Tourist/Racist Charity

Putin has gone and done it.  Told folks here in the US that they won't be able to adopt the Russian children.

Now, there are scads of children here in the US needing to be adopted.  But they are usually the wrong color for the folks wishing to adopt.  So heading over to nominally white Russia allows folks the color option they so desire.

I agree with Vlad on this.  Russia is fully capable of taking care of its own children.  It is us here in the US who need to look at our mirror.  I would agree that, if there were no children available for adoption in the US, going to another country and adopting is a fine gesture, but if there are children here in the US who need adoption, it is absurd to let folks get away with looking around for different models.

I can here the screaming now.  Mostly from the lawyers and caseworkers here in the US who make their living charging absurd sums for the paperwork and bureaucracy-management needed for this venture.  The sums are staggering to most folks.

Naw, I am good with this.  Keep it up Vlad.  I think that it is more important to fix our problems than try to go off and save the rest of the world.

Venality of office

By this, I do not mean the venial nature of the people currently holding public office in America (though I think not enough can be written on that particular issue), but rather, the way that certain professions are held in this country.

Consider for a moment the medical professions.  Doctoring, Nursing, Medical Tech's, CNA's and such.  The schools that run them are extraordinarily profitable, the tuition to enter one prohibitive, and the desire of these guilds to keep supply low and wages high out of the realm of public discussion.

The medical profession as a whole is an endless stream of self adulation and self promotion, all being accomplished by guild-masters whose purpose seems to be the continuation and enhancement of the status, perquisites, and incomes of the guild.  Patient care is taken care of only after the doctors, nurses, techs, etc have been taken care of in a manner that makes them some of the best paid people in America.  We don't even have to bring up the vagaries of the pharmaceutical industry to reinfoce this point.

No, one of the big reasons that we have such an out of control medical cost structure is the featherbedding, overpricing, and insanely lucrative practices of the guilds that control the professions.

Blue Christmas

I, for one, am quite happy that Christmas is over.  It is not that I am Scroogy, and I understand the holiday and it's roots, but it is just getting kind of stale.

This was a pretty decent year.  Yes, I spent more than I should have on the boyos new iPods, but it placates them as phone replacements and they have been good this year.  I got everyone else reasonable presents that they appeared to enjoy and managed not to feel to sorry for myself and didn't buy myself a placation present.

The deal with Christmas is that it all about gifts here.  It is a simulacrum of the holiday, with consumption being a replacement for celebration.

I always have been surprised that in a country/culture such as ours, which claims Christianity as its core tenet, that we make such a huge deal out of Christmas.  Granted, a virgin birth is a trick, but seeing as turkeys, sharks, and other critters can pull off the trick, I don't put it up there at the top of the miracle heap.

But man, can we go out of our way to completely ignore the meaning of Christmas, replacing the birth of a savior with the charting of economic trends as the savior of our economy.

Nope.  I am waiting for Easter.  

Watch The Red Tops

Found this in the wood pile that is the drafts of Blogger's interface.

OK...this is a petty bitch.

The eldest son brought home some tomato plants last May.  Grew them himself with his horticulture class and they did fantastic.  I am actually sick of fresh tomatoes at this point.

Which brings me to my "looking a gift horse in the mouth kind" of bitch.  I really need to remember next year to plant a mix of determinate and non-determinate strains.  What I have is four non-determinate bushes, merrily flowering and growing tomatoes on a continual basis.  I get tomatoes by the grundles, but they are all spaced out so that I never get a whole bunch at once to do the canning/preserving thing.

But I will be trying a trick that a friend just told me that I haven't thought of;  Just pull off the little green thingy, dip the tomato in boiling water, then stick the whole tomato in a gallon baggie and pull the frozens out for sauce.

Nope, next year I will make sure to plant some determinant strains.

Chinese Food For Christmas

Still haven't fixed the damn thing

I am, and have been, putting off the repair of the washing machine.  Some of it is money driven, finding extra coin around Christmas to bring in a repairman is problematic and the desire to actually tear the damn thing down and fix it myself is astonishingly low.

But, the other night I sat down and searched the net to find out that the fix is actually quick and quite simple.  Shit.  A fourteen dollar part and maybe fifteen to thirty minutes of work.

I hate running out of excuses.

If you have a chance, take the time to watch this

The fiscal cliff is a joke.  I say let's just go over it.

I think that it is the only way that we will be able to get any meaningful taxes on the rich.  The amount of tax increase will just put me back at 1990 levels and last time I looked, I got through that just fine.

The fiscal cliff is nothing but a false flag that will offer a way for the conservative Obama administration to gut Medicare and Medicaid.

I have good money down saying that they will do just that.

Here Again

Students dig up cobblestones to throw at police [Photo by Serge Hambourg/via NPR]

Been out for a while. Might leave again soon...who knows.

I haven't been reading that much on-line lately.  The main dystopian thread is centered around the financial world, and to be honest, I am sick of rich white folk bitching about how they are going to become poor white folk.  I have been saying for years that there will be a reckoning, with the short-term thinking of the last thirty years giving way to a more constrained set of long term goals.

