Watch this twelve good minutes

Taking a vacation

Don't be too surprised if you don't see anything coming out of this space for a couple of days. It is the boys spring break and I have earned enough leave to take a couple of days off.

So, hiking, digging gardens, reading, and cleaning for the next little bit. I'll post if the mood strikes me, but don't hold your breath.

I'm looking forward to some downtime.

John

Orders from Headquarters

More and more I am thinking that we are either in, or rapidly approaching a phase-change.  It might not happen, but I am giving odds at 4:1 for the phase change. 

Oh, I know that y’all think that I am waffling with the odds thing.  Here in tin foil hat land, one must scream with absolute certainty about these things, but, I have been too wrong too many times to have any faith whatsoever in my infallibility.

So anyway, there is a 20% chance of us being able to pull out of the nastiness.  But is depends on some pretty damn weak reeds.   Those reeds are the national politicians in the G20. 

Cuz’ you see, it will require a concerted effort by everyone to stop the slide.  Every country will have to take a huge hit and we here in the good old USA will have to eat more s#^% than the others, after all, it is the group of thieves who have hijacked this country who started the whole mess.

What I am hoping for is that somehow the leaders of the G20 will come together and come up with a real plan.  One that recognizes that fault needs to be laid, punishment meted out, and then left alone.  That errors in judgment were made and too much greed was let run free.  That the Davos-style greed and arrogance led us down a primrose path and we must return to simplicity and brotherhood and care for our neighbor.  That beggar-thy-neighbor is wrong-headed and will lead to worse outcomes.

OK, OK, maybe the odds are  bit lower than what I stated, but I can hope can’t I?

In a marketplace in old Algiers

I just made the mistake of re-reading my recent rant about air travel.  It would appear that I was particularly bilious that day, so, I think that it is appropriate for me to take some time and expand on one of the subtexts within this ill-humored bit of fluff.
Lets speak of travel and differing culture.   Going to another place and immersing oneself in another culture is a great way to grow as a person.  Don’t kid yourself, your home, wherever it is, is just another spot on the planet.  It is not especially favored by God and does not hold the keys to all truth and goodness.  Travelling and spending time and energy within another culture is one hell of a good thing.  Makes you work on your humility and thankfulness, something that is always needed here in the good old USA.
What offends me so much in our ways of travelling is the tourist/business travel way of life.  It is not limited to Americans, though the Japanese and us have elevated the lifestyle to an art form.  Travelling to a distant land and trying desperately to keep the local culture at arms length, like something to be coolly examined under a naturalist’s lens.  Subtle mocking is the order of the day, to be performed while catching a quick golf game and being served cocktails by servile/nubile locals.  Jimmy Buffet put it best in this excerpt for “A Cowboy in the Jungle”

Steel band in the distance
And their music floats across the bay
While American women in moomoos
Talk about all the things they did today
And their husbands quack about fishing
As they slug those rum drinks down
Discussing who caught what and who sat on his butt
But it's the only show in town.
Chorus:
They're tryin' to drink all the punches
They all may lose their lunches
Tryin' to cram lost years into five or six days
Seems that blind ambition erased their intuition
Plowin' straight ahead come what may.

I have spent too much time and mileage on jet planes.  My Continental Airlines frequent flyer statement by itself shows 329,957 miles.  This number doesn’t include Delta, American Airlines, or the Military Airlift Command, which add about probably twice that to the total.  I’ve been to a couple too many continents and have no intention whatsoever to see the last two.  Traveling to do stuff was part of my life for quite a bit.  But all that time in a bad chair going somewhere else allowed me to watch the bad parts and become thoroughly disgusted by them.
It turns out that my real problem with the current travel model is that it allows one little chance of truly interacting with other people.  You understand other cultures by being invited to weddings; sitting in a back alley in Beijing getting drunk on big bottles of Yanjing beer with your work buddies; watching a young Thai man getting his head shaved in preparation for being a monk; sitting in a bar in Little India with the smell of the spice market overwhelming you while the monks at the Buddhist temple down the street send out a bass line to their prayers; carefully listening to the little Arab kid who sells you the hash cookie and not eating the whole damn thing.
So, if you want to travel, quit your job and catch a boat.  Get an apartment on the rive gauche and argue Sartre.  Squat in a market in Katmandu and dicker over the price of hashish, or go work in a nunnery in Calcutta helping the poor.
But for Christ’s sakes, don’t go there to play golf.

This is what I am thinking

My old buddy Mayberry has just written an article on his frustration.  In a real sense, it is the same frustration that all of feel when we are watching cheap B-grade slasher films and the people on the screen can’t see the man in the mask sneaking up behind them.

Now, this is particular paragraph is directed at Mayberry, and is a bit of a dressing down, so please take it in the spirit it is given:  Look man, if you want to win them over to your point of view, you have to stop thinking of them as “drooling idiots” and “sheeple”.  They are your countrymen and your neighbors.  They might be mistaken, and they might be behind the curve, but folks don’t listen to you when they think you consider them to be less than yourself.

