Well you do have to give Obama credit for at least one thing.
Every US president since Johnson has promised the people to do something about our dependence on foreign, imported crude oi. Few americans may realize that our largest supplier is Canada, but they do understand that crude oil is the #1 ingredient for our economy and there's nothing quite so good as having your own.
Well, but during every presidency since Johnson, the amount of crude oil that has been imported into the US has only increased ... until now.
Yes, its true.... by persuading over 12 million formerly-working people that they no longer need to work, or look for work, or even consider themselves to be unemployed,
those people have stopped driving around quite so much...
According to the figures of the weekly petroleum status report from the Energy Information Administration, crude oil imports have declined by almost 8% this year alone. They have declined by 20% since the years of the Bush Administration. This is a larger decline than anyone thought possible.
Who knows, maybe, if everyone stops working, we can cease to need to import any oil at all! What a concept!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
On Strike
This is a very simple concept.
Even a politician, or even a super-wealthy man, can grasp it, if he tries.
Virtually all of the common people, the laborers, workers, blue collar or no collar folks,
they are all on strike.
They have had it with their wages being forcefully and deceitfully taken from them.
Most of them do not understand how it was done, but they do understand that it was done.
There is no organization, no union, no union bosses. We have workers anonymous.
Some of them collect unemployment, food stamps, section 8.
Some of them camp out down by the river or sleep in their cars in urban parking garages. Some of them live with their parents, their friends, or in houses destined for foreclosure.
Some of them call in sick, then apply for disability.
Some of the better-educated go to work but they spend all day writing long reports about all the work they have done or are going to do, instead of working.
Some of them do odd jobs for cash, no taxes, no banks, no plastic.
They are going to stay on strike until the bankers and the politicians relent,
even if it takes demolishing the entire system.
Which it will.
Even a politician, or even a super-wealthy man, can grasp it, if he tries.
Virtually all of the common people, the laborers, workers, blue collar or no collar folks,
they are all on strike.
They have had it with their wages being forcefully and deceitfully taken from them.
Most of them do not understand how it was done, but they do understand that it was done.
There is no organization, no union, no union bosses. We have workers anonymous.
Some of them collect unemployment, food stamps, section 8.
Some of them camp out down by the river or sleep in their cars in urban parking garages. Some of them live with their parents, their friends, or in houses destined for foreclosure.
Some of them call in sick, then apply for disability.
Some of the better-educated go to work but they spend all day writing long reports about all the work they have done or are going to do, instead of working.
Some of them do odd jobs for cash, no taxes, no banks, no plastic.
They are going to stay on strike until the bankers and the politicians relent,
even if it takes demolishing the entire system.
Which it will.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Zero
God spoke out to me recently in a more forceful fashion than He has for many years ... I have regretted the distance between us and ascribed it to 1) my sins 2) His insistence that I use more of what He has already given me 3) He want me more deeply grounded in this physical world with the other people in it and less with Him 4)
the end of my idiosyncratic psychotropic drug withdrawal creating hyperawareness.
He brought the number "zero" to my attention.
I guess one thing He was trying to say to me was just that He is very much still there in my life ... He has been telling me that my life is a reduced, slimmed-down, steamlined, simpler, more relaxed version of what I was living before. But that does NOT mean that my tasks are done, as I have been contemplating.
I'm still here.
You will have to bear with my understanding of His language to me ...
very private and personal, always found in events which are surprising to me, sometimes literal scientific miracles other times just very remarkable ... but furthermore they are all laced with a "halo" that I cannot describe to another person which further identify them as "sendings" or "communications" ... He is the living God ...
(I am not going to get into a debate here over elements that other people may ascribe to hallucinations, illusions, delusions, or just loosing it ... I'm happy for them to think what they will.)
I started to play a computer game. Which I do a lot. The game hesitated a lot in starting up. when it did start, it immediately returned a score of zero to me without giving me a chance to make one move. That doesn't happen, it just doesn't.
He's just asking me to meditate on the subject of zero ... it is round ,
it is the most important of all numbers, as a placeholder it enables addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, if you don't understand what I mean then just try, for a minute, to add or multiply a few roman numeral numbers.
The earth is round. Most everything in nature goes in cycles, up, down,
around and around, night and day, summer and winter, birth and death. I just finished reading Joseph Felser's "The Myth of the Great Ending", full of philosophy, paranormal discussions, dreamwork, out of body experiences, rebirth experiences, other stuff that I'm somewhat familiar with already. Felser has a nice website to promote the book and on the website he says "everything is round" and has a picture of the earth. His premise is that we are not coming to a great ending.
I am coming to similar understandings ... these days I find myself to be less and less perturbed about the cliff that we are all headed towards ... I see it as a pretty cataclysmic change for mankind, maybe on the same scale as Noah's flood or the burning of Lot's home town ... but not, not, not anything like John's dream in revelations ....
I don't expect to hang around for this, but I see a great cleansing coming at us, a washing away of a great many strong beliefs and activities which are sinful
and have made this result inevitable. Because human beings don't like being forced to change, and maybe also because quite a few folk are going to die "unexpectedly" as the population reverts to something more reasonable for this poor old planet, there will be some hardship and hard feelings and misunderstandings about it,
which will make no more difference than a grain of sand in the Taklimaken Desert.
Beyond it I see a great, peaceful pastoral time/place ... life will be simpler and easier and a lot less "stressful" for a long time to come ... for all the strife near-term, this is not to be feared ....I'm even having a few delightful moments of "jumping in the puddles" like a three-year-old boy, instead of fretting about the cold and wet and the mud on their new shoes like someone believing themselves "more mature"....
the end of my idiosyncratic psychotropic drug withdrawal creating hyperawareness.
He brought the number "zero" to my attention.
I guess one thing He was trying to say to me was just that He is very much still there in my life ... He has been telling me that my life is a reduced, slimmed-down, steamlined, simpler, more relaxed version of what I was living before. But that does NOT mean that my tasks are done, as I have been contemplating.
I'm still here.
You will have to bear with my understanding of His language to me ...
very private and personal, always found in events which are surprising to me, sometimes literal scientific miracles other times just very remarkable ... but furthermore they are all laced with a "halo" that I cannot describe to another person which further identify them as "sendings" or "communications" ... He is the living God ...
(I am not going to get into a debate here over elements that other people may ascribe to hallucinations, illusions, delusions, or just loosing it ... I'm happy for them to think what they will.)
I started to play a computer game. Which I do a lot. The game hesitated a lot in starting up. when it did start, it immediately returned a score of zero to me without giving me a chance to make one move. That doesn't happen, it just doesn't.
He's just asking me to meditate on the subject of zero ... it is round ,
it is the most important of all numbers, as a placeholder it enables addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, if you don't understand what I mean then just try, for a minute, to add or multiply a few roman numeral numbers.
The earth is round. Most everything in nature goes in cycles, up, down,
around and around, night and day, summer and winter, birth and death. I just finished reading Joseph Felser's "The Myth of the Great Ending", full of philosophy, paranormal discussions, dreamwork, out of body experiences, rebirth experiences, other stuff that I'm somewhat familiar with already. Felser has a nice website to promote the book and on the website he says "everything is round" and has a picture of the earth. His premise is that we are not coming to a great ending.
I am coming to similar understandings ... these days I find myself to be less and less perturbed about the cliff that we are all headed towards ... I see it as a pretty cataclysmic change for mankind, maybe on the same scale as Noah's flood or the burning of Lot's home town ... but not, not, not anything like John's dream in revelations ....
I don't expect to hang around for this, but I see a great cleansing coming at us, a washing away of a great many strong beliefs and activities which are sinful
and have made this result inevitable. Because human beings don't like being forced to change, and maybe also because quite a few folk are going to die "unexpectedly" as the population reverts to something more reasonable for this poor old planet, there will be some hardship and hard feelings and misunderstandings about it,
which will make no more difference than a grain of sand in the Taklimaken Desert.
Beyond it I see a great, peaceful pastoral time/place ... life will be simpler and easier and a lot less "stressful" for a long time to come ... for all the strife near-term, this is not to be feared ....I'm even having a few delightful moments of "jumping in the puddles" like a three-year-old boy, instead of fretting about the cold and wet and the mud on their new shoes like someone believing themselves "more mature"....
my favourite joke
Really, there are only 10 kinds of people in this world:
those who understand the binary number system, and those who don't.
those who understand the binary number system, and those who don't.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
words
Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read?
Hamlet: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled and that they have a plentiful lack of wit ...
John:
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things were made, without Him n9othing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not understand it.
It seems to me, me who lived through the richest of times and born into
the best of gifts and opportunities, me who is witnessing much of this come down
to dust with the promise of starvation, thirst, bloodshed and plague heavy in the air,
it seems to me that there is a powerful want of people
to understand the difference between symbol and substance
in these terrible times.
It seems to me that nearly all of us were born with that gift --
how else could any of us learn how to speak and to listen? --
but that a fair number of folk abandon it, some indeed at a quite young age,
and they learn to mimic and copy their way through every situation
as if they were parrots or monkeys.
It seemed to me that the negroes, the black people of america,
and indeed, the recent and current slaves of every civilization,
are a bit more apt to be more aware of their environment and their world
and hence this distinction. And maybe that is so
but certainly there is a plenitude of exceptions on both sides.
Anyway I have made a lot of choices betting on that distinction
and I do not regret any of them.
Hello?
The USA is going to being suffering
until a leader arises who understands
that wearing a cheap painted metal pin, made in China,
which happens to be in the likeness of a piece of woven tapestry
first created by Betsy Ross,
is not an act of bravery, or power, or courage, or strength, or patriotism.
Not one iota.
And maybe a whole mess of symbols need
to go into the trash bucket or the ash heap.
Maybe USA'ans need to remember,
on their own without using GPS,
that the first Aryans
lived in the ancient city of Rage,
(of the ancient Media empire)
which is now known as Tehran,
just southeast of the Caucasian mountains.
Or maybe they just need to forget everything they ever learned and start over.
I don't know.
but God knows.
The coming years and decades and generations will not be so pleasant
as the recent past. No indeed.
Some housekeeping is going to take place.
He knows who and He knows when and He knows how.
After its done, life will be a bit nicer here, I think.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read?
Hamlet: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled and that they have a plentiful lack of wit ...
John:
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things were made, without Him n9othing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not understand it.
It seems to me, me who lived through the richest of times and born into
the best of gifts and opportunities, me who is witnessing much of this come down
to dust with the promise of starvation, thirst, bloodshed and plague heavy in the air,
it seems to me that there is a powerful want of people
to understand the difference between symbol and substance
in these terrible times.
It seems to me that nearly all of us were born with that gift --
how else could any of us learn how to speak and to listen? --
but that a fair number of folk abandon it, some indeed at a quite young age,
and they learn to mimic and copy their way through every situation
as if they were parrots or monkeys.
It seemed to me that the negroes, the black people of america,
and indeed, the recent and current slaves of every civilization,
are a bit more apt to be more aware of their environment and their world
and hence this distinction. And maybe that is so
but certainly there is a plenitude of exceptions on both sides.
Anyway I have made a lot of choices betting on that distinction
and I do not regret any of them.
Hello?
