JHK’s Three-Act Play
Do you, too, sense the dread abiding in our annual celebration of national wonderfulness? Outside today’s barbeque bubble the dark shapes of wild events loom, exciting primal fears of unresolved woe and travail. Yesterday, I saw a man on a back street of a small town with spider webs tattooed on his elbows and a screaming skull on the back of his neck. America, meet your new normal: a citizenry of exterminating angels. Our political exertions mean nothing to them. They think Ronald Reagan was the offspring of John Wayne and Minnie Mouse and the House of representatives is a reality TV show about home improvement. Once they are on the loose, even Rush Limbaugh and other like-minded jingo creeps of the airwaves will despair.
Old Allen Ginsburg got it right fifty years ago: “America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb,” he said. Even back then, in the age of purple people eaters and the weird neutered figure of Ozzie Nelson lurking in kitchen with nothing to do but drink endless cups of coffee, all was not so well. Freedom to cruise for burgers turned out to be a pretty trashy thing, considering all the blood and sacrifice that preceded those days of fun in the California sunshine. Look at California now: Nathanial West Meets Aztlan (coming soon on home video). Who put that locust in my burrito?
Do you ever wonder what Mr. Jefferson would think looking around Virginia today? All those farms of his sturdy yeomanry turned to tract McHousing for lobbyists from pharmaceutical industry; the Beltway traffic at Tysons Corner; the Richmond International Speedway. I’d like to take ole Tom to Nascar on the Fourth of July to meet the futurity of 1776, put him on a seat right behind the crash barrier, stick a long-neck in his left hand, a cheese-steak in the other, and one of those hats crafted of flattened beer cans on his philosophy-filled noggin. What would he make of the celebrity drivers in their logo-covered jumpsuits, not to mention the activity to which they dedicate their youthful energies: roaring around an oval circuit in flame-spewing carriages. There was no analog for this is Tom’s time, except perhaps the alter-pieces of Hieronymus Bosch – and there was no color lithography in those days, so he may well never have actually seen that particular depiction of hell. I’m sure the speedway spectacle would drive him batshit. Five minutes into a Sprint Cup heat, Tom runs shrieking to the piers of Norfolk in search of a passage to France….
Science knows: not all experiments come out the way you expect. Here you have the North American continent, filled with untold natural riches, splendid waterways, six feet of loam on the trackless prairie, timber galore, gold, silver, borax, buffalo, passenger pigeons innumerable darkening the skies! All in all, a pretty high-percentage deal. And it took only a couple of hundred years to turn it into a set of interconnected parking facilities, that is, to fuck it up royally (even though we are officially opposed to royalty). Too bad none of the Founding Fathers was a traffic engineer. He might have advised against recent developments.
And now the experiment is foundering. It’s been nice not thinking about it so much for a day or two. I spent one afternoon canoeing down a local trout stream called the Battenkill. Even this will be impossible in a few years, because you need a couple of cars to do it – one at the put-in and one at the take-out. So it is not that far removed from Nascar, really. And the darn canoe itself is made of some rubberoid petroleum derivative So shame on me. All I can say is they weren’t selling cheese steaks and beer can hats along the bank and the ospreys do not wear the Budweiser logo on their under-wings. It was shockingly beautiful along the river. I thought about all the people battling their way hopelessly on the I-30 freeway through Dallas, or the I-405 in L.A., or the I-85 in Atlanta and almost squeezed out a few crocodile tears for them. When “this sucker goes down,” in the immortal words of a recent former president, we’ll all fall pretty hard, wherever we may live. I wish I knew what the hell we are really celebrating today.
Surely many in this nation see an approach to an abyss. I wish we could get our heads together before it gets here or we get there. There is so much to do besides what we are busy doing now, keeping a set of stupid rackets spinning just because they are our rackets and we’re used to them. Among other things, in case you haven’t noticed, money is going extinct. The distant roar you hear today is neither Nascar nor Niagara. It’s the sound of institutions crashing. I guess, like Scarlett O’Hara, we’ll think about it tomorrow. Happy Fourth of July everybody. Happy birthday, America.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
   |
|
|
|
 |
 |
Happy 4th, Jim !
First in war, first in peace, & first on this ol’ blog today! (& I’ll never do it again…)George W…
damn… CO must be working for the GOP…
Unless and until we abolish money we are just re-arranging the deck chars on the Titanic. It’s such a simple solution. Why does it elude us? Jack
Did John Wayne and Minnie Mouse ever get together??
What do you intend to replace it with?
I am starting to wonder how viable the electrical grid will be without oil.
I have yet to see any of the large equipment needed to keep the lines up and going being powered by moonbeams and goat farts.
Not to mention the equipment that is busy removing mountaintops seems to run on plenty of diesel… not the “bio” kind either.
I went to a Chevy Dealer to look at the much touted “Volt”… they told me that they didn’t sell them.
I suspected as much from the get go.
I have yet to see one, despite that fact that the entire population of Connecticut seems to be in town for the weekend.
For all the talk of “energy independence” going on for years and years now I see nothing but the signs on the freeway that run on solar.
No Hydrogen stations, or cars…. 20 years after the announcement that this would save us.
Just a bunch of badging on cars with a picture of a tree, or leaves or something… assuring me how smart “green” and kind to trees it is.
Bullshit… bullshit everywhere, and not a bull in sight!
“All I can say is they weren’t selling cheese steaks and beer can hats along the bank and the ospreys do not wear the Budweiser logo on their under-wings.”
Exactly what’s wrong with America today: there are still places without advertising splayed on them.
And Nathanial West? It’s been too long since I read him. The Day of the Locust is surely upon us. But, then, we earned it.
Money is our (contemporary civilization) means of keeping score. Unless we are all to live a subsistence or nomadic lifestyle, which may or may not be considered egalitarian, how would you suggest we divvy up the (power) pie ?
“A republic, Madam…if you can keep it.” Dr. Franklin, we lost it.
Nothing; just simple desires. Why do we have to replace it with something? Jack
“Surely many in this nation see an approach to an abyss. I wish we could get our heads together before it gets here or we get there.”
-jhk-
Well said, JHK. Happy 4th of July to all of you ClusterFuckers. Get out there and appreciate what you have, today. As always, the times, they are a changin’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIPQxrog8M&feature=related
Jim’s mirrored my thoughts exactly. I feel like I’m on the runaway train in the 1985 movie of the same name, an obvious, but great metaphor for where we’re going today. Or maybe I’m on the back of the bicycle in the WWII cartoon “FROOMB”, an acronym for “the fluid’s running out of my brakes”.
BTW, I don’t know if this is meaningful, but I usually hear fireworks most nights up to two weeks before July 4th, but this year I haven’t heard any. Is this another metaphor?
If Jefferson were to come alive in our time, what would shock and appall him the most is what has become of our banking system. Jefferson warned of the dangers of a centralized bank, and that it would impoverish the population and concentrate money and power in few hands.
However, I don’t think he’d be particularly shocked at the vulgarity of certain segments of the population. Back in those days, the analog to Nascar was of course animal torture of all kinds, notably cock fights and dog fights, not to mention vicious abuse of “inferior” people, all with the approval of the larger society.
Kunstler has this way of idealizing a past that never existed. It’s easy to do that because all the filth and barbarity of the past- the slavery, the commonplace daily filth and brutality, the vicious domestic abuse that met with no disapproval, the mistreatment of slaves, servants, factory workers, and of course, women, as well as the enslavement of whites and blacks- yes there WERE white slaves and they were not indentured servants either-has been buried and what remains are highly sanitized images.
Hate to tell ya, but the 19th century was distinctly not Currier & Ives, and the 18th century was elevated by what the people of that era aspired to, not what they actually were and did.
We need to think about that. Jefferson and his colleagues and fellow philosophers in France strove for something much better for every human creature. What do WE aspire to? We need to ask ourselves that. You are no better than what you aim for, and while having elevated goals is no guarantee that you will achieve them or even approach them, if you aim low, you will surely not do any better than that.
Why divvy it it up. What’s so complicated about simple desires???? Jack
I’m sensing if you want to have money in the future, find a job serving the rich. Note, the best job security is probably in cleaning, gardening, tailoring, cooking, and other daily essentials.
Thing is, there are far fewer of the rich than there are of the rest of us, so you’d better get your resume in pronto.
Jim,
I caught the new movie Transformers – Dark of the Moon this weekend and realized how mesmerized the American sheeple have become by corporate brands, religious zealots, and militarization to stop invading aliens (aka terrorists). There must have been no fewer than a couple dozen ad “spots” for everything from Chevys to St-Germaine. With two and half hours of nothing but exploding robots the mind starts to believe that the plant really is at the brink of armageddon! This sort of cinematography keeps the kids transfixed on the important things that matter in American life.
I’m quietly celebrating the idea of America, of equal rights under law, of my freedom to bitch about things I don’t like and the type of thought which gave us the Bill of Rights. At least I’ve had a pretty good life as a fairly-free citizen and not as a subject of a king or queen.
The world has always been overloaded with assholes. You either kill ’em or avoid ’em. Avoidance is far less hassle. But people are people and always will be. If a way to screw up can be found, it will be found. That’s what people do. Having taken that for granted, I refuse to worry about it.
I’m still trying to figure out if I had more fun driving race cars or going hunting. Tossup, I guess. But today’s “decorations” on the cars are a turn-off for me.
Overall, I agree with a lot of Jim’s views of the future, although I think the negativism against Joe Sixpack is a waste of psychic energy. That world made by hand may come back around, but we survived the first iteration. Why worry?
LOL pure luck on my part and definitely no link to the GOP !
“The distant roar you hear today is neither Nascar nor Niagara. It’s the sound of institutions crashing. I guess, like Scarlett O’Hara, we’ll think about it tomorrow. Happy Fourth of July everybody. Happy birthday, America.” -JHK
I must say that I always enjoy your upshot windups!
Zingers, fer shure.
Funny, there ARE times I’d just like to “blanken” the mind and not think about the dissolution of all things profit-driven (and oh so comfy-cozy). But, it’s like the “loss of innocence”, or the crossing of the Rubicon; once that door is opened, it’s not disposed to close again. Still, I like your generally snarky finger-pointing, and feel that bit of lightness about the whole deal [the Great Crumbling]. I’m just a very little guy, so I can only affect my tiny corner, and you make me feel as though that’s okay, for the nonce.
R.I.P. for-profit-happy-burger ‘Murka; Happy Birthday Oo-Ess-Eh!
…. not much comment today …. likely, everyone’s got big plans 4 da 4th….
…. sorry about my prior trivialities…..
My enlightenment for the week was to discover that NASCAR grew from moonshiners one-upping the cops with faster & faster cars to move the ‘shine around in ol’ Kentucky. So really, it’s sparked from an anti-authoritarian/anti-gubamint activity! Jim, I dislike nascar too, but hey, it did have some redeeming qualities originally….
Personally, I think real decline in the 235 year old US is going to take a bit more time to unravel… like not this year or next… But man, does one get frustrated & angry reading about all the pathetic intentions and activities of so many humans….too many humans….. but really, it’s the same old song – just that more & more of us can figure out how pathetic our civilization/culture is….
Now today, THE FOURTH OF JULY, check out some jazz! The greatest American “invention”… not that most ‘merkuns… even know what it is….like those polls that are on the news today about how 76% of ‘merkuns don’t know the year the US started (1981?), or the 24% who don’t know who we split from… Rome?
Happy 5th!
If your canoe weighs over 80 pounds it is probably constructed of polyethylene just like most garbage cans are. If the canoe only weighs about 60 pounds it is almost certainly made from a sandwhich of styrofoam coated on either side by ABS plastic then encased in a thin skin of vinyl for the sake of cosmetics. This substance is usually called royalex and is used by the big three canoe builders: Old Town, Wynona, and Mad River. Old Town currently produces about 25,000 plastic kayaks and canoes per year, mostly kayaks, while yet retaining a wooden canoe department which builds about 75 wood & canvas or wood & fiberglass canoes per year, in addition to restoring their older canoes at the plant in Maine. A few canoes are also built entirely of fiberglass. Plastic canoes can also be trimmed with wooden gunwales, seats & thwarts plus a yoke amidships for carrying the canoe in an inverted position. I prefer aluminum canoes because they are fire resistant. I currently own a plastic canoe trimmed in wood which nearly had a hole burned through the hull by an errant spark from a telephone pole fire. Patched the hole in the outer layers of skin by painting over the styrofoam core with red rubberized spray paint used for coating tool grips. Worked so well I neglected to demand that the power company buy me a new canoe. Should’ve made them buy me an aluminum canoe. Too late now. Beat up old plastic canoe works fine.
Sir, you are a gentleman! May I pour you another expensive micro-brewed beverage?
Oh, but in America we are all subjects… of Corporations…. you to ratty… you may think that you have enjoyed freedom, but mostly what we have had in this nation is freedumb.
The freedumb to shop… and ‘choose’ where you do it.
The freedumb to use oil, and other resources with reckless abandon
The freedumb to treat the planet as if you can simultaneously live on it and kill it.
The freedumb to choose between two candidates who have been chosen for you.
The freedumb to embrace “left” or “right” and believe that you are actually part of real conflict and debate.
The freedumb to go to war for rich people.0
And one things for sure… freedumb isn’t free.
Cheers Ratty!
Asshole avoidance is indeed the secret of happiness. And there will never be a shortage of assholes. In fact I’m sure that there are many people who think The name Desertrat indicates that you’ve discovered that living in undesirable areas in one way to avoid assholes, as undesirable places are by definition thinly settled. The notion that one could or should take refuge in the most highly desirable land doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Better to adapt to the undesirable place which is why I’m also attracted to the desert. I could be totally full of shit. Should find out soon enough.
James,
“Surely many in this nation see an approach to an abyss. I wish we could get our heads together before it gets here or we get there. There is so much to do besides what we are busy doing now, keeping a set of stupid rackets spinning just because they are our rackets and we’re used to them”
Unfortunately, we are on a path of no return
Well it is Independence Day… many happy returns,
sandy, the kulturCritic
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/independence-day-freedom-and-human-nature/
Sentence fragment on line #3 above: “I’m sure that there are many people who think that I’m an asshole and want to avoid me.” followed by The name Desertrat…
what do we celebrate today – why the day off, of course.
approaching the abyss – always have been, always will be.
jingo creep, Limbaugh – self-hating creep, Olbermann
everyone just do a little good in your little corner. a little adds up to a lottle when a lot of folks do it.
peace people
Yes, I also find myself inconsolably sad this Independence Day over the cliff’s edge towards which we as a society are racing and our fervent determination to blind ourselves to our rapid approach to it.
Every species is an experiment. Nature the experimenter is indifferent to the outcome. Species come and go on a regular basis – on the geological time scale. Civilization is also just an experiment. There have been two dozen large scale civilizations since the dawn of history. None of those experiments stood the test of time. And the time scale of all civilization is a mere blink of an eye in geological time. The problem is people cannot or will not think on a geological time scale. If we did have long term thinking then people would have realized as soon as we started to use oil that The Age of Petroleum would be over in a geological blink of an eye. Wink. It’s almost gone.
Nathaniel West meets Atzlan?
Is The Day of the Locust at Hand, finally?
Calling Miss Lonely Hearts, Calling Miss Lonely Hearts, we need your sage advice now more than ever.
Still, happy 4th fellow CFNers!
-Marlin
I forgot it was the 4th of July American biggie-day for a holiday, I suppose it must be a significant date but I don’t really “get it”. Nationalism and national pride has always seemed to be a stupid idea to me, how can an individual feel proud of the nation they live in unless they had something to with creating it personally? The same way I view the Olympics, not a contest between nations but the individuals that stretch their limits to the max, I applaud the valliant loser who did his best more than the champion who didn’t…
Anyway, getting past the holiday story I wonder how JHK wouldvé felt had he been canoeing down the Yellowstone river when the oil pipeline burst around the same time he was enjoying his local trout stream. Surprising to think that a pipeline was allowed in such an iconic national park, they banned any exploration for oil and even the passage of oil tankers through our Great Barrier Reef down thisaway. I can understand why so many Americans don’t think much of making a mess of the ANWR since few would go there, but putting parks in danger that are easily accessible and have probably been visited by most Americans at some time in their lives seems a bit… provocative…
JHK’s post today was a little brief compared to usual so I suppose he’s enjoying as much of the day off as possible (a long weekend)like most of you up’n thataway… enjoy it while you can…
“BTW, I don’t know if this is meaningful, but I usually hear fireworks most nights up to two weeks before July 4th, but this year I haven’t heard any. Is this another metaphor?”
Those blasts you used to hear were not fireworks, they were gun blasts. The spider and skull heads are conserving and saving all the ammo for later, but not much later…
America is Dead. Good Riddance.
“Look at California now: Nathanial West Meets Aztlan (coming soon on home video). Who put that locust in my burrito?”
As an expatriate Angeleno living in Detroit, I resemble that remark. For years, when I ran into another person who had moved to Michigan, I asked them, “So, do you miss Mexican food?” and they invariably answered, “Yes! Do you know where any is around here?” They also missed cheap Cantonese food, too. I was always happy to steer them to the nearest good examples of both.
Within the past decade, Chinese takeout places run by immigrants from the mainland have sprung up all over southeast Michigan, to the point where two of the three small towns on the outskirts of Irish Hills each have one and the next small town I moved to had one as well. Also, Mexican food has become common enough and people have developed enough of a taste for it that the local blues joint that served ribs has become a Mexican restaurant. I no longer run into Californians who can’t find the food of home; it’s now all around them. I personally consider this to be an improvement.
All of the above reminds me that I’ve twice before remarked about your anti-immigration stance and how it conflicts with your self-identification as a liberal, the first time a year ago in “My Tea Party,” an entry of yours that I really enjoyed, and two weeks ago in “Man Down,” in which I found three of your paragraphs about gender equality troubling and also conflicting with your political identification.
