Sitting back and thinking dark thoughts is one of my least favorite pastimes. Unfortunately, it has also been one that has been occurring frequently of late. My latest little tidbit is the idea that maybe the rot that is being exposed now goes deeper than just some crooks skimming as hard as they can.
Maybe it is time to look at the core of our culture. No, I am not talking about Democracy, the Constitution, or Christianity but rather, the true core, Capitalism.
The trouble that I see with capitalism is that it truly appears to be structured on the same basic principles as a perpetual motion machine. You take a clear set of finite inputs, run them through the magic capitalism machine and at the end you have more than what you started with.
But from what I can see in the real world, it is nothing but a shell game run by rigged rules and dependent on the free flow of oil to keep it going.
The real darkness of my thoughts is that what the hell do we use to take its place?
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Delusional Apes
I am beginning to think that maybe the most pernicious lie ever told was that man was created in Gods image. Now some of you will go crazy and damn me to Hell. Oh well, such is life.
But consider it. I am an aficionado of Darwin. Not the pop culture Darwin that folks trot out for any purpose. But the real core. The simple fact that things adapt to the world around them.
Now think about what the "made in Gods image" does to that. By being a fragment of the divine, we get to mold the world to our wishes. The world must adapt to us, not vice-versa. We see ourselves as marching toward godhood. That we can do what is needed to fuel our "progress" toward that goal. Also, and most critical, by being in the image of God, we are also able to understand the universe and the will of God.
But I am of an older style Christianity, one described by Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. This Christianity accepts the truth of original sin. It draws clear distinctions between the city of God and the city of man. It accepts that we are deeply flawed and rooted in sin. We can be forgiven for our sins, but we will always be sinners.
Once you accept that we are sinners, the world around you starts making more sense.
Now, I am throwing in a reference here. John Michael Greer writes brilliantly over at the Archdruid Report. This entry was the result of me cogitating on one of his posts. So now I will use him as an inspiration (probably against his will), and get back to the points at hand. (Also, I find it howlingly funny that the Archdruid of America is named after a Christian saint and an Archangel, I wonder if he takes any grief about that?)
So from here on in, this is a disquisition on the root of the flaws of culture in the West stemming primarily from a serious misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the bible by the protestant reformation and the subsequent spin-doctoring of dogma by all christian confessions in search of converts/tithepayers.
I begin here from John Michael reminding me of the feverish and wacked-out writings of Joachim of Fiore. I can't say that I fully agree with JMG that Joachim started the mess, but he was the first one that managed to have a Pope or two cover for him while he wrote them, so I will concede the point.
Getting back to the point, what Joachim really did is enshrine the idea that man can know the will of God. Now, lets be real clear about it, he did it by reading the bible and figuring out what was going to happen by "interpreting" the book of revelations. But he still laid the formal groundwork that said that the future and God's plan could be divined by man.
At his point we started to run with it. Thomas Bacon (a follower of Joachim) kicked off the idea of Science. William of Occam followed up. Alchemy became trendy and we thrashed about for a bit, but around four centuries later, Isaac Newton came in and delivered the knockout punch which changed over the view of the world (I always was amazed at the egotism and genius that could actually name a book "The System of the World").
While this was happening, the protestants started up. At first, Luther and Calvin ( sixteenth century) started out by going even further than the Catholics toward the idea that people are fucked. This continued for a bit, but after the peace of Westphalia, things settled down enough that the different faiths started to have to sell their wares in the same manner that folks now sell toothpaste.
Needless to say, there are a lot of folks who don't want to go to a church that tells them that they are fucked up...bad business that. So, all the churches began to soften their pitches to bring in the converts. Which leads us to where we are today, with churches that extol the wonderfulness of their flock, tells them how much God loves them, and passes the plate. This loosening of the idea of original sin loosens up the avenues of research available to the literati.
Because of this loosening, Newton and his followers are discovering some pretty cool shit. We are actually getting some traction on understanding some of the nuts and bolts of the way the world is put together. The biggie was thermodynamics with Newcomen and Kelvin and Carnot giving us the knowledge to use heat in a way that really got the party started.
We then got into the fossil fuel supplies and wow did the party really get going. A couple billion years of saving by the planet and God were went through in no time flat. But the trouble with savings accounts is that they are finite.
So, when you sit back and examine this bit of inchaote rambling, you start to see how stuff ties together. Once we got the incorrect idea that the City of God and the City of man were connected, we started down a path that led us to where we are today. But it appears to me that the path was doomed from the start. It allowed us to start the process where we used everything and every effort to build an edifice that is starting to show its cracks and poor design.
So now we are running out of the magic juice that allowed us to make the adaptations that gave us our Godlike powers. Maybe there will be a replacement. I don't think that will happen. So we will have to conserve what we have left, and start to examine our behaviors. Maybe we will notice that we are tainted with original sin and start to act accordingly.
But consider it. I am an aficionado of Darwin. Not the pop culture Darwin that folks trot out for any purpose. But the real core. The simple fact that things adapt to the world around them.
Now think about what the "made in Gods image" does to that. By being a fragment of the divine, we get to mold the world to our wishes. The world must adapt to us, not vice-versa. We see ourselves as marching toward godhood. That we can do what is needed to fuel our "progress" toward that goal. Also, and most critical, by being in the image of God, we are also able to understand the universe and the will of God.
But I am of an older style Christianity, one described by Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. This Christianity accepts the truth of original sin. It draws clear distinctions between the city of God and the city of man. It accepts that we are deeply flawed and rooted in sin. We can be forgiven for our sins, but we will always be sinners.
Once you accept that we are sinners, the world around you starts making more sense.
Now, I am throwing in a reference here. John Michael Greer writes brilliantly over at the Archdruid Report. This entry was the result of me cogitating on one of his posts. So now I will use him as an inspiration (probably against his will), and get back to the points at hand. (Also, I find it howlingly funny that the Archdruid of America is named after a Christian saint and an Archangel, I wonder if he takes any grief about that?)
So from here on in, this is a disquisition on the root of the flaws of culture in the West stemming primarily from a serious misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the bible by the protestant reformation and the subsequent spin-doctoring of dogma by all christian confessions in search of converts/tithepayers.
I begin here from John Michael reminding me of the feverish and wacked-out writings of Joachim of Fiore. I can't say that I fully agree with JMG that Joachim started the mess, but he was the first one that managed to have a Pope or two cover for him while he wrote them, so I will concede the point.
