A teacher says,
“Follow your curiosity.”
Einstein adds,
“Follow your curiosity. It’s the only thing that knows where you’re going.”
sew what?
skirting from attention
Debt?!
More than one generation went lookin’ for a loan. The debt of all generations put us here.
And no one does debt better than business.
Wait for it. There’s more
five million barrels
It’s said BP captured 800,000 barrels. At the start of the disaster 62,000 barrels of oil a day were escaping, falling slightly to 53,000 barrels per day, reaching a total of about 4.9 million barrels. Saddam’s war time sabotage was about 5 million barrels.
a radically new diety
It seems to me people argue the most about what they know the least about.
Restraining flippant theology, Michael Shermer at Big Questions writes, “I have debated many theologians who make the traditional arguments for God’s existence.”
- the cosmological argument (prime mover, first cause)
- the teleological argument (order and design of the universe)
- the ontological argument (if possible for God to exist, then God exists)
- the anthropic argument (nature, making human life possible)
- the moral argument (awareness of right and wrong)
I don’t know which of these ‘arguments’ is most popular or likely effective, nor would I choose one over the other.
While “sitting around in a cloud of possibilities”, I think we should be far less uppity with our imagination. With no God, why argue? With God, we better not.
tip humorzo
they too big for law
“And where will we hide, when it comes from inside?” — James Taylor
I often wonder if journalism and watchdogs as we know them, and of course our elected in all branches, will ever or can ever blow an alarm or close the gate against marauding and pilfering.
The playing field is a ski run. If there were a Capitol Hill on every hill perhaps we could defend ourselves. Is no government or institution strong against brigades of slavish wit intending to slice our apple?
We will meet and moan in tea parties forever until we solve respect.
Here’s another example pointing out our weakness – standing like corn for combines against banks and usury.
What lies ahead, over the next year and beyond, will require far larger armies of lawyers, economists, finance experts and just plain able bodies and minds to monitor and influence the rulemaking process.
Rumor has it that one bank alone plans to set up 100 teams of employees tasked with particular rule makings. And that is just one bank.
That’s 100 teams clamoring for your pocket. Imagine that? Blackbeard could be so lucky to commandeer boatloads of pirates!
Oh what will we do?
working the mirror
Jonathan Bernstein at Salon:
The media’s real bias: Caring about itself too much.
Among the many real biases of the press (as opposed to the ideological and partisan fantasies of both sides) is a bias in favor of overestimating the importance of press coverage. Not that the press is unimportant, of course … but it isn’t as important as one would think from reading the newspapers and watching the news on TV.
our shameful waters
This year’s hypoxic zone, er, dead water, is nearly the size of the state of Massachusetts. The second largest hypoxic zone worldwide is the Gulf of Mexico adjacent to the Mississippi River. Delivering water that can no longer support life, the Big Muddy has become the Big Dead.
The oil spill rightly gets the headlines, but corn is every bit as harmful to the gulf – 120,000 tons of fertilizers washing off Midwestern farm fields last year alone. Oil consuming bacteria will add to the shame by consuming Gulf oxygen as well.
America’s environment is industry.
A. There’s hardly a family in the Gulf region that does not have a member involved in the oil industry. My father was a tugboat captain who handled barges of crude oil for the sprawling refineries, my brother sells oilfield equipment and technology, my nephew captains offshore supply vessels, my great-nephew operates a giant crane currently picking Katrina-smashed equipment from the Gulf floor. Cousins manage oil leases.
B. There’s hardly a family in the Midwest that does not have a member involved in agriculture. My father managed sprawling farmland, my brother sells farm equipment and irrigation, my nephew brokers exports, my great-nephew operates a giant combine harvesting corn across Iowa and Nebraska. Cousins manage feed mills.
The USA has become a dead water drain. NOAA’s Hypoxia Research Team is here. National Geographic’s animated map of world rivers is worth a visit.
Focusing on a spill as large as a continent is astounding challenge. Mega-fixes and macro-engineering might restrain industrial impact if implemented across national scale. There’s 50 million educated unemployed in the OECD and we stimulate hi-ways and retail. Geesh.
condemning error
“I saw at close range the failure of the US war on drugs with its absurd sentences, including 20 years for marijuana, although 42 per cent of Americans have used marijuana and it is the greatest cash crop in California.” – Conrad Black
fame is not worthiness
Sarah Palin is to Barack Obama as The Monkees are to The Beatles.
Cormully caught that from the Department of Painfully Obvious Promotion and knows what we know: “I was an adolescent and cynicism was transparent to me.”
“Who is the better band?”