The USA is going to being suffering
until a leader arises who understands
that wearing a cheap painted metal pin, made in China,
which happens to be in the likeness of a piece of woven tapestry
first created by Betsy Ross,
is not an act of bravery, or power, or courage, or strength, or patriotism.
Not one iota.
And maybe a whole mess of symbols need
to go into the trash bucket or the ash heap.
Maybe USA'ans need to remember,
on their own without using GPS,
that the first Aryans
lived in the ancient city of Rage,
(of the ancient Media empire)
which is now known as Tehran,
just southeast of the Caucasian mountains.
Or maybe they just need to forget everything they ever learned and start over.
I don't know.
but God knows.
The coming years and decades and generations will not be so pleasant
as the recent past. No indeed.
Some housekeeping is going to take place.
He knows who and He knows when and He knows how.
After its done, life will be a bit nicer here, I think.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Power
In 2001, in the regular conduct of my career as journeyman computer researcher, I made the acquaintance of one "Martin Artiano". Together we concocted a scheme for his benefit, mine, and I hoped, my organization. I was unable to deliver my end of the bargain and the relationship ended.
If you Google this name, at least at the present time, you will find that it is quite unique; all links lead to the same individual. Quite the opposite of my given name, of which there are three just in my local phone book and hundreds and hundreds across the country.
However, the material you will glean from such a search will not tell you much about him. The most telling is a single veiled innuendo in regards to the Iran/Contra affair of Reagan's presidency. The reference, however, reveals little.
I came to know enough about him during our relationship to realize that for a time, he had been the most powerful man in the world. I am fascinated that so few
common peoplle have ever even heard of his name, and apparently nobody on the whole
Internet knows much of anything about him.
Having a preference to remain above ground, I'm not going to tell you all anything about him either. I just want to mention that real power is quite different from either fame or money. Artiano had the power to move mountains, to redraw national boundaries, to start or end wars. Clearly, he also had the power and good sense and ability to keep his own name unknown.
By the time I met him, he was douwnsizing gracefully yet still keeping his fingers in the world pie. Once he learned that I have a taste for chocolate he offered me a blind date with Condi, and I'm sure he would have delivered if I had only kept up my end.
The only reason I mention all of this is to remind you all that what you read in the papers and history books and here on the television news is a far distant cry from what is really going on.....
If you Google this name, at least at the present time, you will find that it is quite unique; all links lead to the same individual. Quite the opposite of my given name, of which there are three just in my local phone book and hundreds and hundreds across the country.
However, the material you will glean from such a search will not tell you much about him. The most telling is a single veiled innuendo in regards to the Iran/Contra affair of Reagan's presidency. The reference, however, reveals little.
I came to know enough about him during our relationship to realize that for a time, he had been the most powerful man in the world. I am fascinated that so few
common peoplle have ever even heard of his name, and apparently nobody on the whole
Internet knows much of anything about him.
Having a preference to remain above ground, I'm not going to tell you all anything about him either. I just want to mention that real power is quite different from either fame or money. Artiano had the power to move mountains, to redraw national boundaries, to start or end wars. Clearly, he also had the power and good sense and ability to keep his own name unknown.
By the time I met him, he was douwnsizing gracefully yet still keeping his fingers in the world pie. Once he learned that I have a taste for chocolate he offered me a blind date with Condi, and I'm sure he would have delivered if I had only kept up my end.
The only reason I mention all of this is to remind you all that what you read in the papers and history books and here on the television news is a far distant cry from what is really going on.....
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Wealth
with the market now down 270 pts, this seems like a good time to tackle this subject ... as faithful readers can appreciate, I have shorted and shorted this market over the past several years and been burned pretty badly, finally reaching the point where I simply could not afford to do so any longer ... and I am quite certain that numbers of other folk find themselves in very similar circumstances ... the market, as always, hurts the most number of people; now that most shorts have finally capitulated the market can collapse ....
I read web site after blogs, etc on the subject of what money is and what wealth is and is gold money and so forth, all the time. Though I'm just a bit player I think I have a few noteworthy ideas to add to the conversation. Here is one example:
http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/11/moneyness.html
Most of these discussions represent "money" as being a storehouse of wealth,
in much the same way that a gallon of gasoline is a storehouse of energy.
Discussions of gold do not generally raise this point, but it takes a huge amount of human labor to raise and refine every new ounce of gold coming out of the ground ... in fact, 99% of all the physical gold now available for trading is "old gold",
the amount of new gold produced each year is trivial in comparison with what's already been extracted, refined, and stored for safekeeping.
Other discussions get into the subject of "symbol versus substance". I could devote numbers of blog entries to that subject but I don't. There seem to be a whole lot of people who just don't "get" this distinction. I tend to think that my own people in my own time are particularly foolish in this but I could be biased. Certainly authors ever since antiquity have railed at those who don't understand the difference. Obviously a piece of paper, or worse, a digital entry on a ferro-magnetic hard drive is not an item of substance but only a symbol for wealth ... and people can change their general opinion about the meaning and value of a symbol, sometimes very, very quickly.
So what I want to add to the discussion is a reckoning of some of the items which I count as making up my personal wealth, some items which are not generally discussed in any of these pontificating discussions. I suppose that they are not discussed because none of these additional items are fungible. They cannot be duplicated and they cannot be traded. However, these non-tradable items constitute the vast majority of what I consider to be my net worth.
To start off, very simplistically, I wish to enumerate a pair of 34-D's.
I don't actually "own" them, legally I am technically "married" to the owner,
but that can change. I list them because I have experienced them, and much much more, for the person who sports them is one of the sharpest and most cunning, most versatile and flexible, and when she chooses to be, one of the sweetest and most affectionate human beings that I have ever had the honor of knowing. I count myself as being very, very rich to have had the experiences that I have had with her and to know that whatever happens between us she will always respect me as the one who rescued her and effectively gave her life.
fungible? no.
tradeable? no.
priceless, it goes without saying.
Next, I wish to relate a parable that I hear some years ago and began to apply in my own life, and the more I apply it the more wealth I believe I accumulate.
Again, not tradable.
A banker, recently completing a multibillion-dololar deal, finds himself lying in bed that night still in angst and actually praying to God for some answers.
The archangel Urial hears his plea and actually responds... he brings him above and he explains to him that he is going to show him two rooms, one of which happens to be a room in heaven and the other is a room in hell.
Without saying which he wants to show first, the archangel leads the banker to a door and opens it. Inside, he sees a very large, round table. Around it are seated a large number of people. the banker can see that the people are hungry and very, very unhappy. In the very middle of the table, there is a depression and set inside of it is a large round bowl of savory soup ... there are large chunks of meat, and potatoes, vegetables, and a wonderful aroma fills the entire room.
The table is so large that the people seated at the table cannot reach the soup with their free hands. However, on one forearm, every single person there has had fastened securely to it a very long, large spoon. each person is quite able to reach the soup with the spoon and pick up a good spoonful of the tangy, inviting repast. However, this does them no good at all, because the spoon is too long for them to then be able to reach their mouths. So the people all sit around as despondent as Tantalus and misery prevails.
Then, the archangel closes that door and opens a different door to show the banker.
Low and behold, the second scene is very like the first. Here is the same large round table, the same folk seated around it, the same tureen of soup in the middle, and even the very same spoons. but, but, but ... here, everyone is laughing, everyone is happy and telling stories and talking and enjoying one another; the atmosphere is totally different. After watching for a minute or two the banker suddenly understand why: each person is able to fill his spoon and then reach over to feed his neighbor! By feeding each other, all of the people take care of each other and everyone is fed as much as they desire!
The banker came to understand where his angst came from and what he could do about it, and he went forth the next day and began to change his life.
(Most bankers are never so fortunate(!!!!!)
Here is a shorter version of the same parable, in a proverb:
The best place, the very best place to store your wealth, is in your neighbor's stomach.
Obviously, neither paper money, nor digital money, nor stock certificates, nor even gold coins, are fit for your neighbor's stomach. but all of them, even the gold, can lose their value in the sight of those you trade with and deal with to supply your needs.
So I count my friends and the people I deal with regularly as a part of my wealth, a big part. I attempt to take care of them as best that I can. Its not always food, there are numerous other "gifts" that I have that I can share with them, some of them unique to me. Sometimes confidence and firmness are asked for, too, though I am known as kind and generous, people who try to take advantage of me eventually come to think better of it.
If our government collapses, there is no finer storehouse for what I have than with my friends, no better protection, no better chance of our mutual survival. Many of the doomsday predictions going around, such as James Kunstler painst so vividly, point out that few will survive when the electric grid and the gasoline stations go down ... the anarchy will be beyond our imagining ... still, the best chances we all have is to be known widely as a trusted friend.
Related to that is another set of items wherein I have accumulated a great deal of wealth, what I consider to be far beyond most of the people I relate with and also those I read about ... my skillset. I have always had a natural curiosity about this world and a certain naivety about anything I have not yet encountered harm from. As a consequence I have got my fingers into quite a lot of different activities and disciplines. The sum is one of the most eclectic set of skillsets and knowledge that I know of, the quintessential "renaissance man". True there is a great deal that I do not know. But I am a passing plumber, electrician, structural engineer, designer. I can do all things with wood, cut, gather, split, burn it, make fine furniture or art, marquetry, dressers, tables, sculptures. I understand the basics of computers, something woefully lacking among our young people today,
I have built a simple electronic counting machine with wires and resistors, transistors, capacitors. I understand binary ....
scuse me. one of my favorite jokes:
There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand the binary number system,
and those who don't ....
I can count on my fingers up to 1023 and I can do it while talking with someone
or other similar mental activity. I understand that a computer is nothing more than a bucket of on-off switches connected with a system of relays which do exactly, exactly, what they are told to do with no deviation or motivation whatsoever.
That's a pretty valuable (and rare!) concept, these days.
In my day I have coded in Fortran, Cobol, C, HTML, XSLT, and other languages and could do it again in a pinch.
Navigating ... sine qua non. I've been around the world, canoe, bicycle, hitchhike, fly, drive, camel... am not afraid to go anywhere ... not the Pentagon library, nor the monasteries on the isles of Lake T'ana, nor the girls rooms in my junior high school ... I don't use GPS because God gave me a much better one than that. So far, the power has never failed on mine. never.
For many years God has protected me and showered me with wealth beyond imagining,
everything that I have wanted, save for a few select things that He knew better about ....
I hope this adds to the discussion about what money is, and isn't ....
I read web site after blogs, etc on the subject of what money is and what wealth is and is gold money and so forth, all the time. Though I'm just a bit player I think I have a few noteworthy ideas to add to the conversation. Here is one example:
http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/11/moneyness.html
Most of these discussions represent "money" as being a storehouse of wealth,
in much the same way that a gallon of gasoline is a storehouse of energy.
Discussions of gold do not generally raise this point, but it takes a huge amount of human labor to raise and refine every new ounce of gold coming out of the ground ... in fact, 99% of all the physical gold now available for trading is "old gold",
the amount of new gold produced each year is trivial in comparison with what's already been extracted, refined, and stored for safekeeping.