Now, back to the point at hand.  I recently put up some info about the common security club system that is being started by the folks over the Institute of Policy Studies and onthecommons.org. 

I have started a dialog with these folks, because I really feel that if we are going to be getting through the next little bit of time in history, we are going to have to do it together.  Doing things together means organization and hard work.  I would prefer to use a more right-wing, libertarian organization as a resource, but the organizational cadres of these appear to have been hijacked by the same people who are currently looting the country. 

The left has a long and proud history of organization at low levels.  The right has historically spent much effort suppressing such organization.  Joe Hill is still dead, yet he is much better remembered than the Utah Supreme court who turned down the appeal. 

So, I am beginning the process of making common cause with these unreconstructed leftists.  I have issues with some of their thinking, but they seem to be headed the right way.  Maybe if I talk with them as equals, and we work together, both groups will grow in wisdom.

I’ll keep you posted

A sentient thing

That is how we appear to think of and describe the economy.  Since the days of Adam Smith, we have had this idea that the ways of money and of the economy are the actions of a peculiar form of sentience.  I especially love the idea espoused by the “efficient market hypothesis”.  That prices act as some sort of supercomputer, reflecting the “true” price of things.  We are currently coming to understand the complete stupidity of this bit of academic fluff.

As I have already admitted, the bulk of my academic knowledge in economics was drained from my brain cells in recurrent drinking bouts with a linebacker from Eau Claire.  But my memories of the theories and practices described to me in macro then micro economics still raise a spate of giggling.

Prices are usually reflected best in and are a symptom of the madness of crowds.  Bubbles and ponzi schemes and manipulations of the market by any number of actors appear to be the norm.  This has been so since the time of John Law and the Mississippi bubble, they probably date back further than that, but I am too lazy to go looking for citations.  Governments overtaxing and going bankrupt are commonplace.  Business cheating and colluding and overcharging are equally common.  The only common ground is that one of the other (government or business) usually has has first pick during any particular time.

So what say we stop thinking about the mad chasing of lucre as “the economy” and thus stop incorrectly anthropomorphizing it as a sentient, controllable thing.   I think a better analogy for the wheels of commerce would be that of an ocean, with its tempests, calm harbors, and tsunamis.  Then we might have a better chance at a sufficient understanding to live with it. 

Read this

This should creep you out.

http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html#dc=gh0sla&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=gh0sla&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20latitude

I am more and more happy that I don’t own a cell phone

Mixed feelings

I have been seriously looking into this concept. 

http://commonsecurityclub.org/

I am very curious and intrigued about the possibilities the idea offers, but I am very leery of the koombaya aspects.  I am thinking that something like this is just the ticket, but if we implement it with the lack of discipline and the poor decision-making outcomes required of a system structured as these folks approach the problem, it will be doomed for failure.

Please go and look at these folks.  I think there is a lot more good there than bad. 

Science funding and the forced bias on data

Science funding in the US is a strange thing.  It is a classic example of those that gots, gets.

The current trends in science are constantly reinforced by funding agencies staffed with scientists who fund the research that supports their own work.  It is a constant shuffle between academia and government.  The current model is enshrined.

Let me tell you about my experience back in the early 80’s.  I worked in a lab that did research in avian retroviruses (Rous Sarcoma virus) developing vaccines.  When I presented my work to my committee, one of my assigned faculty told me that “what you call retroviruses is a artifact in your data.”  You see, at the time, in Gordon’s mind, central dogma in molecular biology was that DNA—>RNA—>Protein.  There was no backtracking, that was the way of it.  Needless to say, I went and got a job, cuz I sure wasn’t going to get a degree.

Now that dogma isn’t held up as true.  I probably could dust off my work and resubmit it, but at this point, who cares?  The point of the story is that science isn’t always right, especially when funding is involved.  Suppression of data disproving current dogma is as prevalent now as in the 1600’s.  The only difference is that now the cycles of getting the real data out are shorter.

So right now I have been fascinated by the work in climate coming out of Russia and other countries.  They are sniping at the current religious beliefs of the “global warming” cadre and press.  They are also being systematically ignored.   I can’t emphasize strongly enough about the human error and mistakes in Science.  Eugenics was taught in high schools in the 1930’s.  God apparently does play dice.  Sociobiology is ignored because it conflicts with educational beliefs.

Wonder what the truth will be twenty years hence.

An unknowable war, the war that isn’t

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.
Mao Tse-Tung

My DD214 is an odd thing.  It says absolutely nothing.  I am an 11B10.  I am shown to be an expert in the 45 caliber pistol and the hand grenade.  I am a marksman with the M16. 

I am shown with no time out of country.  It lists no medals.

All of this is at odds with my memories and a box of crap up in my moms cedar chest in Utah, but when you were employed by the US Army in this period of time (1975-1981), there is often an strange discontinuity in many a career.