Over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News, I’m participating in National Blog Posting Month, in which bloggers post every day of the month on the monthly theme of “swim.” One of the interpretations of that theme is “bloggers swimming against the stream,” something you do regularly. I already have one commentary on “Man Down” on the site and plan another, plus one on “My Tea Party.” There are some things that require more room and formatting to say than can be said in a comments section.
I also have coverage of how local zoning ordinances designed for a happy motoring suburbia are coming in conflict with people who are accidentally trying to prepare for the Long Emergency by growing vegetables in their front lawn. For some reason, this ticks off the powers that be no end.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
It seems the president and his transport secretary Ray LaHood are missing a bet by touting High Speed Rail, when a lower profile but more massive program to expand generic rail capacity & reach would smoothly move along…
Private enterprise rail operators and investor mentors like Warren Buffington are savvy in rail technology, and would move rail expansion quickly when the President acted like he had a clue about the Energy Emergency. The move to tap Strategic Petroleum Reserve could in fact be a test; what happens to oil price and supply with this new tweak on the oil markets? If artificial (SPR) addition to oil supply fails to dampen price what next?
By now no one trusts anything the government does, so why not get crazy: declare Peak Oil a fact, call up Gold & Silver to bolster the currency, and issue Nixon’s Federal Executive Emergency Orders for motor fuel rationing?
This forum for doomnation and gloomstone seems to be stuck in some kind of Sargasso Sea, with no direction. It does serve as a springboard for book sales and lecture gigs, but it is time the proprietor got into some specifics on the railway tool beyond generalizations about “rebuilding the passenger rail system”??? Specific rail corridors are bottlenecks, and that really begs talking about freight haul too in any motor fuel allocation scenario.
To mention the I-95 Corridor as a candidate for rail track capacity enhancement is what we mean by project specificity. Another is the western Bakersfield-Mojave/Palmdale segment, so jammed by freight NOW, no track & time exists for passenger trains. Imagine what happens at rail chokepoints when trucking wakes up to diesel fuel allocation?
There are 3000+ County Planning Bureaus in the US. It would be helpful for each to visit the library, get circa 1920-1950 copy of “The Official Guide” of the US Railways and refresh their recollection of the legacy rail corridors and dormant branch lines in their purview. Another source, “US Rail Map Atlas” from spv.co.uk is available.
Interested parties can get a quick read on rail scoping methodology by obtaining the 1995 Reno-Tahoe I80/US50 Rail Corridor Study (unabridged) from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. For an excellent look at a rail branch line rebuild document, see the 1991 Wilbur Smith Associates Nevada County RR Study of the Colfax-Grass Valley branch rail corridor. Citizens can do it & you too, Jim!
Reformed US Army/Guard Railroad Operating & Maintenance Battalions are crucial elements for expediting the dormant branch line rail lines, beginning with agricultural traffic generators. Peak Oil is not a routine challenge; mitigation of impacts to transport (victuals distribution) includes full employment of assets civilian and military. Interim we need to emplace container handling enroute rail main lines to enable more local orientation for truck interface with rail.
China is waiting in the wings to develop rail infrastructure in Afghanistan. Why not shift strategic emphasis; excuse our military from roadside amputations detail, partner with China to build railway and develop the mineral resources? Just sayin’.. Like, if we want to save some real money? Back to you-all…
The US Military burns up about 300.000 bpd of oil. NASCAR and all the other racing events can’t use more than 10 or 20 thousand bpd. Its hardly a drop in the bucket.
-Marlin
Laura,
I think you are right on young lady!
Now we need to begin to identify the kind of world we all may want to live in. Jim K. has his say about that every week.
I think we all need to start providing our ideas too, and somehow try to generate a consensus as to the direction we want to head.
Then of course we have to start working to achieve those goals.
Anybody else want to work at some goals? Big effort, but nothing happens until someone starts.
Jim H.
Hey BHM I have an Old town cedar/canvas canoe. with sponsons! Made in 1911 It is a century old this year. 17.5 feet long and heavy as a mofo. It’s a nice lake cruiser but I would never take it in the river. http://www.westfieldriverraces.com/
Celebration? It should be a day of mourning: For all the lost freedoms, especially since 9-11 & the passage of the so-called patriot act, more like an obscean act performed on the ‘Merican sheeple, who now have been reduced to corporate serfs. No once- proud Citizenry left, just fat, tat’d freaks.
But to paraphrase, your getting the government you deserve, and your getting it good and hard.
Glad to be outta that mad house. The loonies really are running things there.
Well, hope you enjoy the BBQ, Blues & Beer, it probably wont last much longer.
Dee
I think asshole avoidance was one of the main drivers of human migration. Hell, after all, is other people.
I can see in my mind’s eye the fed up stone age hunter or neolithic farmer telling the little lady to pack up girl we’re leavin’. Enough of the mooching, deadbeat cousins, useless as tits on a bull, goat fucker of a brother, migraine inducing mother in law, thieving neighbours etc.
You wonder why people moved to the arctic. Maybe their ancestors were driven there by stronger, more numerous tribes. But maybe not, maybe they’d had enough of everybody and thought that putting up with extreme cold and an iffy food supply was better than putting up with the bullshit at the old homestead.
Please let’s all get along this week people.
here’s proof for Soak and Vlad that the black man and the white man can live in harmony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp4BlGXwSew&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp4BlGXwSew&feature=related
talk about inflation, I have a blond Tele like these dudes. It’s a 1969. I paid 100 bucks for it in maybe 72? It is wworth maybe 5 large now.
Your comments make me think about how ole Daniel Boone had to get out of Boonesboro and stay in the woods for long periods of time because he couldn’t deal with so many people in one place. Wonder what he’d think of today’s 330 million population?
tell me that brother can’t tickle the ivorys and I’ll poke ur friggin’ eye out! check out 4:40
“Among other things, in case you haven’t noticed, money is going extinct. The distant roar you hear today is neither Nascar nor Niagara. It’s the sound of institutions crashing.”
At the moment all I hear is lawnmowers, chainsaws, gunfire, fireworks, and the odd aircraft.
I suspect the institutions are doing the Wylie Coyote “suspended over the cliff” thing. Despite the best efforts of the banksters to cushion the void beneath with newly printed greenbacks charged to taxpayers, the cacaphony of crashes could soon become audible even to me.
Ole Dan’l would go north of the border where it isn’t so crowded.
JHK, you wrote that there was no color lithography in the days of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) so Thomas Jefferson may well never have actually seen Bosch’s depictions of hell.
Correction: it was during Bosch’s lifetime that color printing, color etching, and color woodblocks all came into use — so no reason our hero couldn’t have seen ‘prints’ of Bosch’s tortured works. 16th C Europe was definitely ‘on the up’.
Love your rants and keep hoping you’re wrong.
Judith
So last week we were talkin’ bout Iceland. Here is a nice Iceland link for yhe dudes. What a country. The scenery is beautiful and the late great SRV is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-G6ebGV0w&feature=related
“All of the above reminds me that I’ve twice before remarked about your anti-immigration stance and how it conflicts with your self-identification as a liberal,…”
-neon, to JHK-
Neon, liberalism is not a cult to which one must swear allegiance. It is very possible for a thinking person to look at the evidence and make the decision to oppose more immigration into the US.
Without oil and technology, we could not begin to support the population that we have now.
Life should be about more than liberal fealty, nearby Mexican dining and good Chinese take-out.
Now, I’ve got to go hunt up some good beer, some good bar-b-que, and a good designated driver to take me to see some good fireworks.
Again, happy 4th to all – even if it is “just another Monday,” where you are!
Very few younger Blacks like that kind of music anymore. It’s a White thing now. Whites have always been able to appreciate Black music – but very few Blacks able to appreciate our’s. This is just more proof, as if more was needed, of how alien the two races are to each other – exactly as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson said.
Alexander Hamilton won – we lost.
@onzone
Thank you for ‘The Great Crumbling.’ Best description I’ve ever heard for the state we’re in.
Wonderful. ” . . . . and the ospreys do not wear the Budweiser logo on their underwings.” Reminds me of Michel Serres’ (French philosopher) recent “Malfeasance: appropriation through pollution?”. Advertising is ‘soft’ pollution, forceful appropriation of our perceptual space. If the corporatocracy could get its own way, every blade of grass, every leaf would bear a corporate logo. Advertising is simply corporations pissing, nay, shitting, in the clear swimming pool water of our minds.
GOD BLESS what’s left of America.
I think blacks and whites won’t just “get along”. Things will go a lot further than that. Yesterday I was on the bus and across from me a black chick and her white boyfriend/hubby were sharing lunch in a plastic container, passing a spoon back and forth and having a great old time. Human libido will do its thing regardless of whether racists like it or not. It’s as relentless a force as gravity. Anyway IMO inbreeding is not a good thing. Better a vigourous mongrel horde than stunted, cretinous inbreds.
Sadly, July 4th has become a day that reminds us of how intrusive all levels of government and commerce have become in our daily lives.
We’ve all lost our way; willing victims of economics, profits and convenience.
We grow ever closer to lives that resemble those of the cattle in feed lots. Nothing more than livestock for the rich to grow and slaughter.
How thankful I am to have been born into the time before hand. How disheartening to see the noble “experiment” go so horribly wrong.
How many years until we reach the “greek solution?” How many until the Argentina finale?
Neon Vincent: ‘As an expatriate Angeleno living in Detroit, I resemble that remark. For years, when I ran into another person who had moved to Michigan, I asked them, “So, do you miss Mexican food?” and they invariably answered, “Yes! Do you know where any is around here?” They also missed cheap Cantonese food, too. I was always happy to steer them to the nearest good examples of both.’
Tell, tell! Good food is one of the things that can still lure me across the border these days. Are Xochimilco and Mexican Town even on the map, or am I just a philistine Windsorite?
The 4th of July is a magic day for me.
Even though I am Italian I always feel a little part of myself belongs to that place.
My grandfather was there as a little boy, with his sister and brothers.
They all stayed there, he came back.
He missed his country too much, he wanted to die in Italy, in the small village where he was born, among his friends.
But a small part of his heart was there, in the new land where he lived for a while, chasing the dreams of a better life.
But he found soon out that a better life was not a better income, it was the place where you felt loved.
I was the first time in my life in USA when I was 15 and it was the 4th of July.
I didn’t know it was a big feast, we do not celebrate the birth of our nation.
We do not celebrate our nation, we take it for granted and we hate it more than loving it.
I was surprised of how proud Americans were to be Americans.
How they felt to belong to their land, how they worshipped it.
But today, today, I am not so sure anymore.
Today there is a feeling to be on the verge of an abyss, of something great that will destroy what little still has to be destroyed.
There is this feeling like being an American is not something to be proud of, like not having a future and lacking the present too.
There is not anymore what they called the American dream, there is no dream, but the sight of a sad reality which nobody can escape.
Truth is something nobody wants to talk about because it is an unhappy truth.
Truth is pretending that nothing has changed, that everything will go back as it was.
Truth is believing in miracles, because miracles happened and will happen again in this land.
Nobody talks about the next fourth of July.
Nobody talks about tomorrow.
Let’s talk about yesterday, how we were, how we hoped, how we dreamed.
Happy birthday, even though it is one nobody would like to celebrate.
America has reached the age in which you shouldn’t celebrate birthdays anymore.
My neighbor is a native of Iceland and from what he’s shown me, it’s quite the place. I may take a long weekend sometime and fly over there for a few days.
China and Japan have lasted for thousands of years. You have to distinguish between a Civilizaton and it’s Dynasties or Regimes. They only last a few hundred years – usually not more than two. We’re due. Of course, there wont be a new America since we aren’t a people anymore but rather a multiracial and cultural mob. That’s the secret of longevity: homogeneity. No one belives modern Egypt is the same as ancient Egypt: different people, language, and culture. They lost their homogeneity, and then had no basis to reconstitute themselves after beating back invasions. Then the Arabs conquered and flooded in in massive numbers and that was the final end.
Go tell some Black Africans in Toronto that they are inbred cretins – just be careful of those blue eyed blonde gangbangers when you go downtown.
Boy have I outed you or what. You are another Asoka or Met.
the cacaphony of crashes
==============
It’s spelled cacophony.
On my way from my man-cave to the kitchen last night to make a cup of tea I passed through the living room where my wife was watching a movie. I asked her if it was a horror movie and she said “yeah, how did you know?” I said “the cacophonous background music and sounds portending danger and mayhem.”
And Aslan had to die in torment because Edmund couldn’t resist sweets.
“Tell, tell! Good food is one of the things that can still lure me across the border these days. Are Xochimilco and Mexican Town even on the map, or am I just a philistine Windsorite?”
I went to Xochimilco in Mexican Town once. It was OK, but not impressive enough to make me drive there again from Ann Arbor, where I was living at the time. I thought “La Fiesta Mexicana” in Ypsilanti was better and made that my regular Mexican Food stop when I was in the area. When I lived in the Irish Hills, I drove to El Chiapulin in Adrian, which is the second most Mexican city in Michigan after Holland. They have very good food, although it’s from a different part of Mexico, then filtered through Texas, than what I grew up with in California. I haven’t yet tried Cantina Diablo, which replaced the rib and BBQ place nearby, so no opinion yet.
I notice you didn’t ask about Chinese food. I’m not surprised, as Windsor has the reputation of having the best Chinese food in the area. Let’s see how long that lasts, as Troy is now the most Asian city in Michigan, with active and growing Chinese and Indian populations.
Mmmm… But I’m still surprised by the number of people who grudgingly acknowledge that other civilizations did collapse, but… this time will be different. It’s variant of the Titanic syndrome. Industrial Civilization is unsinkable. Apparently.
“And Aslan had to die in torment because Edmund couldn’t resist sweets.”
Aztlan=Aslan? Impaler, I don’t know whether to compliment you on the creative pun or tell you that you are being silly.
Celebrations are just so fun on this blog, where we mostly agree the country we commemorate today has already passed into history. Or that it never existed in the first place, or was just the myth of our elementary school textbooks.
And so the plutocracy grows. The Democratic Party remains shamelessly complicit. Obama proves he was just a brilliantly marketed cypher. The two latest generations have little or no intelligentsia. Our political will is diluted in a sea of endless war and endless entertainment. There is no opposition. And humans continue to prove that their only true evolutionary purpose is to liberate mineralized carbon back into the environment where the planet can use it to start over with the next iteration of life.
I remember how quickly that other modern empire, the USSR, slipped beneath the surface and disappeared, and I wonder, could this be America’s last Fourth of July? And the fact that such a question doesn’t even seem cynical anymore and might get a yawn and a “whatever” from most voters, even those who haven’t had a paycheck for 99 weeks, suggests that the answer is, if anything, a quibble over the year it will happen, or the year it already happened, or a not so secret wish that it happen soon, since we all know we’re in that inevitable period of foot dragging before we get on with it.
Wow. On my radio show this morning, I brought up some of the same points as JHK, what with the squandering of natural wealth and all.
But along with the passenger pigeons and the 6 feet of topsoil, I mentioned cod so thick you could walk on their backs, the bountiful Gulf of Mexico and the redwood lined Pacific coast.
All gone now, while the current crop of Americans busily blow up the beautiful Appalachians and bury its streams while also destroying the water supply of the East Coast to get that hundred year supply of natural gas.
Bah, humbug!
You’ve forgotten Vlad that subsaharan Africans are genetically more diverse than other people in the world. Why? Simply because those populations are far older than non African populations and there’s been a lot more time for mutations and genetic variability to accumulate. There are neighbouring tribes of Bushmen that are more genetically dissimilar to one another than Frenchmen are from Japanese. WRT Blacks that are descendants of slaves I don’t think you need to worry about inbreeding among them. A good deal of their bloodlines come from white folks and Amerindians. What I’ve read is that Europeans are the least genetically variable of the world’s people simply because that population is the youngest. And don’t ask me about sources. I can’t fucking remember but most of this stuff will have come from mags like Scientific American ie publications for laymen like me that want to read up without having to get graduate degrees so as to understand dense, field specific jargon.
Exactly. The Central Bankers finally triumphed after a long struggle. Actually their final victory was assured in 1913 with the founding of the Federal Reserve. The currency has been debased and America enslaved. There wont be enough money for anything soon. Everyone will be put on rations – with a ration card. No one will be able to be allowed to buy or sell without his card – or a computer chip embedded in his hand for the same purpose.
Cash proving that Political Correctness is a pathology of the mind/soul.
It seems the 4th has now become the greatest of Aryan holidays, where all of us whites/non-whites debate the purpose or merit of living.(mainly whites doing this, non-whites not having much more than a vicitmization script in their tawny hands)
Since the enviroment and conservation of pristine enviroments is a main point of this CF post I happily remind my fellow Americans of one of the originators of the conservation ethic, Madison Grant. You libs google him and let your heads explode.
Chronicles of Narnia – Aslan is the Lion Christ.
Oh so your hate filled comment was just meant for Whites? You stand revealed as what you are. Mine, the revealing hand, Mine the glory.
Oh, I know that. So are you saying that you accidentally made a silly pun?
“Whites have always been able to appreciate Black music – but very few Blacks able to appreciate our’s.”
Mmmm-hmm…. doesn’t take you long to get down to hating on blacks, does it?
How is a Racist like a drunk?
Everything he says ends in a slur.
What’s the difference between a white supremacist and a bucket of shit?
The bucket.
How do you make a white supremacist laugh on Monday?
Tell him a joke on Friday.
How many racists does it take to change a light bulb?
None, racists hate enlightenment.
Why do racists compete on the basis of color?
Because if they competed on brains, they’d loose.
Yes the Normalcy Bias. And even a mere Dynasty/Regime fall is catastrophic for the people involved. And there is usually a goodly gap lasting decades or even a century. In the meantime: chaos, hunger, rape, plague, warlords, foreign invasion etc. And the new regime may be a foreign occupation – such as the Manchus or Mongols in China or the Chinese in Vietnam.
Thanks Cash for telling us genetics is important, its high time the blank slate bunkum got put down so we can concentrate on real science and not magic thinking garbage.