Other discussions get into the subject of "symbol versus substance". I could devote numbers of blog entries to that subject but I don't. There seem to be a whole lot of people who just don't "get" this distinction. I tend to think that my own people in my own time are particularly foolish in this but I could be biased. Certainly authors ever since antiquity have railed at those who don't understand the difference. Obviously a piece of paper, or worse, a digital entry on a ferro-magnetic hard drive is not an item of substance but only a symbol for wealth ... and people can change their general opinion about the meaning and value of a symbol, sometimes very, very quickly.
So what I want to add to the discussion is a reckoning of some of the items which I count as making up my personal wealth, some items which are not generally discussed in any of these pontificating discussions. I suppose that they are not discussed because none of these additional items are fungible. They cannot be duplicated and they cannot be traded. However, these non-tradable items constitute the vast majority of what I consider to be my net worth.
To start off, very simplistically, I wish to enumerate a pair of 34-D's.
I don't actually "own" them, legally I am technically "married" to the owner,
but that can change. I list them because I have experienced them, and much much more, for the person who sports them is one of the sharpest and most cunning, most versatile and flexible, and when she chooses to be, one of the sweetest and most affectionate human beings that I have ever had the honor of knowing. I count myself as being very, very rich to have had the experiences that I have had with her and to know that whatever happens between us she will always respect me as the one who rescued her and effectively gave her life.
fungible? no.
tradeable? no.
priceless, it goes without saying.
Next, I wish to relate a parable that I hear some years ago and began to apply in my own life, and the more I apply it the more wealth I believe I accumulate.
Again, not tradable.
A banker, recently completing a multibillion-dololar deal, finds himself lying in bed that night still in angst and actually praying to God for some answers.
The archangel Urial hears his plea and actually responds... he brings him above and he explains to him that he is going to show him two rooms, one of which happens to be a room in heaven and the other is a room in hell.
Without saying which he wants to show first, the archangel leads the banker to a door and opens it. Inside, he sees a very large, round table. Around it are seated a large number of people. the banker can see that the people are hungry and very, very unhappy. In the very middle of the table, there is a depression and set inside of it is a large round bowl of savory soup ... there are large chunks of meat, and potatoes, vegetables, and a wonderful aroma fills the entire room.
The table is so large that the people seated at the table cannot reach the soup with their free hands. However, on one forearm, every single person there has had fastened securely to it a very long, large spoon. each person is quite able to reach the soup with the spoon and pick up a good spoonful of the tangy, inviting repast. However, this does them no good at all, because the spoon is too long for them to then be able to reach their mouths. So the people all sit around as despondent as Tantalus and misery prevails.
Then, the archangel closes that door and opens a different door to show the banker.
Low and behold, the second scene is very like the first. Here is the same large round table, the same folk seated around it, the same tureen of soup in the middle, and even the very same spoons. but, but, but ... here, everyone is laughing, everyone is happy and telling stories and talking and enjoying one another; the atmosphere is totally different. After watching for a minute or two the banker suddenly understand why: each person is able to fill his spoon and then reach over to feed his neighbor! By feeding each other, all of the people take care of each other and everyone is fed as much as they desire!
The banker came to understand where his angst came from and what he could do about it, and he went forth the next day and began to change his life.
(Most bankers are never so fortunate(!!!!!)
Here is a shorter version of the same parable, in a proverb:
The best place, the very best place to store your wealth, is in your neighbor's stomach.
Obviously, neither paper money, nor digital money, nor stock certificates, nor even gold coins, are fit for your neighbor's stomach. but all of them, even the gold, can lose their value in the sight of those you trade with and deal with to supply your needs.
So I count my friends and the people I deal with regularly as a part of my wealth, a big part. I attempt to take care of them as best that I can. Its not always food, there are numerous other "gifts" that I have that I can share with them, some of them unique to me. Sometimes confidence and firmness are asked for, too, though I am known as kind and generous, people who try to take advantage of me eventually come to think better of it.
If our government collapses, there is no finer storehouse for what I have than with my friends, no better protection, no better chance of our mutual survival. Many of the doomsday predictions going around, such as James Kunstler painst so vividly, point out that few will survive when the electric grid and the gasoline stations go down ... the anarchy will be beyond our imagining ... still, the best chances we all have is to be known widely as a trusted friend.
Related to that is another set of items wherein I have accumulated a great deal of wealth, what I consider to be far beyond most of the people I relate with and also those I read about ... my skillset. I have always had a natural curiosity about this world and a certain naivety about anything I have not yet encountered harm from. As a consequence I have got my fingers into quite a lot of different activities and disciplines. The sum is one of the most eclectic set of skillsets and knowledge that I know of, the quintessential "renaissance man". True there is a great deal that I do not know. But I am a passing plumber, electrician, structural engineer, designer. I can do all things with wood, cut, gather, split, burn it, make fine furniture or art, marquetry, dressers, tables, sculptures. I understand the basics of computers, something woefully lacking among our young people today,
I have built a simple electronic counting machine with wires and resistors, transistors, capacitors. I understand binary ....
scuse me. one of my favorite jokes:
There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand the binary number system,
and those who don't ....
I can count on my fingers up to 1023 and I can do it while talking with someone
or other similar mental activity. I understand that a computer is nothing more than a bucket of on-off switches connected with a system of relays which do exactly, exactly, what they are told to do with no deviation or motivation whatsoever.
That's a pretty valuable (and rare!) concept, these days.
In my day I have coded in Fortran, Cobol, C, HTML, XSLT, and other languages and could do it again in a pinch.
Navigating ... sine qua non. I've been around the world, canoe, bicycle, hitchhike, fly, drive, camel... am not afraid to go anywhere ... not the Pentagon library, nor the monasteries on the isles of Lake T'ana, nor the girls rooms in my junior high school ... I don't use GPS because God gave me a much better one than that. So far, the power has never failed on mine. never.
For many years God has protected me and showered me with wealth beyond imagining,
everything that I have wanted, save for a few select things that He knew better about ....
I hope this adds to the discussion about what money is, and isn't ....
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Another Carrington Event?
.....they say that a solar storm the size of the "Carrington Event" hits earth on the average, once every 500 years. They say not to worry about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
From spaceweather.com this morning:
A strong X-class flare, directed at earth, could have the following events:
frying the electronic circuit boards of a healthy percentage of all satellites in earth's orbit. this would effectively end tv and radio communications, military communications, many telephone communications, weather information, GPS communication, affecting millions of surface navigation devices including the instant position loss of all airplanes and most large ships.", and of course, all ATM machines and in fact virtually all "money" transfers and trades of any kind larger than, say, buying a pack of cigarettes ....
setting up huge arcs at many, many electric grid substations, effectively shutting down the grids all over the world and, in the process, damaging a healthy percentage of the very large, costly, and difficult-to-replace transformers which are essential for the whole system to process.
Here's what that can look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=vqgNrj6oEdc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngiPk6sTBs&feature=related
In effect, ending all electric use, worldwide.
These days, that could have "interesting" effects .....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
From spaceweather.com this morning:
Sunspot AR1339 is crackling with M-class solar flares, unleashing at least five of them in the past 24 hours.
Even bigger eruptions are possible before the weekend is over. AR1339 has a delta-class magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class flares. The sunspot is turning toward Earth, so the odds of a geoeffective flare are increasing.
A strong X-class flare, directed at earth, could have the following events:
frying the electronic circuit boards of a healthy percentage of all satellites in earth's orbit. this would effectively end tv and radio communications, military communications, many telephone communications, weather information, GPS communication, affecting millions of surface navigation devices including the instant position loss of all airplanes and most large ships.", and of course, all ATM machines and in fact virtually all "money" transfers and trades of any kind larger than, say, buying a pack of cigarettes ....
setting up huge arcs at many, many electric grid substations, effectively shutting down the grids all over the world and, in the process, damaging a healthy percentage of the very large, costly, and difficult-to-replace transformers which are essential for the whole system to process.
Here's what that can look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=vqgNrj6oEdc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngiPk6sTBs&feature=related
In effect, ending all electric use, worldwide.
These days, that could have "interesting" effects .....
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
OWS
just a few comments ....
First of all, anyone who knows anything about my point of view will understand ...
I gotta ask "What took you all so long to start this?"
Second, yes, comparisons will be made with what we did in the sixties.
but there are critical differences. We all had a future to look forward to
if we dropped our protesting and cooperated with the system. We were not
hungry. It was just that, according to the rules that had been made by the authorities,
some number of us,. at random, would be coming back from extended vacations,
in a box.
Certainly Ron Paul bears an uncanny resemblance to Eugene McCarthy. Yes, the press
will succeed in scuttling his candidacy. But not his issues.
Finally, one can look back at the recent Egyptian governmental change, and a little further at the events of Thermidor, to see what's likely to happen. Yes, this
movement will grow in scope. Yes, it will get violent. Yes, at first the violence will seem random and disorganized, hitting wrong targets ... but in time opposition leaders will rise and the targets will be more thoughtfully chosen. Yes, the new leaders, as the consolidate their power, will reveal dreadful evil sidelines, along the great traditions of Robespierre and Adolf ....
However there's one thing that the kids and the movement will not easily understand .... they are angry because of everything that they thought was promised to them, which they won't ever be able to get ( a secure future, a wife and children, a nice white collar job, a home in the suburbs with 2.5 bathrooms and a lot of grass that must be mowed every weekend, etc etc etc).
But, but, but ...once they succeed in overthrowing the current government (and yes, they WILL succeed, mostly because it has already self-destructed, its just that nobody has figured that out yet.)
it will begin to become evident that the problems they wanted to fix, have not been fixed ....
basically, the money and resources that they thought they were going to get, which they realize Wall Street and the ultra-rich and the older generation have all stolen from them ....
that money is gone, gone gone with the wind.
Nothing, not all the kings horses and all the kings men, can ever get it back again.
The whole world and everyone in it is still going to be poor, no matter how many new governments are put into place or how they are structured ... there is just no way around the fact that the whole planet is overpopulated and cannot (anymore) support the number of people who are here, so many of us must die, in ugly, premature ways that we do not choose for ourselves ....
and thus, if this be revolution, then the wheel is going to just pick up more and more momentum, there will be many, many turns, and perhaps all of humanity will be "broken upon the wheel ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel
there is, still, hope ... its just so marvelously far off .... we really have done it to ourselves, this time ....
First of all, anyone who knows anything about my point of view will understand ...
I gotta ask "What took you all so long to start this?"
Second, yes, comparisons will be made with what we did in the sixties.
but there are critical differences. We all had a future to look forward to
if we dropped our protesting and cooperated with the system. We were not
hungry. It was just that, according to the rules that had been made by the authorities,
some number of us,. at random, would be coming back from extended vacations,
in a box.
Certainly Ron Paul bears an uncanny resemblance to Eugene McCarthy. Yes, the press
will succeed in scuttling his candidacy. But not his issues.
Finally, one can look back at the recent Egyptian governmental change, and a little further at the events of Thermidor, to see what's likely to happen. Yes, this
movement will grow in scope. Yes, it will get violent. Yes, at first the violence will seem random and disorganized, hitting wrong targets ... but in time opposition leaders will rise and the targets will be more thoughtfully chosen. Yes, the new leaders, as the consolidate their power, will reveal dreadful evil sidelines, along the great traditions of Robespierre and Adolf ....