What I am saying here is that oftentimes, in the course of a nations history, the military is quite active, but not involved in a publicly announced and debated war.   This is for the best, as the rough and violent men that make up the military are sorely tested by peacetime service with its parades and politics.

We should be looking at the truth of the world.  That there is need for such as these men, but they are best spent sparingly.  To throw them away trying to keep peace for the ungrateful is a mission that demeans both these soldiers and those in their “long Egyptian night”. 

Maybe we ought to really look at how we run our military.  Large conventional forces are not where we need to be, they force us to be targets.  Maybe a hidden military is a better.  There are good reasons for the use of violence.   None of them are appealing.  But they are still there.  The silent raid, the targeted chaos to remove a threat, the silent murder to stop a war.

The military is the biggest of the “too big to fail” enterprises within our country.  But if we keep sending it to die in large numbers for little reason, it may choose not to fail in a way we may not like.   I think that it will be imperative for the future of the Republic that we rethink our military force structure and its uses.

I think that it is also time to ponder the history and fate of the New Model Army.  They kicked ass wherever they went too.

Theft of what?

I have been thinking a lot about bailouts, money losses, theft, and all the other unpleasant thoughts that occur when one reads the headlines or listens to the yammering on the television or radio.

But just now, an unpleasant thought has just went through my head.  The whole thing is a shell game.  Fast hands moving the shells around so quickly that we lose track of what we are trying to follow.

Folks, we are broke.  Period.  The “assets” that we are buying are worthless.  We are buying them with money of no value. 

All that is happening here is some folks think that what they are getting will be worth something.  It won’t…what’s the problem.

We are at the endgame.  It is that really crappy point where you are too stinking proud to push your king over and concede, so you let the rook and the bishop push you inexorably back to checkmate.

So, my feeling is to suck it up.  The money is gone.  The system is broke.  Time to get on with thinking about the way up while the idiots figure out that they are beat. 

Might as well crack a beer and watch the antics

Just because I am a curmudgeon

Consider for a moment this article.

Now, this is probably raising ire among the constytooshunalists.  Maybe so, but good on the TSA.

It isn’t because I afraid of terrorism.  Naw, terrorism is less frightening to me that what I know will occur the next time I go for my yearly checkup(I hate being >50 YO).

It is because we have to stop this incessant gadding about on airplanes.  We appear to be infatuated with some notion that it our right to climb aboard a aluminum tube sloshing with jet fuel, burn the jet fuel up at 30,000 feet, where the greenhouse gasses produced by said combustion can have the greatest adverse effects, in order to land and “recreate” in a different place than where we live.

Oh…cultural education you say…we get to see other cultures.  Bullshit, folks who are rich enough to travel this way don’t go anywhere near the local culture, they stay in places where a well-disinfected, disneylike, simulation is available to ever so discreetly disparage.

My favorite is the “business traveller”.  This moron does it because he is felt to be indispensible.  His is the healing presence that allows all good things to flow.  Money and goodwill are his to turn like a tap.  What a drone.

Nope, my feeling is that anything that will will help to kill the ill-considered and parasitic airline travel and tourism industries will be be for the overall good and be a blessing for the planet.

You go TSA…you have my full support.  Hell, for my share of the money, you can even throw in some random cavity searches.

Now this makes for some interesting reading

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-645&tab=committees

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h645ih.txt.pdf

Nobility of the sword, nobility of the robe

I feel that the biggest problem currently facing the United States is the completely unequal power distribution.  We have been taken over by the rich.

I guess what surprises me the most is how the rich have neutered us low-lifes.  They haven’t done it the old fashioned way, with the dragonnade and the gallows, but rather, they have appealed to our cupidity.  The po’ folk here in the US feel that, if only they could keep the government off of their back, they could rise up the social and cultural ladders and live like the plantation owners of old.  Hrrmph.

Folks, I don’t know how to tell you this, but the rich have no intention of sharing, and they have every intention of butt-fucking us until the bitter end.   Some will say “why look, you are so wrong,  millionaires have been created by the miracle of capitalism.”  Well, I say bullshit.  There are maybe a couple of Dot-Com millionaires left (not that a million will be worth much soon), but most of them are just folk now.  Real estate millionaires need no explanation whatsoever.  It is boiling down to the poor folks who get screwed and the rich pukes (read here:  Goldman-Sachs) that do the screwing.  In other words “same as it ever was”.

The rich plutocrats that are stealing from us live on Wall Street.  Their wealth and power depend on us thinking that, through pluck and hard work and a little luck we can join them.  This is the ultimate American lottery.  A chance of a couple million-to-one to join the plutocrats all for an easy, single-payment price of your freedom. 