As an aside the negroes you mention the Bushmen and their look alikes in the South Pacific have a great internal GPS system, truly wonderous if one appreciates HBD.
But then again you are mush head who wants a globalized consumer prole, a low grade commoditized human being.
If cattle were allowed to roam free, with no directions they would quickly degenerate to a lumpen mass of ill quality stock without their masters guiding their breeding, proving genetics once and for all.
Second if one wants a truly wild unfettered existance on breeding then one must accept the survival of the fittest, the weak and the stupid dying out. A lib no-no and a major strike against the magic thinking of the blank slate.
Whole sections of the college curia are made up of declaritive sentences declaring whites this, whites that, are they too a bucket of shit? Are you an anti-white? Tell us about yourself?
The most corrosive not to mention most irrational pathology is that of the racist. You have recent history as your guide.
Define racist. Can Blacks be racists? So do these jokes apply to Blacks and East Asians racists too? Or are you a narrow hater?
On the Music: it’s true. Blacks don’t typically like Classical, Opera, Folk, or Rock. That you don’t know this shows you don’t know many or any. And the younger generation don’t usually care for the great traditions of Jazz, Blues, or Motown.
You have proven yourself an anti-White racist. A self hating White.
Cacaphony: a harsh, discordant talking of shit. See Spanish/English: Caca/poopoo.
you lack the ability to appreciate a fine neologism, even an inadvertent one. your schoolmarmish need to adhere to the established order stifles the evolution of the linguistic canon.
hie thee to hell, schoolmarm. apply your red pencil to the errors of your self.
you are correct about jibe vs jive, however. soak in your squat-juice, asoka.
Are you saying that your tongue and belly are more important than safety, survival and sovereignty? A litte bit selfish of you….
Common sense, with which you sound as if you have only a glancing familiarity, is important too. Try using some.
Neon Vincent: “I notice you didn’t ask about Chinese food. I’m not surprised, as Windsor has the reputation of having the best Chinese food in the area.”
Yes, for a city as pedestrian (in the unfortunate sense) as it is, Windsor is surprisingly well-supplied with good ethnic, and especially Asian, cuisine. Visitors can start with the string of restaurants on Wyandotte Street West in the Ambassador Bridge area, or a bit closer to downtown, Pho Nguyen Hoang (sorry I can’t get the Vietnamese diacriticals right) — my friend-the-actor worships the soup there.
Too absurd for comment other than to say this post is too absurd for comment.
A birthday wish laden with sadness…
Just got back from my daily swim which generally clears my head…
I think the first time I realized things had really gone wrong was when Solzhenitsyn finally could emigrate here only to tell us how far gone we were–how we didn’t even respect our freedom and how we took it for granted–how vacuous we were. And that was in the 1970’s!
Somehow I imagined this would have been a relief to him after all he had been through–but I think he really couldn’t wait to go back to Russia, now that he had seen heaven.
Anyway I’ve always been amazed at how a few generation who were given so much could screw it up so completely and yet there seems to be so many screw ups that there’s no way to fix it.
Here’s my comment for today:
Laws are meant to be Circumvented, changed on the fly…subjugated to the will of the powerful
I remember someone saying when I was young that “rules were meant to be broken”. Now we live in an age where if you’re in the right position, laws are meant to be circumvented, and changed on the fly, so you haven’t broken any laws. (you gotta love Orwell)
This morning I came across a few articles on the web. One was by Mish Shedlock discussing how since 2009, China has been buying more than the legal limit of 35% in our treasuries in any given auction. They do that by coming in under various names and in different locations, ie London, etc.
Well given that they have so much of our debt, wouldn’t we be vulnerable to a giant dumping of the dollar?
Other articles I’ve read this morning reveals so much of our vulnerabilities, it is hard to imagine this going on for the long-haul.
In OfTwoMinds blog, Charles Hugh Smith posted a great blog illustrating the what he referred to as peak government.
[Cheap, abundant energy offers a surplus of value that can be invested in social complexity and consumption. Once the cost and availability of energy declines, then that surplus shrinks and can no longer be used to support the high cost structure.
The U.S. economy has clearly been driven to the cliff edge of instability by both dynamics: the cheap, abundant energy which enabled fast growth of consumption and high cost social complexity is vanishing, and the cost structure of the economy has ballooned far beyond sustainability.]
He also brings up Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond’s books about how empires fail. This goes back to much of what JHK describes in saying that racheting down would be the option to take, but as Smith says, the information that would lead in that direction has been suppressed.
Tying into the Shedlock interview is an interview I had copied a few months ago he had with Chris Martenson where he discussed peak everything. CHS also brings up China in his interview saying [China has every intention of “winning” any potential conflict with the U.S. by disrupting the U.S. military, society and economy via cyber-attacks on our infrastructure and communications. That ability to disrupt an entire nation via fiber-optic cables is new.]
The third article I read is be Richard Clark on opednews. From Democracy to Kleptocracy: What’s being stolen from us and how.TBTF in the banking system and all that is done to keep these banking cartels going is the key to ultimate failure and the destruction of democracy.
[3. The rule of law in the US has been divided into two branches: one is a branch of law in name only — it’s for the financial elites and corporate cartels. The other branch, which actually has some teeth, is for the rest of us, we mere “citizens” (so-called citizens). Between corporate toadies on the Supreme Court who have granted corporations rights to spend unlimited amounts of money lobbying and buying legislators, as a form of “free speech” — but how can something that costs billions of dollars be “free”? — and vast regulatory bureaucracies that saw nothing wrong with MERS and the complete corruption of land and mortgage transfer rules, the US legal system is now part and parcel of a very refined and perfectly functioning kleptocracy.]….
[The USA is a haven for corporate money laundering
The “little house of secrets” on the Great Plains is the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business-incorporation specialist that establishes firms which can be used as “shell” companies, i.e. paper entities able to hide assets so as to keep them from being taxed.]
Boy, and I thought you had to go to the Grand Cayman Islands for this to happen.
What a sad mess we find ourselves in, many years in the making and nobody noticed anything till the steep recession and stock market crash in 2008.
Trip has it right, the only thing we can do is to become self-reliant.
How many times has your ass been pinched by the local Latino men? Remember, if you say 0, that implies that it isn’t worth pinching.
Thank you for reminding us to remember the past as it was. Perhaps the absurdities of the present somehow make us long for a perfect world that never was.
Very impressive. My first response got eaten or else I screw up somewhere so this’ll be brief. Look up cool canoeing photos at both Keewaydin of Temagami and Camp Wabun, Lake Temagami. The custodian at Wabun still builds wooden canoes on a surviving Chestnut mold for Camp Keewaydin. The famous impostor Grey Owl also guided for Keewaydin. Grey Owl turned out not to be half Apache & half Scots but entirely English and from Hastings, England. He wrote “Tales of an Empty Cabin.”
You said what you said – the rags of your false dignity cannot cover your nakedness now.
Oh, oh. We’re sliding into irrelevant racist talk. Warning! Warning! Let’s stay on-topic – even though we know Blacks are responsible for global warming, peak oil, fracking and ocean oil-drilling, agri-business, the mess on Wall Street, the ME wars and other problems. And, and what’s that I see? Oh, no! Behind the curtain pulling the strings to orchestrate all this are, are OMG! … THE JEWS!
Bulletin (via CNN, Cable Nazi Network) at 1:47 P.M. there’s been a sighting of Jewzilla in New York harbor. It’s heading for downtown! Call in the Air Force! NYC is doomed! Run for your lives!
Get real, idiots.
5 minutes in any canoe, plastic, plywood or birchbark, is worth 5 years spent watching american idol. my best trip ever was 110 miles down the rio grande; mexico to the right, texas to the left. they looked about the same to me.
The USA is the worst place on the planet except for all the rest. The trouble with America haters is they have no idea of all the rest.
This place is full of America haters. Besides hating Westerners it’s the only socially permissible bigotry. What I’d like to see is what would happen if we can’t firehose 400 billion a year of exports south of the border. A multitude of people here made a damn good living off the 100 million plus American consumers living a day’s drive from Toronto. Hypocrisy on stilts.
What do you do when the grid goes down?
Jump into the water and drown!
Yes and we were already to love and lionize him but then he talked about boring things like morality and abortion and so became an unperson. He coulda been famous, a contenda.
You come on this site, week after week; you don’t mention peak oil, suburban mistakes, or anything else mentioned on here… instead you spend a day or two on CFN… blaming other people for your failings and shortcomings.
You carefully avoid using the word “nigger” to try and have some air of respectability in your blame… But everyone know that’s exactly what you mean.
Is it possible for there to be a black racist? Black people have a hell of a lot more reason to hate you than you do them.
Your great grandparents built this country using slave labor… they were lazy pigs… and your hatred of the people who did all the heavy lifting for you…
…. it is the essence of disgusting.
It isn’t racist to hate your oppressor… it is racist to hate people of another color who did your grand parents work for them.
You are a spoiled brat… and you hate black people why? Because their descendants didn’t do enough free labor to make your great grandparents richer?
White racists seem to forget… you hate black people so much… but it was your lazy ancestors who kidnapped them and brought them here in the first fucking place!
If you are a pig, and feel blacks are ruining your country… then place the blame squarely where it belongs…. WITH WHITE PEOPLE!
about the only time texas ever showed up on my left, btw.
Cash replying to newworld: “The most corrosive not to mention most irrational pathology is that of the racist. You have recent history as your guide.”
Vlad Kranz replying to Cash: “You have proven yourself an anti-White racist. A self hating White.”
So, to recap: Cash, evidently a non-racist, denounces racism as an irrational pathology, not mentioning whites (with either an upper- OR a lowercase ‘w’) or any other specific race in particular. Vlad, clearly a racist and apparently incapable of imagining that other people really, sincerely do not see everything through a racist lens as he does, is helpless to understand Cash’s statements on its own terms. Instead, Vald draws the non-sequitur conclusion that Cash’s rejection of racism is in fact a racial slur. Did I miss anything?
I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about Vlad. To claim that I hate Whites because I say that races do not differ in terms of their intellectual abilities is nonsensical.
You may have missed about two years worth of back and forth arguments between me and Vlad on this issue. Other than that, no.
Thank you for you input about my cat. It is a little dicatator like Charlie Chaplin. It marches into my bedroom like a drill seargeant and wakes me up with a loud meow so I can get up (even in the middle of the night) and let her out. I have to learn to protect myself.
In gratitude, I give you this piece which explains why we fight. It wont be easy for you, but it is the Truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkXfnyXp06Y
Go on a bike ride, work in the garden, enjoy some quite time with a good book. Here in Illinois the tomatoes are reddening, the chard has been big enough to eat for some time, the eggplants and peppers have flowers, the beans are vining, the squash is getting big leaves and life is, at least temporarily calm and sweet.
Well, Impaler, it took you a while to get to your point. I suspected that’s what you were getting at, but decided to play with you first to see if your creativity was intentional or accidental.
As for my safety, survival, and sovereignty, let me address those in order by telling you some stories. First, when I lived in East Bakersfield, a mixed working-class White and Mexican-American community, nearly 30 years ago, it wasn’t the Mexicans who scared me. To them, I was just another White guy, and not their problem as long as I minded my own business. It was the working class Whites. They were the ones who could tell that I wasn’t from there. They were also the ones who were likely to confront me about it. They were also the drunks and wifebeaters. I was happy to get away from those people. The “diversity” wasn’t my problem, the “uniformity” was.
Speaking of Bakersfield, the most memorable T-shirt I ever saw there read “Bakersfield isn’t the end of the world, but you can sure see it from here.” On the other hand, Detroit’s most famous T-shirt is “Detroit, where the weak are killed and eaten.” I’ve survived 21 years in southeast Michigan, including 15 years working and living in or next to Detroit. All of us here in Metro Detroit are starting to realize that we’re all in this together and that the survival solutions Detroiters devise will be the ones exported to the rest of the continent, a theme I’ve explored on Crazy Eddie’s Motie News multiple times and will explore again. Diversity will be a big help here and respect for diversity will be an even bigger one.
So, I’m not worried about my survival here. We’ll do just fine and teach you all lessons in how to survive based on what Detroit, ground zero of the post-industrial future, has learned.
As for sovereignty, I have two things to say. First, why are you picking at the people at the bottom of the social order and not the people at the top? They’re the ones in charge of sovereignty. That’s the federal government’s role and right now, they’re too busy making sure the rentier class is made whole while everyone else suffers. Those are the people borrowing from foreign investors and it will be the calling in of those debts that will be the threat to national sovereignty more than immigration.
Speaking of immigration, if you really want to frame sovereignty in terms of ethnic identity, I want to know what percentage of your ancestors are Native American/First Nations? If it’s more than 12.5% and you’ve maintained a connection to your ancestors, like my ex-wife, my longtime ex-girlfriend, and my second wife, you can talk, but then your talk would look very different from what you’re doing now. Otherwise, you are just another descendant of immigrants, just like most of the rest of us, and your spiel becomes “We stole it fair and square” and “I got mine, screw you.” On that note, as someone born in California, I will remind you that the Spanish and Mexicans were there first, not the Americans.
As for American culture, it is an amalgamation of immigrant strains from all over the world. Are you saying the American culture is now so fragile that it can’t still accomodate immigrants? Do you hate America that much?
Wrong. He is a fanatical advocate of miscegenation – but apparently only for Whites. He said Whites are inbred cretins but Blacks are fine as they are. You see, he has a Chinese Wife and wants everyone to do as he did. He’s the Model, the New Capitalist Man.
“Too absurd for comment other than to say this post is too absurd for comment.”
To a racist, it’s completely normal to assume anyone who doesn’t share their pathology is some kind of hypocrite. They can’t imagine a different state of mind.
Lorne why is it that only white countries must submerge their populations with non-whites? Vlad and myself are the actual anti-genocidalists here, the rest are either loathsome hateful self-haters or unicorn libs afraid to actually think.
I think Cash is a unicorn and puppy dogs lib myself, happy to believe in the blank slate nonsense for a few pats on the top of his male pattern baldness head.
Is Jim disgusted with only white tatooed thugs? What about the black and brown tatooed types, or is lib etiquette such that one must never critique them?
FTR if one is thinking of attending the University of Illinois Champaign the main business model of its downtown is tatoo parlors.
“Shut the fuck up”
Let me guess, you are a Vet who went to war for my right to free speech?
I’m white… and more into peak oil then blaming the predecessor to petroleum for my problems
When did this place turn into a KKK rally?
I can think of a better Allen Ginsberg quote. In an interview in a compendium called Mavericks of the Mind, he said: “The Americans are the most stupid and heartless…”
God, are you ever stupid. Only a tiny percentage of Whites ever had slaves – even at the time. As far as my ancestry, we weren’t even here yet – we were slaves in Europe. The same is true for most White Americans – their ancestors never had Black Slaves. Got it dumbo?
Of course that makes no difference to the Black/Liberal hate fest. You sure watch TV reeeal Good boy. And you payed attention in school and got your conditioning in real well too.
When you get attacked in the coming flash riots, will you make excuses for them? Or do you just do that when it’s other White People getting it? I’ll say this for Blacks, no one of them is a traitor to their own people like you and your’s are.
There is still slavery in Africa. Strangely, our great Blacks don’t seem interested. No do the Clintons and the Pelosis. Maybe something else is going on? For example: there’s no money in it? There lots of money and political advantage in White guilt and dispossesion – even though we outlawed it long ago and lost hundreds of thousands fighting a war over it. Gratitude from Blacks to Northern Whites? Absolute Zero exactly as predicted by the South.
OY – I am going for a swim.
He is a fanatical advocate of miscegenation – Vlad
Bullshit.
He said Whites are inbred cretins – Vlad
I said no such thing. Stop misrepresenting the clear intent and meaning of my posts and stop making me waste time clearing the record as to what I said and meant. Otherwise I’ll stick you on my “ignore” list with Asoka.
You see, he has a Chinese Wife and wants everyone to do as he did. – Vlad
See my prior comment.
Good ending Vinnie. That’s exactly what I’m saying. We can’t take anymore diversity. Way too fragile. We were a White Anglo Saxon Nation that somehow (it wasn’t easy) accomodated other European Groups. The Anglos changed a bit but by definition, the other groups had to change more. That’s the difference between immigration and colonization. We’re being colonized now – we are that weak. And some of the weakness came from trying to accomodate too may people who could never have fitted in.
This is the Earth, a place of conflict. A Nation by definition is a group of sucessful fighters. Why apply the screws to Whites and Whites alone? The Sioux got screwed by the Ojibwas, fled the Woods, and then screwed the previous residents of the Dakotas. A dog barks, the Caravan passes. Grow up.
Go back to your post about the mixed race couple sharing a spoon. Down past that. You said you’re in favor of mixing; that better a vigorous mongrel horde than a bunch of inbred cretins.
I called you on it. Dared you say that to Blacks. You replied that it didn’t apply to Blacks – implying that it only applied to Whites I assume since those are the two groups we were discussing. Logic, my poor hate filled fellow.
It’s a He not even a He/She or She/He. More’s the pity!
DreamCycle, it sounds as if your garden is growing nicely. I cut 3 cucumbers from my garden this morning, and green beans from my 6″ beanstock. It looks like a tepee. It’s huge. Tomatoes haven’t ripened yet. Tonight I’m taking a bike ride up to the Hollywood Hills overlooking the Hollywood Bowl to watch fireworks. I’m staying in today reading “Death By Supermarket”. An excellent book for everyone here on CFN to read. Thought I’d share.
6 foot beanstock I meant, not 6 inches. Pffsssh
I think Jim will be disappointed. The US has enough coal to power the country on coal alone for 67 years. It also has hydro, oil, natural gas, and Canadian tar sand. So the US is not going down in the sense of no energy. It does seems to be going down in the sense of fascist control by the few of the many. Fourth of July wonderful ideas that are not part of present day America.
And fuck you on your “Happy Birthday America”. You don’t mean it and are too stupid to know what many of us chose to celebrate.