Getting back to the point, what Joachim really did is enshrine the idea that man can know the will of God. Now, lets be real clear about it, he did it by reading the bible and figuring out what was going to happen by "interpreting" the book of revelations. But he still laid the formal groundwork that said that the future and God's plan could be divined by man.
At his point we started to run with it. Thomas Bacon (a follower of Joachim) kicked off the idea of Science. William of Occam followed up. Alchemy became trendy and we thrashed about for a bit, but around four centuries later, Isaac Newton came in and delivered the knockout punch which changed over the view of the world (I always was amazed at the egotism and genius that could actually name a book "The System of the World").
While this was happening, the protestants started up. At first, Luther and Calvin ( sixteenth century) started out by going even further than the Catholics toward the idea that people are fucked. This continued for a bit, but after the peace of Westphalia, things settled down enough that the different faiths started to have to sell their wares in the same manner that folks now sell toothpaste.
Needless to say, there are a lot of folks who don't want to go to a church that tells them that they are fucked up...bad business that. So, all the churches began to soften their pitches to bring in the converts. Which leads us to where we are today, with churches that extol the wonderfulness of their flock, tells them how much God loves them, and passes the plate. This loosening of the idea of original sin loosens up the avenues of research available to the literati.
Because of this loosening, Newton and his followers are discovering some pretty cool shit. We are actually getting some traction on understanding some of the nuts and bolts of the way the world is put together. The biggie was thermodynamics with Newcomen and Kelvin and Carnot giving us the knowledge to use heat in a way that really got the party started.
We then got into the fossil fuel supplies and wow did the party really get going. A couple billion years of saving by the planet and God were went through in no time flat. But the trouble with savings accounts is that they are finite.
So, when you sit back and examine this bit of inchaote rambling, you start to see how stuff ties together. Once we got the incorrect idea that the City of God and the City of man were connected, we started down a path that led us to where we are today. But it appears to me that the path was doomed from the start. It allowed us to start the process where we used everything and every effort to build an edifice that is starting to show its cracks and poor design.
So now we are running out of the magic juice that allowed us to make the adaptations that gave us our Godlike powers. Maybe there will be a replacement. I don't think that will happen. So we will have to conserve what we have left, and start to examine our behaviors. Maybe we will notice that we are tainted with original sin and start to act accordingly.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Hawley-Smoot
Lets speak of Hawley-Smoot.
The free-traders who drove us into our current mess are forever holding up this benighted piece of legislative nincompoopery as the reason that the great depression went on so damn long. They were right. They were also wrong.
But the trouble is that they are too damn hidebound and blinded by the dogmas that they have been spouting to stand back and rationally examine the whole thing. Hawley-Smoot was badly written by two of the biggest simpletons in the history of the Senate. The bill was written to decrease the amount stuff coming into the US, forcing the US consumer to buy US stuff. Now this while this is a noble idea, the two morons who wrote the bill hadn't figured out that the US during that period of time was a huge exporter, kinda like China is today.
Well, as the free traders say, the bill did start a series of retaliatory tariffs in other
countries. So the other counties started a set of "retaliatory" tariffs, which made our export dependent industry lose a major portion of it's market. But lets think about that whole process.
The free-trade morons don't bother to tell you that in other countries the tariffs worked pretty dang well. Britain and the Commonwealth actually did a lot better than we did during the depression because their tariff barriers. I will dig out the figures, but if my memory serves, Britain and the commonwealth only contracted by about 5% during that period of time compared to the US 30%. Pretty good in the grand scheme of things. So maybe the "retaliatory" tariffs weren't retaliatory, but just good common sense.
So what I am saying here is that just maybe, we should stop believing the blinded cant of the idiots in the Chicago School and the quasi-syphilitic ravings of the free traders and instead look at the whole picture.
We are no longer an manufacturing powerhouse, we have been crippled by a generation of greedy and inept leaders (both corporate and governmental) who have gutted our manufacturing base. There is no such thing as a "post-industrial" society. We are going to have to rebuild our industrial base. We will have to protect this nascent creature. We can't do it if China and the rest of the world can flood us with low-cost material.
I would say that we have to look out for ourselves. We can do this, but we have to get over the blind beliefs that have led us to where we are. Free trade and globalism is not a panacea. We are not an industrial powerhouse anymore. We are not even a rich country anymore.
Time to hunker down.
The free-traders who drove us into our current mess are forever holding up this benighted piece of legislative nincompoopery as the reason that the great depression went on so damn long. They were right. They were also wrong.
But the trouble is that they are too damn hidebound and blinded by the dogmas that they have been spouting to stand back and rationally examine the whole thing. Hawley-Smoot was badly written by two of the biggest simpletons in the history of the Senate. The bill was written to decrease the amount stuff coming into the US, forcing the US consumer to buy US stuff. Now this while this is a noble idea, the two morons who wrote the bill hadn't figured out that the US during that period of time was a huge exporter, kinda like China is today.
Well, as the free traders say, the bill did start a series of retaliatory tariffs in other
countries. So the other counties started a set of "retaliatory" tariffs, which made our export dependent industry lose a major portion of it's market. But lets think about that whole process.
The free-trade morons don't bother to tell you that in other countries the tariffs worked pretty dang well. Britain and the Commonwealth actually did a lot better than we did during the depression because their tariff barriers. I will dig out the figures, but if my memory serves, Britain and the commonwealth only contracted by about 5% during that period of time compared to the US 30%. Pretty good in the grand scheme of things. So maybe the "retaliatory" tariffs weren't retaliatory, but just good common sense.
So what I am saying here is that just maybe, we should stop believing the blinded cant of the idiots in the Chicago School and the quasi-syphilitic ravings of the free traders and instead look at the whole picture.
We are no longer an manufacturing powerhouse, we have been crippled by a generation of greedy and inept leaders (both corporate and governmental) who have gutted our manufacturing base. There is no such thing as a "post-industrial" society. We are going to have to rebuild our industrial base. We will have to protect this nascent creature. We can't do it if China and the rest of the world can flood us with low-cost material.
I would say that we have to look out for ourselves. We can do this, but we have to get over the blind beliefs that have led us to where we are. Free trade and globalism is not a panacea. We are not an industrial powerhouse anymore. We are not even a rich country anymore.