What is happening now is the rich are trying to break the poor to their place.  The laws being placed into play are being placed by the wealthy to conserve that wealth.  From the point of view of the wealthy, this is a very good investment.  Politicians have a marvelous return on investment, but so do all cheap whores.  The laws dumping the losses on the rich onto the taxpayers will continue until there is pushback.  We aren't ready for that yet.  The laws giving the rich privileges will continue until there is pushback.  Again, not ready.

The wealthy are constructing their redoubts in plain sight.  The subordination of the military and security apparatus is nearly complete.  The levers of wealth are in secure control.  The legislative and Executive branches of government are in their hip pocket.

The draining of the bourgeois and the middle class have quite a while to run.  They are starting to feel the pinch, but they aren't ready to join the poor for the run at removing the "master class" currently riding us.

Need

So, why is it so important for folks to feel like they are prophets?  I include myself in the mix.

As a species, we seem to pride ourselves on our ability to say “I told you so!”.

I know no one who can truthfully say that they have been right about the future without serious weasel-wording and self delusion.

I wonder if there is a DSM category for this type of behavior.

Funding the Cause

Or: Making the best of it (11/18/12)

The Elder and the Younger are both of an age where, in my humble opinion, they need to have computers available for their homework and other such nonsense. So, I am faced with a funding dilemma that may well be a blessing in disguise.

The old warhorse Pentium-powered Compaq which I have been using to produce this screed was purchased on sale for $299.00 approximately five years ago. The network card just gave up the ghost, and as this card is not replaceable, the computer is now an excellent word processor. This also leaves me with no way to hook to the Internet at my preferred working location of the kitchen table.

I have the new Dell laptop purchased a year ago, but the Youngest uses that for his homework and is now a traveling computer, going back and forth between the two households. The Eldest has his own little convertible tablet, but he is truly loathe to allow sharing by any others. Finally, there is the behemoth tower hooked to the plasma which is a gaming terminal for WOW and other such wasters of time. It definitely cannot be taken to the table for my use.

Now, in the salad days, I would have toddled down to the Dell store and purchased a replacement. But even cheap computers aren't so cheap and shelling out $300.00 to $500.00 for a device primarily used for the occasional post to a not-very-well-read blog seems to be a bit of a waste.

So, here I am, plugging away in LibreOffice Writer, creating an HTML document to be posted in the near future. I get to sit down at the table, write to my heart's content (and my reader's dismay) and not really have any differences in my lifestyle other than an odd little bit where I take the computer and plug it in to charge it, check to see if there are upgrades to the OS (thank you Linux Mint) are available, and do a mail fetch.

Now, the point of this excess of detail is pretty damn simple. What is described in the above paragraphs is not in any way, shape, or form a difficult process. What is also implied is that a lot of folks would have gone the other way, went out and bought a new computer in order to save themselves a very minimal effort and inconvenience.

When I think about it, this is the core of our problems here in the Western world. We are just too damn lazy. I place myself in that group, so please don't accuse my of hypocrisy, I am fully aware of my myriad faults, but the core of this post is to point out that the laziness, and its handmaiden "convenience" are not our best cultural attributes.

We are also getting poorer as a country. Despite the protestations of the impassioned, the rich getting richer is not the issue, the money being hoarded by the wealthy is ephemeral paper, kind of a consensual hallucination or inside joke, signifying status but in a pinch, worthless.

Nope, we are becoming poorer because in our last little oil-fueled orgy of self-gratification (or as I call it, the last twenty-five years of my life) we burned too much the fuel that runs things and used too much of the resources needed to keep the party going.

We are going to be getting poorer. No way around it. We will be poorer in real terms, as we won't be able to go out and buy something every time a notion strikes us, the real costs of everything will increase (read here inflation and/or wage deflation) until their cost to consumer matches the scarcity of resource.

Our lives will change, we will work longer into our declining years, and current retirements will be changed radically. Our dreams of old-age leisure are built upon paper wealth. As the resources underlying this paper wealth are currently being depleted, the value of the paper wealth itself will become progressively more attuned to its real worth (do your really think that Apple is worth $600+ a share?). The golf and the travel will gradually fade away, and the current retirees will find themselves in the standard condition of old people everywhere. Worried and tight with money.

Maybe I dwell to much on all this, It really won't change my life all that much. I know that I will work until I am seventy or so. I will become poorer like the rest of the country and weather the process with as much style as I can manage. I will watch political charlatans come and go, promising things that they cannot deliver. I will endure.

testing.

Testing Testing 1, 2, 3

Hostile Saviors

Found this picture here.   I was giggling so hard at the end of the posting that I nearly old-manned myself.
I was looking for a picture to have at the top of the posting about how, as Americans, we are currently absolutely dependent on the Chinese and the Arabs to support the ideas that "the American lifestyle is not negotiable”.  This little blog came up and what was I to do.  I have a feeling that it is all a bunch of shit by a snot nosed brat of a middle manager, replete with delusions of grandeur, but it might actually be true which makes it that much richer.

Irony

Maybe it is just me, but in light of current events, I find it screamingly funny that General Petraus' biography was titled "All In" by it author,

But I am known for my sophomoric sense of humor.