================
Obviously his Birthday wish was intended sarcastically. And it’s choose unless you intended the past tense. You really DO need to watch your spelling since it affects the meaning you’re trying to convey.
Yes Vlad take your own advice and try using logic. You apparently have no concept of time and of change. What I said about inbreeding applies to all peoples equally because, the last I checked, the clock hasn’t stopped ticking has it? There’s a future to deal with is there not? The past is past and we can’t go back and rewrite history and re-do events. Blacks in North America have varied ancestry because of past circumstances. And that is over and done. But if we want a healthy population in the future I maintain that too much inbreeding is unhealthy. You don’t like racial mixing? Tough shit.
not my point. asoka is as doctrinaire in his racism you are in your racism. “free your mind and your ass (or whatever) will follow.” this is a semi-quote from a black motherfucker which applies as much to you and me as to the soaker. we are all rats who must swim from the sinking ship. to where shall we swim? someone lives there already.
my children are dead. to me this is merely interesting.
an aside- When The Killing’s Done- good fucking book, T C Boyle.
Personally I enjoy racist rhetoric as a radical form of dissent from current consensus reality; in fact I strongly recommend embracing all forms of “evil” as a means of mental liberation from this wretched and failing paradigm.
Taking this idea further, I would suggest that what is commonly thought of as “good” is really mostly social conditioning designed to perpetuate your slavery, and has no basis in nature. I have no doubt that there is a small class of “Satanic” elites who understand this cosmic fact, and teach their children accordingly so as to maintain their dynasties. So to those who would be truly liberated and powerful, my advice is to reject the Light of the false religions, embrace the Left Hand Path and Darkness, and always remember that in this dark universe, evil wins!
“The nature scientists uncover has crafted our viler impulses into us: in fact, these impulses are a part of the process she uses to create. Lucifer is the dark side of cosmic fecundity, the cutting blade of the sculptor’s knife. Nature does not abhor evil; she embraces it. With it she moved the human world to greater heights of organization, intricacy, and power.” –Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle
No, that isn’t what Cash suggested. You’re twisting his words. He stated, correctly, that most North American Blacks are already racially mixed because they have European blood. I would add that many also have Indian blood, often Cherokee.
Since you dared Cash to go downtown and provoke Blacks by calling them inbreds, I dare you to do likewise. Take leave of northern Idaho for a while, find a black neighborhood (if Spokane doesn’t have one, Tacoma and some of the areas around Fort Lewis do), and talk smack to the locals about their genetic inferiority.
I don’t expect you to actually do this, of course. Internet bluster from the Great White North (yours, not Cash’s) is one thing; leaving the White Man’s lair to mix it up with swarthier sorts is another.
Let’s ask Q to follow the dialogue and decide whether you were out of bounds or not.
What is to be gained? You want to see me beat up? I Know what they are like – Cash doesn’t perhaps.
You believe naturally (and incorrectly) that the mixed is always superior to the pure breed. As if a greyhound crossed with a German Shepherd will have BOTH the great speed on the first and the strength, loyalty, and intelligence of the second. It doesn’t work that way at all. The offspring may be healthy and a nice pet, but it will not have all the qualities of the parents to anywere near their full extent. In fact, it may be a mixed up mess of qualities and traits.
Forget the name but there was a “screwball” comedy back in the early 60’s: a puny genius and a beauty queen decide to have a super child. But the dumb blonde asks what if it has your body and my mind. Not so dumb after all.
Bravo Sean. Beware Bloom – he lifted entire parts from Lindsay’s “Voyage to Arcturus.”
You are tacitly admitting that you said it – and defiantly holding that it was OK because true.
Take the Africans. A mixed bunch to be sure. But not all mixed the way most of our Blacks are. There are groups that are ancient and distinct populations. The Mountain Tribes of Kenya are the best marathoners in the world – an adaptation to their way of life in a high environment. If they were to be mixed with West and Central African Bantus, the offspring would not be as good at distance. Nor would they have the incredible jumping and sprinting ability seen in much of West and Central Africa. Mixed isn’t always better. The hybrid vigor is something specific and lasts one generation I believe. After that, the mixed aren’t any stronger or healthier in general. Of course, something valuable may have been picked up – to balance out what has been lost. Can mulattoes retain the immunity against AIDS that 20% of Western Europeans have as a legacy from the Black Plague?
Not much holiday cheer here today, and the idiots are out in droves, ready to slash each other to bits with their bon mots. I will leave them to their hatred.
On the bright side, up here in Canada our version of History Channel ran the mis-named show “Prophets of Doom” recently and my son watched it. He came over to tell me all about this terrific guy he saw who talked about peak oil and what we need to do to survive the future without it. He didn’t know the guy’s name but it sounded alot like JHK to me, and when I showed him the pic on this website of JHK with moustache attached, he got all excited and said yes, that’s him.
Wow. I’ve been telling my son about JHK for a couple of years now, and he was mildly interested, but this show featuring him really lit a spark. He is now reading my copy of the Long Emergency, and I can hardly wait to have the discussion that will follow.
Thank you JHK. I caught up to that show myself a few days later, and must say I was impressed with your contribution. Compared to the guy worried about terrorists and the other one scared of robots, it must have been easy to be the shining star of the show. You were indeed most persuasive and engaging too. Your facial expressions were priceless. Thank you, from one citizen of the world to another.
Speaking of Black slaves,
of all the slaves sent out of Africa by other Africans and Arab slave traders….What percentage were brought to the United States?
50%? 25%?
Nope….Four Percent, that’s 4%. So much for our country being responsible for slavery. The Jesuit order of the Catholic church brought more slaves
to Brazil than all the English and Portuguese slave ships coming to the United States.
Ahem. The Canadian “tar sands” are not yours to take. They belong to Canadians. That may seem like a small point to you, but for many of us here, that does matter. And if you want it, you will pay BIG to get it. Hopefully nobody will get it though, since it costs more to access than it is worth, and the environmental costs are enough that we should just leave it there.
As you can tell, I am not from Alberta. They are singing a different song out west unfortunately. We can only hope the voters in Central Canada will put their brakes on for them. Cowboys should not be in charge of our resources.
Vlad is really getting to me today. Just how does he know all the “facts” he keeps asserting? He must be a real genius to be so sure of what black people all think, like and dislike. I wish I had that kind of insight to just know with certainty what others believe.
What a tool.
Yes, let’s leave the complaints for tomorrow. Paul Fussell, the great American intellectual, once said that July 4 is the one day the United States should receive nothing but praise.
Jimbo…I’m surprised you left hot dog eating contests out of your 4th of July essay. 60 dogs at one sitting, now that’s AWESOME and something the winner can really be proud of. Gluttony, deadly food and good ol’ Americana all rolled into one! Really makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it? Even puts NASCAR to shame. Party on, America!
Jim, if he could have, Ginsburg would have tried to fuck himself with an A-bomb.
You are right, not all experiments come out the way you expect, and the founding fathers were not fortune tellers.
It has been proven that you cannot stop or foresee the resulting long term ramifications of the exciting and joyful moments of invention. Of the steam engine; the locomotive; the automobile; the airplane.
Today I’m celebrating what we had and what we still have, keeping in mind the dangers that we face.
In this great, grand experiment that is the USA, with all of its flaws, I’m still a yankee doodle dandy, yankee doodle do or die!
Don’t let the bastards wear you down! Keep up the good fight! God bless the USA!
You want ME to “shut the fuck up” about race?
I’m not the looser who comes on a peak oil blog and blames all my problems on blacks and “liberals”…..
You want me to “shut the fuck up”…. come make me!
“Transformers – Dark of the Moon”
I heard that 532 flood-damaged automobiles were “recycled/salvaged/destroyed” in that movie. At first, I was liek, “WTF? No more CGI?” But then I was all liek, “Uhmm-K…”
I have to admit, I took great pride in seeing my hero Jerome’s “The Garden Of Earthly Delights” triptych as discussion material this week. A friend and I used to study all of his artwork, and found the “stomach flute” in the Hell panel, played by the dark, hooded, bat-like figure quite mesmerizing. We made it our ‘clan’ logo, and even silk-screened t-shirts of it in high school (oh yeah, that went over well with the ‘in crowd,’ LOL).
Well, gotta get back to work – 2 quarts of raspberries picked, and at least another 3+ quarts to go. Also need to try and clone some of the grape vines and blueberry bushes – I’m not sure you can ever have enough of those (and they could prove valuable for next year’s bartering of crop starts).
I suggest a rereading of E. F. Schumaker’s Small is Beautiful before the week-end.
“Every species is an experiment. Nature the experimenter is indifferent to the outcome. Species come and go on a regular basis – on the geological time scale.”
Well said, Newfie. The Great Experimenter is indifferent to humanity, or was, until we got so big that we started impacting her complex systems in a noticeable way. The “Anthropocene” era will end most abruptly, from a geological perspective anyway. Still, for us humans living in human time frames, it could take a while yet.
As “Earth Abides” author George Stewart said:
“As for man, there is littler reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one….Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.”
Nature, I’m afraid, is already loading the dice.
“I suggest a rereading of E. F. Schumaker’s Small is Beautiful before the week-end.”
Sound advice. I’m taking my copy to the mountains with me on Wednesday for a much-needed, feet-in-trout-stream-soaking holiday. Thanks for helping me decide which book to take.
The current grid won’t be viable in the total absence of oil. On the other hand, barring a total and sudden collapse of oil supplies and gross political incompetence, utilities will get high priority for emergency oil deliveries. I doubt that the Federal government would be stupid enough not to impose some sort of official rationing or at least allow market-based rationing by price to arise. Utilities might not fare as well buying oil on an inflated open market as in a rationed market, but even so they might bite the bullet and buy enough oil to keep servicing their grids.
In the next few years we’ll probably see massive blackouts more or less on the scale of the 2003 monster blackout in the Northeast. I’ve often imagined electric vehicles overloading grids to the point of brownouts or blackouts, especially during the summer in California. The environmentally correct set driving the e-cars and plug-in hybrids are woefully ignorant about the actual sources of electricity that they use. They’re prime marks for carbon offsets and surcharges that purport to ensure a direct supply of renewable electricity. They are deluded into thinking that by paying these surcharges they can plug directly into a wind turbine or a solar panel through the common grid.
So I don’t think it bodes well if many of these people decide to recharge their electric cars from the grid on a hot summer afternoon. If they overload the system, something has to give. To avoid a brownout or a blackout, immediate austerity measures must be imposed by, or on, grid customers.
In fact, car charging ports should be first in line for shutoffs, or else close. It’s less disruptive to shut down power to car charging stations than to server farms with business transactions in progress, and it’s a lot safer than shutting down supplies to, God forbid, hospitals.
The American public has a real mental block on the electrical grid. This includes most of the environmental movement. A lot of environmental activists have gotten on board with the e-commerce model because it saves shipping fuel and allegedly saves trees. Some of the paper savings are imagined, since all sorts of receipts and the like are printed out, and the amount of fuel saved through online bill payment schemes is negligible. At the same time, few people give any thought to the huge amount of electricity needed to run an e-commerce server farm, or for that matter any server farm. Or even an office computer network.
Something to consider for a low- or post-oil future: mail can be hand-sorted by daylight; it can be transported by barge or railcar, horse-drawn if desired, or by sailing ship; it can be delivered by foot or bicycle. But there is no way in hell to back up a server farm with a towpath and a mule.
If we use your premise about there being absolutely no oil to maintain the electrical grid, the super high-voltage interties have to go. I have trouble imagining the utilities devising a system to hoist heavy parts into place at heights of over a hundred feet in the middle of the desert. Even if such a system could be devised, the manpower or literal horsepower requirements would be huge, and there might be no way to provide enough food and water.
Basically, the grid would have to be downscaled and localized. Many cities would be well served by the establishment of DC grids, either parallel to the AC grid or as replacements. If memory serves, parts of New York City had a parallel DC grid until the mid-Twentieth Century. DC is much more efficient than AC, but AC has become the industry standard because it has lower transmission losses over long distances. Some appliances would have to either be converted to DC operation or supplied with AC-DC inverters, but maybe the biggest obstacle is the cultural one. The people running the grid think in grand terms using AC; they just don’t think in local terms using DC. Parallel systems may have to be built ad hoc with no consultation of the electrical powers-that-be.
Coal mining will continue on some scale without oil inputs, but it will become more labor-intensive and dangerous, as it used to be in the US and remains in places such as China. Coal mining is an industry that has not historically placed much value on human life, and I don’t see that changing in the US without an honest-to-God labor insurgency of the sort that we haven’t seen in decades.
“Nature, I’m afraid, is already loading the dice.”
As our friendly commenter Zen17 has said on more than one occasion, we will need sharp minds and healthy bodies to respond appropriately to the suite of novel pressures energy descent will present. In that vein, my blog post this week is about a group of new medicinal herbs and super foods we’re trialing at Small Batch Garden this season. Hopefully this will be useful information for those of you determined to get your genes through the looming population keyhole event.
Great stuff, Ripped, thanks for posting!
I was listening to this Cheo Feliciano song recently and I thought it was incredible. The first part not so much, but from minute three-and-a-half it was pure rapture for my ears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh87b_4FwlU
“On the Music: it’s true. Blacks don’t typically like Classical, Opera, Folk, or Rock. That you don’t know this shows you don’t know many or any. And the younger generation don’t usually care for the great traditions of Jazz, Blues, or Motown.” Flad
Geez, along with everything else you know nothing about, you know even less about music.Winton Marcellas, and others prove the lie to your claims.
You really are retarded, and shouldn’t be allowed to breed, tho with enough meth, you will no doubt find the perfect mate, tats & all. Just make sure you know which hole to put it in, its the Front one, just so you know.
And as to your other comment, the men here are truly gentlemen, something you also know nothing about.
Dee out….
Yes and no. You’re right that we weren’t responsible for creating African slavery, but we were responsible for maintaining it in our part of the New World for over two centuries, enshrining it in the mid to late Seventeenth Century as an officially racist system of servitude and social control, and maintaining that system of apartheid in various official forms for three centuries. We are still responsible for the largely unspoken racism that continues to pervade our society, especially our criminal justice system.
As a nation, we made Black slavery our own, and four centuries on we’re still struggling to deal with the ramifications. We can’t shift the blame onto sub-Saharan tribes for starting it, Arabs for consolidating it, or Spaniards for besting us at it in the New World. We need to own our part of it and do our best to rise above its evil legacies.
As an addendum to AMR’s weighty post above, I came up with what I think is an easy way to determine if your recycling activities are producing a net energy gain. Back when I figured out that ethanol was a net loser, and just another wealth drain on the federal coffer, I started wondering whether all the materials we recycle might have the same issues. Plastic in particular seemed problematic, as making bottles from raw petroleum is easy and the infrastructure and markets for doing so already existed. In essence, recycling plastic added another link to that food chain, and longer food chains always come with a substantial metabolic drain on the system.
So here’s my rule of thumb: if you can get paid for your recycled materials they represent a net energy gain. Otherwise they just represent another form of eco-piety. And eco-piety ain’t gonna cut it in the descent phase. If the option is tossing your plastic in the landfill, then by all means keep recycling it, but if you can reuse the plastic, or even burn it, I’m guessing we’d all come out ahead energetically. Best option obviously would be to refuse to buy plastic in the first place, but it’s a useful material, so I understand. Holds a bourbon and 7 on a hot Independence Day afternoon quite nicely…
“Nature, I’m afraid, is already loading the dice.”
As our friendly commenter Zen17 has said on more than one occasion, we will need sharp minds and healthy bodies to respond appropriately to the suite of novel pressures energy descent will present. In that vein, my blog post this week is about a group of new medicinal herbs and super foods we’re trialing at Small Batch Garden this season. Hopefully this will be useful information for those of you determined to get your genes through the looming population keyhole event.
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
That little link might be useful…
Cheers!
Tripp
Experience old girl. Also keeping my eyes open in general. Most people here who so piously pontificate have obviously never lived near Blacks, lived with Blacks (1 once), gone to school with Blacks, and worked with Blacks. It really shows by the sappy idealism and relentless overestimation of their abilities and character.
What you call “getting to you” is actually your mind starting to work. Don’t be afraid – that’s how it feels as you begin to lose a paradigm. It gets easier once you’ve done it a few times as I have. Liberals are the most resistant to growth and change and thus almost as conservative as Communists.
‘diverse’
DIVERSITY IS THE HOBGOBLIN OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA.
“The American public has a real mental block on the electrical grid. This includes most of the environmental movement.”
David Holmgren said that reducing our overall energy use is the best way to care for the Earth, without the need for specific knowledge of the individual impacts of each consumptive action. Likewise, I think the only way to reduce environmental impact from electrical use is to less of it. Period. Solar, wind, tidal, coal, or gas, it is foolish to think that continuing to use the same amount of energy from a “green” source is really changing anything. The only truly green energy is energy not spent.
You moved from LA to Detroit?
Years ago I was on the 22 Filmore bus in San Francisco.
An African American woman got on the bus, and started a conversation with a friend a few rows away. (The bus was packed).
It was a loud conversation, but everybody on the bus politely looked forward and pretended that they weren’t listening. Until one of them asked the other, who had recently moved back from Detroit “So, which do you like better? San Francisco or Detroit?”
At that, everyone on the bus, black and white, roared with laughter.
Detroit? As if!
The Front?! Oh that’s why! Wait, what if I’m already behind her?
Two paths diverged in a wood,
I took the less traveled and
it has made all the difference.
One of my all time favorite posts here folks! As one of the Futurama robots would say “That equals true.”
If ‘subsaharan Africans’ and Africa are so
WONDERFUL then tell us more!
Whats so wonderful in their ‘diversity’?
Why are so many of them so eager to move to USA/
Europe?
Like the black woman crying rape in NYC with
the big $ so recently added to her bank account?