Time to hunker down.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Low Tech Beer Not Half Bad
In Re:
http://mightaswellliebackandenjoyit.blogspot.com/2008/11/lowering-intensity.html
First tasting gives a good solid B, maybe a B+
http://mightaswellliebackandenjoyit.blogspot.com/2008/11/lowering-intensity.html
First tasting gives a good solid B, maybe a B+
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
I'm taking a break
See you after the New Year, may the peace of Christ be with you always. May you find hope and joy in your life.
There is no evidence of any kind regarding the date of Jesus’ birth. His nativity began to be celebrated on Dec. 25 in Rome during the early part of the fourth century (AD 336) as a Christian counterpart to the pagan festival, popular among the worshipers of Mithras, called Sol Invictis, the Unconquerable Sun. At the very moment when the days are the shortest and darkness seems to have conquered light, the sun passes its nadir. Days grow longer, and although the cold will only increase for quite a long time, the ultimate conquest of winter is sure. This astronomical process is a parable of the career of the Incarnate One. At the moment when history is blackest, and in the least expected and obvious place, the Son of God is born…"
-- Frederich Borsch & David Napier
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Chinese Train Wreck
You know, we whine constantly about how bad we have it. It really isn't all that bad. We had best start counting our blessings and getting ready to send aid and comfort to folks overseas when their world starts blowing up on them. Of course, we will have to do the same here, but despite all of the serious doomsaying going on, we will be able to deal with the changes coming better than a lot of people will.
China is going to be going through some bad shit soon. You probably should have realized this when the morons writing books for public sale began to talk about the "Asian Miracle" and other such rot. As soon as you see a book on the sale rack at Barnes and Noble espousing some thing or the other, you are usually pretty certain that that phenomenon is doomed.
Anyway, they have set up their economy to do nothing but feed into our neurotic shopping habit. Needless to say, if the current trend continues and the US comes to its senses and starts living within its means, China is well and truly fucked. But the truth is that they are waaaaaayyyyy too overpopulated, polluted and corrupt to survive anything coming at them.
Right now they have an intellectually bankrupt and amoral elite trying to keep the lid on a billion or so peasants who tire of getting screwed over. They are also sitting on a huge pile of soon-to-be-worthless US bonds to show for their bad decisions. Life is going to be interesting there.
So to my friends Liu Kiu Shan and Chen Jian Liu, keep your heads down and start preppin' , cuz you guys are gonna need it more than I will.
China is going to be going through some bad shit soon. You probably should have realized this when the morons writing books for public sale began to talk about the "Asian Miracle" and other such rot. As soon as you see a book on the sale rack at Barnes and Noble espousing some thing or the other, you are usually pretty certain that that phenomenon is doomed.
Anyway, they have set up their economy to do nothing but feed into our neurotic shopping habit. Needless to say, if the current trend continues and the US comes to its senses and starts living within its means, China is well and truly fucked. But the truth is that they are waaaaaayyyyy too overpopulated, polluted and corrupt to survive anything coming at them.
Right now they have an intellectually bankrupt and amoral elite trying to keep the lid on a billion or so peasants who tire of getting screwed over. They are also sitting on a huge pile of soon-to-be-worthless US bonds to show for their bad decisions. Life is going to be interesting there.
So to my friends Liu Kiu Shan and Chen Jian Liu, keep your heads down and start preppin' , cuz you guys are gonna need it more than I will.
Monday, December 22, 2008
NorthCom
I am really torn here.
Lets get it out into the open so we can discuss this. One of the main purposes of government, any government is to keep order. We can discuss at length where the cutoff line for what is appropriate lies, but at the end, we are little better than medieval scholars discussing the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.
So, with a distinct possibility of unrest ahead of us, how will the government keep the lid on things? I have been in a country in the middle of a revolution. Not fun.
The police are already quite stretched thank you.
The old National Guard has been so thoroughly absorbed into the structure of the Federal Army that it is effectively indistinguishable from that Army. I also can't see any of the current crop of spineless parasites we have annointed as "Governors" taking their troops back or rebuilding their own Guard.
So that leaves the Army. Now most of you folks will start screaming "Posse Comitatus" at this point. I would ask you to take a breath and think first. Despite what everyone in the tin-foil hat crowd thinks, posse is not a part of the Constitution. It was part and parcel to as as vulgar and cynical a bit of political horse trading as ever seen in the good old USA.
It was in the deal that gave us a Republican President (Rutherford Hayes) after a bitterly contested and crooked election (Sound familiar?). As a quid pro quo for the election of Hayes, it allowed for the removal of federal protection of former slaves coupled with a wink and a nod to the soon-to-be Jim Crow South, allowing them a pleasant return to their cherished pastime of butt-fucking the blacks.
As you can probably tell, I don't think to highly of the "Compromise of 1877".
So, back to NorthCom. They will be up to around 20,000 troops soon. Not enough to do any real good in a country this big, but enough to make a difference in a spate of serious civil unrest that is well localized.
Now most of us don't have to worry about this too dang much. But let's for a moment consider Detroit:
Hmmm
Lets get it out into the open so we can discuss this. One of the main purposes of government, any government is to keep order. We can discuss at length where the cutoff line for what is appropriate lies, but at the end, we are little better than medieval scholars discussing the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.
So, with a distinct possibility of unrest ahead of us, how will the government keep the lid on things? I have been in a country in the middle of a revolution. Not fun.
The police are already quite stretched thank you.
The old National Guard has been so thoroughly absorbed into the structure of the Federal Army that it is effectively indistinguishable from that Army. I also can't see any of the current crop of spineless parasites we have annointed as "Governors" taking their troops back or rebuilding their own Guard.
So that leaves the Army. Now most of you folks will start screaming "Posse Comitatus" at this point. I would ask you to take a breath and think first. Despite what everyone in the tin-foil hat crowd thinks, posse is not a part of the Constitution. It was part and parcel to as as vulgar and cynical a bit of political horse trading as ever seen in the good old USA.
It was in the deal that gave us a Republican President (Rutherford Hayes) after a bitterly contested and crooked election (Sound familiar?). As a quid pro quo for the election of Hayes, it allowed for the removal of federal protection of former slaves coupled with a wink and a nod to the soon-to-be Jim Crow South, allowing them a pleasant return to their cherished pastime of butt-fucking the blacks.
As you can probably tell, I don't think to highly of the "Compromise of 1877".
So, back to NorthCom. They will be up to around 20,000 troops soon. Not enough to do any real good in a country this big, but enough to make a difference in a spate of serious civil unrest that is well localized.