However there's one thing that the kids and the movement will not easily understand .... they are angry because of everything that they thought was promised to them, which they won't ever be able to get ( a secure future, a wife and children, a nice white collar job, a home in the suburbs with 2.5 bathrooms and a lot of grass that must be mowed every weekend, etc etc etc).
But, but, but ...once they succeed in overthrowing the current government (and yes, they WILL succeed, mostly because it has already self-destructed, its just that nobody has figured that out yet.)
it will begin to become evident that the problems they wanted to fix, have not been fixed ....
basically, the money and resources that they thought they were going to get, which they realize Wall Street and the ultra-rich and the older generation have all stolen from them ....
that money is gone, gone gone with the wind.
Nothing, not all the kings horses and all the kings men, can ever get it back again.
The whole world and everyone in it is still going to be poor, no matter how many new governments are put into place or how they are structured ... there is just no way around the fact that the whole planet is overpopulated and cannot (anymore) support the number of people who are here, so many of us must die, in ugly, premature ways that we do not choose for ourselves ....
and thus, if this be revolution, then the wheel is going to just pick up more and more momentum, there will be many, many turns, and perhaps all of humanity will be "broken upon the wheel ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel
there is, still, hope ... its just so marvelously far off .... we really have done it to ourselves, this time ....
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Solution
One of my friends said, about taxes and the Federal debt:
The big boys aren't going to pay, no matter what. Suckers like us will get the bill.
I answered:
nope.
The bill is not going to be paid.
That's the whole point.
Beginning with Paulson's efforts back in 2008, TARP
and the other bailouts and Bernanke's expansion of the Fed,
the bankers have desperately been trying to save their own necks
at the expense of everybody else.
They are nothing but ignorant fools who have killed the golden goose,
trying to get at the source of the gold inside of it,
and they've got nothing for their troubles
but a lot of nasty entrails on their hands.
Fact is, if nobody has any money, then nobody needs bankers for anything. A world with no productive work, where only bankers can profit, is a world without any wealth, where no one profits.
Interesting case in point ... someone asked the Icelanders
how their country recovered so quickly from its crash
a couple of years back.
"Easy. We let the banks fail."
The level of debts worldwide are unsustainable.
Everybody knows that now, everybody understands.
None of these debts are going to be paid back. Not ever.
The Greeks will never pay off.
Neither will the Portuguese or the Irish.
Not the Spanish or the Italians. Not the French or the English.
And certainly not the Americans, who are all armed to the teeth
and planning strategic defaults all across the board.
There is no other solution but a total debt jubilee,
where ALL Debts are declared null and void.
The longer they put it off, the worse it is going to be for everybody,
including the bankers themselves.
At least, now, we are going to have worldwide collapse
of ALL asset classes, bonds, stocks, oil, precious metals, real estate.
Until the deed is done.
EVERYTHING is going down.
We will see just how long this takes ....
they may try to start a war here.
Be kind of interesting if they have a war and nobody comes .....
There is no other way ...
Luke 11 verses 3-5 ... KJV ... pay attention to these exact words ...
3. Give us day by day our daily bread. 4. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
The big boys aren't going to pay, no matter what. Suckers like us will get the bill.
I answered:
nope.
The bill is not going to be paid.
That's the whole point.
Beginning with Paulson's efforts back in 2008, TARP
and the other bailouts and Bernanke's expansion of the Fed,
the bankers have desperately been trying to save their own necks
at the expense of everybody else.
They are nothing but ignorant fools who have killed the golden goose,
trying to get at the source of the gold inside of it,
and they've got nothing for their troubles
but a lot of nasty entrails on their hands.
Fact is, if nobody has any money, then nobody needs bankers for anything. A world with no productive work, where only bankers can profit, is a world without any wealth, where no one profits.
Interesting case in point ... someone asked the Icelanders
how their country recovered so quickly from its crash
a couple of years back.
"Easy. We let the banks fail."
The level of debts worldwide are unsustainable.
Everybody knows that now, everybody understands.
None of these debts are going to be paid back. Not ever.
The Greeks will never pay off.
Neither will the Portuguese or the Irish.
Not the Spanish or the Italians. Not the French or the English.
And certainly not the Americans, who are all armed to the teeth
and planning strategic defaults all across the board.
There is no other solution but a total debt jubilee,
where ALL Debts are declared null and void.
The longer they put it off, the worse it is going to be for everybody,
including the bankers themselves.
At least, now, we are going to have worldwide collapse
of ALL asset classes, bonds, stocks, oil, precious metals, real estate.
Until the deed is done.
EVERYTHING is going down.
We will see just how long this takes ....
they may try to start a war here.
Be kind of interesting if they have a war and nobody comes .....
There is no other way ...
Luke 11 verses 3-5 ... KJV ... pay attention to these exact words ...
3. Give us day by day our daily bread. 4. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Consumption
Prior to my lifetime, this was the name of a deadly disease.
On second thought, maybe it still is ...
On second thought, maybe it still is ...
Friday, August 5, 2011
see!
Its Friday.
Market is green, just like I said.
(Oh. sorry about that. did I forget to tell you about yesterday??????)
Market is green, just like I said.
(Oh. sorry about that. did I forget to tell you about yesterday??????)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
green
I posted this over on Seeking Alpha last Friday.
Debt Downgrade Drama: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet [View article]
On the other hand,
when the "inevitable" deal is made,
which everyone has already bet upon,
that just could be when the "fun" selling starts ....
hmmm ... since then the Dow has dropped 300 pts.
so, while I am hot, lemme make another prediction:
this coming friday, the payroll numbers are going to be awful.
I mean, really, really bad.
and the market will close green ....
Debt Downgrade Drama: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet [View article]
On the other hand,
when the "inevitable" deal is made,
which everyone has already bet upon,
that just could be when the "fun" selling starts ....
hmmm ... since then the Dow has dropped 300 pts.
so, while I am hot, lemme make another prediction:
this coming friday, the payroll numbers are going to be awful.
I mean, really, really bad.
and the market will close green ....
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Genesis (cont.)
Chapter 11
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of San Jose, and they dwelt there.
And they said, to one another, “Go to, let us make webs, and join them thoroughly”
And they said, “Go to, let us build a worldwide city and a network, and let us make a name for ourselves, and so they called their city “Silicon”.
And the Lord came down to see the city and the network, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, for they have Google, and they have automatic translator algorithms.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
So the Lord created viruses and Trojans, and He created worms. The Lord brought spyware, and malware, and adware, and botnets. He brought “virus protection software” to steal resources and charge for the service, and He brought help desks and security czars to bog down, shut down, arrest and frustrate all those with imagination and vision. He brought hackers and leakers and service interruption attacks and identity theft.
So the Lord bogged down the network til the weight of the overhead brought all creative endeavor to a complete standstill.
And He brought crushing debt upon the region of San Jose until all city services came to a halt.
Therefore is the name of it Gaggle for it soundeth and meaneth like the calling of geese.
And he brought Menlo when the speed of all communications reached Park.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of San Jose, and they dwelt there.
And they said, to one another, “Go to, let us make webs, and join them thoroughly”
And they said, “Go to, let us build a worldwide city and a network, and let us make a name for ourselves, and so they called their city “Silicon”.
And the Lord came down to see the city and the network, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, for they have Google, and they have automatic translator algorithms.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
So the Lord created viruses and Trojans, and He created worms. The Lord brought spyware, and malware, and adware, and botnets. He brought “virus protection software” to steal resources and charge for the service, and He brought help desks and security czars to bog down, shut down, arrest and frustrate all those with imagination and vision. He brought hackers and leakers and service interruption attacks and identity theft.
So the Lord bogged down the network til the weight of the overhead brought all creative endeavor to a complete standstill.
And He brought crushing debt upon the region of San Jose until all city services came to a halt.
Therefore is the name of it Gaggle for it soundeth and meaneth like the calling of geese.
And he brought Menlo when the speed of all communications reached Park.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Genesis
Chapter 1
In the beginning, God created Plymouth rock. And Jamestown.
And God said, “Let there be light” and there was Westinghouse.
And God saw the light, and it was good.
And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
Waters”, and He created US Steel.
And God said, Let the land bring forth profits, and there was
B & O Railroad, and American Tobacco, and Western Union, and Standard Oil.
And God said, “Let there be lightweights in the capital to divide
The people and their wallets” and he created the Presidency and the Congress.
And God saw everything that he had made, and told everybody
That it was very good.
Chapter 2
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And the Lord God formed Woodrow Wilson and caused him to be elected
From the dust of the nation. And He gave him dominion over all the land
And all the citizens.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “of every effort thou art
Free to tax, but thou mayest take only what thou needest, thou mayest
Not create a central bank thereupon to take and keep and withhold from
The people, for if thou creates a central bank thou shalt certainly die.”
Chapter 3
Now the banker was more subtle than any beast of the field which the
Lord God has made. And he said unto Congress, “Yea, hath God said
Ye shall not create a central bank?” And Congress said, “We may tax any
Fruit of the garden, but God said we may not partake of a central bank.”
And the banker said, “Look ye, woman. See how the economy goes in waves
And in circles. See how the hard times follow the good times, see how
The citizens suffer joblessness and hunger, in cycles. Know you that risk
Can be mitigated? Did He tell you that you can take compassion on your
People, help them out, and buy their votes in the next election? Did
He tell you that you can have higher highs, whiter whites, and new and improved
nigh unto eternity? Perhaps He wants to keep all the fun and glory to
Himself? Have you ever thought about keeping a little reserve?”
Chapter 4
And Congress took a bite of the apple, and handed it to Wilson, and he also
Took a bite, and they found that it was sweet and juicy, and they wanted more.
And so they created the Federal Reserve. And henceforth,, when there were good times,
The tax receipts were plentiful. And when there were bad times, the Federal Reserve created more paper money and created money to be borrowed, and the losses were postponed, and the
Tax receipts were STILL bountiful.
And they created insurance companies and the FDIC and the SEC and Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac and Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and nuclear deterrents and all manner of protection against all manners of losses, any loss that anybody could think of or imagine.
Chapter 5
And one day it came to the attention of the man in the street that one loss, one little possible loss, had not been insured, contracted, mitigated, indemnified, incorporated, or otherwise protected against, and that was the loss of everything-all-at-the-same-time. The whole nine yards, the kit-and-kaboodle, the cat’s meow. And other people began to read and to hear and to understand and to fear, against this one little item. And a fifteen minute call to Geico went unanswered. And all of the preachers and the Pharisees and the Sadducees arose and penned opinion pieces for the local newspapers that such a thing could never come to pass and y’all need to quit worrying about it and go back to cheering for American Idol and the Pittsburg Steelers. But real estate prices fell and people lost their jobs and had their homes foreclosed upon and the dark clouds continued to build over Noah’s town and the people became more and more fearful…
{snip}
Chapter 7
…
He sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated. But the dove found no rest for her foot, and she returned to him. And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, that the waters were dried up from the earth. And God said, look okay, I did it again. But still I have not destroyed everything. I give you another chance. But please, this time, stay away from snakes and bankers!
In the beginning, God created Plymouth rock. And Jamestown.
And God said, “Let there be light” and there was Westinghouse.
And God saw the light, and it was good.