Whats her name?
i once read that jefferson’s wife had the declaration of independence tattooed on her backside
and the hobgob of little minds. As it says in The Postman, Oh little mind of Bethlehem. I was rooting for Bethlehem but I still liked the Black kid. If I ever have a son, I’m going to name him Ford Lincoln Mercury.
lol
I went to buy a dog pillow for my paralyzed dog to lie on.
I chose the one with the spiffy card on it, claiming that the filling was made of recycled plastic bottles, now turned into a soft, bouncy pillow. My dog wins, and the Earth does too!
When I got home, I read the tag attached to the side that every pillow has. It said that the filling was 100% polyester!
They lied somewhere, and I’m guessing it was the spiffy card.
Albert Collins! Makes me want to slow boogie. Uncle Ned caught his act live when we were in Mpls but I missed it.
Cash is right on the money. Human genome project and mitochondrial DNA studies. Mitochondria have their own DNA which comes directly through the matrilineal line and has been key to determining historical family trees. Australian aborigines are genetically closest to the Chinese, and quite distant from any modern Africans.
Still laughing out loud.
SOLAR GUY, ARE YOU OUT THERE?
I would like to put my well pump on a solar backup. It’s 3 hp, 230 volts, 60 Hz. What size panel would it require?
Thanks,
Tripp
“Yesterday, I saw a man on a back street of a small town with spider webs tattooed on his elbows and a screaming skull on the back of his neck. America, meet your new normal: a citizenry of exterminating angels.”
I guess you don’t read Drudge. The new normals travel in packs on the main streets of the large cities and don’t look anything like angels and they are already busy exterminating whatever they can.
JHK’s proofreader must have the 4th off and Qshtik is napping, so I had to step in.
It’s altar.
“Take leave of northern Idaho for a while, find a black neighborhood (if Spokane doesn’t have one, Tacoma and some of the areas around Fort Lewis do)”
Try the Hillyard or “Felony Flats” (it’s near the jail) neighborhoods in Spokane. And let me know how it goes.
I didnt know that.
Q,
You lament that nobody has anything nice to say about the rich—well surprise, I do.
I was watching C-Span the other day and someone called in to say this. He said he was invited to a dinner party comprised of seven couples. He said the one with the least amount of money had a mere $500 Million and I’m not getting that wrong–no typo here.
He said the group was made up of some Liberals, Centerists, Republicans and one Conservative. they were discussing raising taxes to help this country an all were in favor-except the one Conservative.
Now isn’t that a heart-warming story?
Time for a quick bike ride before heading to the bonfire for roasted weenies and wine. But first I want to say Happy Birthday America, I love you! Why do I love America? Because, at the beginning of the revolution John Adams volunteered to be the defense lawyer for redcoats accused of massacre. That’s American. Because two books written by women, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “A Silent Spring” were able to change who we are. Because abolitionists refused to give in on the issue of slavery, and because white people were willing to march with Martin Luther King. Because women at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory stood up for their rights, and their deaths came to mean something. Because hippies smoked pot and grew their hair and challenged the rigid ideas of the world they were born into. Because I can bike through landscapes so lovely tears come to my eyes. Because so many of my hellos and goodbyes are accompanied by bear hugs.
If I say I love my husband and my daughter, do you assume I think my family is better than any other family? Of course not. That’s how I love my country. It’s MY country, cruel and compassionate, ugly and beautiful, corrupt and innocent and crazy and wonderful. Talking don’t change nothin’. Live your life with kindness, love and compassion toward everyone including yourself. THAT is what matters.
Happy fourth! Don’t drive drunk!
Gay NY jooish who wrote a poem about getting his back acre plowed by a blond.
I almost smoked a joint with him at the fillmore 41 years ago.
Unless the spelling is intentional.
Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man of wealth and taste.
Do you fancy yourself a radical? Know then that in the twilight of this Dark Age of egalitarianism, collectivism, rationalism and utilitarianism, the real radical is the Aristocrat, the Artist, the Conqueror, the Irrationalist, the Mystic, the Sith Lord and the Satanist. Are you a man or a steer? Are you man enough to leave the herd behind and walk the Path of Darkness which is the Path of Power?
Then raze this wretched civilization to the ground! Destroy everything that is weak, botched, mediocre and ugly! Use your Dark Art to invoke the Apocalypse!
Of course most of you are not true “doomers”, but pathetic cowards clinging to the delusions of a dying age. The real face of doom is the event horizon of the black hole, the total overthrow of the moral order, a violent gnosis with the Dark Energy, a return to the primal order, a Satanic Singularity.
Out of the ashes of a world in flames shall the empires of the future be built. The strong will once again annihilate the weak without pity or remorse, for they will serve the Lord of this World, who is as cruel as nature. You moderns have allowed yourself to become disarmed and blinded to the true nature of the world in which you live. Time to wake up, all you would-be conquerors and men of power! The age of pious weakness and false religions of the Light is ending. The time has come for the strong to stand and once more wield the cleansing power of the holy Darkness. The time has come to decide who is worthy of life, and who must die. The time has come to ask yourself: am I evil enough to survive?
Grouch….quit yr whining and scroll past.
HAPPY HOLIDAY TO ALL
You’re putting words into my mouth. I don’t believe in breeding humans in the manner of dogs or horses, something that you routinely insinuate would be a good idea, with all your rhetoric about Kenyan marathoners, Greyhounds and the like.
My position is that incest is a bad idea morally and pragmatically, inbreeding (i.e., at the level of cousins) is dubious, but pretty much anything else is fair game. With a few basic exceptions, people should be allowed to shack up and breed with whomever they want.
I don’t advocate licentious reproduction; in fact, I think birth control is highly underused in many circles; but it sure as hell isn’t the government’s or society’s place to say tell people that they are to have their children with those of like race, or with those of unlike race. That decision is for the individual parents to make. There are some valid arguments to be made for non-racially based eugenics, but it’s a road to hell paved with good intentions, so it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution.
Your talk about racial purity, as though the goal is pedigreed Jews or Englishmen or Kikuyus, is sick. It has a depraved Nazi vibe, and there are people alive today who have seen where that sort of rhetoric leads when it becomes the basis of policy–specifically, to Auschwitz, Srebrenica, and the killing fields of Rwanda.
I wasn’t trying to get you beaten up by suggesting that you talk to Blacks about their racial inferiority. You’re the one who first made the suggestion, to Cash earlier in the thread. You’re projecting.
I’m sure Cash will exercise his own right of reply as to whether or not you know more about the nature of Blacks than he does. I will say, however, that he certainly does not sound like an idealistic naif to me. He seems to have a keen understanding of a number of ethnic cultures, interactions between those cultures, and the general effects of culture on individuals and societies–much keener, I should note, than you seem to have, being blinded by racial theory and paranoia.
In the same vein, let me state right now, although you probably won’t heed my advice, that you do not speak for me about my knowledge of or experience with any ethnic group. You do not speak for my ethnic prejudices or lack thereof. You are not my spokesman. It is safe to assume that if you continue to put words into my mouth as you did above, they will be pure bullshit. If they aren’t, it’s because even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
As far as your reference to the “screwball comedy” is concerned, it’s a long way down from the bona fide, serious debate about genetic disorders that you and Cash had upthread.
I read about the Koch brothers..what evils have they done other than who they were born to?
One of the things I read warned that …
One of them sided with Mc Carthy [right side]
and warned peeps about Stalin.
If they are trying to take over the world…cite source. [they may be]
No where did I read that Soros was a Nazi as I searched.
Thus spoke Vladisthustra…’We have no rights to people like this. Save Tibet but let the West die’
I once read UTNE reader…article saying..
I HATE OSWEGO NY, WHERE THE COLLEGE KIDS GO TO
A TIBET BENEFIT WALKING BY A CRACK HOUSE!
On Public Radio recently…
I learned to hate libs at Harvard Divinity..
the libss id cut cane in Niceragua but would never go walk thru slums talking to blacks!
Sean,
Have you ever had your ass kicked and I do mean kicked bad? In the hospital for months bad? As my grandma used to say there’s always someone bigger, stronger,faster,smarter, and luckier than you are. Be careful what you wish for.
You said what you said – the rags of your false dignity cannot cover your nakedness now.
====================
Vlad waxes poetic…
Hey Auntie,I saw ol’ Albert once. He opened for Grand Funk Railroad at Springfield MA in maybe 72?I had nosebleed seats but the rebels which we were we elbowed our way to the front of the stage.
You are the Pope and therefore infallible in these matters but yet I wonder…If the Sun is giving us the energy anyway, it can’t be as dangerous as say, nuclear. Once the infastructure is in built and in place anyway.
“The Master of the Telecaster”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Collins
So Spokane’s only Black or partially Black neighborhood is called Felony Flats. How appropriate. It’s the most dangerous too I bet – I mean right now, not because the jail was once there.
What street intersection is it near? Bus number?
I wonder at times why people just don’t go to D.C. and start shooting. All of my normal friends are so upset with the way things are, they have turned so negative towards everything. I’ve never seen it so bad. Not even during the Vietnam War were the folks I worked with so negative.
But it’s a differnt kind of negative. Back in the days, people rose up to the occasion…..now, nothing……..just fighting between each other. Road rage, cheating, disrespect, loss of values, wanting something for nothing, being self-centered…….is the order of the day.
One day the whole system will shut down……..maybe pretty soon…….sadly, we will all sufer.
Anyways……just keep checking the messages on your cell phone……you are so fu**ing important, you know!
I take our case to you. Trace back the scrolls and judge whether Cash is guilty of insulting the White Race.
No need to breed them – the difference are already there. Bless the Maker and His works. The joy of Creation is in its infinite Diversity. But instead of blessing, Liberals curse and would undo the work of the Maker – making all Humanity into a mono chrome Dung Heap – and all in the name of Diversity! What a Sin and a Mockery. May they be cursed.
The Hierarchy has no idea how many Whites they’ve lost by going Native as they have.
“Good ending Vinnie. That’s exactly what I’m saying. We can’t take anymore diversity. Way too fragile.”
I’m stunned. I asked that question to back you off a rhetorical cliff and you kept walking in reverse and fell. I haven’t done that online in years, so I didn’t know if I still had it in me. Looks like I do.
“This is the Earth, a place of conflict. A Nation by definition is a group of sucessful fighters. Why apply the screws to Whites and Whites alone? The Sioux got screwed by the Ojibwas, fled the Woods, and then screwed the previous residents of the Dakotas.”
You didn’t claim Native American ancestry, but making you face the issue did change the kind of talk you engaged in. In both cases, I admire your honestly, even if I find your views repugnant.
Since you conceded both of my points above, and refused to address the rest of my thesis, I’ve decided that descretion is the better part of valor, so I declare victory and depart the field of battle. I’m looking forward to finding out if you’re up to the challenge next week, when the debate starts all over again. See you later, Impaler!
Jim, do you own a gun?
I bite my hand. Strike it. Sit on it. Anything to stop it from saluting in the Roman Way.
Just remember, Love is the Law. Love under Will. You seem a little Yang there, bro.
Christian Warriors followed your advice. 5000 Saxon unarmed chieftans were sacraficed writhing in their own blood after being invited to a feast. The Vikings never offered as a big a sacrafice to the Grey Man.
Sir, why would I allow myself to have my “ass kicked”, as you so pithily put it? As a servant of the Lord of this World, I fear no one. Fear is my ally. Fear is my power.
As we enter the time foreseen by all the dark prophets, the time called Apocalypse, “Helter Skelter” and the return of the Old Ones, “with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy”, I too will shout and kill and revel in joy and fear. I did not choose to be born into this dark time and place, but I will play the hand I am dealt and perhaps if I am lucky I can build a new empire among the ruins.
There is nothing left to hold the American Empire together now; its people are divided in a thousand ways, such as no lasting nation can be. In the parlance of our times, America has sacrificed everything for the creed “get rich or die trying”, and now she must surely die….
“Surely many in this nation see an approach to an abyss.”
Actually, we are beyond the approach to an abyss. We have entered the abyss and are sliding down the vortex with increasing velocity. There is absolutely nothing in the whole wide world to stop this slide. All resources are heavily and irreversibly depleted and the hungry population looms too large. Technology cannot save us because technology itself is starving. Prepare for a bump, a BIG bump.
The past 200 years of industrial civilization was just a one-time blip on the radar screen of eternity.
What becomes of all these nukes is anyone’s guess. Happy 4th of July…
The economy did Fuck me…
I’m barely alive…
Obama did spunk me…
Our leaders so jive…
Education to make me somebody…
Put on a suit, a tie…
Give me a place, stucture, order…
Feel like I’m special inside…
But the dream has crashed…
I’m lost, in a cloud….
Awaiting the Fuehrer…
So that I can goosestep around….
Ssst Ssst, Macha! Macha! It is customary for Costa Rican men to compliment women in public places. These cat calls are called piropos and are usually considered harmless unless excessively vulgar. Women are advised to ignore them since any response in seen as an invitation for attention. Macha refers to someone light skinned.
I do it all the time, Vin. Blacks accuse me of racism and I just smile or say “Sure just like you”. What can they say? It’s true. That’s what you Liberals don’t get. Whites aren’t the most racist people in the world but the least. What other race would give their whole Civilization away as we are doing now?
Tripp,
Actually not so much a question of the panel size but the balance of equipment required IE battery pack, inverter, etc. For backup purposes probably a couple 200watt panels would be sufficient since there is a long time for charging between expected outages. Depending on how long you want to run the pump the battery pack is crucial. Any competent electrician should be able to advise.
And Noddens is Lord of the Abyss…
Lot of racism on this discussion thread, today.
The perpetrators may protest otherwise, but there it is – useless, heavy, and hatefilled.
It is a sad thing to see – on this well-crafted website, featuring the work of our intelligent, and VERY tolerant, Jewish host. And on this, the day that celebrates the birth of a grand experiment in government.
Oh well, tomorrow is another day.
Thunderstorms brought the blessings of rain and cool air into the north Georgia mountains for the evening.
Now, I’m going back out in hopes of watching stuff blow up.
Auntie,
Remarkable woman you.
6 foot beanstock I meant
===============
No, you meant 6 foot beanstalk.
SEAN THE MYSTIC:-
“The time has come for the strong to stand and once more wield the cleansing power of the holy Darkness. The time has come to decide who is worthy of life, and who must die. The time has come to ask yourself: am I evil enough to survive?”
This is what happens when you take too many holidays in Mordor…
Cry me a river. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a work of Hatred for Southern Whites. This desire to be better than other Whites and to justify ourselves to Minorities (who hate us) will be the end of us.
WAge, et al, recycling plastic bottles uses less energy than the manufacture of new ones, all they do is melt them down again, at a much lower temp too.
Plus they can be made into many items, such a re-usable shopping bags, your doggie bed, etc.
So, go ahead and recycle them.
As for actually buying drinking water, then recycling the bottles, that is just stupid.
Instead, buy a nice metal bottle, and fill it from a Brita or PUR water filter, and keep it in the fridge. Water just as good and pure as anything you buy in a plastic bottle, with out the tiny amounts of plastic that is released into the water in the bottle.
Enjoy.
Oh, and fuck off Flad,
Dee 🙂
Lots of White Self Hatred – racism of Whites by Whites. The festering wound of self hatred must be lanced. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.
Blah. This guy was miles ahead of most whites, including his white smart ass host, and probably still is:
http://youtu.be/0D-ktFALbsE
“What street intersection is it near? Bus number?”
28? You could check out STA.com, I think. West of Ash/Maple, north of the river, south of Monroe. Should be at least a line or two that would get you in there.
And it’s perfectly safe to walk around in Felony Flats too. Not at all like a real ghetto. My wife says that Hillyard would be your better chance though.
Obvious foil. But who do you belong to?
Sean the Mystic, I mean.
But I don’t want a battery pack. I have enough water to make it through the night. I want to pull water in the sunshine when the grid is down. How many watts would that require? I have a backup wind turbine coming online this year too.
I’ve been free enough to not have to be anywhere at anybody else’s appointed time for over thirty years, now. I go where I want to, whenever I want to and stay as long as I want. Don’t have to obey anybody’s orders, from one day to the next. Living quite comfortably amid many and many an acre of elbow room. Bigwigs harumph and spout off a lot, but I just ignore their BS.
Deserts are way too harsh for most folks, but I’ve enjoyed every moment of my time here. Living is easy, since I know the “how to” of the desert.
I like “easy”. 🙂
And plans to build a 5000 gallon ferro-cement cistern to get me through outages, and dark, calm and cloudy days.
“I’ve been free enough to not have to be anywhere at anybody else’s appointed time for over thirty years, now.”
And I thought waking up to only 2 alarms in the last 3 years was free. You got me beat by an unrecoverable distance. Jealous.
I’m not the looser who comes on a peak oil blog
=================
OMG, stop them Lord. I beg you in the name of Samuel Johnson.
“What becomes of all these nukes is anyone’s guess. Happy 4th of July…”
There’s the rub, isn’t it? That’s the one thing that worries me. Post-peak, everything starts recovering, but there’s always this one dark cloud in the back of my mind. If there was one task worth banning together for, one last task to shore up as a country, perhaps one last defining moment as a nation, it would be to snuff out the nuclear threat. You can’t prepare for nuclear winter, no matter how many years you’ve been at it.
Whose Samuel Johnson? 😀
Good rant:
http://youtu.be/D4YMbsEm3ms
Wow, my password still works after all these months. Good ole TypoPad.
JHK’s long card is the not so simple way he has of rationally looking at what’s possible and doable, and not getting suckered by all the “technograndiosity” we are fed as in “keeping hope alive”, “daring to hope” or whatever. It’s interesting that he doesn’t follow his own observations and conclusions too far, least they bum everyone out, including himself. That he leaves to the readers. In his books about the future, humans are always a bit thinned out. That may come to pass, but I doubt much usable infrastructure will remain.
His recent article for Orion was simply outstanding. Just about sums it all up, and again, the reader can read between the lines on what all the occupants of those fancy high rises and exurb mansions will be doing in the not too distant future. Worm food, mostly, I’m afraid. See Rome, Western Empire, Collapse. Speed up film.
you know even less about music. Winton Marcellas, and others prove the lie to your claims.