Now most of us don't have to worry about this too dang much. But let's for a moment consider Detroit:
- Big Three looking bad?
- Corrupt and ineffective local government?
- Soon to be massive unemployment among a group with a fairly high set of expectations?
- Supporting State government almost broke?
- Federal Government in a bad way?
Hmmm
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Thanks Stephi, for the other B
I was having a very slow conversation with Stephanie in AR over the weekend and she brought up an important part of what most of us don't pay enough attention to in our preps.
Beans, Bandaids, and bullets will keep any animal alive. Hell, you will probably even live longer under that regimen. But what is it you wish to be during your life? If your entire existence is structured around the military style need for firearms and an itchy trigger finger, then I hope that you never come into my neck of the clear cut, you are little better than the barbarians who sacked Rome.
As Steph sez', beauty should be one of the B's. So preps should include the life of the mind as well as the basic's of existence. An animal is supremely suited for survival, if you don't prepare for the life of the mind, your mind and your ethics will starve and wither, leaving you a well-armed, well-fed animal.
So, start filling up your essential library. Erasmus and Luther, Epicurus and Epictetus, good copies of the bible and the Upanishads. If you can afford it, the Encyclopedia Britannica Great Books are usually very reasonably priced in used book stores. I would very strongly urge you to buy an old textbook in art history and appreciation. Heck, buy some watecolors and start learning.
You have to look long and hard at what you wish to become. If SHTF, will you be a Roman or a Senone?
Beans, Bandaids, and bullets will keep any animal alive. Hell, you will probably even live longer under that regimen. But what is it you wish to be during your life? If your entire existence is structured around the military style need for firearms and an itchy trigger finger, then I hope that you never come into my neck of the clear cut, you are little better than the barbarians who sacked Rome.
As Steph sez', beauty should be one of the B's. So preps should include the life of the mind as well as the basic's of existence. An animal is supremely suited for survival, if you don't prepare for the life of the mind, your mind and your ethics will starve and wither, leaving you a well-armed, well-fed animal.
So, start filling up your essential library. Erasmus and Luther, Epicurus and Epictetus, good copies of the bible and the Upanishads. If you can afford it, the Encyclopedia Britannica Great Books are usually very reasonably priced in used book stores. I would very strongly urge you to buy an old textbook in art history and appreciation. Heck, buy some watecolors and start learning.
You have to look long and hard at what you wish to become. If SHTF, will you be a Roman or a Senone?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Saturday Morning
Now that I am used to waking up at 4:00, sleeping in on the weekends is a thing of the past. Granted, I do get until 5:00 AM, but then I am awake, so it is time to get up and about. So while I sip my tea, lets talk about the old realities that we will soon be revisiting.
Everyone is going to be spending more time in their homes and their neighborhoods pretty soon.
This is going to be a problem for some folk. They have designed their lives around the idea that home was an investment that you slept in during the time you weren't out and about, living the dream. Other folks will take to it nicely and lapse back into the normal patterns of life lived by every generation other than this one.
So Saturday here at the inner city digs is house maintenance day. Gotta do the basics; clean the house, sweep the walks, do laundry, bake. You know....adult stuff. Now you can choose other days for the duties, but unless you are a self-martyring housewife who does it all herself (a behavior I find profoundly weird), there should be a day of the week where all the family pitches in for the common goal of maintaining the abode.
Yes your children will complain bitterly. You did when your parents forced you to work. They will get over it and you will be a better parent for it. Also, it is a pretty good way to force a self-examination. The most natural thing in the world to say is "I sure didn't act like that when I was a kid!" But if your parents are honest with you, or you with yourself, you will remember how you were forced against your will into unpaid labor and wound up the better for it.
So start setting aside a day for maintenance. Doesn't even have to be a whole day, but start developing good routines of cleaning and maintenance for the times ahead, it will make the hard days easier to bear.
Everyone is going to be spending more time in their homes and their neighborhoods pretty soon.
This is going to be a problem for some folk. They have designed their lives around the idea that home was an investment that you slept in during the time you weren't out and about, living the dream. Other folks will take to it nicely and lapse back into the normal patterns of life lived by every generation other than this one.
So Saturday here at the inner city digs is house maintenance day. Gotta do the basics; clean the house, sweep the walks, do laundry, bake. You know....adult stuff. Now you can choose other days for the duties, but unless you are a self-martyring housewife who does it all herself (a behavior I find profoundly weird), there should be a day of the week where all the family pitches in for the common goal of maintaining the abode.
Yes your children will complain bitterly. You did when your parents forced you to work. They will get over it and you will be a better parent for it. Also, it is a pretty good way to force a self-examination. The most natural thing in the world to say is "I sure didn't act like that when I was a kid!" But if your parents are honest with you, or you with yourself, you will remember how you were forced against your will into unpaid labor and wound up the better for it.
So start setting aside a day for maintenance. Doesn't even have to be a whole day, but start developing good routines of cleaning and maintenance for the times ahead, it will make the hard days easier to bear.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Our Continent
There was a fairly poorly written and intellectually lazy book written in the Nineties named "The Nine Nations of North America".
But the book had some merit. As I have stated before, I don't see the United States in it's current configuration lasting much longer, certainly no more than fifty years, though there it would seem that we are moving fast toward some kind of serious spasm. Joel Garreau at least took the ball and started the conversation, so hats off and many thanks to him.
So this post is just about my neck of the woods, the Pacific Northwest. Garreau had us stuffed into a coastal state of Ecotopia. HA. What really pisses me off is that he lumped us in with those assholes down in California.
Now that I have vented my spleen, lets get back to the task at hand. A true nation is a couple of big cities, an integrated transportation system, a food basket, a resource base, and a reasonably common culture. What I propose (and, let's be clear about this, this is not an original idea, though for the life of me I can't remember where I first heard it. If someone would fill in the blanks for me, I would be very grateful) is that the Northwest United States and British Columbia begin to work on the political structure required to build a nation from the Columbia River drainage.
Just ponder it. The country would have some great cities (Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Boise, Vancouver, etc). It would also have a great bread basket in the Palouse and Idaho (why that idiot Garreau lumped that area into "the empty quarter is beyond me), an great transportation system (river travel and transportation is easy and efficient), excellent natural resources, a pretty fair population with an excellent sprinking of minorities to keep things interesting.Just a thought
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
New
I read quite a bit about the current state of affairs. Their are some remarkably prescient folks out there. Mike Ruppert made calls about this stuff years ago. Michael Panzer wrote a book that could easily serve as a script for the movie. Jim Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov are a joy to read. Jesse's Cafe Americain is a very thoughtful must.