An Odd Election

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I have been spending a little time watching the post mortems on the election.  Out here in doomerland there is a strange and sullen vibe going around.  Now, lets get to the main point of this.  In the eyes of a majority of doomers (my non-Nate-Silver estimate is around 55% of total doomers) are basically glued to old patterns of race identification and are in varying stages of annoyance/anger that some uppity nigger still has the gall to be in the White House in a capacity other than that of a house servant.

Then there are the significant minority of doomers who make a mental hegira to Galt’s Gulch every year (Non-Nate Silver rates this at around 40% with such a significant overlap with the above group that it probably should be a subset rather than a separate category)

Add to this the gun nuts who populate our little community (around 65%, with 50% overlap with the above two categories) and you are looking at an odd demographic where I kind of fit in.  I am out of touch with around 75% of the prepper/doomer population, which is a small (around 10%) faction of a increasingly odd general population.

So, what do I write about and why the hell should I care?

Maybe I’ll take a long nap.

Happy Veterans Day.

A Bigger Now

 

102012, Saturday morning, around 07:00

This time of the year, this is really the only time that I have the energy or desire to sit down and write something. This desire to write is complicated by my complete lack of insight regarding or details concerning the way that the world is choosing to attempt self-mutilation. I am blind to the coming storm and I can offer no persuasive insight into how to weather it.

I am progressively more and more jealous of the certainty and assuredness with which my parents and grandparents seemed to hold in their images of the future. They seemed to lead their lives with a certainty of a better future for their descendants that I can't seem to conjure out of the vapor of nuance and conflicting data that is offered me.

My forebear’s certainty of a future culture and society was birthed in a slower world, where the recognition and classification of the incoming events and technologies were performed in a setting where the moment had a longer duration. I don't have that luxury: the grossly abbreviated “now” in which I live twists under my feet like a living thing, thrashing like a large, irritated animal, seeking to dislodge my understanding.

I can't seem to come up with a clear vision for the future, the variables that I monitor give me conflicting and bizarre patterns that are resistant to useful conclusions. I can only seem to fall back into a set of poorly executed risk management strategies which have already failed me many times.

Now...upon reading this, you may think to yourself that you are witnessing an individual's descent into depression. I can't really say that this is the case. I feel fine. I am just frustrated that I am not able to make any sense of this mess. I want more than anything to be able to teach my sons how to understand the world, but I am beginning to think that they, with communal silicon memories and their comfort with instant communication are better suited than I to navigate this new world.

But that is where the main thrust of my inability to comprehend lies. To an old man such as myself, the world of Google-based knowledge and social media based communication; all mediated by an increasingly monitored and built-for-purpose internet seems a slippery and dangerous proposition. There are simply too many ways for things to become too complex and muddled. There are too many ways for too complex structures to become critical and upon their failure, Babel.

So, where do I go from here?  These are questions that have to do with the culture that I live in.  They are not questions amenable to any positive action on my part, they are questions of strategies on how to navigate a complex series of unknowable that are resistant to understanding.  Culture is always opaque, economics are contingent, luck is fickle. 

So, here I sit, an old man in a changing world, doing what all of my ilk have done for millennia, hoping that those who follow me are better at this than I, and wondering what will happen next.

$3.00 Well Spent

I just joined the "Not Safe For Work" corporation and I am very pleased.

Well written funny stuff.  They pay their writers and I think that this will go far.

This article will be available for your reading pleasure for the next two days.  I think that shit like this is more cogent to the current political discussion than anything the two morons will debate this evening.

Read it and enjoy.

Change of Season

Well, the rains started.  Right now I am kind of pleased, but up here in the NW, what this translates into is we are entering the wet tunnel that won't let up until next May.

Sorry if I haven't been keeping in touch lately, but there really isn't much to say.  It would appear that quite a few of the outlandish predictions made here in Doomerland are queuing up to make their grand entrances.  Nothing I can do about it.  The die is cast and now it is time to start developing tactics and strategies to meet the real world changes that will be heading our way.

Or, it may be just that the idea of heading into that tunnel has got me down.

Fragmentation

I am too much a history buff to believe for a moment that the United States will last forever.  It will fragment.  There will be a political entity named the United States which does not include the current, continent-wide empire that is the current political entity, but will instead be much smaller and will have neighbors who are quite adamant about their independence.

I have been keeping an eye out of late for the secessionist movements here in the US.   Overall, a pretty weak showing.  Some folks down in Texas, some folks up in Vermont, and a baby movement here in the Northwest.  The Native American tribes are getting a little restive.  Nothing of real note yet.

But I do find the noises coming out of Europe of interest.   Venice is trying for a comeback as a separate country.  Catalonia is looking pretty solid for independence.  The Basques are always trying, so me putting them in here is just padding.

Europe is in worse shape than we are.  That is why these kind of things are coming out the woodwork.  The European Union was always kind of iffy.  Now we are seeing the cracks in a pretty serious way.  I don't think that the project will survive.

We here in the US have a very defined history of dealing with secessionist movements.  We killed off 4% of the men in the country to make sure that such a thing would not happen.  I really can't see that happening again.  As the state progressively weakens over the next years, we will see if we still have the level of resolve that President Lincoln et al. displayed.