And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
Waters”, and He created US Steel.
And God said, Let the land bring forth profits, and there was
B & O Railroad, and American Tobacco, and Western Union, and Standard Oil.
And God said, “Let there be lightweights in the capital to divide
The people and their wallets” and he created the Presidency and the Congress.
And God saw everything that he had made, and told everybody
That it was very good.
Chapter 2
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And the Lord God formed Woodrow Wilson and caused him to be elected
From the dust of the nation. And He gave him dominion over all the land
And all the citizens.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “of every effort thou art
Free to tax, but thou mayest take only what thou needest, thou mayest
Not create a central bank thereupon to take and keep and withhold from
The people, for if thou creates a central bank thou shalt certainly die.”
Chapter 3
Now the banker was more subtle than any beast of the field which the
Lord God has made. And he said unto Congress, “Yea, hath God said
Ye shall not create a central bank?” And Congress said, “We may tax any
Fruit of the garden, but God said we may not partake of a central bank.”
And the banker said, “Look ye, woman. See how the economy goes in waves
And in circles. See how the hard times follow the good times, see how
The citizens suffer joblessness and hunger, in cycles. Know you that risk
Can be mitigated? Did He tell you that you can take compassion on your
People, help them out, and buy their votes in the next election? Did
He tell you that you can have higher highs, whiter whites, and new and improved
nigh unto eternity? Perhaps He wants to keep all the fun and glory to
Himself? Have you ever thought about keeping a little reserve?”
Chapter 4
And Congress took a bite of the apple, and handed it to Wilson, and he also
Took a bite, and they found that it was sweet and juicy, and they wanted more.
And so they created the Federal Reserve. And henceforth,, when there were good times,
The tax receipts were plentiful. And when there were bad times, the Federal Reserve created more paper money and created money to be borrowed, and the losses were postponed, and the
Tax receipts were STILL bountiful.
And they created insurance companies and the FDIC and the SEC and Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac and Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and nuclear deterrents and all manner of protection against all manners of losses, any loss that anybody could think of or imagine.
Chapter 5
And one day it came to the attention of the man in the street that one loss, one little possible loss, had not been insured, contracted, mitigated, indemnified, incorporated, or otherwise protected against, and that was the loss of everything-all-at-the-same-time. The whole nine yards, the kit-and-kaboodle, the cat’s meow. And other people began to read and to hear and to understand and to fear, against this one little item. And a fifteen minute call to Geico went unanswered. And all of the preachers and the Pharisees and the Sadducees arose and penned opinion pieces for the local newspapers that such a thing could never come to pass and y’all need to quit worrying about it and go back to cheering for American Idol and the Pittsburg Steelers. But real estate prices fell and people lost their jobs and had their homes foreclosed upon and the dark clouds continued to build over Noah’s town and the people became more and more fearful…
{snip}
Chapter 7
…
He sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated. But the dove found no rest for her foot, and she returned to him. And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, that the waters were dried up from the earth. And God said, look okay, I did it again. But still I have not destroyed everything. I give you another chance. But please, this time, stay away from snakes and bankers!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Gold's Gym
Patent medicine. The elixir of youth. Land in Florida. Penny Stocks.
Subprime Real Estate, ARM mortgages, chain letters, the eat-all-you-want-to-all-day-long diet, John Law and The Mississippi Company, and dutch tulip bulbs.
None can compare with this one.
You are going to do what? "Work out"? um, how much are they paying you????? Tom Sawyer would be so proud ....
Do I really have to say anything more?
Subprime Real Estate, ARM mortgages, chain letters, the eat-all-you-want-to-all-day-long diet, John Law and The Mississippi Company, and dutch tulip bulbs.
None can compare with this one.
You are going to do what? "Work out"? um, how much are they paying you????? Tom Sawyer would be so proud ....
Do I really have to say anything more?
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Sitaka
So many of my experiences in Ethiopia were of the kind that "you had to have been there." On the other hand, so many of my peers now suspect or accuse me of such dark pessimism, and they just don't know, so feeble as they may be I will make some attempts.
"Sitaka" means "gift" in our language. This was the name of the live-in servant girl of the family where I stayed on my first trip. Yes, there is that dirty little secret that the National Geographic and all of the "save an orphan" organizations do not want you to find out, namely, that most of the middle class in Ethiopia have live-in servants.
She must have been around seventeen. The occupation is a major alternative for a young woman who does not accept an early marriage (choices of schooling and other occupations are very limited.) She worked from around sunup to around sundown, seven days a week. Her pay consisted of her own little room, and food, the same as the
family, and a stipend equal to $20/month.
She had all sorts of activities and it seemed to me that she was always busy. She prepared most of the meals and she washed the dishes afterwards. There was a single faucet in the back yard, the extent of the running water in the compound. She did the dishes in the sun and let the brightness dry them. She swept out the entire compound every day. She fed the chickens and the cat. She washed all of the laundry, bending over two large pans on the ground that looked like the bottoms of oil drums, hung it on the line to dry, pulled it in before evening. She owned two sets of faded, raggedy dark outfits that she alternated; those were probably all
her possessions in the whole world.
Sitaka turned my whole understanding of the world completely upside down, as I spent weeks and weeks watching her, interacting lightly. She never worked hard but always went easily, lightly to her tasks. She sang, usually softly, sometimes more loudly, while she bustled about. She played, with Tadios, with the chickens, with the cat. She was ALWAYS smiling, she was ALWAYS happy; Nagast even said about her that she was the happiest person that he even knew.
This simple truth, that we tell each other, in church, and to our young people and in our greeting cards and our little sermons to one another, but none of us believe it for a moment and no one would dream of giving up anything they had to attain what she has ... but that is what you have to do, that is all you can do, put down your own stuff and trust in the Lord, and thank Him constantly
for everything He gives you. There is no other way to happiness.
If that is really what you want.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sex
I’d prefer for this issue just to go away, quietly. I’d prefer for me just to ignore it. But nearly everybody around me seems to be obsessing about it. Since, imho, they are all missing the mark by a pretty wide margin, I am impelled to shoot my arrow into the maw.
One of the important experiences in my past was a long-drawn-out negotiation of divorce and property settlement with a former wife, and her attorney, and my attorney. There really was not all that much to fight over and most of what there was the ownership was pretty clear. The main problem, as I see it from retrospect, was that the woman had an unholy desire to hurt and take advantage of me in any way that she possibly could find. This was coupled with an education and career in the twists and turns of the written English language. Bluntly, she employed every subterfuge and device that she could imagine. Actually, I suspect that she borrowed most of them from the real estate and mortgage industry of this great country. The long and the short of it was that we struggled for over two years, it became the major concentration of my time and energy and affected every part of my life. Even the lawyers, on both sides, got tired of it. At the end, she ended up having to pay me over twice what I had originally asked for, in return for the property of mine that she held back for herself.
Another set of experiences also has a strong impact on my point of view. During a period in my life when I was single and moderately wealthy, I had opportunities to idyll and play for weeks at a time under the roves and mingling with people in a very different and foreign culture, that of modern Ethiopia. I ate, drank, danced, partied, prayed and slept with natives. Previously I had had some vague suspicion that the prevailing attitudes, standards, laws, and mores of my own culture, having to do with sexuality, might be a bit twisted and perverted. The profound experience of being able to look back at it from the outside, has taught me a great deal that few around me can see.
Just for example, I remember a particular discussion I had with an older Ethiopian gentleman about the drug Viagra. I can still see and hear his belly-laugh at the americans who believe that such a drug could be beneficial or pleasant or helpful.
For the longest time on my bulletin board I had posted a quote from Bishop Desmond Tuttu descrying the ruckus about priestly pedophilia, in a world where problems of persisting violent struggles, starvation and disease plague large populations. Only in America, where anything sexual is perfectly permissible in public so long as it is used to sell something, but highly improper for pleasure, could such a brouhaha arise.
Where am I going here? The issue of the day, at least in the newspapers and the discussions at my church, is “gay marriage”. Maybe the tv too, I wouldn’t know. Is it right or wrong. I can envisage some pretty thorny legal situations arising. A same-sex couple can marry in one state, then move to another where their marriage is no longer accepted. Or a hetero couple can marry, then one of the members submit to medical science’s wizardy and physically and legally change their sex, in a state where even cohabitation in certain venus may be punishable by law. The variety and kind of ridiculous fabricated conflicts that could arise, boggle the mind.
We base our culture and our laws, to a high degree, on the writings of a misogynist from almost two thousand years ago, who spent all his time with other men, never married and barely tolerating others who did. He did, in fact, devote considerable discourse and energy on the subject of whether or not a grown man must have his penis mutilated in order to gain admittance, upon death and leaving his body, of the most hallowed permanent vacation place. It escapes me why his opinions are considered to be paramount, especially on this subject.
So the reason I am bothered enough to write is this: hearing and reading all the discourse, debate, and acrimony, on both sides of the aisle, I have yet to read or hear one person correctly identify, even mention, the root of the difficulty, the true foundation of the problem.
As usual, it is money. Not sex or morality at all, but lucre.
To go back to that failed marriage, I recall after that experience being truly regretful that no one in this culture will ever tell young people in consideration of matrimony, the nasty truth of what marriage (ANY marriage) really is about here in this land. It doesn’t matter if you pretend to do it in a church or synagogue or mosque or Las Vegas chapel, or just the office of the justice of the peace, or maybe even out in the woods. Before you can do it you have to get a license, that should be a clue. The plain fact is that making a marriage is an act of creating a contract. Most importantly, it is a three-way contract, between two individuals and the state. No one is told, in advance, that there is simply reams and reams of fine print which is written upon that contract and which both individuals must accept and adhere to. Obviously even fewer people ever actually READ the fine print. Not until one or the other actually finds themselves in a lawyer’s office discussing the opportunities of divorce, do they begin to understand the breadth and depth of all of that verbiage.
When you marry, it changes your financial status in all kinds of ways. It immediately changes your withholding and tax status. It affects your last will and testament, whether duly recorded or simply assumed. It affects all the contracts you have with insurance companies, health, automobile, hazard, whatever. Amounts of money that you pay to these various entities will change, immediately. Money, money, money. In most of these situations, you will find that you will benefit, financially (at least, until you show up in divorce court!)
People cannot rationally discuss whether or not gay marriages should be legal until they recognize and accept that society grants substantial financial advantages to couples who sign this marriage contract and agree to all of its terms.
The simple way (KISS) out of all this morass is to change all of the laws and regulations to be transparent to marriage. Make it a religious and only religious institution, which has no effect legally, has no affect on anybody's wallet. Then, all this nonsense about same-sex marriages would fade like the fog on a September morning. Ain’t gonna happen, is it. People just have to make drama, don’t they. Sigh ….
One of the important experiences in my past was a long-drawn-out negotiation of divorce and property settlement with a former wife, and her attorney, and my attorney. There really was not all that much to fight over and most of what there was the ownership was pretty clear. The main problem, as I see it from retrospect, was that the woman had an unholy desire to hurt and take advantage of me in any way that she possibly could find. This was coupled with an education and career in the twists and turns of the written English language. Bluntly, she employed every subterfuge and device that she could imagine. Actually, I suspect that she borrowed most of them from the real estate and mortgage industry of this great country. The long and the short of it was that we struggled for over two years, it became the major concentration of my time and energy and affected every part of my life. Even the lawyers, on both sides, got tired of it. At the end, she ended up having to pay me over twice what I had originally asked for, in return for the property of mine that she held back for herself.