But all of them seem to be using the past as a template. They seem to feel that the current state of affairs is deriviative of a past event and attempt to use the resolution of those events as the template for our way of working through this process.
But sometimes this scares me. We have a tendency to look to the past for our answers. This serves us well most of the time. We even go through the motions of pasting up overlays to reassure ourselves of the applicability of the past to the present. But I have a nasty feeling in my gut that the deal going down is different this time.
By making up our models and our chart overlays and our anecdotal comparisons, we are reassuring ourselves that we have the means and savvy to solve the problems that are coming. But this act may blind us. It may make us stop looking for the black swan.
We can plan all we want for the last war, but that has never led anywhere of value yet. The future is a fickle creature. It is what we don't expect that has the best chance of killing us.
Keep your eyes open.
Winter is coming.
But all of them seem to be using the past as a template. They seem to feel that the current state of affairs is deriviative of a past event and attempt to use the resolution of those events as the template for our way of working through this process.
But sometimes this scares me. We have a tendency to look to the past for our answers. This serves us well most of the time. We even go through the motions of pasting up overlays to reassure ourselves of the applicability of the past to the present. But I have a nasty feeling in my gut that the deal going down is different this time.
By making up our models and our chart overlays and our anecdotal comparisons, we are reassuring ourselves that we have the means and savvy to solve the problems that are coming. But this act may blind us. It may make us stop looking for the black swan.
We can plan all we want for the last war, but that has never led anywhere of value yet. The future is a fickle creature. It is what we don't expect that has the best chance of killing us.
Keep your eyes open.
Winter is coming.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Continuum
I was explaining the difference between communism and capitalism to the woman I carpool on the way home on Friday. She specifically asked for me to "break it down into a couple of sentences" for her so that she could understand. She also prides herself as being an "independent".
But lets take hard look at that thought. Here in the old USA he have an odd view of how politics works. Most of us don't even know the basis or platforms of the major parties, voting for the "man" rather than the party. The most prized voter label is that of "independent".
That moment was when I started to realize the almost frightening ignorance of those who vote this way and the way that the heads of the major parties have so thoroughly corrupted the system. Because when you can focus the attention of the populace on an insipid beauty contest, you won't have to come up with any plans to accomplish what is needed.
You see, when you vote for "the man rather than the party", you are not really voting for a man, you are voting for a fable. This allows the party bosses and the money machines to work in their smoke-filled rooms and construct the candidates that they can work with and set them up in a series of phony "Primaries" that are more akin to American Gladiator than to a rational political process.
Think this is wrong....tell me then how a Illinois State representative who gave a pretty dang good speech at a convention four years ago can be catapulted into the presidency?
The party bosses have never let go of the political process. They have blended the control they had in the back rooms of the nineteenth century with the slick and subtle control of a Madison Avenue ad campaign.
So just maybe, we had better start looking at the parties and their platforms instead of the front men that want us to watch. Because in the real world, an obsession with pretty front men has led us off a cliff, maybe we had better start looking at the organization that they front for and their plans
But lets take hard look at that thought. Here in the old USA he have an odd view of how politics works. Most of us don't even know the basis or platforms of the major parties, voting for the "man" rather than the party. The most prized voter label is that of "independent".
That moment was when I started to realize the almost frightening ignorance of those who vote this way and the way that the heads of the major parties have so thoroughly corrupted the system. Because when you can focus the attention of the populace on an insipid beauty contest, you won't have to come up with any plans to accomplish what is needed.
You see, when you vote for "the man rather than the party", you are not really voting for a man, you are voting for a fable. This allows the party bosses and the money machines to work in their smoke-filled rooms and construct the candidates that they can work with and set them up in a series of phony "Primaries" that are more akin to American Gladiator than to a rational political process.
Think this is wrong....tell me then how a Illinois State representative who gave a pretty dang good speech at a convention four years ago can be catapulted into the presidency?
The party bosses have never let go of the political process. They have blended the control they had in the back rooms of the nineteenth century with the slick and subtle control of a Madison Avenue ad campaign.
So just maybe, we had better start looking at the parties and their platforms instead of the front men that want us to watch. Because in the real world, an obsession with pretty front men has led us off a cliff, maybe we had better start looking at the organization that they front for and their plans
Monday, December 15, 2008
Just a brief note to those who are too busy to cook.
Piss off you lazy bastards.
Get off your dead asses and start doing the work of an adult. Despite all of the lies that Madison Avenue has been feeding you, not everything and everyone is put in place for you to live the dream. Your buying the predigested pap of "convenience dinners" and "gourmet prepared meals" is just a way of getting more time to fill up with Oprah.
One of the reason that we are fat and lazy as a culture is that everyone is "too busy" filling their lives up with meaningless crap. You aren't too busy, you are too lazy and too self-centered.
Get off your ass and get to work
Get off your dead asses and start doing the work of an adult. Despite all of the lies that Madison Avenue has been feeding you, not everything and everyone is put in place for you to live the dream. Your buying the predigested pap of "convenience dinners" and "gourmet prepared meals" is just a way of getting more time to fill up with Oprah.
One of the reason that we are fat and lazy as a culture is that everyone is "too busy" filling their lives up with meaningless crap. You aren't too busy, you are too lazy and too self-centered.
Get off your ass and get to work
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Just a thought
We have a deformed political structure in the United States.
Every other country in the world has a respectably-sized communist and/or socialist party. Oh, they don't name them that anymore, but they are there.
We here in the US have witch-hunted these parties and philosophies off of the map. By doing so we have thrown our country open to the depredations of the oligarchs and the fascisti.
We had better start looking at a balance here folks. We are in the pickle we are in because we gutted the Left side of the political spectrum here in United States and let the political Right run without an organized opposition party to hound its every move.
Now, some of you will start screaming "look at Barack Obama"......Give me a break. He is as middle of the road and business leaning as his forerunner Bill Clinton, who in every other country in the world would have been forced into the conservative party.
So, think about it. Think about the whole government that you want. With checks and balances of political theory and a complete spectrum of thought.