New Comet Discovered—May Become "One of Brightest in History"

New Comet Discovered—May Become "One of Brightest in History":

I got hopes for this one.  Kahoutek was a big letdown.  Hale-Bopp was pretty cool.  Keep hoping.

OK  This was found over at "Some Assembly Required"

Rationing: The health care cost problems in the US stem from two things – for profit medicine, and the tendency to lavish costly efforts on elderly Americans without considering the cost/benefit ratios in the context of the overall health of the nation. To put it a tad more clearly, we need death panels.

 Now on the same day, over at "Jesse's Cafe Americain"

"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.  

The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps.

The number of victims is huge, the number of offenders who were sentenced, small.

Commemorative Tablet at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin

Now, this is the hard thing that I have been wrestling with of late.  This one has given me fits for three weeks now.  Where does the right exist to live beyond ones natural lifespan?  Does withholding expensive medical care constitute abuse?  Are the elderly more important than those in their younger years.  Where does honor thy Mother and thy Father start and end.

I can't seem to pin down the answers.  Any attempt leaves me unsatisfied.  There may not well be a right answer, just a series of unsatisfactory compromises.

Now this is funny

I really recommend reading Slashdot every day.  Oh, it is old school in internet years, and it has fallen from being the power it once was, but as a hand out for nerds with good access to ideas, you really can't beat it.

This particular story really tweaked my interest

Now, in my mind this is a grand-slam, out of the park home run.   Living in rural America among whacked out evangelicals, I think that the tenor of the original article, while brutal satire, might be uncomfortably close to the mark.

Hat trick to Jesse

I copied this  from JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN.  This post and writing is his alone.

I hope that you all will do something similar to this.  This kind of nonsense need to be shown the light of day.

Bill Moyers: ALEC, the Secretive Corporate-Legislative Body Writing US Laws

ALEC in the US Congress

State Legislators with Ties to ALEC By State


International ALEC 'Delegates'

Senator Cory Bernardi – Australia

MEP Philip Claeys – Belgium

Hon Iris Evans (PC - Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations) - Canada

MEP Ivo Strejcek – Czech Republic

MP David Darchiashvili – Georgia

Assemblywoman Ayesha Javed – Pakistan

MEP Adam Bielan – Poland
MEP Michal Kaminski – Poland
MEP Miroslaw Piotrowski – Poland
MEP Konrad Szymanski – Poland

MEP Cristofer Fjellner – Sweden

MEP Richard Ashworth – United Kingdom
MEP Martin Callanan – United Kingdom
MEP Niranjan Deva – United Kingdom
MEP Daniel Hannan – United Kingdom
MP Chris Heaton-Harris – United Kingdom
MEP Roger Helmer – United Kingdom
MEP Syed Kamall – United Kingdom
MEP Robert Sturdy – United Kingdom

Social Policy

We argue constantly about the preferred nature of the state.  Now, down at the level that you, gentle reader, and your humble correspondent reside, this argument really doesn't come to much.  It is similar to discussing the number of angels performing the Pizochara on the head of a pin.

Nope, the coming election offers a real chance to try and keep a little balance in the mix.  I can't say that I can vote for the wealth-unit Mittster.  My personal bigotry and anger derived from growing up a gentile in Utah stands in the way.  His policies seem to change weekly.  His campaign seems more intent on fundraising than convincing the populace his ideas are worth a try, but that is to be expected from a man who spent his life pursuing wealth.  Finally, I really don't like rich dickheads, so that puts him out of the running.

I may well place my vote for Ron Paul as a write in.  I like some of his ideas, and truthfully, I like his style.  But truthfully, a write-in for Ron Paul is just a way to make a personal statement, not a way to assist the Republic to choose its leader.

Nope, in an odd way, I am not voting for the President of the United States as much as I am voting for the foil to the sitting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Reading about John Roberts has left me fascinated about the man.  I think that he is probably one of the smartest men in the country.  I think that his rulings show a slow and measured approach.  He is a young man and in the job for a long haul.   Here is a conservative worthy of the name, not a screaming Fox news crazy, but a serious man, smart enough to know when to compromise for a long game.  Magna Cum Laude, Harvard Law, erudite, smart capable.

The perfect foil is Barack Hussein Obama.  He is a young man and in the job for a long haul.   Here is a liberal worthy of the name, not a screaming The Nation crazy, but a serious man, smart enough to know when to compromise for a long game.  Magna Cum Laude, Harvard Law, erudite, smart capable.

I am voting for Obama, not because I agree with him, but his views and decisions will be reviewed and balanced by Roberts.  It is my sincere hope that Hegel's dialectic will come into play here.  With the final results of these two intelligence's conflict being a more perfect union.

The Only Thing in Ogden

It's Friday morning, spent yesterday driving the eight-hundred miles from Ogden to Vancouver.  Needless to say, I was burnt out on arrival, but a good nights sleep and a cup of tea in the AM has worked wonders for my mood.

Mom is doing better.  She is still a weak old lady, but she is getting stronger now.  Who knows?