Another set of experiences also has a strong impact on my point of view. During a period in my life when I was single and moderately wealthy, I had opportunities to idyll and play for weeks at a time under the roves and mingling with people in a very different and foreign culture, that of modern Ethiopia. I ate, drank, danced, partied, prayed and slept with natives. Previously I had had some vague suspicion that the prevailing attitudes, standards, laws, and mores of my own culture, having to do with sexuality, might be a bit twisted and perverted. The profound experience of being able to look back at it from the outside, has taught me a great deal that few around me can see.
Just for example, I remember a particular discussion I had with an older Ethiopian gentleman about the drug Viagra. I can still see and hear his belly-laugh at the americans who believe that such a drug could be beneficial or pleasant or helpful.
For the longest time on my bulletin board I had posted a quote from Bishop Desmond Tuttu descrying the ruckus about priestly pedophilia, in a world where problems of persisting violent struggles, starvation and disease plague large populations. Only in America, where anything sexual is perfectly permissible in public so long as it is used to sell something, but highly improper for pleasure, could such a brouhaha arise.
Where am I going here? The issue of the day, at least in the newspapers and the discussions at my church, is “gay marriage”. Maybe the tv too, I wouldn’t know. Is it right or wrong. I can envisage some pretty thorny legal situations arising. A same-sex couple can marry in one state, then move to another where their marriage is no longer accepted. Or a hetero couple can marry, then one of the members submit to medical science’s wizardy and physically and legally change their sex, in a state where even cohabitation in certain venus may be punishable by law. The variety and kind of ridiculous fabricated conflicts that could arise, boggle the mind.
We base our culture and our laws, to a high degree, on the writings of a misogynist from almost two thousand years ago, who spent all his time with other men, never married and barely tolerating others who did. He did, in fact, devote considerable discourse and energy on the subject of whether or not a grown man must have his penis mutilated in order to gain admittance, upon death and leaving his body, of the most hallowed permanent vacation place. It escapes me why his opinions are considered to be paramount, especially on this subject.
So the reason I am bothered enough to write is this: hearing and reading all the discourse, debate, and acrimony, on both sides of the aisle, I have yet to read or hear one person correctly identify, even mention, the root of the difficulty, the true foundation of the problem.
As usual, it is money. Not sex or morality at all, but lucre.
To go back to that failed marriage, I recall after that experience being truly regretful that no one in this culture will ever tell young people in consideration of matrimony, the nasty truth of what marriage (ANY marriage) really is about here in this land. It doesn’t matter if you pretend to do it in a church or synagogue or mosque or Las Vegas chapel, or just the office of the justice of the peace, or maybe even out in the woods. Before you can do it you have to get a license, that should be a clue. The plain fact is that making a marriage is an act of creating a contract. Most importantly, it is a three-way contract, between two individuals and the state. No one is told, in advance, that there is simply reams and reams of fine print which is written upon that contract and which both individuals must accept and adhere to. Obviously even fewer people ever actually READ the fine print. Not until one or the other actually finds themselves in a lawyer’s office discussing the opportunities of divorce, do they begin to understand the breadth and depth of all of that verbiage.
When you marry, it changes your financial status in all kinds of ways. It immediately changes your withholding and tax status. It affects your last will and testament, whether duly recorded or simply assumed. It affects all the contracts you have with insurance companies, health, automobile, hazard, whatever. Amounts of money that you pay to these various entities will change, immediately. Money, money, money. In most of these situations, you will find that you will benefit, financially (at least, until you show up in divorce court!)
People cannot rationally discuss whether or not gay marriages should be legal until they recognize and accept that society grants substantial financial advantages to couples who sign this marriage contract and agree to all of its terms.
The simple way (KISS) out of all this morass is to change all of the laws and regulations to be transparent to marriage. Make it a religious and only religious institution, which has no effect legally, has no affect on anybody's wallet. Then, all this nonsense about same-sex marriages would fade like the fog on a September morning. Ain’t gonna happen, is it. People just have to make drama, don’t they. Sigh ….
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
The economic death-spiral has been triggered.
http://www.philstockworld.com/2011/05/30/the-economic-death-spiral-has-been-triggered/
yes, yes, yes, I know ....
I'm just another crackpot.
Please pay no attention to that man behind the curtain ....
yes, yes, yes, I know ....
I'm just another crackpot.
Please pay no attention to that man behind the curtain ....
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
thermodynamics, or the laws of everything.
I'm merely paraphrasing. These things are worth saying,
again and again and again, until we all get too cold.
from wikipedia:
* The first law of thermodynamics expresses the existence of a quantity called the internal energy of a system, and shows how it is related to the distinction between energy transfer as work and energy transfer as heat. The internal energy obeys the principle of conservation of energy but work and heat are not defined as separately conserved quantities.
* The second law of thermodynamics expresses the existence of a quantity called the entropy of a system and states that the entropy of an isolated macroscopic system never decreases.
* The third law of thermodynamics concerns the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero temperature, and implies that it is impossible to cool a system to exactly absolute zero.
To restate more simply:
from Ugo Bardi and others:
1. You can't win
2. You can't get even
3. You can't quit the game
And, like the speed of light,
its not just a good idea, its the law.
again and again and again, until we all get too cold.
from wikipedia:
* The first law of thermodynamics expresses the existence of a quantity called the internal energy of a system, and shows how it is related to the distinction between energy transfer as work and energy transfer as heat. The internal energy obeys the principle of conservation of energy but work and heat are not defined as separately conserved quantities.
* The second law of thermodynamics expresses the existence of a quantity called the entropy of a system and states that the entropy of an isolated macroscopic system never decreases.
* The third law of thermodynamics concerns the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero temperature, and implies that it is impossible to cool a system to exactly absolute zero.
To restate more simply:
from Ugo Bardi and others:
1. You can't win
2. You can't get even
3. You can't quit the game
And, like the speed of light,
its not just a good idea, its the law.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
ቀላል
(The title of this post is written in "Fidel" script, an alphabet in use
throughout the horn of Africa, in the language of Amharic. the word is
pronounced "kel'-al" and translates to "easy".)
I just have one question for you all.
When did "easy" start having anything to do with "good"?
Just think back, to that one incident in your life, when you were ecstatic, jump-for-joy, hug-a-stranger happy.
Now think, for a minute, about what had happened to make you that way. What had you just done?
Did you like feeling that way? Did you enjoy it? Did the people around you enjoy it? Do you hope to feel that way again sometime?
Now, just ask yourself, whatever you did to feel that way. Was it easy?
throughout the horn of Africa, in the language of Amharic. the word is
pronounced "kel'-al" and translates to "easy".)
I just have one question for you all.
When did "easy" start having anything to do with "good"?
Just think back, to that one incident in your life, when you were ecstatic, jump-for-joy, hug-a-stranger happy.
Now think, for a minute, about what had happened to make you that way. What had you just done?
Did you like feeling that way? Did you enjoy it? Did the people around you enjoy it? Do you hope to feel that way again sometime?
Now, just ask yourself, whatever you did to feel that way. Was it easy?
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Price Controls
The US Government,
in cahoots with the COMEX and sundry other parties,
is attempting to manipulate the price of crude oil (downward!)
by manipulating the futures markets.
Its a more obfuscatgory tactic than Nixon's simple price controls
and its difficult to explain to the ovine --
they won't know who did it.
But the results will still be the same.
Within months from now,
The USA is going to start experiencing spot shortages
of gasoline and other crude oil by-products.
Hang on, folks.
Your life is about to get seriously ugly.
in cahoots with the COMEX and sundry other parties,
is attempting to manipulate the price of crude oil (downward!)
by manipulating the futures markets.
Its a more obfuscatgory tactic than Nixon's simple price controls
and its difficult to explain to the ovine --
they won't know who did it.
But the results will still be the same.
Within months from now,
The USA is going to start experiencing spot shortages
of gasoline and other crude oil by-products.
Hang on, folks.
Your life is about to get seriously ugly.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Nelson Bunker Hunt
(just in case you have been asleep in a cave)
The recent run-up in the amount of fiat currency that people are trading for hard silver has been quite spectacular recently, from $17 to $49 in one year’s time. For at least the past several weeks this has been garnering widespread publicity. As can be expected, comparisons and contrasts are being drawn with an incident within my memory and that of numerous other market participants, namely the attempted cornering of the whole silver market by Nelson Bunker Hunt and associates during the decade of the 1970’s.
An article that appeared in 1980 in Playboy which detailed the machinations is making the rounds and being extensively quoted and paraphrased.
I am finding that there is a rather extensive omission in the information of that article. Yes, it says that for a brief time Bunker was the wealthiest that any single man has ever been, with a NAV north of $4B at a time when the advertising campaign at McDonalds was “a big mac, fries, a coke, and change back from your dollar!”
Okay, yes, the roof fell in on him. Yes, the tightening of margin requirements at the Comex had a lot to do with the crash. Yes, after the crash he was, if not left penniless, at least reduced back to human proportions. Okay, so where did the $4B go? Did it just vanish, as all the articles seem to imply? Did it (Ha Ha!) go back to "the people"?
I can’t offer cold, hard facts here, I seem to recollect a few admissions at the time which have since disappeared from print. Volker was of course involved; he backed up the project with the unlimited credit of the Federal Reserve. There were key players. Partners at the Comex. Large bankers who could not stand for inflation to get out of hand, let alone for it to be generally understood by the public for what it really is, grand theft by the bankers and politicians from everybody with a positive net worth. Partners such as JPMorgan. As I recall, the Comex changed its rules, somewhat illegally, to establish not only margin limits but position limits on longs (but those same limits have never been enforced upon shorts!). And NY megabanks, operating together behind the scenes, took out huge short positions.
So where did the $4B go, now? Well, of course, it all went to the banks holding the shorts.
And some of them remember. Greedily? Well you know about bankers by now, right?
Now I know you all are now realizing something. There is no NBH this time playing on the long side against the establishment. The situation is different this time. Its all of us, isn’t it ….
And all the talk, all the bombast, all the paper, all the contracts, all the fake news articles opining about bubbles, all the bamboozle in the world, cannot create one more dime of real silver.
The recent run-up in the amount of fiat currency that people are trading for hard silver has been quite spectacular recently, from $17 to $49 in one year’s time. For at least the past several weeks this has been garnering widespread publicity. As can be expected, comparisons and contrasts are being drawn with an incident within my memory and that of numerous other market participants, namely the attempted cornering of the whole silver market by Nelson Bunker Hunt and associates during the decade of the 1970’s.
An article that appeared in 1980 in Playboy which detailed the machinations is making the rounds and being extensively quoted and paraphrased.
I am finding that there is a rather extensive omission in the information of that article. Yes, it says that for a brief time Bunker was the wealthiest that any single man has ever been, with a NAV north of $4B at a time when the advertising campaign at McDonalds was “a big mac, fries, a coke, and change back from your dollar!”
