Around the blogs

There are lots of interesting entries this week.

Let's start with a couple of 'blasts from the past' (from 2004, to be more precise) by Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog.  Both of them came to my attention in the process of researching some post-election articles (which have yet to appear).

• 60 Second Refutation of Socialism, While Sitting at the Beach
• Progressives are too Conservative to Like Capitalism

Both make interesting reading.

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I came across the blog 'Loner In The Night' recently.  It hasn't been updated for several months, so it may be defunct, but two of its previous articles made me chuckle:

• It's that time of year AGAIN (concerning tax audits)
• Cancel your credit cards BEFORE you die

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The always interesting Charles Hugh Smith has two articles on our economy and our society that will give you a great deal of food for thought:

• Is Democracy Possible in a Corrupt Society?
• Understanding the "Exorbitant Privilege" of the U.S. Dollar

Recommended reading.

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Depleted Cranium, which advertises itself as 'The Bad Science Blog', has an amusing article titled 'The One True Religion: The Church of Aircraft'.  It's full of interesting comparisons like this one:

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I enjoy Cajun cooking, and prepare Cajun recipes myself from time to time.  I've been told I make a passable jambalaya, but I'd never heard of 'pastalaya' until Pawpaw put up his recipe for it.  Basically, pastalaya substitutes pasta for the rice used in jambalaya.  It looks very interesting.  I'm going to have to experiment.

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The inimitable Karl Denninger compares our infatuation with the Republican and/or Democratic political parties to an abusive relationship.  Here's an excerpt.

Think long and hard ladies and gentlemen. Political parties and groups will try to tell you that you must choose between evils, and of course they are the lesser of them, as if there is no other option. But there are other options -- you can refuse to participate entirely or you can go off and form a new group among those of you who refuse to be abused.

The woman in an abusive relationship or the person in a cult may not recognize that they are the victim of abuse but this does not change the objective view of what is going on. Your time, effort, personal well-being and sometimes wealth are being siphoned off for the benefit of others -- and to your detriment.

There's more at the link.  Methinks the man has a point.

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Old NFO, as a public service, teaches us about the geography of a woman.  I daresay he's still running and looking for cover . . .

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I'm sure at least some of my readers have read polemics from environmental activists that proclaim the past to have been wonderful, right up until the Industrial Revolution started polluting the environment and Mother Nature was gang-raped by greedy capitalists.  It's not that easy at all, as anyone with so much as an inkling of history will understand.  Allan Bevere has an excellent article in his blog archives pointing out the historical fallacies of the enviro-Nazies.

Imagine that it is 1800, somewhere in Western Europe or eastern North America. The family is gathering around the hearth in the simple timber-framed house. Father reads aloud from the Bible while mother prepares to dish out a stew of beef and onions. The baby boy is being comforted by one of his sisters and the eldest lad is pouring water from a pitcher into the earthenware mugs on the table. His elder sister is feeding the horse in the stable. Outside there is no noise of traffic, there are no drug dealers and neither dioxins nor radioactive fall-out have been found in the cow’s milk. All is tranquil; a bird sings outside the window.

Oh Please! Though this is one of the better-off families in the village, father’s Scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at 53 – not helped by the wood smoke of the fire. (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbour’s lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to an orphanage. The stew is grey and gristly yet the meat is a rare change from gruel; there is no fruit or salad at this season. It is eaten with a wooden spoon from a wooden bowl. Candles cost too much, so firelight is all there is to see by. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture or heard a piano. School is a few years of dull Latin taught by a bigoted martinet at the vicarage. Father visited the city once, but travel cost him a week’s wages and the others have never travelled more than fifteen miles from home. Each daughter owns two wool dresses, two linen shirts and one pair of shoes. Fathers’ jacket cost him a month’s wages but it is now infested with lice. The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor. As for the bird outside the window, tomorrow it will be trapped and eaten by the boy.

More at the link, and well worth reading.

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Dustbury links to a particularly stupid car question on the Internet.  The fun part is the responses by other readers . . .

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Tam links to an interesting article in ComputerWeek, and points out that the privacy genie won't go back into the bottle.  To my abiding (and increasingly curmudgeonly) anger, frustration and sadness, I fear she's right . . .

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Last but not least, Dr. Grumpy informs us of an act of coitus terminally (and musically) interruptus, involving alcohol, a piano, and a hoist.  All I can say is, what a way to go!


That's all for this week.  More soon.

Peter