I grew up in the Ogden environs.  Ogden was the big town where we went to see the Pioneer Day parade every year and we would go and shop for clothes.  But now it appears to be a dying town.  The railroads are going, the farms are replaced by acres of tract homes, the industry second-tier and sporadic.  Even the Air Force Base is running down a little bit and the economic benefits are being siphoned off by the small, close in towns that have attached themselves, lamprey-like to the Hill AFB body.

The town is dying.  It has a small college that has recently given itself airs by awarding itself "University" status.  But that isn't enough.  It is being flooded by immigrants, which may just give it a chance to reinvent itself, but the pasty white-boys who currently run the town are sullen and hostile toward any reformation away from their Caucasian ideal.

It is a little piece of Ohio or New Jersey stuck in Utah.  A dying town with not too much in the way of prospects.  I remember now why I ran.

Why I Can’t

I think that the reason I am so sure that I am on the right path is the number of folks who think I am slightly bent and the vitriol which they pour on my ideas about what constitutes a just society.

The cult of Randism and the market has so thoroughly insinuated itself into our mindsets that I cannot imagine a future version of our society not having to strangle that monster. The sad part about the this future event is that it will leave a shattered and empty husk.  Tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of lives on the North American continent will be in play and the outlooks for most of these folks is, to say the least, not rosy.

Truth be told, capitalism and the rape and misuse of the natural environment and resources are the only way we can keep this current edifice going.  There really isn’t any other way, and this solution has a pretty damn short shelf life.  I can see no way that a gradual transition to a sustainable future can be achieved without major social dislocation and war. 

Those that currently control more than their share of the resources wish to maintain the kingly lifestyles that is seen as a right.  They are working hard to ensure that the riches of the country will wind up in their villa.  By the rules of the game that was played for the past fifty years, the money is rightfully theirs.  But the real question is, do gains that result from a rigged and crooked game rightfully accrue to the erstwhile “winners”.
The Republicans rightfully bring up the terror-words of “Class War” whenever us low-lives speak of needing our share of the pie.  The lower orders are currently merely squawking for their share.  Even at the reduced lifestyles that are becoming the norm, the complaints do not venture into the concrete.  I am curious as to how long this situation can hold.

But we will be soon reaching a point where burning up our seed corn won’t work anymore.  We will have to make a decision about what will be done with the remaining wealth.  The poor, who will be soon be taking a crash course in frugality and austerity will begin to act up and bring a greater meaning to the words “Class Warfare”. 

To me, all of this is pretty obvious.  But mentioning such things among the people that I grew up with and who profited by their subservience to the system merely brings anger.  Usually, there is no concrete disagreements as to the facts of the discussion, there is only a blind anger for pointing out a particularly ugly truth.  What we are looking at is an ongoing set of negotiations about who will have a slice of the pie.  The folks doing the cutting have to be pretty damn careful here, if too many people get left out of the equation, things will go down fast. 

SciFi Chick is Feeling Gloomy

I have Bacon and Eggs on my reader.  She cheers me up.

Not this last post.  I think that she is feeling the gloom that a lot of us are feeling lately.  Not that these feelings are wrong or inaccurate, and I kinda feel the same vibe.

Things are being masked by the fever of the election.  An extraordinary amount of money and time are being thrown at the general population right now, trying to get them to choose between a Chicago Technocrat or a Mormon rich kid.

What is sad is that both of these men, while probably being good men in their private lives, are really not up to the task of leading us out of the labyrinth.  They are too closely tied to the poles of interests that currently are wrestling for the control of spoils.  The contest between these two men is a zero-sum game, between a set of dueling fiefdoms vying for control of the diminishing resources available to a continental empire.

SciFi uses the analogy of the movie “The Matrix”.  Hmm, I can understand the desire to try on this myth, it is sexy and it kinda takes our personal responsibility for the situation out of play.   But more and more I am of the opinion that the situation that we face is a amalgam of all the decisions that we have made as a society for the last fifty years. 

In the matrix, the machines tricked us, enslaved us, and kept us in thrall by a hologram version of our lives.  We are here by a different route altogether, we are here by adding to our own chains link by link in a series of moves originally motivated by the greed for more but now motivated by the desire to retain the little we have left.

All of these links continue to bind us, we are adding links day by day in hopes that we can keep a vestige of the material that seems to have taken the place of the spiritual.  Because, when we lose the last of our wealth, we lose the last of what it is that we currently use to define ourselves.

And without the consensual hallucination of material wealth as an indicator of the good life and virtue, we are left with little to mark our passing.

Extra Bacon, If You Please

Drove down to see Mom in Ogden,  800 miles in the Town and Country (circa 1999) and listening to albums from my youth.  Didn't spend much time  on the freeway.  Got off about sixty miles into the trip and went on back roads to sooth my soul.

Eastern Oregon is currently a smokey mess.  But the drive was still beautiful, didn't get past fifty-five much and stopped at orchards and ate some of the best apples and plums that I have had for quite some time.

The roads out west are in great shape, lots of fed funding going into projects.  The only bad area was when I got down into Utah, where, due to the miracle of low taxes and small government, the roads and the schools suck.