Okay, yes, the roof fell in on him. Yes, the tightening of margin requirements at the Comex had a lot to do with the crash. Yes, after the crash he was, if not left penniless, at least reduced back to human proportions. Okay, so where did the $4B go? Did it just vanish, as all the articles seem to imply? Did it (Ha Ha!) go back to "the people"?
I can’t offer cold, hard facts here, I seem to recollect a few admissions at the time which have since disappeared from print. Volker was of course involved; he backed up the project with the unlimited credit of the Federal Reserve. There were key players. Partners at the Comex. Large bankers who could not stand for inflation to get out of hand, let alone for it to be generally understood by the public for what it really is, grand theft by the bankers and politicians from everybody with a positive net worth. Partners such as JPMorgan. As I recall, the Comex changed its rules, somewhat illegally, to establish not only margin limits but position limits on longs (but those same limits have never been enforced upon shorts!). And NY megabanks, operating together behind the scenes, took out huge short positions.
So where did the $4B go, now? Well, of course, it all went to the banks holding the shorts.
And some of them remember. Greedily? Well you know about bankers by now, right?
Now I know you all are now realizing something. There is no NBH this time playing on the long side against the establishment. The situation is different this time. Its all of us, isn’t it ….
And all the talk, all the bombast, all the paper, all the contracts, all the fake news articles opining about bubbles, all the bamboozle in the world, cannot create one more dime of real silver.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Heart of Darkness
I just may embody certain aspects of my personality in common with Kurtz.
And, more interesting, we share them with Almaz, my African wife.
They must be exceedingly rare and exceptional traits, poorly understood by
anyone around us, and its pointless to even attempt to explain them.
I am quite gratified that Conrad himself had some knowledge of what I am
talking about. So let me just share some choice quotes from this
little book (which I enjoyed immensely!)
I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent -- and nothing happened.
I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men -- men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.
I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. the most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of unextinguishable regrets.
Oh! The horror, the horror!
And, more interesting, we share them with Almaz, my African wife.
They must be exceedingly rare and exceptional traits, poorly understood by
anyone around us, and its pointless to even attempt to explain them.
I am quite gratified that Conrad himself had some knowledge of what I am
talking about. So let me just share some choice quotes from this
little book (which I enjoyed immensely!)
I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent -- and nothing happened.
I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men -- men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.
I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. the most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of unextinguishable regrets.
Oh! The horror, the horror!
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Universal Panacea
Was your country just hit with one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history,
followed by a 30-foot tsunami that just kept coming and coming and coming,
and then after that your massive nuclear generating complex started to get a little warm?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Was your country just hit by a wave of fraudulent banksters selling fraudulent mortgages to people who could not honestly afford them, collapsing the economy and adding 15 million individuals to the roles of the "I'm not unemployed, I want a good job right now!"?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Did your military machine, already the largest and most expensive and inefficient that the world has ever seen and overextended in several long-term theatres, just attempt to grab yet another expanse of oil fields and find that lo and behold the former owner is choosing to destroy them rather than let you steal them?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Is your new girlfriend just a little late on her period this month?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Are the alcoholic members of your legislature, hooked on the glories of giving away free money to the people who put them where they are, suddenly seeing the light of sobriety but arguing and debating that if they cut back from 15 drinks a day to 14 drinks a day, how strong the last drink can be?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Is your bank commodities desk under orders from above to maintain a short position on silver futures roughly the size of the entire yearly market, and the price of silver has just doubled in the last 9 months?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Did you find three new grey hairs coming out of your scalp while showering this morning?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
And not only that, but you have the "heartbreak of psoriasis" on your knee?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Thank God for Mammon!
followed by a 30-foot tsunami that just kept coming and coming and coming,
and then after that your massive nuclear generating complex started to get a little warm?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Was your country just hit by a wave of fraudulent banksters selling fraudulent mortgages to people who could not honestly afford them, collapsing the economy and adding 15 million individuals to the roles of the "I'm not unemployed, I want a good job right now!"?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Did your military machine, already the largest and most expensive and inefficient that the world has ever seen and overextended in several long-term theatres, just attempt to grab yet another expanse of oil fields and find that lo and behold the former owner is choosing to destroy them rather than let you steal them?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Is your new girlfriend just a little late on her period this month?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Are the alcoholic members of your legislature, hooked on the glories of giving away free money to the people who put them where they are, suddenly seeing the light of sobriety but arguing and debating that if they cut back from 15 drinks a day to 14 drinks a day, how strong the last drink can be?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Is your bank commodities desk under orders from above to maintain a short position on silver futures roughly the size of the entire yearly market, and the price of silver has just doubled in the last 9 months?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Did you find three new grey hairs coming out of your scalp while showering this morning?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
And not only that, but you have the "heartbreak of psoriasis" on your knee?
There is a solution, just print some more money.
Thank God for Mammon!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Lord Jim
When I was a teen, I saw the movie (1965 Columbia Pictures), and while at the time I did not get the gist of the story, I remembered enough so that when a used copy of the book fell into my lap, I picked it up with interest.
An immediate aspect of the written story is the complexity of the vocabulary. English was actually Conrad’s third language and he shows off a mastery profoundly more articulate than my peers. While there is little doubt that electronic communications have reduced our society’s articulations to the level of tweets and grunts of the forest, this is still an impressive work if for this reason alone. My vocabulary may be more extensive than most yet I found myself reaching for my dictionary every two or three pages. I was furthermore fascinated with the characters’ conversations, for in marked opposition to contemporary constant shouting competition to shock and awe our colleagues, the meat of their utterances is almost always drowned in delicate, savory sauces to the point where only the most intensive attention can perceive it at all.
Other reviewers make a note that Conrad fractures time as well and tells the tale through the eyes and mouths of several characters at differing occasions. By this artifice no simple, straightforward view of Jim emerges but rather a collage or mural.
Conrad weaves an interesting tale set in the colonial backdrop of the maritime West Indies and old Siam. Basically there are only three or four events to make up the plot and around which to build the character descriptions of the major participants. The central theme of the book is the unveiling of the personality of the central figure, Jim, or Lord Jim.
A quick skim of the predominant critical opinions turns up no mention whatever of what I find to be glaring and fascinating about Jim’s adventures and his approach. Perhaps a recent confrontation with Albert Camus’ scalpel in the hand of the protagonist of “The Fall” affected my point of view. Jim’s abandonment of the pilgrims of the Patna, his heroism and rise to Lordship in the struggle with the hilltop raiders of Patusan, and his final act of contrition, reminded me overmuch of the story of Jesus. It strikes me now as pertinent that both stories are told from a variety of voices, times and points of view.
As Camus abjectly points out, Jesus must have known that He was the sole survivor among his peers of Bethlehem, and might reasonably have carried a terrible psychic burden in a sense of responsibility. Conrad goes into exquisite detail in describing Jim’s similar burden after his inexplicable flight from the Patna. Jesus’ sermon on the mount, his subsequent persuading of the crowds to feed each other with their spare provisions and assorted other miracles and wise teachings, parallel Jim’s fabulous success with the ornamental six-pounders and the element of surprise on the mounts over Patusan. And Jim's adamant refusals to defend and rescue himself from narrow, self-serving accusation is exactly similar to Jesus’ trial and crucifixion.
I come to the end of the book admiring, respecting, honoring, almost loving Jim, notwithstanding all the crowd of deviants, miscreants, and mudfaced maggots who circled about him throughout the book.
An immediate aspect of the written story is the complexity of the vocabulary. English was actually Conrad’s third language and he shows off a mastery profoundly more articulate than my peers. While there is little doubt that electronic communications have reduced our society’s articulations to the level of tweets and grunts of the forest, this is still an impressive work if for this reason alone. My vocabulary may be more extensive than most yet I found myself reaching for my dictionary every two or three pages. I was furthermore fascinated with the characters’ conversations, for in marked opposition to contemporary constant shouting competition to shock and awe our colleagues, the meat of their utterances is almost always drowned in delicate, savory sauces to the point where only the most intensive attention can perceive it at all.
Other reviewers make a note that Conrad fractures time as well and tells the tale through the eyes and mouths of several characters at differing occasions. By this artifice no simple, straightforward view of Jim emerges but rather a collage or mural.
Conrad weaves an interesting tale set in the colonial backdrop of the maritime West Indies and old Siam. Basically there are only three or four events to make up the plot and around which to build the character descriptions of the major participants. The central theme of the book is the unveiling of the personality of the central figure, Jim, or Lord Jim.
A quick skim of the predominant critical opinions turns up no mention whatever of what I find to be glaring and fascinating about Jim’s adventures and his approach. Perhaps a recent confrontation with Albert Camus’ scalpel in the hand of the protagonist of “The Fall” affected my point of view. Jim’s abandonment of the pilgrims of the Patna, his heroism and rise to Lordship in the struggle with the hilltop raiders of Patusan, and his final act of contrition, reminded me overmuch of the story of Jesus. It strikes me now as pertinent that both stories are told from a variety of voices, times and points of view.
As Camus abjectly points out, Jesus must have known that He was the sole survivor among his peers of Bethlehem, and might reasonably have carried a terrible psychic burden in a sense of responsibility. Conrad goes into exquisite detail in describing Jim’s similar burden after his inexplicable flight from the Patna. Jesus’ sermon on the mount, his subsequent persuading of the crowds to feed each other with their spare provisions and assorted other miracles and wise teachings, parallel Jim’s fabulous success with the ornamental six-pounders and the element of surprise on the mounts over Patusan. And Jim's adamant refusals to defend and rescue himself from narrow, self-serving accusation is exactly similar to Jesus’ trial and crucifixion.
I come to the end of the book admiring, respecting, honoring, almost loving Jim, notwithstanding all the crowd of deviants, miscreants, and mudfaced maggots who circled about him throughout the book.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Warning
I can't find correct attribution to the bit about the shoeshine boy in 1929.
Street myth, probably.
Anyway, I just went down to the local hardware store to pay off my tab.
The owner (I've been doing business with him for over 20 years, and
he was an old man, then), started to tell me about the Weimar Republic.
He said that Hitler was a smart man and a good orator, until he went
nuts. And he said that soon, we in the good ole USA are going to need
a wheelbarrow full of cash just to buy a loaf of bread.
If there is anyone who actually reads me, and has any respect at all,
lemme tell you now:
Its time to sell. Everything. And go short. Monday morning, first thing,
if you have not done it already.
Street myth, probably.
Anyway, I just went down to the local hardware store to pay off my tab.
The owner (I've been doing business with him for over 20 years, and
he was an old man, then), started to tell me about the Weimar Republic.
He said that Hitler was a smart man and a good orator, until he went
nuts. And he said that soon, we in the good ole USA are going to need
a wheelbarrow full of cash just to buy a loaf of bread.
If there is anyone who actually reads me, and has any respect at all,
lemme tell you now:
Its time to sell. Everything. And go short. Monday morning, first thing,
if you have not done it already.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Craig's List Personals
"Why do all the men here want asian or latin women?"
After having been reading these personal ads for awhile,
I have decided to stay with my cat.
But I think I can take a swipe at your question.
I am going to make a generalization,
so of course there will be exceptions,
but I think that the principle is basically accurate.