===========
Wynton Marsalis
“If the Sun is giving us the energy anyway, it can’t be as dangerous as say, nuclear. Once the infastructure is in built and in place anyway.”
Again, here’s the rub, once the infrastructure is built. But what do we mean by that? Do we mean replacing the entire oil and coal infrastructure with solar, because surely that is an impossible task this late in the piece. And solar will never ever, on its most charmed day, be oil. Oil is the representative of eons of solar energy sequestered through geologic time by living creatures that built up to form it. Dense, stable, portable, liquid, concentrated like no other. Solar panels simply harvest the sun’s energy at that moment in time. Just that one second’s worth of power. It barely registers on the scale compared to a quart of oil. So right off we ought to still be talking about radical conservation practices preferentially to alternative energy sources.
Second, the rare earth elements required to manufacture PV panels are already past their peak supply, and the so-called solar revolution hasn’t even begun.
Third, solar is not a simple technology. For all its merits the deployment of solar technology requires a certain amount of economic buoyancy from the consuming population. That economic buoyancy is eroding severely as we speak.
Solar is a one generation transitional technology to my mind. It’s worth employing for sure, but by the time it’s time to replace those panels I would be highly surprised if we still possessed the economic buoyancy to do so, or the mining and manufacturing capability to make it happen technically. Get them, and use them for important tasks, but do it with the idea that this is only to make the transition back to zero more comfortable.
Other than that, yes, it’s a lot safer than nuclear! My god, what a mess nuclear is!! How anyone can look at Japan and Nebraska right now, and think, hmm, I think we should do more of this, is beyond me. Especially someone who really understands where we’re headed, and how much less control over Nature we’re likely to have there.
mosdef is fulla s*it.
Wait, what if I’m already behind her?
===============
Then if you took the one in front you’d be traveling “the old dirt road.”
You’ve done a yeoman’s job of paraphrasing but for others reading here those last 3 lines from Frost are:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A simple but profound poem. My very favorite.
Wait a minute now, no talkin’ shit about Mosdef.
‘lie to your claims’
Really? I know of no Black Americans that buy or
listen to Blues?
Are you Black?
I say Whites are the most violent race, as judged by number of bombs dropped.
worse than…
Darfur
Rwanda
Somalia
Congo
Zaire
Uganda
Tripp,
3 horsepower is a pretty big well pump. Horsepower increases as a function of depth, flow rate, and (somewhat?) age of the installation.
My pump is 1.5 hp, hanging 250 feet down a 500 foot well. It flows about 10 gpm when the well hasn’t been pumped for a while – since the water is within about 85 feet of the ground surface. After a couple of hours of continuous pumping, the flow rate drops down to about 1.5 gallon per minute – which is my signal that it’s past time to shut down whatever I’m using water for – usually irrigation – to let the well recover for a half hour or so.
My installation is 3 years old, now. I looked into “variable speed” well pumps, but stopped because of the high cost – and thinking that I’d go to a variable speed when the time came to replace the first pump. It’s on flexible poly pipe, so I can pull it myself if I ever have to.
The problem with well pumps on PV solar, without battery banks, is going to be the amperage required to get the pump started. That’s considerably higher than the running current for most any standard electric motor or appliance.
I know there are specialty pumps for solar designed to have a very low starting load. But I think they only work on “low heads,” where the water is close to the level of your house.
So, one of your first questions would be – how deep is your water table, month after month.
That’s what I know about off the top of my head – and based on a fair amount of research and some hands-on work.
I’ll be interested to hear SolarGuy’s response – or anyone else’s.
Without reliable running water, civilization is pretty much out of business, IMHO.
mosdef is fulla s*it.
==
Yeah? Well, I don’t know enough to say. Except that in that vid he was miles closer to the truth than most in the US.
Mr. T. thinks I’m overly frightened. He thinks that if he be a good boy on his isolated farm they’ll leave him alone. I think the outrages of the Nazis were just a trial run compared to what’s coming. Certainly the potential is there. I hope I’m wrong.
Are you in USA?
whats ahead?
Mos was talking about cops killing folks…..
Back in the days,
Unintuitive as it may sound, the expression is “Back in the day.”
I take our case to you.
===============
Sorry Vlad, enough people here hate me already without getting mixed up in this kerfuffle.
descretion
=========
discretion
banning together
==========
banding
Whose Samuel Johnson? 😀
============
Google it.
Whose Samuel Johnson? 😀
============
P.S. It’s Who is.
Chris Hedges opens his birthday card on truthdig.com today with three powerful paragraphs before telling us that Nader has had enough. Hedges then quotes Nader as saying we need organizers, organizers, organizers.
The trouble is: organize what? We have only one ideology, one religion in this country. Unbridled, unfettered laissez faire capitalism. Greed. Selfishness. The gospel according to the syphilitic German’s alter girl, Ayn Rand.
The government’s depredations of the past century have completely destroyed the left in this country. A left that has completely abandoned the working class for the middle is the silly kerfuffle we see at work today.
Instead of working for economic justice we’ve all been seduced by the dream of middle-class comfort and status. A powerful witches’ brew it is. To the extent, Mr. K., that we Americans realize that that is what’s a stake, there will be hell to pay. Anything, anyone in the way of maintaining that illusion is forfeit.
The 500 years of the modern age, of unlimited resources, land, manpower (slave, indentured, proletarian), energy, wealth, have been a dream.
All of the laws of capital a pure illusion.
I can’t think of a better metaphor for the state of our hyper-complex system than that of an aging aircraft, its systems failing one by one. We’re just beginning to fall out of top-of-climb.
No orchestra to play us to the ground. Just re-runs.
His recent article for Orion
===========
Can you provide a link?
“It isn’t racist to hate your oppressor.”
-suburbanE-
Suburb, this one short statement of yours excuses both racism and hate – two things which should never be excused.
“Is it possible for there to be a black racist? Black people have a hell of a lot more reason to hate you than you do them.”
-suburb-
So hate is OK?
And a black man can’t be a racist?
That’s some nasty and twisted logic, Mr. Suburb An Empire.
================
I give Vlad plenty of hell for the way his fear and hate screws up this discussion board.
But it still seems strange to see the precise polar opposite coming from a thoughtful poster such as yourself, SuburbEmpire.
================
But it’s still hate.
And it’s still racism.
And it’s still wrong.
Jesus H! Jumped straight to the racist bullshit this week, didn’t it, instead of a day or so of relevant discussion beforehand! Man, so much intolerance out there!
I watched a couple of interesting flicks on Netflix streaming last night, both gay/lesbian history films (“Before Stonewall” and “After Stonewall”) and I’m not even gay, I just find the world an interesting place and I can’t say that I really understand the world without having listened to and absorbed the POV of people who aren’t all like me. Liberal that I am, I saw a lot of parallels between that group of people and the history of the civil rights movement for blacks in America, as well as the women’s rights movement in America. Bottom line . . . How can ANYONE claim freedom for themselves while oppressing another? It’s so much hypocrisy and bullshit, if you really look at it.
If you can watch Dr. King make his “I Have A Dream” speech, and not be moved as a human being and as an American, then you have a heart of stone, IMO, and you should search your heart for humanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk
the silly kerfuffle we see at work
===========
Perhaps you are unaware that the word kerfuffle may only be used once per day on this blog and that I got there first at 12:02AM. Sorry.
From the JHK Home page: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6336
Remind me why I would’ve read you?
I’m all about recycling. I just doubt that the dog bed is actually recycled plastic, since the tag says something different.
And I drink tap water, bizarre as that is in this day and age. I won’t touch water in a plastic bottle.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2010/03/battle-against-dehydration.html
I put my last post out there as food for thought. I am not a black woman, and I have no claim to the oppression that the black people in this country have gone through. I am a white woman, born in the Deep South to the exact same conditions that Dr. King speaks of . . . poverty, injustice, and oppression. As a miracle of Dr. King’s work, I did not grow up in an atmosphere of segregation and inequality. I rode the school bus with little black boys and girls, and they were my friends. I benefited from the civil rights movement as a child of the south. I grew up believing that I could work hard, use my brain and my discipline, and go much farther than my mother had the opportunity to go, and that was by benefit of the women’s movement. I benefited from public education, and from the schools in Mississippi teaching evolution (not creationism), the benefits of a scientifically oriented education. I learned to question, and to say “NO” to oppression. I learned the ethic of hard work and discipline and kindness and decency toward my fellow man and woman, regardless of race or creed. These are the blessings of the “TRUE” America, my friends! People who stand up, and speak up! Perhaps we are in a world of shit, but I’m here to tell you . . . not all is lost! We’re not all a bunch of mouth-breathing morons out here in this country (even the South, JHK! 🙂
I went to my first day of first grade, with no shoes on my feet, and I have a master’s degree and make pretty damn good money today. I HAD A DREAM. And it started, with someone telling me I COULD. So, ClusterFuckers, know that all hope is not lost . . . if I could DO IT, perhaps your children can TOO . . . meet these seemingly insurmountable challenges and meet them with dignity and certitude. We CAN DO THIS!
Let freedom ring! FREE AT LAST! And I hold hands with my fellows and meet that future willingly.
Judge not by the color of someone’s skin (or the nature of their genitalia or sexual orientation) but the content of their character.
Or even their tattoos and piercings or NASCAR leanings 🙂 Judge NOT! You’d be damned surprised at how many tattooed, smart-as-hell blue-collar bikers I know personally 🙂 People who can quote poetry and read philosophy books (YES, some of those people READ, man! And FAR ABOVE a fifth-grade level :)~
One Breeding Female Available.
On young breeding female. Interested in surviving the impending apocalypse. Wishes to connect with strong and successful Armed Survival Compound in need of young stock.
In addition to sexual services, can cook and clean. Also know HTML.
=====
I wonder how long before we see personal ads like this?
A libertarian, ragging on the central bank (suprise! suprise!), bringing the K. up short for idealizing a non-existent past. My, my! Nothing is as we suppose it to be, have been or to be. All uglier and far more accidental than your philosophy dreams of.
“Gentlemen, he said
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards”
Damn, Bob.
We’re so proud of ourselves. We’ve done all this by ourselves. All these glittering towers of glass and steel and Babel. These last 500 years of wealth and glory. Earned by the sweat of our brow and glorious intelligence.
Jared Diamond has tried to show us that the glory of the west is just a confluence of accidents. Plate tectonics.
Oh, and newbie. Fred Hoyle. Thank you for that quote. Wow! I am of the generation of “heavy!” Maybe the heavy of all time:
“It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical preequisties so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however compentent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high=level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, the planteary stem fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them ther will be one chance, and one chance only.”
One chance only.
This Earth is Eden. As harsh a mistress as she is, the conditions for the evolution of life have been perfect here. Out of all the billions of stars and planets.
All the chances we’ve been given to get it right.
The funnel is narrowing.
Excellent points, but my fellow co workers and many have letters of education after their name, tell me they do not care what Science says, the earth is only 10,000 years old, climate change is false,and we did not evolve, its the same group of animals since the flood. Socialism is causing all the money problems,and Jesus hates gays,and as soon as Sarah or Michelle become President and instill Christian Values( right wing view) American will rise again,until the rapture occurs. I cannot wait until the rapture as a B.A.A, (born again Athenian) I can garden in peace. Happy 4th of July!! Zeus bless us all. Good article JHK.
My apologies for whatever repulsive posts were posted while my terminal was commandeered using my account name. I’m much too horrified to even look. These are people I will probably have I lifelong bond with.
If I don’t indulge them, they use physical duress and, it hurts.
The thing about these people is that they still believe.
I still believe.
We all swore an oath to defend the Constitution.
Not some fuckin’ personality.
We’re all pretty much in agreement. For the foreseeable future, that better not goddamn change.
This is your blog. I’ve intruded enough.
See ya in couple of centuries?
THE easy path is to kill, destroy,raze,that requires no courage,espeically when brought against the defenseless, fear is stronger than reason, terror is stronger than reason. The dark side is so easy to follow. Thats why to me the strongest act by Jesus was when he told his fellows, to turn your cheek when slapped. BUT not to fear history shows your path was many more followers than Jesus, Gandi,or Martin Luther King, fear,rage,and darkness are easy, thinking, working, compassion require courage and strength. May Zeus bless us all.
So, you open with a line from “Sympathy for the Devil”, and I guess that prelude is supposed to introduce us to how cleverly far you can take the satanic and destructive.
Let’s instead call you Sean the Septic, because your rant is not only a one pound bag filled with twenty pounds of putrefaction, but also a one pound bag covered externally with the excrement that only a spewer of shit could produce.
You say, “Destroy everything that is weak, botched, mediocre, and ugly.” Why not start with yourself, O courageous one. Come on, get the balls, it’ll be over quickly if you do it right.
You also say, “most are not true doomers, but pathetic cowards..”
O leader of the satanic horde, tell me, I beg, if I destroy the world can I heroically enter the dark kingdom?
Your rant is full of the sound and fury of a confused adolescent in search of himself and finding an internal map leading only to an angry contrariness intended to further provoke adults.
Sean the Septic, Satanic Shit Shoveler
Right on. Women immediately go into prostitution under duress. As Jim said thru one of his characters, they are not moral creatures. At least it will be the end of the bullshit posturing known as Feminism. Too bad young men wont get to enjoy the illusion of romance that we had. But it was going sour anyway – way too much power imbalance against men.
Now do you see the method in my madness? You’ll never agree with my views, but without me would this man ever face the contradictions inherent in the hatred of his own race?
That was official dogma a couple of decades ago: only Whites could be racists. My Women Studies Major girlfriend preached to me to that effect. It’s gone underground since it’s so patently absurd, but they hard core still believe it 100%.
Hey Tootsie… take your meds, your real manners are showing
I think I knew most of that, but it’s so easy to forget and fall back into the old way of thinking. The problem with “head knowledge” I guess. You don’t know something until you know it with your whole body and being.
Thom Hartman put it the end of oil beautifully: the last hour of ancient sunlight.
Nebraska? What’s going on?
The Left always says this with one side of their mouth as they condemn all those who disagree with them with the other.
People aren’t going to get along – look at the flash mob attacks by Blacks. And things aren’t even that bad yet. Nations need alot more ethnic homogeneity than we have now. We will never recover since we aren’t a united people anymore. Sure there were always lots of Blacks – concentrated in the South and without power. Now they’re everywhere and the Hispanics too – both vying for an ever larger piece of the vanishing pie. It’s over. Separation is the way towards any kind of recovery from here on in.
So it is raciest to sit in a ghetto in Camden NJ and resent the man?
My gawd, listen to yourselves…. most blacks in this country are plenty suspect of whites, and with good reason!
That’s all I’m saying….. a person in a ghetto has a hell of a lot more reason to resent the person in a plantation house than a person in a plantation house has to resent the person in the ghetto….
person… not black and white…. person.
If a person kidnaps another person…. makes them work for free, treats them cruelly, is forced to let them go, and just goes on resenting them …. and their children resent that persons children….. that is a trans generational asshole.
you don’t even have to add white/black to the story to get it
as a matter of fact it helps if you take it out.
A group that has been victimized by a group of trans generation assholes deserves to have a chip on their shoulder… no?
Now.. you.
Why are you so afraid to use the word “nigger”?
Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?
Why are you afraid of the truth about yourself
Would you like to see what your posts would look like if you took out the word “black” and substitute the word “nigger”?… I would!
let’s do that……
“The Left always says this with one side of their mouth as they condemn all those who disagree with them with the other.
People aren’t going to get along – look at the flash mob attacks by Niggers. And things aren’t even that bad yet. Nations need alot more ethnic homogeneity than we have now. We will never recover since we aren’t a united people anymore. Sure there were always lots of Niggers – concentrated in the South and without power. Now they’re everywhere and the Spics too – both vying for an ever larger piece of the vanishing pie. It’s over. Separation is the way towards any kind of recovery from here on in.”
—–or there’s this instant classic
“Experience old girl. Also keeping my eyes open in general. Most people here who so piously pontificate have obviously never lived near Niggers, lived with Niggers (1 once), gone to school with Niggers, and worked with Niggers. It really shows by the sappy idealism and relentless overestimation of their abilities and character.
What you call “getting to you” is actually your mind starting to work. Don’t be afraid – that’s how it feels as you begin to lose a paradigm. It gets easier once you’ve done it a few times as I have. Liberals are the most resistant to growth and change and thus almost as conservative as Communists.”
————–
Wow… I know why you don’t use the word “nigger”… even though we know that’s how you really feel….
It’s because if you use the word “nigger” to express your stupidity… you suddenly sound as stupid as you are.
Washington wouldn’t be surprised–dismayed, yes, but not surprised. Joe Bageant wrote that George Washington was appalled by the cretinism of Winchester’s voters when he rolled the whiskey barrel out to them during his campaign for the House of Burgesses. Nearly three centuries later, according to Bageant, a lawyer visiting from Atlanta, himself not a stranger to Southern backwardness, took a look around Winchester and announced in astonishment, “Dumb Lordy, Crackers, I reckon!” The longue duree dies hard.
I’m not sure that NASCAR really has an early American analog. I say this because even though it’s stupid, vulgar and wasteful as hell, it isn’t nearly as violent as it looks or as it should be. From a safety perspective, it’s pretty close to harmless. If large numbers of Americans were obsessed with something in that particular vein of idiocy in the pre-automotive era, I’m not aware of it.
Also, some of the sorts of violence that you mentioned endure to this day. Case in point: Jefferson and Washington’s fellow Virginian Michael Vick. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s a modern analog to the “rough and tumble” fighting that was common among Scots frontiersmen in Appalachia. The old-time Cracker understanding of “rough and tumble” was a lot rougher than ours; causing an opponent’s death or putting out his eye were considered fair game. I don’t know of a neighborhood anywhere in the United States where that level of hand-to-hand violence is accepted by anything resembling a plurality today; maybe it’s accepted in deepest Appalachia or our most degenerate urban ghettos, but even for our most fucked up backwaters it sounds like the province of renegades who know better than to let their neighbors know that they brawl like that.