This is the ultimate irony.  They sell the masses on the idea that if capitalism is unfettered, anyone can rise to the big times.  So we give these swine the freedom and they turn around and screw us hard.  Then they go back to the same old well and say that if we take their freedom to screw us, we will not be able to join them in the screwing class.  So we hem and haw…because our fondest dream is to be on the other side and to be an oppressor.

Freedom and high-level crony capitalism have nothing to do with each other.  One is a right, the other is a golden-plated set of chains.   What we are seeing now is the gold plating wearing off the chains, exposing them for what they truly are.

I’ll make you a bet that we order them replated and keep on going.

Systems View

The real difficult part of this period of time in our lives is that we are living through a confluence of multiple systems undergoing rapid change at the same time. 

Human nature being what it is, we will try to sort and categorize all of the data into understandable categories.  The trouble with this view is that we will pigeonhole the data incorrectly and that will skew our analysis.   The act of classification leads to all sorts of problems.

Which is the phenomenon?  Which is the epiphenomenon?  Is there a causal link between A and B?  These are fundamental questions that have not been answered to my satisfaction.

The current raft of problems that we are experiencing are one of the difficult brews that percolate though the human population from time to time.  I would very much recommend a little brushing up on the phenomenon of the Bundschuh in the sixteen century HRE. 

We are on the verge of a major change.  I feel it in my bones.  But my bones have led me wrong before.  They have also been tragically right.  In order to understand and make plans, you have to understand the first principles.  Getting involved in petty squabbles about the appropriate classification of a minor symptom isn’t going to help you.

If I can get a decent handle on this, I will let you guys know. 

Just 'a thinkin'

Working on some ideas.  Nothing has gelled yet.

 

So, there is nothing here today.

 

Sorry

Man…….

I’m just gonna watch today, things are getting interesting.

The Tea Party

Sending a tea bag to Washington

I have not decided whether or not this is a foolish waste of time, or it might be worth a go.

Hmm….what the hell, $1.26 for postage to all three.   Harry Reid because he may well be the most piss poor excuse for a Senate leader in the history of the office.  Nancy Pelosi because she is nothing but Tom Delay in drag and botox.  Barack Obama because he promised change and has thus far only delivered the same tired democratic politburo.

It probably won’t wake them up.  But it might.  At around $1.50 it is worth a try.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Office of the Speaker
H-232, US Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Harry Reid
United States Senate
522 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-2803

Can you really ever have….

Too much toilet paper?

I always remember my Mom and my uncles trying to one up each other in the “who really had it bad in the depression” derby.   Listen to this to get a general idea.

One of the big reasons that I pray fervently for the continuation of civilization is the easy access to this luxury item.  Mom and the uncles spoke of their use of Sears catalogs in the outhouse.  As my great-grandmother and grandmother did substantiate this tidbit, it bears a stamp of “very likely the truth”.   Apparently,  there was a strong drive to go for the order pages first, as they were made from flimsy, softer paper that would be lighter in the mail and cost less postage.  The glossy pages were not highly regarded.

But if there is a general breakdown, one of the things that you will have to wrestle with is shortages and absence of a whole bunch of stuff that are essentials currently.  Even if there isn’t a breakdown, you should do routine inventories of your mound of stuff to see what is really needed. 

And pray for the continued financial health of Kimberly-Clark.

Local

I guess that you should take some time every week to take a look at the news.  I personally recommend reading The Economist cover to cover on Sunday morning.  Excellent writing, good clear insights.  It is canted toward the making money at all costs neck of the political spectrum, but you can live with it.   I am thinking about ordering up a subscription to the Nation to see how the liberals think, but I can get the same from NPR for free.

Because, you see  I think that it is the frequency that appeals to me so.  Just once a week.  That is enough time for seeing something significant that occurs on the great stage. 

You see, I think that a lot of the zeitgeist of the current thrashing around is our REQUIREMENT for immediacy.  We want to know everything when it happens.  It is almost a game, who can make it to the water cooler first with the most recent nugget of bad news.

But think about this trend.  How much of your life is spent trolling for the latest tidbit proving that the world is going to hell instead of going out and doing something useful.   Of course the world is going to hell, just ask the old men in Athens in Socrates days, they coulda’ ran down the whole deal for you.

My point here is that the most important things are the local things.   Go talk to your neighbors and gossip about the new family that has moved in.  Take some cookies to the old lady next door.  Hoe your garden. 

The news will be there on Sunday morning.  What will not be there is the shrill demand for immediacy and immediate resolution that is the hallmark of this petulant and demanding age.

Cutting and running

Bugging out is an interesting concept.  The idea that things will get so bad that you will have to leave your home and make for the wilderness in order to save you life.

But the more that I think about it, the more that the logic of this endeavor eludes me.  Unless you have a secured site to go to, with prepared caches of supplies along the way, and a good plan, I think that you might have a hell of a go at it.  Best of luck.