Having read a lot of these ads,
from a variety of women,
I find that most of them have a very definite idea of what they want,
and whatever it is, none of them seem very interested
in learning anything new or having any new experience that they have not done before,
and none of them seem very interested in compromising their values, either.
In other words, they seem to approach looking for a man
the same way that they go grocery shopping,
they have a list of items that they expect to get
and they will not deviate from the list.
And this seems to be the fundamental difficulty that our whole society has got itself into.
We believe that we can control reality.
For one thing, we believe that we can control risks and largely avoid any serious problems.
For another, we seem to think that we can control other countries and governments.
For another, we think that our government can control our economy.
In other countries, the people tend to be a little bit wiser,
and they realize that there is very little that they can really control,
so they are more willing to accept conditions that may not be totally to their liking.
This makes all women from all other societies more appealing than american women.
In a word, american women are all bitches. Sorry to be so blunt, but that's how almost all men feel. Sadly, the american men have the same attitude problem.
What happens is that after a little while, the new latin or asian or african woman leaves the man because he won't compromise either.
Let me give you one example.
fat is ugly.
Not only is it ugly, but being fat limits your ability to negotiate through this world.
The fatter you are, the less you can move about and do things.
You can't even make love with any authority, all you can do is lie there.
However, obesity is getting more and more common among american men and women.
And all the fat americans take the attitude that if others don't like it, they can stuff it.
That we ought to love fat people. that you can't help it.
None are willing to make any sacrifices, even though it would make your own lives much happier and more successful. All it takes is to close the mought for awhile and suffer
the pangs of hunger now and then. Its not difficult.
Another example.
I ride the train to work.
Usually it is on time but occasionally it can be a half hour or more late,
and once in awhile it gets canceled completely.
This morning, there were two inches of snow and slush on the ground.
The man standing next to me on the platform, besides being fat,
was wearing sandals. Bare toes in the snow.
I suppose that he thought that the weather ought to have more respect for his wants and needs.
does this help any?
-chiz
After having been reading these personal ads for awhile,
I have decided to stay with my cat.
But I think I can take a swipe at your question.
I am going to make a generalization,
so of course there will be exceptions,
but I think that the principle is basically accurate.
Having read a lot of these ads,
from a variety of women,
I find that most of them have a very definite idea of what they want,
and whatever it is, none of them seem very interested
in learning anything new or having any new experience that they have not done before,
and none of them seem very interested in compromising their values, either.
In other words, they seem to approach looking for a man
the same way that they go grocery shopping,
they have a list of items that they expect to get
and they will not deviate from the list.
And this seems to be the fundamental difficulty that our whole society has got itself into.
We believe that we can control reality.
For one thing, we believe that we can control risks and largely avoid any serious problems.
For another, we seem to think that we can control other countries and governments.
For another, we think that our government can control our economy.
In other countries, the people tend to be a little bit wiser,
and they realize that there is very little that they can really control,
so they are more willing to accept conditions that may not be totally to their liking.
This makes all women from all other societies more appealing than american women.
In a word, american women are all bitches. Sorry to be so blunt, but that's how almost all men feel. Sadly, the american men have the same attitude problem.
What happens is that after a little while, the new latin or asian or african woman leaves the man because he won't compromise either.
Let me give you one example.
fat is ugly.
Not only is it ugly, but being fat limits your ability to negotiate through this world.
The fatter you are, the less you can move about and do things.
You can't even make love with any authority, all you can do is lie there.
However, obesity is getting more and more common among american men and women.
And all the fat americans take the attitude that if others don't like it, they can stuff it.
That we ought to love fat people. that you can't help it.
None are willing to make any sacrifices, even though it would make your own lives much happier and more successful. All it takes is to close the mought for awhile and suffer
the pangs of hunger now and then. Its not difficult.
Another example.
I ride the train to work.
Usually it is on time but occasionally it can be a half hour or more late,
and once in awhile it gets canceled completely.
This morning, there were two inches of snow and slush on the ground.
The man standing next to me on the platform, besides being fat,
was wearing sandals. Bare toes in the snow.
I suppose that he thought that the weather ought to have more respect for his wants and needs.
does this help any?
-chiz
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Cathartic Release
I was at that age where the dreams of a successful career and a warm, loving family were slightly tarnished but still very much alive. Recently I had begun my second professional job. It had taken a few years of labor to recover from the disastrous first. I was still enjoying the taste of such fruits as paid holidays, sick leave and health benefits.
One workday found me crunched in my chair, cramped in my stomach. Though commuting my ten miles by bike could sometimes be a tad inconvenient, this was more than that. I took the liberty of reporting my malaise and then walking the half-block to my HMO.
It was a slow day at the clinic; the waiting room was empty. A secretary took my health card and then explained to me that their system was to initially assign an assistant “health practitioner”, more than a nurse but less than a doctor, to make an initial assessment. I guess I waited a few minutes before a woman not much older than myself, dressed in a lab coat, came for me and brought me back to a dimly-lit examining room.
After checking vital signs, the woman instructed me to remove my shirt, loosen my belt, and lie down on one of those examining table thingies with the crinkly paper. My cramps were coming and going, here and there in my belly. She began to massage my abdomen expertly with her strong hands. Lying there under someone else’s control, I began to have a little sense come into me about my situation. More than likely, there were some serious bubbles of gas tying up my intestines. As she deftly moved things about, they made a few gurgling sounds.
Gradually, I became even more aware, somewhat the way someone wakes up in the morning on a Saturday, when there are no pressing responsibilities for getting up and the cheerful sunlight is streaming through the curtains. The woman’s firm, friendly hands were ever-so-slightly suggestive. The fact that I had hardly seen anyone else, either staff or patient, in the facility, added to the sense of protection and opportunity.
Most unfortunately, another though intruded upon our secluded solitude. I realized that she cared about me and she wanted very much to help me to feel better, physically. She wanted to bring me a release and relaxation. And this was more than a little bit tempting. However, if she kept on kneading me the way she was, there was a strong and growing possibility that we would both be confronted with a noisy, fragrant, and utterly natural bodily event, quite different than the one she appeared to me to be aiming for. It started to trouble me a great deal that the direction she was taking us in would more than likely end in a culmination which, unfortunately, I would find totally embarrassing and utterly without conjugal merit. I began in fact, sweating, shaking, and praying to God that I not make a total fool of myself.
At my tender age, I forced myself to lie in order to extract myself from impending delight, and disappoint her with my coldness and lack of receptivity. All in all, an utterly unhappy outcome of the situation. I told her I was feeling better and I needed to get back to work. Kinda ruined everything. For a long, long, long, long, long, long time ….
One workday found me crunched in my chair, cramped in my stomach. Though commuting my ten miles by bike could sometimes be a tad inconvenient, this was more than that. I took the liberty of reporting my malaise and then walking the half-block to my HMO.
It was a slow day at the clinic; the waiting room was empty. A secretary took my health card and then explained to me that their system was to initially assign an assistant “health practitioner”, more than a nurse but less than a doctor, to make an initial assessment. I guess I waited a few minutes before a woman not much older than myself, dressed in a lab coat, came for me and brought me back to a dimly-lit examining room.
After checking vital signs, the woman instructed me to remove my shirt, loosen my belt, and lie down on one of those examining table thingies with the crinkly paper. My cramps were coming and going, here and there in my belly. She began to massage my abdomen expertly with her strong hands. Lying there under someone else’s control, I began to have a little sense come into me about my situation. More than likely, there were some serious bubbles of gas tying up my intestines. As she deftly moved things about, they made a few gurgling sounds.
Gradually, I became even more aware, somewhat the way someone wakes up in the morning on a Saturday, when there are no pressing responsibilities for getting up and the cheerful sunlight is streaming through the curtains. The woman’s firm, friendly hands were ever-so-slightly suggestive. The fact that I had hardly seen anyone else, either staff or patient, in the facility, added to the sense of protection and opportunity.
Most unfortunately, another though intruded upon our secluded solitude. I realized that she cared about me and she wanted very much to help me to feel better, physically. She wanted to bring me a release and relaxation. And this was more than a little bit tempting. However, if she kept on kneading me the way she was, there was a strong and growing possibility that we would both be confronted with a noisy, fragrant, and utterly natural bodily event, quite different than the one she appeared to me to be aiming for. It started to trouble me a great deal that the direction she was taking us in would more than likely end in a culmination which, unfortunately, I would find totally embarrassing and utterly without conjugal merit. I began in fact, sweating, shaking, and praying to God that I not make a total fool of myself.
At my tender age, I forced myself to lie in order to extract myself from impending delight, and disappoint her with my coldness and lack of receptivity. All in all, an utterly unhappy outcome of the situation. I told her I was feeling better and I needed to get back to work. Kinda ruined everything. For a long, long, long, long, long, long time ….
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
more jobs
from ZeroHedge:
"How The Fed Spent $2 Trillion And In Exchange We Got 650,000 Temp, Leisure And Retail "Jobs""
"When we looked at the changing composition in the US work force one month ago, we discovered, to our dismay, that since the start of the Depression, the US labor pool has transformed substantially from a full-time time to an increasingly more part-time dominated one. Specifically we found that "America has lost 10.5 million full time jobs, offset by a 2.8 million increase in part time jobs" and that "the US not only lost 478k seasonally adjusted full time workers in November but has lost full time jobs for 6 months in a row, for a total of 1.6 million job losses!" In an attempt to further refine this number, we present some TrimTabs data which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Fed's QE (1, Lite, and 2) efforts, when expressed in labor force "pick up" has been an abysmal failure. To wit: "In 2010, the BLS reports that the economy added 1.12 million jobs. Almost 60% of these jobs are in one of three relatively low-paying areas—temporary employment (308,000), leisure & hospitality (240,000), and retail trade (116,000)."
I realize that the preponderance of american denizons find decimal points, zeroes, and the differences between a million, a billion, and a trillion, abit confusing.
So I will help out.
Two trillion in new debt, divided by 1.1 million jobs, equals $200,000 per job.
Which the taxpayers are expected to pay back. With interest.
"How The Fed Spent $2 Trillion And In Exchange We Got 650,000 Temp, Leisure And Retail "Jobs""
"When we looked at the changing composition in the US work force one month ago, we discovered, to our dismay, that since the start of the Depression, the US labor pool has transformed substantially from a full-time time to an increasingly more part-time dominated one. Specifically we found that "America has lost 10.5 million full time jobs, offset by a 2.8 million increase in part time jobs" and that "the US not only lost 478k seasonally adjusted full time workers in November but has lost full time jobs for 6 months in a row, for a total of 1.6 million job losses!" In an attempt to further refine this number, we present some TrimTabs data which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Fed's QE (1, Lite, and 2) efforts, when expressed in labor force "pick up" has been an abysmal failure. To wit: "In 2010, the BLS reports that the economy added 1.12 million jobs. Almost 60% of these jobs are in one of three relatively low-paying areas—temporary employment (308,000), leisure & hospitality (240,000), and retail trade (116,000)."
I realize that the preponderance of american denizons find decimal points, zeroes, and the differences between a million, a billion, and a trillion, abit confusing.
So I will help out.
Two trillion in new debt, divided by 1.1 million jobs, equals $200,000 per job.
Which the taxpayers are expected to pay back. With interest.
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