If you just plug in the left side of the equation you will get the nanny state with all the sharp corners rounded off. If you just vote in the conservatives, you will have an economic free for all with you pockets being picked by unfettered business.
Of course, we could just hire George Bush and his buddies and get both.
Every other country in the world has a respectably-sized communist and/or socialist party. Oh, they don't name them that anymore, but they are there.
We here in the US have witch-hunted these parties and philosophies off of the map. By doing so we have thrown our country open to the depredations of the oligarchs and the fascisti.
We had better start looking at a balance here folks. We are in the pickle we are in because we gutted the Left side of the political spectrum here in United States and let the political Right run without an organized opposition party to hound its every move.
Now, some of you will start screaming "look at Barack Obama"......Give me a break. He is as middle of the road and business leaning as his forerunner Bill Clinton, who in every other country in the world would have been forced into the conservative party.
So, think about it. Think about the whole government that you want. With checks and balances of political theory and a complete spectrum of thought.
If you just plug in the left side of the equation you will get the nanny state with all the sharp corners rounded off. If you just vote in the conservatives, you will have an economic free for all with you pockets being picked by unfettered business.
Of course, we could just hire George Bush and his buddies and get both.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
You Know, It may not be all that bad
I highly recommend reading CK Michaelsons "Some Assembly Required" every day. This post is about a comment that was at the top of one of his posts last week
"Money is an accounting device we imagine is real."
Well. That got me to thinking. You know, we constantly piss and moan about TEOTWAWKI and all of the portents that we see coming down the pipe. Well, you know, it might not be all that bad.
Now that isn't saying that the way we have had it is going to stick around in some form. Au contraire mon vieux, if you (like a lot of folks) are gauging success as the number of zeroes and ones that will soon be vanishing from a bank's database, well, you will be getting fucked soon, and, should you wish, I will be happy to send you a shitpot of KY...you will be needing it.
But it won't be bad if you step back now. cut your losses and simplify, simplify, simplify.
Your food is going to change...get ready to start eating the way you always knew you were supposed to eat. Lots of beans and soups and breads. Cable....get over it, paying $100.00 a month to have a sewer delivered to your living room is stupid. Yes your kids will whine, but they can get over it.
I keep beating this drum again and again and again, but the quality of your life isn't demarcated by the size and quality of your toys or your bank account. Get down to the basics. Decent healthy food, a warm fireplace, some time set apart for your family, a chess set, a radio.
We are going to be poorer in a financial sense. Maybe it won't be all bad, it will just depend what you do with this opportunity.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Dehydrated Foods
I think that buying #10 cans of dehydrated foods is just a really good idea. Yeah, they are expensive, but they last forever and they can provide a really good diet when you do open them. The trouble is that if you buy them, you had better learn to cook with them. It isn't all that straightforward.
The first deal is that you have to reconstitute them before starting to cook. This means putting them in water and letting them hang around for a while getting back to their normal state. Then when they are rehydrated, you actually have to think when you are cooking them (gasp). You will have to learn how long each different type takes to reconstitute and cook. It isn't a huge deal, but it will take same time and training.
Today's object lesson is sweet corn. This is good stuff.
As you can see, they come out as little bits of nothing. Sweet corn is not field corn. When you yummy it up off the cob, you are getting mostly water...really tasty water. I have always thought of it as a dessert. Here is a picture of an advertising board outside a KFC in Nahkom Panom, Thailand. Sweet corn parfait, Dessert it is.
So when you dry it, it doesn't look like much of anything. You have to add back in all of the water that was dried out. Now a lot of folks just dump on water and wait some number of hours. Admirable simplicity.
That is my normal method, but lately I have been fascinated by the thermos-style slow cookers where you have a pan that you to bring to boiling on the stove and then put inside a thermos holder to hold in the heat and cook with residual heat. The sales blurbs on these things say that if you drop in a boiling pot, the pot is still >160 F. after eight hours.
So today, when I made my tea in the morning, I put in a half cup of corn into my little one-cup thermos and filled the thermos up with boiling water. I will take a look at it around fivish and let you know what I see.
After 5 hours
Looks and tastes like uncooked sweet corn...life is good, into the soup it goes.
The first deal is that you have to reconstitute them before starting to cook. This means putting them in water and letting them hang around for a while getting back to their normal state. Then when they are rehydrated, you actually have to think when you are cooking them (gasp). You will have to learn how long each different type takes to reconstitute and cook. It isn't a huge deal, but it will take same time and training.
Today's object lesson is sweet corn. This is good stuff.
As you can see, they come out as little bits of nothing. Sweet corn is not field corn. When you yummy it up off the cob, you are getting mostly water...really tasty water. I have always thought of it as a dessert. Here is a picture of an advertising board outside a KFC in Nahkom Panom, Thailand. Sweet corn parfait, Dessert it is.
So when you dry it, it doesn't look like much of anything. You have to add back in all of the water that was dried out. Now a lot of folks just dump on water and wait some number of hours. Admirable simplicity.
That is my normal method, but lately I have been fascinated by the thermos-style slow cookers where you have a pan that you to bring to boiling on the stove and then put inside a thermos holder to hold in the heat and cook with residual heat. The sales blurbs on these things say that if you drop in a boiling pot, the pot is still >160 F. after eight hours.
So today, when I made my tea in the morning, I put in a half cup of corn into my little one-cup thermos and filled the thermos up with boiling water. I will take a look at it around fivish and let you know what I see.
After 5 hours
Looks and tastes like uncooked sweet corn...life is good, into the soup it goes.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
A bit of pathos
OK, I like playing World of Warcraft.
I realize that this is just a stupid waste of time. It glues me in front of a screen for an hour or so every other day and I live in a false world of fantasy.
I also read 10-15 hours a week, take care of my garden, write this blog, walk, and work, cook dinner every night.
I watch no commercial TV save for the ongoing humiliation of watching the Raiders get their asses handed to them by any team that they play that week.
Playing WOW makes me happy, leave me alone.
I realize that this is just a stupid waste of time. It glues me in front of a screen for an hour or so every other day and I live in a false world of fantasy.
I also read 10-15 hours a week, take care of my garden, write this blog, walk, and work, cook dinner every night.
I watch no commercial TV save for the ongoing humiliation of watching the Raiders get their asses handed to them by any team that they play that week.
Playing WOW makes me happy, leave me alone.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Watching the watts and spilt milk
I have been watching my energy use a lot lately. Doing a pretty good job of it too. Mostly it just comes from the simple, virtuous act of turning things off that you aren't using.