I'm sitting in a Einsteins bagel store in Ogden, just had a garlic bagel with a schmeer for breakfast and now I am watching the archetypical Utah princess order her breakfast, her iPhone held in at breast level front of her, in the properly worshipful pose that has so recently become enshrined.

Mom is declining, I just came down to visit and had the good/bad fortune to arrive at the same time as a particularly bad spell.  When I walked through the door, she was grey and looked like hell, the nurses didn't hold out much in the way of hope.  I got hold of my Uncle and made arrangements for Extreme Unction.  But, thankfully, she rallied and pinked up nicely.  I was feeling a lot better when I left.

I'll head over soon and sit with her for a while.  She is completely out of it, I won't linger too long.

Been Busy

It is strange that I feel guilty when I don’t write something up here in Ephemeraland.  I do enjoy the process, but feeling like it is a responsibility is a little show of solipsism that causes a relatively greater amount of embarrassment than guilt.

Finishing up the week, shlepping kids, working and going into the autumn doldrums have eaten up all of my hours of the day of late.  For all the time spent, I still have not managed to accomplish anything of worth.  Just one of those times. 

Now I am packing up to go check on my Mom.  Pack the car drive to Utah, and see how the folks in the euphemistically-named “memory care facility” are doing.  Hell, what this has taught me more than anything is that I really don’t care if I die (we all will), but Alzheimer's scares the living bejesus out of me.

I am bringing along my computer, so maybe I can get some posting done while I am out and about.

Man...I hate this

I have been going hammer and tongs at an idea lately, and it just isn't panning out well.  I keep tripping over the "what-ifs" and they keep it from being ready to post.

More and more, I am getting jealous of folks like John Michael Greer, Jim Kunstler, or Dmitri Orlov,  who seem to be able to deliver thoughtful and internally consistent posts on a routine basis.  At best, I do OK, but their stuff always seem to shine.

While having this soapbox is a great thing, it also reminds me what hard work sitting down and writing well is.  I think that it would have to be exhausting.  Best I can do is hope for a batting average that would better fit a journeyman utility infielder.

Much of blogoland is some pretty low quality stuff, myself included.  I think that we should applaud the good ones more than what we do currently.

Thinking

I have been beating an idea about for a couple of days now.  Adam Smith won't be please about my latest thoughts.  Be patient, I'm working on it.  I am spending time picking holes in the central thesis and patching leaks.

Which Path to Choose?

What we here in the world calls sanity has led us into the present planetary crises.  That is a paradox worth some kind of consideration.

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low - So What?

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low - NYTimes.com:

Now, this little article is there as proof that things are moving along reasonably smartly in the women's equality front.  But it comes back to one of my ongoing questions that no one seems to want to answer: What do we do to provide jobs for dumb people.  There are a lot of them out there.

Men, when they took up the lions share of the workforce had to make due with a lot of dumb men in the workforce.  Luckily, the workforce of those times had a nice compliment of unskilled labor jobs to provide for dumb people.  Nowadays, not so much so.  Women make just dandy office workers, doctors, and other work not having physical strength and a mule-like outlook as it's principal requirements.

I am thinking that one of these days we are going to have to deal with this little problem.  We have been creating a workplace where smart workers are a requirement.  Not educated workers, smart workers.  What the hell do we do to provide the dumb people a decent life and a place in our society.

Nothing is going to happen just yet

Not that things aren't getting weird, I just think that a whole bunch of time and energy are being expended making sure that the lid stays on the pot.  Things are burbling along merrily, but in truth, the strategy of kicking the can down the road has worked reasonably well and things aren't as bad as they could have been.

Oh, now I know that some of you are squawking about me saying this, but Bennie and Barry have ran up the credit card to keep the system afloat, and they have pretty much succeeded to this point.  Whether or not they can keep the party going is another thing altogether.  I am just waiting to see how the whole thing shakes out.

There is a school of thought out there that holds tight to the thought that the longer it takes, the more volatile the outcome.   That is parroted around the internet in Doomerville as an undeniable truth, but I can't really say that I can find any concrete proof that it will work out that way this time.

I remember reading somewhere that if a woman was born on the day that Louis the fourteenth died, she would have been a elderly grandmother when the tumbrils rolled to the Place de la Revolution.  I would argue that if you use the Eisenhower administration as a reference point as the pinnicle of American power, we are only 2/3's of the way to the party.  If you use the Roosevelt administration as your reference point, we are only just getting ready to enter the home stretch.

Being a prepper and a doomer is an odd sport.  I think that it important to hope that you are wrong and things will get through adequately.  Your preparations and your fears are there as a gauge, not as an auto-pilot.  I think that way that the world is being run will have to change.  We will all end up poorer and living in a more fragile system.  We will have to adapt to new realities and change our behaviors significantly.   This simple fact doesn't mean the revolution will come tomorrow.

I certainly hope it doesn't and I sincerely hope that the can will be kicked down the road further.  Times are hard enough now that making the adjustment to an even lower standard of living will not improve my temper.