Oh… I wish I had included this one with the above translations…
Another Vlad instant classic.
“Very few younger Niggers like that kind of music anymore. It’s a Honky thing now. Honkys have always been able to appreciate nigger music – but very few Niggers able to appreciate our’s. This is just more proof, as if more was needed, of how alien the two races are to each other – exactly as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson said.”
HAHAHAHAHA!
boy do you sound dumb!
I think I may spend mondays doing Vlad translations… until you quit race baiting, or Jim bannes me for reposting your posts with the words “honky” and “nigger” replacing “white” and “black”…
Some things are worth getting suspended from school for!
Race bait on my friend! I look forward to translating for you!
Dammit. I nearly forgot. As for the perils of nuclear weapons, they sure as shit brought a swift end to all that convenient continent grabbin’ now didn’t they?
Our annual multi-hundred-million to trillion
dollar annual deficits started PRECISELY when
Reagan lowered the income tax on the rich.
David Stockman called “bullshit” immediately
but even his own party no longer listens.
There were no loony “supply-siders” when
Eisenhower was Prez and we were kings of the
universe. No one thought that a 70% tax on
millionaires was unfair. Only in this era
of cerebral decrepitude do we actually believe
that some dumbshit like Zuckerberg or a scammer
like Vikram Pandit “deserve” a $500M year.
I say SOAK THE FUCKING RICH. No man’s contribution
to society (especially idiotic “contributions”
like Facebook which give the NSA all the
invasions of YOUR privacy they’ll ever need)
are so earth-shattering that they deserve
a HUNDRED LIFETIMES of earnings in a year.
Not a living soul on earth.
If an average man makes $40K he will make
roughly $1.6 million IN A LIFETIME. And that
average man is the one who collects your
garbage so that your neighborhood doesn’t
look like Lagos, Nigeria, he pours your
morning eye-opener in Starbucks, he delivers
your mail (with astonishing reliability, too)
every day, and he Fedexes that critical
document overnight.
As long as we celebritize useless-as-tits-on-a-
boar plutocrats and do not have a proper respect
for the daily toilings of the common man, we’re
going to end up … well … basically where we
are already heading. I don’t think the average
American has felt as economically insecure as
they do now since 1945.
E.
JHK,
I would like to apologize to YOU for attacking Vlad and tootsie in your online place.
Tootsie came on a post late in the day a few weeks or months back and said “I’m sorry everyone, I didn’t take my meds”
It was sincere, and I believed it… now when I figure out that it is tootsie (fabian) I back down and let it lie… I figure tootsie is just being hostile because he/she forgot to take their meds…not their fault.
I tune into the CFN, because I am DESPERATE for some kernels of truth… some thread of sanity in a BS filled media environment…
I have seen so many thoughtful people flock away from the comment thread and thoughtful discussion of peak oil, and the hopelessness of the burbs…. and the only reason I can see for it to happen, is the same reason I have vacated for months at a time…. the sudden race baiting.
While I realize that Tootsie puts the “fuck” in Clusterfuck nation…. it seems that Vlad is the Cluster….. I understand they are a part of this as well… but does it ALWAYS have to get into a “racism” “reverse racism” (no such word by the way… there is only racism) thing?
Vlad doesn’t even link Peak oil to his post industrial white/black tribal war…
Hell it isn’t even post industrial… he doesn’t get why black people don’t embrace Donnie and Marie, and Lawrence Welk???
Seriously. That’s what I got out of his first post today… and I couldn’t stop laughing at him long enough to explain it.
I grew up around nasty, blatant racists… passive aggressive white assholes who used the bible to justify the most vile perverted views. As soon as I could get away I fled to a ghetto.. and stayed in them. (the worst ghettos to live in are poor white neighborhoods… the best, are Latino…)
18th street and Van Buren in Phoenix
30th and Welton in Denver (five points)
56th Ave and Pembroke in Hollywood Fl
Swenson and Twain in Las Vegas (white ghetto)
I have spent my adult life moving around the country and living in the most affordable and “least desirable” places to live…. you know what? I knew my neighbors, even as a resident for one year… I knew their names. Especially in Hollywood. I was not only the only white guy living in a half mile radius, but being gay made it “riskier”.
Turned out there wasn’t any risk at all… at least not from my neighbors, the only people who ever hassled me for renting where I chose to rent were cops.
My neighbors in Hollywood and Denver invited me to their barbeques and holiday/family dinners like Christmas and Thanksgiving… sure there were problems, but not with the people that I lived around. They shared my problems… they looked out for me, and expected the same in return.
inVla(i)d says he has “worked and lived” around blacks… and I have worked and lived around people like Vlad while they are working with blacks…
I know that Vlad and people like him are immune to any attempt to drag them kicking and screaming into the LAST century… I have no desire to change him.
HOWEVER… he is getting people to engage him like he is making thoughtful points… and it has spread like oil in the gulf.
What Vlad has been bringing to the table is toxic crap… with a light razzberry reduction.
It may be a symptom of peak oil… maybe increasing racism is a symptom of peak oil… maybe oil is what made integration and other “liberal” programs possible… and that is a discussion worth having… maybe.
But the racism… weak after weak…
I am not trying to change Vlad’s mind for him… I don’t care about him enough to try…but I do care enough to stand up to him in the presence of others… in person, or in here.
I come from a long line of Ad men… the Detroit kind. I know how to spot destructive self serving bullshit…And I know what even latent racism does to a place….
My own grandmother was a racist.. but at least she had the courtesy to use the word “nigger” when referring to black people… so everyone knew she was a stupid, lazy, drunk, who had a vile temper and a small mind. She died in 2005… she would have died alone, except her family was better than her, and could suck it up and seem to forgive the decades of drunk for her last week.
And no.. I never stood up to my grandmother… something I regret.
But because of that I won’t sit back and listen in a forum where I can speak back.
All I know is I am moving very soon, and have decided that cable to to toxic to subscribe to… Vlad, and the Huffington Post have me thinking that I don’t need an Internet bill either.
So I may be back to “shame” Vlad… I may not be back at all.
Anyway…. Jim, sorry to pick a fight in your bar… I will click through on your google ad and pay for the damages.
And Vlad… I’ll be back! (at least once more) to translate for you… so think about how many times you really want to use the word “black” in a post…cause imma gonna translate for you!
Investment
There is nothing left to invest in. This concept, investment, that dominated so much of the last few decades was based on growing markets, amplifications of results from technology and innovation and new processes, new inventions, growing wealth, more of this and that and you name it. The bases is you put some money in A and you got A + a1, there is some kind of amplification factor that can be based on anything at all, but mostly wage differentials, power differentials, economies of scale, technologies applied, globalization, all kinds of levers and economies of scale and amplifying mechanism that gave you a return, you got more out compared to what you put in, you got more money, more energy, more results – products, more profit, more gain, more anything out of something compared to what was put in.
Well this one trick pony is mostly dead. There are no new amplification processes in sight, there is nothing that seems to be available that will give you a gain. Yes, you have the developing world that is increasing their consumption, hence, invest in the goods they buy since they are growing markets, yes you can make some cash this way, yes we had bubbles of various types in the past, internet bubbles, financial bubbles but especially and mostly real estate bubbles that forced a return on investment, that forced something to go up no matter what, that made believe that there was this magical return on investment for some unknown magical reason, like house prices that just went up for the fun of it, to pretend that they were acquiring value and worth (maybe from the scare of overpopulation and resource scarcity myths and similars when in all truth real estate should go down, way down always, because we have excess capacity, we have way more houses empty now than ever (15 million in the USA, 20 million in Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, go figure), can build them quickly and cheaply if only someone would pay some peanuts for them and real estate should always go down because you have to maintain a structure that decays and grows old everyday, in short, real estate is mostly a loss and a pain in the ass to maintain and always has unforseen problems popping up from nowhere, now who on earth was such a jackass and idiot that thought that real estate should “go up” ?).
But these one trick ponies are dead, have run their course, now there is nothing left. We had the 20th century that added real effective new inventions one after another like magic, first cars (and all the successive 100 years of improvements, markets, brands, economies of scale, prices lowering due to technology, you name it) and this all generated work for millions in factories, showrooms, loans, etc. And then air traffic with jets, another innovation and invention that generated all kinds of jobs by the millions, and TV and then the final perfect model for the myth of “innovation” and “research and development”, etc. the MICROPROCESSOR: this really fooled everyone that real magic was operating in the economy and system and capitalism, no one noticed that this was a one trick pony based on Moore’s law (one of those unique, one time quirks, one time lucky windfalls, like the discovery of electricity, happens once in a thousand years), that you could put ever more transistors on a silicon chip and produce electronics, consumer electronics, microcomputers (then applied all over the place from the 1960s to the 1980s), and then the Personal Computer and all of its software (once again applied all over the place and generated millions of jobs in all kinds of endeavors associated with it) and finally the Internet that once again created all kinds of activities and jobs and returns on investments.
The final innovation is in Health Care, Drugs, as in a population that grows old and has to save itself and try desperately to keep on doing the things it did up until it was about 40 or 45 years old. But this turned out to be just a mega ripoff based on the necessity of avoiding pain but forcing people to pay higher and higher prices for something that should be free as it is a basic necessity (just like real estate and houses).
But all of these fun and games are ending real fast exactly because all the research and technology and computers (why on earth was the computer invented in the first place ? to get rid of work, to automate labor, to render the employer independent of employees making him get essentially free work from a machine) operate exactly to get rid of labor, is successful only in as much as it can streamline and eliminate work and labor and mostly people from all productive endeavors: these technologies serve to get rid of people, that want to be paid and are always a pain in the ass, and always cost too much and always have so many problems and defects, that anyone would greatly be relieved to not depend on these total turds anymore.
So this is the situation: all the innovations that generated jobs are finished, now it is payback time, in the sense that first the innovations created the jobs, now it is time to make the innovations pay back, and they are paying back big time by eliminating all kinds of jobs worldwide as fast as possible. And in the process making corporations and the ruling class gain profits beyond their wildest dreams.
The corporations and rich have trillions of dollars sitting in banks (or wherever) not doing anything, not knowing what to do with all that cash (I estimated that 40 trillion dollars the rich have worldwide could create 400 million free salaries of 10,000 dollars a year worldwide for 10 years) but the rich and hogs just prefer to keep it under their beds. And this finally brings me to the real situation and message of the modern era:
WORK NO LONGER GENERATES PROFITS AND THE WORKERS NO LONGER GAIN ANYTHING FROM WORKING ANYMORE, SO YOU HAVE A WIN – LOSE SITUATION WHERE THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS CONSTANTLY KEEP ON WINNING AND THE WORKERS CONSTANTLY KEEP ON LOSING.
There is no labor or activity people can do that can generate a profit anymore, hence why invest in hiring people, why invest in people anyways since they are all total turds ? And the workers have no incentive to work anymore given such a low salary and high Health Care and Rents and others they have to pay, so why work anymore ? The economy is in a deadlock people aren’t hired because there is nothing they can do to generate profits and people don’t work because there is no work they can do that can make them profit from their work.
But the entire idea of investment, of something that improves, in the idea that you can do something to gain, to get something more back is at a dead end: not only in the economy but in all endeavors, in all social activities, in all possible activities, there is nothing worth doing anymore, nothing can be done to get more or improve or to get something better, all we do and can do generates not only diminishing returns, but negative returns, if you start out with 100 and do something, anything at all, in any possible activity you end up getting 70, and even less and less, so nothing is the best thing you can do, do nothing, give up real fast, watch TV, end of story.
All of the improvements that we expected to keep on having forever, all the huge contrasts that all of the novelties and improvements generated in the 20th century in all cultural affairs also, like in Music Elvis and the Beatles (the surprise factor, the novelty, the contrast with what was before) the contrast between generations, all the Modern Art, the Experimental, the Avant Guard, the new generation always having something new and better to do and new and better ways, the entire mythology of new is better, all kinds of new things, the drugs, the LSD, the experiences, free sex and love, you name it, all the novelties and inventions, Movies, TVs and Internet and books (an infinite amount of new books and ideas, a never ending array) and all kinds of new theories, Marx, Freud, philosophy, Women’s liberation, queers, you name it, all the new and better, and novelties and new is better and all the contrasts with what was before (the Atom bomb, Nuclear Energy, Einstein, the Military Technology) all the improvements (imagined or real ?) the exploration, the Doors, Space exploration, the Future, 2001 a Space Odyssey, Pink Floyd, Progressive Rock (notice the word PROGRESSIVE used in the 1970s) a never ending array of novelties and cultural affairs that went towards the Future, Progress, Better, Newer, the entire idea of you can invent something new, you can innovate, there is something new and better that can be and will be done, well:
THIS IDEA OF NEW AND BETTER IS OVER, DEAD, EXPIRED, OBSOLETE, NO LONGER OPERATING, WAS A LONG FANTASTIC ONE TIME QUIRK TRIP WHERE ALL THE TECHNOLOGIES GOT DISCOVERED ALL AT ONCE AND APPLIED AND CREATED A MAGICAL VISION OF REALITY, BUT WAS AN EXCEPTION, IS THE EXCEPTION, IS NOW DEAD AND OVER.
Now there are only two things left to really do:
1) Free Salaries and Cheap Rents since the economy won’t generate jobs and the entire fairy tale of jobs even necessarily having to be generated (who on earth ever thought that jobs are a natural disposition of things anyways ? the idea is and has always been to do less work possible and technology is forcing this on everyone anyways), money will just keep on being hogged up and concentrated in fewer hands (there is absolutely no mechanism at all that can change this, in fact those that are losing are doing everything possible to lose even more and sustain the “moral” position that free salaries and cheap rents “are wrong” hence giving all that money completely for free to those already super rich, go figure.
2) Modify the neural networks of minds, wether trying to follow some scientific and logical path, or more simply and bluntly through the Instant Singularity, sticking wild chemicals and signals and symbols in wildly modified brains – minds. These weird minds perceive a new universe, actually exit our universe and enter a new one that has nothing to do with ours anymore (hence the end of the idea of progress or a sequence of events that lead up to an aggregated conclusion, this disconnects the sequence, there is no longer any idea of time, or linear progress, or before or after, it can no longer be compared to what existed before because before is totally unrelated to the Instant Singularity), hence this is the end of our civilization, but even more so the end of Science and Progress, but even more so, a new Big Bang, a New universe with totally new laws of physics and logic and metaphysics and the very concepts of non contradiction and identity and existence no longer operate, hence even the Technological Singularity and the Big Bang and God himself are puny concepts and ideas compared to this one. On a side note, this idea of the Instant Singularity, Modified new Minds and Brains (or even the old fashion Technological Singularity) may be the very last and most deeply faith based concept of Investment, and Gain and Profit possible. The concept of Investment brought to its extreme consequence. The concept of doing A and getting something more, in this case a new universe – life – physics – metaphysics.
So the entire concept of investment is done, over, dead. We invent all kinds of make believe activities that simulated a kind of imaginary investment, a kind of imaginary activity, a chore, a task, a start point -> path -> target (often simple, so we are guaranteed to always win, like play a video game or watch a TV program, or go to the Mall and buy some crap), a kind of better, a kind of if I do A, I gain something, or make believe I gain something, so that makes you feel satisfied and OK. Now you are OK, etc. Well there is nothing left to do, no investment possible, nothing that will make you feel OK, now every activity is going backwards, you feel worse and worse, no matter what, you lose more and more no matter what, so the entire idea of better, do this and you gain (like jogging and exercise or whatever, anything else), invest in this you will gain, put effort in this you will gain (win ? be better ? improve ? ALL FALSE), is dead and gone, now it is only loss and losses forever. AMEN.
Quo Vadis, Baby ?
This combination of warm, sunny days with rain and the garden is exploding, lettuce & peas, and tomato plants 4 ft high, tomatoos as well as cukes, squash and eggplant forming up nicely. I surprise my friends in the pressroom, bringing in all this produce for them, they’re thinking, what’s a redneck gun nut like you doing with a garden? Little do they Know …
We had an enjoyable time Sunday PM with Ozone at the Red Rooster in Winsted CT, Mrs. Marlin & me, and thanx, Ozone, for the kindly and welcoming way you treated my wife. That was really an honest to goodness Biker Bar, full of locals and tough looking characters, toughest looking character: the Owner Himself. How ’bout that bartender, Megan? (Whoo, a little hometown sweetheart!) Ozone is a true CFN troubador, and as an adroit facile wordbender behind the mike as he is on this blog.
On the way home we stopped off at DQ for soft ice cream, right next to the Gilbert clock factory on the Mad River, employer of hundreds and maker of the best clocks in the world, now abandoned. All around town, from the imposing Green with Civil War monuments to the solid 19th century 3 story buildings on Main Street, are signs of past greatness, prosperity, pride and prosperity. Now all gone. I saw some of the clueless folk JHK talks about, with tattoos, nose rings, big guts, and skin piercings. And there were some very young girls on Main Street, maybe 14 or 15, already with tattoos, dressed up like hookers and smoking cigarettes. On that rainy overcast day it was a sad sight.
Hey Ozone, far from me telling anybody what to do, but did you ever think of getting some local kid to help you create a website, market some of those CDs of yours? The one I have is good. I think you’d seel a bunch right here.
-Marlin
The problem with satanism, even in the fairly harmless version espoused by the “Church of Satan” founded by Anton Lavey, is that you’re rebelling against an illusion. Although you’re correct in intuiting that the established religions are bunkum, you’d be better off if you didn’t feel the need to rebel against that which is devoid of substantiality in the first place. So yes, no one really needs Jesus to be their imaginary playmate, but neither is it necessary to pay such nonsense any heed either.
