a price to everything, even if it isn't obvious.

Thing is, technology is blurring things a bit. A person or a small business can accomplish things today that used to require mountain moving for little or no cost. This blog is about how folks can take advantage of technology to become more efficient, profitable, happy, creative or taller. Sometimes all at once.