I also keep the house chilly the bulk of the time. I use small, ceramic space heaters for where I am in the house and letting the house stay cool (I keep the main furnace thermometer at 55 degrees) needless to say I heat with electricity.
So where for the last two Novembers I used 1910kwh and 2830kwh, this year I used 630. Now part of me is proud. I am just as warm and well fed as in the past (and no, it wasn't a particularly mild month, pretty much normal) but now I am pissing and moaning to myself about the amount of money that I wasted in the past.
You gotta steer clear of that thought. Beating yourself up for your former mistakes doesn't do a lick of good. I will smile ruefully when I think of the significantly larger cushion that I would have if I had learned my frugality earlier, but hell, life was good then and I was running with it.
Our mistakes of the past are how we learn. They also provide us some of our fonder memories. Deal with them and move on.
Winter is here.
I also keep the house chilly the bulk of the time. I use small, ceramic space heaters for where I am in the house and letting the house stay cool (I keep the main furnace thermometer at 55 degrees) needless to say I heat with electricity.
So where for the last two Novembers I used 1910kwh and 2830kwh, this year I used 630. Now part of me is proud. I am just as warm and well fed as in the past (and no, it wasn't a particularly mild month, pretty much normal) but now I am pissing and moaning to myself about the amount of money that I wasted in the past.
You gotta steer clear of that thought. Beating yourself up for your former mistakes doesn't do a lick of good. I will smile ruefully when I think of the significantly larger cushion that I would have if I had learned my frugality earlier, but hell, life was good then and I was running with it.
Our mistakes of the past are how we learn. They also provide us some of our fonder memories. Deal with them and move on.
Winter is here.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Cash Budgeting
I realize that many would consider the next statement to be the blackest of all heresies....you can survive without a credit card.
I now have no plastic whatsoever. I also have no debit cards, ATM cards, store credit cards...man, I have no way of buying anything unless I (gasp) pull out my wallet and count out the cash.
Now, realize that a great deal of this is caused by external forces...I all the sudden didn't get religion and become frugal by choice. No, I did this because after 60+ weeks of unemployment I managed to snag a job that pays A LOT less than what I was accustomed to burning through. I thank the good Lord for my good fortune every single day and now I am developing the strategies needed to live within my reduced means.
So, back to cash. I have mixed feelings about the stuff. Anyone can use it, you can't trace it, it is slippery stuff. But unless you have it on you, it doesn't do you a lick of good. So you have to strike a balance of keeping some in the bank (and you all know my opinion of those swine) and keeping what you need on your person or secured in your house/yard. I know bunches of folks who bury stuff in the backyard for long term storage. There are myriad hiding places in a house, use your imagination.
Having your spending money physically available and there to look at makes it easy to manage your budget. You can get a good clear visual of the amount of money that you have on hand and how much it is you have to spend.
Paying bills is more problematic. Checks and stamps and crap like that are a real problem. I put just enough money in the bank to cover all my current bills (loan payment(1), rent, car, car insurance, electricity, phone, water, garbage). I then use the electronic bill payer to send the money out and the deed is done. I keep a bare minimum in the account for them to play with or for me to lose.
I then take out all my spending/saving money as good old greenbacks. I prefer ten-dollar bills. These go home and into the "sugar jar". I use this for everything. Groceries, gas, trips to the soda shop and ice cream parlor, shoes....you name it, it comes out of here.
The key is is that you leave the money there. Yes, you can carry a tenner with you for stuff, but if you want to buy something, you have to think about it, figure out how much it costs, find out where to buy it, go in a dicker for it...think about it. Then you go home and get that amount of money out of the sugar jar and go make the purchase.
Don't leave your family out of this. When you come home with the cash, sit everyone down and explain the amount of money that is going into the sugar jar and the length of time that it has to last. Have a little
When you boil all this stuff down, it comes down to the simple idea of living within your means. If you are going to survive the spasm that is taking shape, you will have to get over the childish concept of "impulse buying". All I am talking about here is a structure that will allow you to do this. All of the squealing and whinging being done in the mass media and among your friends and neighbors are nothing but the dismay of spoiled children when they find out that the world doesn't rotate around their needs and wants.
I now have no plastic whatsoever. I also have no debit cards, ATM cards, store credit cards...man, I have no way of buying anything unless I (gasp) pull out my wallet and count out the cash.
Now, realize that a great deal of this is caused by external forces...I all the sudden didn't get religion and become frugal by choice. No, I did this because after 60+ weeks of unemployment I managed to snag a job that pays A LOT less than what I was accustomed to burning through. I thank the good Lord for my good fortune every single day and now I am developing the strategies needed to live within my reduced means.
So, back to cash. I have mixed feelings about the stuff. Anyone can use it, you can't trace it, it is slippery stuff. But unless you have it on you, it doesn't do you a lick of good. So you have to strike a balance of keeping some in the bank (and you all know my opinion of those swine) and keeping what you need on your person or secured in your house/yard. I know bunches of folks who bury stuff in the backyard for long term storage. There are myriad hiding places in a house, use your imagination.
Having your spending money physically available and there to look at makes it easy to manage your budget. You can get a good clear visual of the amount of money that you have on hand and how much it is you have to spend.
Paying bills is more problematic. Checks and stamps and crap like that are a real problem. I put just enough money in the bank to cover all my current bills (loan payment(1), rent, car, car insurance, electricity, phone, water, garbage). I then use the electronic bill payer to send the money out and the deed is done. I keep a bare minimum in the account for them to play with or for me to lose.
I then take out all my spending/saving money as good old greenbacks. I prefer ten-dollar bills. These go home and into the "sugar jar". I use this for everything. Groceries, gas, trips to the soda shop and ice cream parlor, shoes....you name it, it comes out of here.
The key is is that you leave the money there. Yes, you can carry a tenner with you for stuff, but if you want to buy something, you have to think about it, figure out how much it costs, find out where to buy it, go in a dicker for it...think about it. Then you go home and get that amount of money out of the sugar jar and go make the purchase.