Worth Listening

Note:  This was originally published over at WordPress during my most recent pouting-fest. The picture above is a detail from a vase from  Exekias CA 540-530 BCE Greek- Archaic Vase of Ajax and Achilles playing dice

Josephus is one of my friends and he still out there, trying to nail down his first billion.  I support him completely in this endeavor and wish him the best.  Mostly is this is because he has put him money where his mouth is and went out, started a company, worked his butt off, and stands to lose if the deal doesn’t go down.  He is in the first stage of clinical trials after stellar performances in animal and toxicology studies, I have my fingers crossed and keep him in my prayers.

He had some fine news about his business recently, and after I had called him to congratulate him, I got to thinking about what it is we call “Investment” here in the good old USA.  Ponzi scheme keeps coming to mind.  But it is a diffuse sort of Ponzi, not run like the good Mr. Madoff ran his, nope it is a Ponzi scheme where the early-adopters cream the benefits and the firm just is there to provide the press releases essential to the pump and dump operation that we call Wall Street.

In this pump and dump scheme, the actual company gets a very limited amount of the money involved.  They get the share price off of the initial IPO to build the firm and to make the ideas happen in the real world.  Once a share has passed the IPO stage, the stock price increases accrue solely to the person(s) who bought the shares in the IPO.  The firm gets nothing.  This is good and fair and the way that it should be.  It is what happens after that is what is wrong.

Now that the share has been sold post IPO, it is a piece of paper that accrues nothing to the firm.  Now I realize that the firm will retain additional shares and sell them at need, so the rise in stock price will provide value to the firm, but really, the money made after the IPO from the passing back and forth of these initial shares is gambling by others.  The current state of the American economy reflects this penchant  for gambling.  Nothing is really built, the wealth of the past is traded back and forth between people trying to make a little money selling to greater and lesser fools.  No productivity is enhanced, no new ideas are built.  Just a big casino where people live and die at the roll of the die.

The management of the firm is playing another game entirely.  The give themselves compensation in shares for the job that they are being paid to do.  The shares that they are given are a time honored way of looting a company that you work for.  The management gets coin that doesn’t show directly in the W2 and they don’t pay taxes at the “Income” rate, they pay taxes at the “capital gains” rate, which is a pretty big savings.

So what say we just get rid of the capital gains tax on this no capital gain capital gain.  Now, I can imagine you all squealing out there….read on.  Lets start looking at capital gains as only applying  on the money that accrues directly to the firm in the case of an IPO or sale of the stock from the firm to the public or any subsequent money made by the firm selling retained shares .  If the money from the sale is from the first iteration of stock sales, that it, the money that allows the firm the capital base to expand it operations, the profit from the sale of these shares should be tax-free.  Once the shares have been sold by the initial purchaser of the shares from the IPO, all proceeds would be taxed at full income tax rates. 

The profits made by any compensation to an individual in terms of shares would be taxed at income taxes.   All stock issued as compensation would be entered as income at the share price of the day of award and taxes paid upon the the value of the shares.  All profits made from the sale of the stock in subsequent years would be subject to income tax.

Now there are going to be a bunch of people who will give any number of good reasons why this shouldn’t be done.  One of the big ones is that the share prices themselves will come crashing down.   I will even allow this as a truth.  The prices of shares, if they are treated as a means for firms to accrue money for the development of capital would be significantly less than the amount of money that they fetch as casino chips.  So the IPO share price would decrease and the amount of money available for capital projects would be decreased.  As a response to this I merely smirk and point to the recent IPO of facebook to make my point.

The other reason people will throw out is that people will be effected by the loss of their savings in the stock market if this plan is put into place.  Well, it is the stock market, people lose their shorts all the time.   The loss would be hellish at first, but it looks like we are heading that way anyway, maybe some folks smarter than me could create a system to cushion an inevitable fall.

Arbitrage

From WikiPedia

In economics and finance, arbitrage ( /ˈɑrbɨtrɑːʒ/) is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit at zero cost. 

In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to expected profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of a currency or derivative). In academic use, an arbitrage involves taking advantage of differences in price of a single asset or identical cash-flows; in common use, it is also used to refer to differences between similar assets (relative value or convergence trades), as in merger arbitrage. 

People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs (IPA /ˌɑrbɨtrɑːˈʒɜr/)—such as a bank or brokerage firm. The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities and currencies.

It is the heart and soul of what we have become.  Money for nothing.  Chicks for Free.

But, while I want to say that the the description really only applies to the political class, or even the financial class, I am afraid that it just ain't so.  From the chump (and I include myself) buying a lottery ticket to the purveyors of CDO's and other such chicanery, we are all complicit in rebelling against getting up and going to work everyday.

There is a Buddhist saying;  “Before enlightenment chop wood – carry water, after enlightenment chop wood carry water."   It would appear that we have twisted a simple truth to read, “before enlightenment Chop Wood – Carry Water, after enlightenment get someone else to do it for you!!!”

Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

Eccleiastes 3-22

A Discussion of the Coming Irrelevance of `Desktops and OS

I have been using Linux on my personal computer as the OS for years now.  I Started with SUSE 6.2 back at the turn of the millennium and waffle back and forth between distros.  I used Macs when I owned my own business, I used Windows when other people paid my bills.  Hell, for that matter, I remember back to the VAX-VMS days with RSTS as the OS or HP3000's with HPUX.