Even when you arrive, folks seem to have an oddly stylized idea of life in Bugoutland.  All the sudden, the woes of a failed society are lifted from ones shoulders and one is armed anew with clear eyes, a steely gaze, and a fresh supply of good old American ingenuity.  The ground will yield bountiful harvests and the neighbors will all be clear-skinned patriots.  Oh, there will be some troubles, but they will be easily run off with a couple of well-considered three-round bursts from one’s trusty M-4.  All of this will be accomplished before a healthy and flavorful dinner is served by a trusting and loving spouse.

Well folks, pardon me for being a bit of a cynic here, but I just don’t see it.   At best, if things get so bad that you need to bug out, and even if you have the foresight and good luck to have Bugoutland already prepared, I don’t think that it will at all resemble the idyllic scene above.

I guess that I see it as more akin to the story of Beowulf.   The Heorot that has been built will house your own claustrophobic version of brooding Hrothgar, but Grendel and his mom will still be on the outside.  If I were you, I wouldn’t plan on the group of good-hearted sociopaths named Beowulf and the Geats to pull your bacon from the fire.

You see, I think that cities are the place to be.  Yes there will be gangs.  Yes there will be a whole buttload of problems, but they will have solutions.  There will be the manpower and drive to get things right.  I don’t think that things will have the flex that we have now.  Folks will eat less, make less, pay more, and work more.  We will live within our means.  We will probably have a lot of things removed from our “entitlements” list and placed over into the “luxuries” column where they belonged in the first place. 

In the end, it has always been the πόλεις that has made the world a better place. 

I will stand.

The yuppies are dead (God, I will miss the food) long live the yuppies

The used grocery (actually, store where I shop has had an excellent run on boutique and fancy yuppie food.  Apparently, this stuff isn’t selling worth a hill of beans in the usual dens of yuppiedom.  I would venture a guess that as of late as even the swinish, self-centered morons who fed the food craze fads have been running out of money.  Their elite little bottles of really good food have been banished to the netherworld of liquidator stores.

So the boys and I have been livin’ large of late.  Last weeks sale of now unfashionable elite food has yielded some real gems:

• 16 oz of unfiltered organic olive oil for $2.99.
• Marinated artichoke hearts for $0.99
• Calabrese bruschetta topping (red peppers, ricotta, olive oil, pecorino romano cheese) for $1.49
• Mixed Marinated Greek olives $1.49

When you put these together with the rye pizza dough (Pane segala) you have quite a good thing.  A killer pizza for $4.50 for the whole shootin’ match.  I will take the liberty of displaying the results with one of the last two bottles of my lo-tek brau and I think that all will have to say that (in the words of that über-yuppie Martha Stewart) that this is a good thing.


(PS:  The slice to the left are the standard pepperoni/sausage that the boys insist upon….the plebeians)

So the moral of this story is that the really good food that was the hallmark of yuppiedom is looking to go the way of the last great American whale.  So, get thee hence to your local used grocery store and make hay while the sun shines.  It ain’t gonna last and I guarantee you that it will be a pleasant memory.
God I will miss the food.

Requiem for a deleted article

Had an article all queued up and ready, then made the mistake of giving it one final read through.  Thank God for delete functions

Folks, sometimes I am one crabby old man.   I have to be careful to not let that particular note spread too far through the blog.  Because mostly I have to keep a good temper about things that I can have no effect upon.  I have to focus on the things that I can do.

Oh granted, a good bit of bitching and whining is good for the soul if if it is balanced.  But sometimes if you are just bitchin’ to bitch, you gotta shut it off.  Try and remember that the best bitching is done from the top of a barstool, drink in hand, taking your turn when the lead complainer role is passed from friend to friend, down the line.

Then the next morning, you get up and go back to work so that you can make a small impact for good in the world.  Sometimes it won’t be much, but it will be there. 

Gotta finish my tea and get going, its 4:45 and the day calls.

Lost and Found

Lost:

One muse, last seen a couple of days ago.  If found, please contact this site.

I'll try again tomorrow

Peleton

Fucking bicycle assholes.

OK…lets get this clear, I am all for folks riding their bicycles.  Good exercise, wonderful means of transportation, we should all own one and use them to get around.  I love mine and admit that I don’t use it enough, though I plan on changing that this summer.

Nope, what I am talking about here is the bike nazi’s.  You probably have them where you live.  You know, the pack of 20-40 year old yuppie-somethings that dress up in ridiculous, tight, fluorescent clothing and ride through the streets as a gaggle, clogging up traffic and generally irritating those on the road with them.   As this is a weekly occurrence in my neighborhood, it is starting to get a bit stale in my mind.

They seem to be living out some strange sexual fantasy of being on the Tour de France.  I would wager that they spend many a night closeted in their bathroom with erotic pictures of Lance Armstrong and a big jar of lube.  They spend enough on their bikes to buy a small African country and preen constantly whenever a member of the opposite sex heaves into view. 