Don't leave your family out of this. When you come home with the cash, sit everyone down and explain the amount of money that is going into the sugar jar and the length of time that it has to last. Have a little
When you boil all this stuff down, it comes down to the simple idea of living within your means. If you are going to survive the spasm that is taking shape, you will have to get over the childish concept of "impulse buying". All I am talking about here is a structure that will allow you to do this. All of the squealing and whinging being done in the mass media and among your friends and neighbors are nothing but the dismay of spoiled children when they find out that the world doesn't rotate around their needs and wants.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Saving Yeast
OK: The first low-tech batch came out of the carboy today. So far, so good. Looks and smells like beer.
What I did today was to make the first real attempt at recycling yeast. Did an all-grain wort yesterday. (8 lbs of 2-row, 2 lbs 120L Crystal malt, 3 oz northern brewer Hops). Let it cool overnight in the pot and poured it right onto the yeast from the bottom of the last batch.
Whew! 45 minutes later the yeast is rockin' I think that I'll get the blow off within 4-6 hours. Cool.
What I did today was to make the first real attempt at recycling yeast. Did an all-grain wort yesterday. (8 lbs of 2-row, 2 lbs 120L Crystal malt, 3 oz northern brewer Hops). Let it cool overnight in the pot and poured it right onto the yeast from the bottom of the last batch.
Whew! 45 minutes later the yeast is rockin' I think that I'll get the blow off within 4-6 hours. Cool.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Dental Floss and Duct Tape
It wouldn't hurt any prepared prepper to have a bunch of dental floss and duct tape hanging around.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Snobs
When you sit back and peer at the mess in America today, one can make a fairly good argument that the problem that we are facing is one of snobbery. I know that I have been beating this drum quite a bit lately, but more and more it appears that at the core of all of our problems is the desire to make ourselves something we are not.
I am a mongrel mix of recent immigrant Italian dirt farmers (read here peasants) and a hodgepodge of been-here-a while northern european out of the Arkansas Hollers (read here: white trash). Yeah, I have some upper-crust Jewish roots (my paternal grandmother married a hillbilly for some odd reason), but it is pretty threadbare.
But for some reason, just saying that is considered anathema. We are so married to the lifestyles of the rich and famous that we cannot for a second imagine that there is value and contentment in the simple rhythms of a lower impact lifestyle. Our parents worked as welders and janitors and farmers and factory workers so that we could "better" ourselves. But when we wandered off to college and met the upper crust that are the normal denizens of that weird and wonderful subculture, we threw aside who we were and stated aping the manners of our "betters".
Now this aping of manners and petit-bourgeois similacra of the upper class has permeated the whole society. Houses are outsized and ostentatious as a rule. The house where I grew up is considered a "starter" home, meaning that it isn't good enough for anyone of value. We have allowed the productive jobs of our country to be exported on the mistaken notion that we as a culture were "post-industrial" and thus above work.
So maybe, just maybe, the next time that you are sitting around bitching about everyone else's complicity in this ongoing train wreck, perhaps you might take a look and ponder the near-constant over-reaching that has defined your own life. I think that if you look honestly, you will find that beam that is in your own eye.
I am a mongrel mix of recent immigrant Italian dirt farmers (read here peasants) and a hodgepodge of been-here-a while northern european out of the Arkansas Hollers (read here: white trash). Yeah, I have some upper-crust Jewish roots (my paternal grandmother married a hillbilly for some odd reason), but it is pretty threadbare.
But for some reason, just saying that is considered anathema. We are so married to the lifestyles of the rich and famous that we cannot for a second imagine that there is value and contentment in the simple rhythms of a lower impact lifestyle. Our parents worked as welders and janitors and farmers and factory workers so that we could "better" ourselves. But when we wandered off to college and met the upper crust that are the normal denizens of that weird and wonderful subculture, we threw aside who we were and stated aping the manners of our "betters".
Now this aping of manners and petit-bourgeois similacra of the upper class has permeated the whole society. Houses are outsized and ostentatious as a rule. The house where I grew up is considered a "starter" home, meaning that it isn't good enough for anyone of value. We have allowed the productive jobs of our country to be exported on the mistaken notion that we as a culture were "post-industrial" and thus above work.
So maybe, just maybe, the next time that you are sitting around bitching about everyone else's complicity in this ongoing train wreck, perhaps you might take a look and ponder the near-constant over-reaching that has defined your own life. I think that if you look honestly, you will find that beam that is in your own eye.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
1632
I have long been a devotee of the odd sub-cult surrounding a series of books titled the 1632 universe by Eric Flint et al. I would strongly recommend that all of you go to the Baen book free website and download the book 1632 for enjoyment and/or possible edification. All of the books on the website are free. Some are quite good. Others are....well....books.
Start here
The story in a nutshell is that a small town in W. Virginia gets transported back in time to the thirty years war.
I like it because good and decent folks band together and win. But more important to us is the fact that the knowledge we currently enjoy allows the protagonists to be effective. One of the issues that they speak of all the time is "gearing down" and "downshifting". In my mind, this is what we as a society ought to be discussing. Not whether or not we should keep trying the eternal ponzi scheme of constant upward growth, but rather, what level of technology is appropriate and enough.
I have a sneaking hunch it isn't a microchip on a coffeepot or weekend jaunts on a jetliner.
Start here
The story in a nutshell is that a small town in W. Virginia gets transported back in time to the thirty years war.
I like it because good and decent folks band together and win. But more important to us is the fact that the knowledge we currently enjoy allows the protagonists to be effective. One of the issues that they speak of all the time is "gearing down" and "downshifting". In my mind, this is what we as a society ought to be discussing. Not whether or not we should keep trying the eternal ponzi scheme of constant upward growth, but rather, what level of technology is appropriate and enough.
I have a sneaking hunch it isn't a microchip on a coffeepot or weekend jaunts on a jetliner.
Monday, December 1, 2008
A Low-Cost Social/Financial Barometer
Go find yourself a silver dollar or a silver eagle. Right now you can purchase one at on-line stores in the $15-$20 range.
Carry it with you. Use it occasionally to try and buy something that you fancy.
Now, here is how you read the meter on this simple little measuring tool.
Carry it with you. Use it occasionally to try and buy something that you fancy.
Now, here is how you read the meter on this simple little measuring tool.
- If people don't want to take it or look at you funny: Times are good. Party on.
- If people look at if for a bit and try to give you less value than the current value of the silver: Start paying closer attention, things are still OK, but outlook is looking negative.
- People are willing to give you what you feel is fair, no questions asked: Severe slide pending.
- People are willing give you more than the value of the coin and ask if you need anything else: Button up the barn Bertha, the party's getting started.
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