They all do the same thing in different ways.  They all have their strong points and weak points. But in general they are pretty much the same tool, as envisaged by different manufacturers.  I really think that you should all take the time to read "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson to get an excellent analysis of the different flavors and as well as some old discontinued flavors.

Everything that I have spoken of is centered around the idea of the computer as a general purpose tool, a do-it-all, Swiss Army Knife kind of logic engine that could get down and solve any problem that you care to feed to it.  This is passé except to an oddball aficionado such as your humble correspondent.

The use of a general purpose tool is not for the greater bulk of the populace.  What most folks want is an appliance to perform specific tasks for them, when and where they want those specific tasks done.  They also seem to have a particular desire for the simplistic and the vacuous (e.g. Facefook).   So when you couple the massive overkill of a general purpose operating system with the huge indifference of the great mass of users and you have a system of irrelevant power applied to trivial wants.

Apple was the first company to recognize this trend.  Their OS is still marginal with only maybe seven percent of the install base, so it isn't the Macintosh that is driving the increase in value of that company. No, the Mac is just a tarted up rendition of BSD that works just dandy but is no great shakes.

What Apple discovered is the vacuous needs of the general population and exploited them ruthlessly.  Pop music a la iPod, Facefook a la iPhone, fifty shades of smut on your iPad.

Google Android is trying to break into the exploitation of the masses, but the Apple lawyers have been guarding the gates, trying to keep the others from doing to their appliances what Microsoft did to their Macintosh.   This is where the money is, this is where the main attention will be paid.

So that leaves us with the trusty computer upon which I am writing this screed.  The damn thing is grossly overpowered for the tasks that I give it, and it important to remember that the damn thing is five years old, runs dual pentium chips, has two gig of RAM, cost me $399.00 and is still too much for what I have it do.

The truth of the matter is we are moving past general purpose computing.  Oh they will always be there for folks who need them. But the masses will want simple and fashionable, hence the iPads, the Surface, Kindle Fire, Nexus, and other such scaled down and simplified systems.  They aren't there for people to create content. they are there for people to consume the content.

The general purpose operating system world will gradually become more and more self-referential and specialist in nature.  It will gradually devolve into a set of specific tools designed to facilitate the provision of content.

The mothership is dying.

Not Quite a Plug, a Fainthearted, Lukewarm Endorsement

Keynes is always ready to contradict not only his colleagues but also himself whenever circumstances make this seem appropriate. So far from feeling guilty about such reversals of position, he utilizes them as pretexts for rebukes to the less nimble-minded. Legend says that while conferring with Roosevelt at Quebec, Churchill sent Keynes a cable reading, “Am coming around to your point of view.” His Lordship replied, “Sorry to hear it. Have started to change my mind.”

Reference:  See Link Here

Google is an odd intermediary.  The system of server farms and fairly good applications serve the overall internet fairly well.

That being said, we now dive into one of my ramblings.  First things first, don't kid yourself, the "freedom" of the internet is no such thing.  Nor can it be any such thing as long as the capital expenditures and human input required to keep such a mass moving is as extraordinary as it is.  That amount of investment does not lend itself to freedom.  It has to be a pretty controlled and be there for a purpose.

Some of the folks are going to go into gibbering shit-fits when they read this, but I really find that Google provides enough valuable service that I may have to consider my objections into their incursions into the zone of "privacy" as a necessary evil required by the convenience of the set of tools that they can provide.

So, I am back here at Blogger, dealing with a fairly robust interface that lets me do what I want to do (more or less) for free.  I can ramble on for a bit, save, read what I have written, change and delete it.  They track the people who visit my humble site, let me know when other folks disagree (or occasionally agree) with me, all for the small cost of their reasonably subtle attempts to sell me shit.

My opinion is a fickle thing, an ongoing piece of work being molded around a subtle and multifaceted world.   Always remember, a conclusion is just a marker for the point where you stopped thinking about a subject.

100,000

Over at StatCounter I have been keeping track of the unique visitors to this site for the past couple of years.

100,000 unique visits since I started counting. Wow.  Not at all bad bad when you count in the fits of pique, surly pouts, and bouts of boredom.

It is always surprising and somewhat humbling when I realize that people actually read this stuff.

This blog started when I was staring out over the skyline of Bangkok, bored out of my skull and sick of watching westerners come in to go-a-whoring in the land of smiles.  Slow and boring start.

I started writing in a serious way when the company I was working for went under in '08 and I couldn't find a job for around 56 weeks of trying.  Actually got my most hits and did my best stuff.  I had the time to think about it.  I kept at it as a hobby for all these years, Got pissy with Google, realized that I was being useless, came back, repeated the process later.

I have taken long vacations from this avocation and written some astonishingly lame stuff during the tenure.

My most popular post was back in '09.  Got grundles of unique visitors. (347 on a single day).

My favorites are:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Mostly I want to thank you all for allowing me this soapbox and giving of your time to read my thoughts.  I wish they were all gems, but that isn't in the realm of my meager abilities.