By riding in a huge group, they block traffic and keep people from passing them safely.  The thing that really pisses me off though is that they usually drive their bike rack infested SUV’s to a meeting spot, then go out for their orgy of traffic-impairing self-righteousness.

I have a lot of trouble restraining myself from running them down as sport.

Fucking bicycle assholes.

OK Maybe I am missing something here

OK, the market is up 250 today on the fact that Citi made 2 billion in profit. 

 

Now, didn’t we just fork over 30 some odd billion to these clowns? 

 

How hard is it to make a 2 billion profit after someone hands you 30 billion?

 

Just wondering

Triticale and Rye

Making pizza dough tonight.  But as an experiment, I’m going to start cutting the wheat flour with rye flour.   Tonight I will start with 1 cup dark rye to 4 cups white.  Go through the normal recipe and see how it goes over.   Rye and it’s kissing cousin triticale are winter-hardy crops that will do a lot better in short growing seasons.  Might behoove me to learn a bit about them

I guess that the reason that I am trying this on is to add some variations to the themes in my cooking, but another is that I am a contrary fellow, and I am beginning to think that there might not be more to the global warming debate as I was leaning a while ago.  There is no real reason for this, I am just starting to suspect that there may be something deeper than the data shows.  .

There has been a whole bunch of black swans wandering around the planet lately.   It seems as though the “experts” have been wrong more than they have been right and the phenomenon has been spread out across any number of fields.    There is starting to be some evidence accumulating that the suns cyclical nature is not all that well understood by the experts.  The sunspot cycle was supposed to have restarted by now.  Instead, there is zip, nada.  I’m waiting to see.   But what is curious to me is the was that the scientist smart-boys are treating the data.

Watch this and you will see what I mean.  When they started out in july 2004 the mimimum was supposed to be in early 2007 with a huge old peak ahead of us.  Instead, it is now getting onto the second quarter of 2009 and we are still at the bottom. 

What I am saying is that I am starting to seriously suspect anything that claims to predict future events from a mathematical model.   And lets not kid ourselves, that is a bunch of our lives.  Better to be careful and to cover all bets.  I am not sure that the experts are worth their weight in warm spit.

I’ll keep you posted on how the rye bread pizza works out.

Seeds

So today is a inventory day for seeds.

1. Radish
2. Swiss Chard
3. Pole Beans
4. Brussel Sprouts
5. Turnips
6. Delicata Squash
7. Sugar Baby Watermelon
8. Zucchini
9. Cabbage x 2
10. Cucumber
11. Spinach
12. Tomato
13. Carrot
14. Beets
15. Carrot
16. Cauliflower
17. Broccoli
18. Peas x 2

So…Now I have to make a decision about living arrangements pretty soon.  What was once an easily affordable home at my old salary has now become somewhat a burden at the new rate of pay (don’t kid yourself, a salary cut to 40% of what you are used to making changes your world).  But the current digs has mucho gardening space and a great landlady.  I am honestly thinking about a roommate but have to discuss it with the boys.

So anyway, Peas are my first crop planted.  I have a running dispute with my neighbor about the planting, she claims that you should always get them in before the first of March, I wait until the soil temp goes over 47° F.  Who knows, but after reading this,  I think that I will hold off for a little while on planting the peas.

Silence and blindness

Went walking this morning, down to the red canoe and back.  Two reasonably flat miles through a quiet town.  Fishermen are out on the river.  Not too many bums out yet.  Four or five new for sale signs, lots of for rent signs.  Almost no traffic. 

What saddened me was that everyone that was on the streets with me (save the bums) had their iPods on and were tuned out. 

So this will turn out to be a further digression on music.  But this is more a digression on how it can be misused to blind us to the world around it.  As good old Claudius has pointed out so eloquently, good music takes some effort, takes some ritual.  But what is channeled through the white earpieces while you are out on the streets isn’t music.  It is a wall that prevents you from interacting with the world around you and vice versa.

When you wander the streets, trying to wall yourself off from the world around you, you become little better than the גולם.  You are an insular self, deliberately cutting your senses off in order to staunch and “better” control the information flow that is the world we live in.  You become insensate in the true sense of the word, substituting a rhythmic simulacrum for the complexity and subtlety of the world.

Think of all the little things that you do to prevent this interaction.  I am arguing that there are innumerable things that you do that are similar to this particular deliberate self-impairment.  One by one, these are things that you will have to root out.

Preventing yourself from fully seeing the world that engulfs you will keep you from sensing the subtle cues that will perhaps allow you the edge you need to live.

From Claudius

Bob O'Brien's "Musings..." (great stuff there) puts me in mind of this
song....

The unbearable oddness of being

(Front Note: I had almost finished this article when I read this one. It is actually much better articulated than mine. Damn. Thanks Bob O’Brien for writing it so well and thanks CKMichaelson for pointing it out to me)

It is difficult sometimes to ignore the very real desire to crawl into an insulated cocoon of work/home/sleep and by doing so to ignore the world. I am living in a country where a cartel of bankers controls the government and the people who are my neighbors and friends are being relegated to the time-honored status of serfdom.