In 1965, Don Kirshner, music producer extraordinaire, signed onto a project capitalizing on the Beatles’ fabulous success not merely as musicians but as movie stars.
Seeking to exploit that year’s A Hard Day’s Night, aspiring filmmakers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider proposed to Kirshner an American television show approximating the movie.
From a pool of 400 applicants were selected four eminently qualified, talented, perfectly lovely young men.
They were to mature from commercial enterprise to self-propelled artists – whose quality of work is a judgment call – to be pitted against their inspiration.
Do you see?
The fact remains: Obama/The Beatles created themselves.
found my rare baby
I owned this car as a teenager. I bought it from a 20 unit Ford lot on a northern highway, true story, for $600. Flush with cash from a timber camp, I flew by, I turned around, I bought it.
Taking it with cash for a new sedan, the dealer did not know it was a Porsche. I said this is a true story. The nameplates had been torn off by blizzard driving and wrapped under the spare tire. Other than unpronounceable type on the papers, I suppose he didn’t much care.
I think I saw this jewel go for $120K not long ago. Made me ill. I found this pic in a NYTimes review of car investing. It’s been tough to find this exact model. I’ve scoured through hundreds of pics at a dozen sites over the years.
Its heater mattered because it wasn’t. I’d wear a full body snow suit under a parka, a half dozen socks, and light a camp heater on the floor just to visit friends. A day in 25-below January I stopped to see a girlfriend and left the car idling in the lot of her apartment. We smooched a bit too long. Sub-zero weather didn’t prevent its neglected pistons from melting like sugar. The only VW mechanic that knew how to import parts for a Porsche was 200 miles away. I just towed the car to his garage and gave him the title.
I could not roll this car. I’d flipped cars into snowbanks and down a ditch, but this thing was flat like your palm on a butt. My Canada had not much more black top than just one highway and our one mile Main Street. Ice and gravel is what this Porsche could do and that’s all I knew about driving. You can bet I could fishtail this baby as well as I could steer it.
I often wonder why that car was abandoned so north in the boonies. I’m guessing a wealthy or professional adventurer wanted to ‘do’ the Alaska Highway but did not know what 1300 miles of gravel would ‘do’ to an adventure.
The Porsche I loved wasn’t branded 356 C as this pic of a USA model. Confusing me for years, I learned that the 12 or so imported to Canada were ‘1600 Super Cabriolet’ – maybe 20″ longer than 1600s and Super Cs – with rear flip up seats to earn a 2×2 classification needed under import rules.
to know you is to profit
The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tennessee.
The 50 most popular websites are 40% of the Web. You’re enjoying that, an audience applauding. Are you nuts America? The top 50 sites are inserting 3,180 tracking files into one computer.
Fix it. You gave them your economy and now you’re stoned at their parade. Privacy has long been a priority for billionaires. Turn that around. Your forefathers could.
Stop being vulnerable America. Ponder. Pull up your pants. Power is the use of means and you let that go on and on. Turn that around by insisting your marketplace is better than free and unregulated but is also level and fair.
Faking Reagan’s tan for the popular vote, candidates skew issues against rule making. The result is pilfered pockets and phooey on your future. We’re vulnerable enough under media’s wrap. Stop secret data-mining.
trickle up thieves
Who puts the lie to Republican pretense?
No no and no. That’s the wrong answer.
Republicans… the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.
Depredations: plundering and pillaging and marauding. Who said Republicans are ‘robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes‘? Reagan’s keynote Budget Director, David Stockman.
While reading his piece at the NYTimes, I think he’s trumpeting. He sells raw fix, a kitchen table simplicity he’s sold throughout his career. Perhaps not more wise but deeply disappointed. And oh so very much blame.
Stockman is gunslinging debt reduction by pricking Wall Street with 0.15% transaction taxes, perhaps to sell the grail of a universal flat tax.
I’ll stay with my opinion that tweaking rates along with ascetic retrenching merely satisfies zealots of balanced books, a loud reply to the sting of exploitation but narrow, and no more able to unwind our errors than the sloppy triumph of Reagan, our Robin Hood in reverse.
Voting belief has not been smooth and its era of opinion not very helpful. A gritty fix is upon us, a nifty trick of humanity, “What are the questions?” instead of “These are the answers.”
There might come something to gain from understanding not money’s theory but where the money went.
chesty mcfesty
if yer gonna be a rooster
might as well have some character…
take another look
appreciate the stern eye,
the froth of feathers better than a comb,
and the parchment tail, the pride he tows each day.
do friendly are evolve
Oh the wonderment, he says,
if an orchid makes its own moth.
Or if each the genera of fortunate tease,
the other thing he said.