A peculiar apathy takes me sometimes. “What the hell”, I say to myself, things aren’t really so much going bad as returning to normal. But the path back to normal is going to be paved with all kinds of unsavory things. The wealth of country is going to be looted by the nobility of greed and the lives of our children will be returned to the normal impoverishment of the masses. We will be the backs that will build the new Versailles and the coins that could feed and educate our children will pay for the new Sistine chapels with a new and improved Denarii Sancti Petri.

We will argue about the oh-so-obvious pack of lies bellowed by democratic party versus the oh-so-obvious pack of lies shrieked by the republicans. It is not so much a debate as a deliberate distraction in order for the assassins to line up the crosshairs.

We will continue to knowingly elect officials with histories of screwing us over because they lard the looting with enough “jobs” for our little slice of hell. We will rant and complain, but most will in the end comply because the myth of our “American Exceptionalism” and the sacredness of our “Constitution” and our “American Way of Life” will blind us.

We are now being looted. The accumulated treasures from our rape of the financial world following the Second World War is being taken from us by the uberclass. When I started this blog, I had kinda hoped that maybe it would open some eyes. But the eyes are still firmly closed. It would even appear now that the feet are drumming on the ground, the fingers are in the ears, and a singsong “la la la” is being voiced.

Oh well, it was just money.

Time to get back to work

Just a question

So, the constitution has been around for 230+ years.  It has been the centerpiece which is garlanded with slavery, the trail of tears, a good solid crack at colonialism in the Phillipines, manifest destiny, a civil war, one good, one not so good world wars, Vietnam, the current messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least 6 or seven major financial crises, Guantanamo Bay, Privateers, carpetbagging, the elections of 2000 and 1876, several invasions of other countries on the sly, Dred Scott, and the Federal Reserve.

So, Why is it that something that has allowed this string of questionable events to occur and flourish is sacred?

Maybe, just maybe, we need a new starting point.

Maybe it is time for a new constitutional convention.

What is it with these guys

Now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am NOT a member of the Democratic Party.  I really think that the Democrats are little more than the PR department for the teachers union and the trial lawyers.   They appear to me more intent on carefully crafting a world with all the sharp corners rounded off.  They also appear to be tightly focused on making sure that we are all equally labeled and pigeonholed as victims so that they can “help” all of us.  That coupled with the empty promises of extracting us from two pointless wars leave me to think that it is all the same shit over and over again

So that being said, what the hell is the problem with the Republican Party?  They cannot seem to find anything but liars and losers to stand up and run for any office.  Can anyone think of a decent republican lately…please….anyone??  Now they are out of power they appear to have found religion in fiscal probity.  Something that they lacked seriously when they were in power.  But it appears that when they overspend in power it is for virtuous reasons, when the opposition overspends in power, it is evil.

So, since the Demos are morons and losers and the Republicans are morons and nitwits, can we please get off the “Demo’s are going to take us into hell” tirades here in tin-foil hat land.  Bullshit.  The Clinton Adminstration got us started, the Republicans under Georgie smallbrains drove us 90% of the way there, now you are going to try to blame the fall on the democrats just because they were driving when we crossed the finish line?  Give me a break.

It isn’t just the presidents, it is the legislatures at all levels who dole out money to keep us happy, and our greedy sucking at the tit that drags us down. 

I don’t know what to do, we need to somehow create a mass movement part to compete with these parties of self-absorbed thugs.  But as the the perquisites that they hand out freely to placate the masses and the corporate money and power protect the sacred “two-party” system, it seems to be an almost impossible task.  

Good old George

Pimps or Shills

CNBC, the Nightly Business Report, and MSNBC have built an entire structure around the idea that money is sacred.

They must be going through hell right now, their beliefs in something for nothing being challenged the way it is.  But what will really start to tell is when people will stop watching these pimps.  They sell hot air and commercial time for get rich quick schemes.  Hell,  look at the composition of their commentators.  Bald guys and bimbos. 

The sooner these whorish swine are banished from the airways the better.  Please stop watching them now so that their ratings drop and they are one of the losses of the great depression that we won’t regret losing.

The Road to Hell

I still remember vividly the first time I heard this song.  1988, in Kent, Washington.  Parking next to a field where they were getting ready to tear up some fine cropland to put in another strip mall.  Thought it was prescient then, looks perfect for now

Lyrics to The Road To Hell :
Stood still on a highway
I saw a woman
By the side of the road
With a face that I knew like my own
Reflected in my window
Well she walked up to my quarterlight
And she bent down real slow
A fearful pressure paralysed me in my shadow
She said 'son what are you doing here
My fear for you has turned me in my grave'
I said 'mama I come to the valley of the rich
Myself to sell'
She said 'son this is the road to hell'
On your journey cross the wilderness
From the desert to the well
You have strayed upon the motorway to hell

Well I'm standing by the river
But the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison you can think of
And I'm underneath the streetlight
But the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the perverted fear of violence
Chokes the smile on every face
And common sense is ringing out the bell
This ain't no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to hell
And all the roads jam up with credit
And there's nothing you can do
It's all just pieces of paper flying away from you
Oh look out world, take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road
Said this is the road
This is the road to hell

Lent

It is a good model for our current predicament.  A time of fasting and introspection.  Where you examine your life and toss out the dross. 

We need to do this, each and every one of us.  I would argue that if you feel you life has been virtuous and good, perhaps you need to look deeper.  The taint of original sin is in all.

The hard part of where we will be going is going to be getting our heads in tune with the way the world really works.  That you have duties to your fellow man.  That sacrifice and thrift are more important than things.

Begin to pray.  Begin to work to better yourself and provide for your neighbors.

The time is now

Guest Post: Another Ritual

Claudius came through with a guest post

I recently got a turntable after having had only CD's for the last ten years or so. I'm downright relieved to hear vinyl records again, hadn't known how much I missed them.

Based on observation and my own experience of it, some harsh, unfair and over-generalized words about the "iPod-ization" of music:

• First, mp3's and their ilk just plain sound like sh*t.  It's like our latest technology has whisked us back to listening to 78's or 4th-generation dubs of cassettes. So why have they caught on?
• Convenience, yes. But also because, to the iPod-ized listener, sounding like sh*t doesn't matter, 'cause there's no listening anyway. Music is this stuff in your earbuds/docking station that goes straight to the background, it's for modulating your moods or motivating your workout, or squelching whatever troubling noise would happen inside your head absent the distraction.  And iPod-ized music is cheap and instantly obtainable, so naturally it's not greatly valued.

What's lost is the practice of actually listening to music: listening with full and sustained attention, as you'd attend to a good movie or book. Listening because it's important. There's music that demands and rewards nothing less.

Earlier today I listened to Beethoven's 2nd Symphony, with Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. It's a 1951 recording on an RCA Red Seal LP released in 1958, part of a 7-LP set of Beethoven's nine symphonies.  I found it at a very cool classical record shop (I've been discovering these since I got my turntable): a narrow space in an old brownstone, with shelves of vintage LP's going up to the ceiling. To get at their Beethoven I had to climb a rickety ladder and I found rummaging around up there faintly, enjoyably hazardous.

The discs of this Beethoven set are perfectly pristine, as if they'd never been taken out of their wax paper inner sleeves. In 1958 the set would have retailed for around $3.50 per disc, or, in inflation-adjusted dollars, $150.00 or so for the seven-record set. It cost me eight dollars.

As for the sound of these records: I've heard the same Toscanini Beethoven recordings in a couple of different CD incarnations, and in that format they sound bad. RCA/Sony have tried various things to "improve" the sound of the old master tapes: adding fake stereo, fake reverb, hiss reduction, etc., all of which only muddles things and obscures what's there in the original masters. On these RCA Red Seal mono LP's, this music comes into its own: It sounds warm and full and right in ways I can't describe. It's the ideal medium for this particular music.

My point being? Ritual, vinyl, turntables; rummaging through record bins; blowing dust off the stylus; generally obsessing and fetishizing; whatever it takes to get you to sit your ass down and really listen, to find (or rediscover) the music that speaks deeply to you, and to give it a due place in your life: it may be worth doing. Balm for the soul.

Rituals

Remember 33-1/3 records?  The full albums?  YesSongs, Steve Miller Anthology, Dark Side of the Moon?

Remember going out and spending $8-$15 dollars on a new album (when $8 to 15 was a days work) and taking it home, calling your friends and all of you sitting down to listen to the whole thing?   Remember the pleasure of peeling off the shrink wrap and putting it on the turntable, not sure at all what you would be hearing.  Remember dissecting the album and how some of the songs sucked at first and after a bit the grew on you and then became your favorites.

I kinda miss that.  Maybe a turntable is in order. 

Threats

OK….don’t think that threats can be unidirectional.  As I have discussed in prior posts, I have been seriously thinking about going back to dial up.  This is cost-related and shaving expenses kind of thing. 

Well, Friday I acted on it.  Got everything settled in to go back to a dial-up system and called into Qwest to cancel.  When I started to go through the process, they stopped me and sent me over to the “customer satisfaction group”. 

So, when I got there, I tried to shut off my line.  They acted as though I was threatening to kill my dog.  The told me of the great things that I could do with the internet, they told me of the time I would save, they told me about the convenience.  I agreed politely with all of their arguments, said I didn’t want it.

So at the end, they said “we don’t want to lose you as a customer”, and they gave me six months free service.  No contract extension, no strings, just six free months.

Huh?   Needless to say, I took the offer, but I say again “Huh”?

So, you guys might want to give it a try.