On the first point solution in my previous block of text, please add:
“And huge public private projects hiring millions like Rockets to Mars, trillions of skyscrapers, high speed trains, you name it. Not because of the profit motivation or for gains but to give Pride, Ambitious, Meaning, a Goal, a collective aggregated symbolic social (and therefore Metaphysical goal, like Hitler gave the Germans under the Nazi myth)and a Function (give them a function they will be happy) to millions of unemployed worldwide so they don’t just throw themselves down the toilet, as Man is a Turd, so they know they are turds and hence they would just throw themselves down the toilet.”
So the correct text should be:
1) Free Salaries and Cheap Rents since the economy won’t generate jobs and the entire fairy tale of jobs even necessarily having to be generated (who on earth ever thought that jobs are a natural disposition of things anyways ? the idea is and has always been to do less work possible and technology is forcing this on everyone anyways), money will just keep on being hogged up and concentrated in fewer hands (there is absolutely no mechanism at all that can change this, in fact those that are losing are doing everything possible to lose even more and sustain the “moral” position that free salaries and cheap rents “are wrong” hence giving all that money completely for free to those already super rich, go figure. And huge public private projects hiring millions like Rockets to Mars, trillions of skyscrapers, high speed trains, you name it. Not because of the profit motivation or for gains but to give Pride, Ambitious, Meaning, a Goal, a collective aggregated symbolic social (and therefore Metaphysical goal, like Hitler gave the Germans under the Nazi myth)and a Function (give them a function they will be happy) to millions of unemployed worldwide so they don’t just throw themselves down the toilet, as Man is a Turd, so they know they are turds and hence they would just throw themselves down the toilet.
Reference :
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175781
I “feel your pain”, SE, because I “disappear”
for weeks at a time because my take is that
it’s either more race wars or trolls like
Fabian calling people “fucktards”. Like
most blogs, the trolls have driven out or
marginalized the civil and the reasonable.
As for the race issue, I’m a “racist” to the
extent that I believe that cats like cats and
dogs like dogs and wolves like wolves and it
has always been so. I actually believe Vlad
has some points but they are negated by his
refusal to look at his own race and their
backwards progress in the USA since the 1970s.
I never thought I’d live to see WHITE TRASH
dominate the social sphere. I cannot tell
the difference, conversationally, between
the white cretins I meet in public meetinghouses
(a.k.a. “pubs”) and the worst sort of ghetto
trash that guys like Bill Cosby decry.
Vlad is living in a “Live It To Beaver” fantasy
land that has not existed since the ’70s. It’s
gone. Whites, educationally, are careening
towards the abyss while ASIANS are the new
valedictoria in high schools and overachievers
in colleges … especially graduate schools of
science and engineering where 55% of new Ph.D.’s
are foreign and nearly ALL of them are Asian …
that’s from AMERICAN colleges.
However, SE, one has to respect the statistics,
no matter how chummy your experience is in
Hollywood, and those stats are very, very
damning of what’s going on in the Black and
Hispanic communities of America.
This is not “hate”. This is arithmetic. Your
anecdotal experience, while interesting reading,
is not a valid argument form to refute Vlad’s
thinking. I empathize with your general
sentiment that the blog has gone more and more
to off-topic comments, incivility, grade-school
vulgarity, and wild emotionality.
Even on the issue of race, however UNgermane it
is to this site’s mission, it is possible for
people of good will to disagree without savaging
the humanity of the other side of the issue. And
that appears to be your message. If so, I
wholeheartedly applaud it and hope for better
days for CFN.
As things appear to stand, in a few scant years
the signal/noise ratio seems to have gone from
about 3:1 to 1:8. That’s why I do NOT believe
in democracy. Democracy is the RABBLE. I’d
rather revert to monarchy than the rabble.
And that “rabble” has become increasingly trashy
in the last decade with alarming speed.
I now expect an average 35 year old white male
to have his ass crack showing because his pants
are sweeping the floor, the tucked-in shirt is
asking too much, the word “fuck” is now filler
in 50% of the sentences even of young women in
place of “er” or “um”, “conversation” has been
replaced by phone-text like interjections which
punctuate uncomfortable silences, even wine bars
have ten TV sets showing crap people pretend to
care about, women are more “male” than men now
that they can “score”, … you get the idea.
And that idea is … IT’S THE SECOND DARK AGE.
E.
1) Free Salaries and Cheap Rents since the economy won’t generate jobs and the entire fairy tale of jobs even necessarily having to be generated (who on earth ever thought that jobs are a natural disposition of things anyways ? the idea is and has always been to do less work possible and technology is forcing this on everyone anyways), money will just keep on being hogged up and concentrated in fewer hands (there is absolutely no mechanism at all that can change this, in fact those that are losing are doing everything possible to lose even more and sustain the “moral” position that free salaries and cheap rents “are wrong” hence giving all that money completely for free to those already super rich, go figure. And huge public private projects hiring millions like Rockets to Mars, trillions of skyscrapers, high speed trains, you name it. Not because of the profit motivation or for gains but to give Pride, Ambition, Meaning, a Goal, a collective aggregated symbolic social meaning (and therefore Metaphysical goal, like Hitler gave the Germans under the Nazi myth)and a Function (give them a function they will be happy) to millions of unemployed worldwide so they don’t just throw themselves down the toilet, as Man is a Turd, so they know they are turds and hence they would just throw themselves down the toilet.
What you’re describing, just burning up all the coal at once to power everything, is the energy equivalent of a small business owner rafting out his credit cards to keep his shop afloat for just awhile longer. Sooner or later the day of reckoning arrives and your shop gets shuttered permanently while you’re pounding the pavement looking for a job. To me electric plug in cars with large banks of batteries are coal cars, nuke cars, or hydro cars. And then of course the coal can be liquified to satisfy the industrial hunger for petroleum needed in manufacturing applications. Same thing. This is not even to mention the effect on the economy of essential commodities becoming ever scarcer and therefore ruinously expensive. And then the government goes bankrupt and can no longer maintain the roads. Roads are much harder to maintain than rails or canals. And finally, without access to easy credit Joe Sixpack will no longer be buying himself a new automobile.
Yes indeed, the “good old days” weren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Also, the appearance of social calm in past epochs was merely a sort of surface placidity concealing the roiling depths beneath. Why were people obsessed with juvenile delinquency during the ‘fifties? Could it be that that was the beginning of the misguided effort to force everyone to become dull noral middle class and middlebrow and even then it was at least somewhat evident that this misguided project was doomed to failure? When there is no work not everyone is going to be content with staying in school fucking forever as some sort of simulated employment booby prize for the painfully earnest who dare not rebel openly. We’ve been screwed for a long time and the negativistic social scientists of early eras were on to it before most.
“Our annual multi-hundred-million to trillion
dollar annual deficits started PRECISELY when
Reagan lowered the income tax on the rich.
David Stockman called “bullshit” immediately
but even his own party no longer listens.” -E.
E. His own party has turned this into a fundamentalist religion. This is the crux of their economic principle. They won’t back down on no matter how destructive. We may even lose the fiat money position with these guys in Congress.
Ipat referred to Ayn Rand as the model for this crazy, off-the-cliff greed is good credo. She was a cult personality who wrote some books and had some acolytes like Greenspan, but it was Milton Friedman who took this thing to theoretical levels. His economic Science has been adopted by think-tanks, professors. The status quo have adopted his model of global corporate communism over real capitalism.
Global monopolies, hegemony in world finance and military force are not what democracy or capitalism are made of.
This is the way the world economy is being redistributed to the top 1% and we are watching the process of rampant privatization in Greece, so to spread to other weaker economies in Europe.
Max Keiser pointed out that when he went to Greece he ran into Steve Forbes who unabashedly discussed helping to establish inroads for those who want to buy the joint off. (a coupla islands for global oligarchy)
Watch as we get others into debt and than privatize the commons for pennies on the dollar. Ayn Rand is nothing compared to this system. When you try to make changes, they cry, this is class war! Nothing like projection.
What’s truly amazing is how the extreme economics are not being challenged and it could be so easy to argue against it.
Tripp,
I’d be happy to go over a more detailed response with you via email and would need more info to do so. The “problem” is really the 3hp pump which is big and requires lots of juice particularly on startup. Also even if one had adequate number of solar panels to operate the pump in full sunshine there are simply too many potential problems unless the circumstances are ideal. And any solar system like this is going to be very expensive. I’m sure you’re not interested in a standby generator alternative but until gas/diesel/propane go to $50/gal that would definitely be the way to go in my opinion given the very limited use as I understand it.
If you want to do the solar thing and the circumstances permit a cistern might be a better approach. Pump from your well into the cistern using your current system when the grid is up then use a much smaller pump to serve the house from the cistern. But before any system design can be done really need more info about your exact circumstances.
One of the things that strikes me as odd is the idea perpetuated around here that things were Better in the Past and that the USA is now teetering on the edge of disaster. Got some news for ya — the PAST SUCKED for mostly everyone. In the past, there was actual slavery (instead of Corporate bondage), women could not vote and had little control over the number of children they produced, the police and firefighters did not exist, laws were few and hard to enforce, health care was non-existent. Too many here whine about how terrible everything is now. Read a history book or two and count your lucky stars that you are alive now and not during the Roman Empire or the Civil War, etc.
I look around and see Great Things. Here’s one — hot showers on demand, clean sheets on the bed of anyone who has access to a washing machine, regular employment and regular unemployment for those who are unlucky, survival from cancer and diabetes, people not lynched, a legal system that usually works, technological improvements galore (including this one that I am typing on). Sure there are problem but there have always been problems. We have always teetered on the brink. There are natural disasters and man-made disasters but we are a progressive people, we can improve. So I am counting on this world not only surviving but getting better. And there are these big incentives to get things right called my children and your children and grandchildren. I won’t let them down.
Happy 4th of July.
Ipat referred to Ayn Rand as the model for this crazy, off-the-cliff greed is good credo.
==
This is the equivalent to saying that Orwell was a proponent for the system he described in his 1984 novel. Ayn Rand was a severe critic of ‘the model for this crazy, off-the-cliff greed is good credo’. Only someone with an IQ lower than their shoe size would not to pick up on this.
..would not pick up on this..
Whose Samuel Johnson? 😀
============
P.S. It’s Who is.
==
No, that was spelled correctly. Whose Johnson are you talking about? Answer the question! 😀
Hey metuselah,
Instead of insults why don’t you enlighten me to why you disagree. Would love to hear your arguement– no, really.
What is it about the word ‘dystopian’ that you don’t understand?
Follow me on twitter for news like:
1. Egyptian natural gas pipeline blown up for the 3rd time.
2. China chemical market sags due to shortage of electricity
3. Roscoe Bartlett delivers speech on Peak Oil for an entire hour in front of C-SPAN cameras. Speech now available on Youtube.
Dear Polyanna,
Yes, everything is wonderful right now. Get back to us once the oil runs out and those who find cannibalism unpalatable or morally objectionable are all starving to death, and all the little vegetable gardeners have been murdered by foragers from hell. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I’ll be hiding out in the wastelands of Nevada where nobody thought to look for me, having been inspired by Desertrat to become a desert rat. I will have a giant Quonset hut filled with the detritus of civilization such as a ton of red beans & rice. Yours, Zonar Fubar
As far as generators go these one lung lister diesels are the way to go. They run for years and Tripp can probably grow his own peanuts to fuel the thing. You can even use the waste heat to warm your hose in the winter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KenSF3wOtIc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Kz7uFOm84
M.
I’m going to end this discussion now. It’s about getting the last word in instead of explaining simply where in Ayn Rand’s ideology is greed not good. She seems to think that it’s human nature to be greedy and not altruistic, but if you disagree, why?
If you don’t want to answer my question that’s ok too. Nobody’s forcing you.
Random thoughts.
I used to fish the Battenkill when I was a kid. Remember standing in the firm current below that old covered bridge in Shushan…and another covered bridge that was further upstream I think….
I learned a hard lesson years ago; people never change. I’m not talking in the meta sense, but I might as well be. It is clear that there is nothing to be done but to step back and watch this implosion, like city-dwellers reveling in the destruction of a 20 year old stadium.
Finally, Jim, don’t speak to loud or someone will make a burrito with locusts — at least every seven years or so.
“Mr. T. thinks I’m overly frightened. He thinks that if he be a good boy on his isolated farm they’ll leave him alone.”
Not exactly. I have guns and I’m prepared to use them. The other folks who live on this farm see things roughly the same way we do and are ready for action too. I have lots of food crops that most people wouldn’t recognize, mushrooms in particular. We’re steadily modifying our behavior for life without electricity, which I think gives us a distinct advantage over the soft and coddled masses.
But more importantly, we’re teaching other people to look after themselves. Subtly challenging people to something resembling an austerity contest. If nothing else, many of our friends have gotten their first glimpse of some energy descent thinking through us. Whether they embrace that kind of thought or not, the seed is planted and will bear fruit of some sort down the road.
Although I will admit, I teeter back and forth between open doors and a more cloistered approach.
ccm989: “One of the things that strikes me as odd is the idea perpetuated around here that things were Better in the Past and that the USA is now teetering on the edge of disaster. Got some news for ya — the PAST SUCKED for mostly everyone.”
Well, the present still sucks for lots of people. (“The future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.” — William Gibson.) What’s changed is that in the past, there was lots more potential (read: energy and resources) than we have now. Society keeps careening forward on the assumption that the future will be like the past. Except that the past had a belief in the future, whereas we *are* that future and it’s beginning to dawn on us that it’s increasingly not working. Much of the potential of the past has been spent, largely squandered on toys and conveniences that will give no long-term benefit (read: suburbia). More Of The Same won’t be like a rising tide that lifts all boats; more like stretching a rubber band till it breaks. We need to be ready.
Happiness is a warm hose. Should have been house.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175781
Investment
There is nothing left to invest in. This concept, investment, that dominated so much of the last few decades was based on growing markets, amplifications of results from technology and innovation and new processes, new inventions, growing wealth, more of this and that and you name it. The bases is you put some money in A and you got A + a1, there is some kind of amplification factor that can be based on anything at all, but mostly wage differentials, power differentials, economies of scale, technologies applied, globalization, all kinds of levers and economies of scale and amplifying mechanism that gave you a return, you got more out compared to what you put in, you got more money, more energy, more results – products, more profit, more gain, more anything out of something compared to what was put in.
Well this one trick pony is mostly dead. There are no new amplification processes in sight, there is nothing that seems to be available that will give you a gain. Yes, you have the developing world that is increasing their consumption, hence, invest in the goods they buy since they are growing markets, yes you can make some cash this way, yes we had bubbles of various types in the past, internet bubbles, financial bubbles but especially and mostly real estate bubbles that forced a return on investment, that forced something to go up no matter what, that made believe that there was this magical return on investment for some unknown magical reason, like house prices that just went up for the fun of it, to pretend that they were acquiring value and worth (maybe from the scare of overpopulation and resource scarcity myths and similars when in all truth real estate should go down, way down always, because we have excess capacity, we have way more houses empty now than ever (15 million in the USA, 20 million in Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, go figure), can build them quickly and cheaply if only someone would pay some peanuts for them and real estate should always go down because you have to maintain a structure that decays and grows old everyday, in short, real estate is mostly a loss and a pain in the ass to maintain and always has unforeseen problems popping up from nowhere, now who on earth was such a jackass and idiot that thought that real estate should “go up” ?).
But these one trick ponies are dead, have run their course, now there is nothing left. We had the 20th century that added real effective new inventions one after another like magic, first cars (and all the successive 100 years of improvements, markets, brands, economies of scale, prices lowering due to technology, you name it) and this all generated work for millions in factories, showrooms, loans, etc. And then air traffic with jets, another innovation and invention that generated all kinds of jobs by the millions, and TV and then the final perfect model for the myth of “innovation” and “research and development”, etc. the MICROPROCESSOR: this really fooled everyone that real magic was operating in the economy and system and capitalism, no one noticed that this was a one trick pony based on Moore’s law (one of those unique, one time quirks, one time lucky windfalls, like the discovery of electricity, happens once in a thousand years), that you could put ever more transistors on a silicon chip and produce electronics, consumer electronics, microcomputers (then applied all over the place from the 1960s to the 1980s), and then the Personal Computer and all of its software (once again applied all over the place and generated millions of jobs in all kinds of endeavors associated with it) and finally the Internet that once again created all kinds of activities and jobs and returns on investments.
The final innovation is in Health Care, Drugs, as in a population that grows old and has to save itself and try desperately to keep on doing the things it did up until it was about 40 or 45 years old. But this turned out to be just a mega ripoff based on the necessity of avoiding pain but forcing people to pay higher and higher prices for something that should be free as it is a basic necessity (just like real estate and houses).
But all of these fun and games are ending real fast exactly because all the research and technology and computers (why on earth was the computer invented in the first place ? to get rid of work, to automate labor, to render the employer independent of employees making him get essentially free work from a machine) operate exactly to get rid of labor, is successful only in as much as it can streamline and eliminate work and labor and mostly people from all productive endeavors: these technologies serve to get rid of people, people that want to be paid and are always a pain in the ass, and always cost too much and always have so many problems and defects, that anyone would greatly be relieved to not depend on these total turds anymore.
So this is the situation: all the innovations that generated jobs are finished, now it is payback time, in the sense that first the innovations created the jobs, now it is time to make the innovations pay back, and they are paying back big time by eliminating all kinds of jobs worldwide as fast as possible. And in the process making corporations and the ruling class gain profits beyond their wildest dreams.
The corporations and rich have trillions of dollars sitting in banks (or wherever) not doing anything, not knowing what to do with all that cash (I estimated that 40 trillion dollars the rich have worldwide could create 400 million free salaries of 10,000 dollars a year worldwide (which is a very high salary in most of the world) for 10 years) but the rich and hogs just prefer to keep it under their beds. And this finally brings me to the real situation and message of the modern era:
WORK NO LONGER GENERATES PROFITS AND THE WORKERS NO LONGER GAIN ANYTHING FROM WORKING ANYMORE, SO YOU HAVE A WIN – LOSE SITUATION WHERE THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS CONSTANTLY KEEP ON WINNING AND THE WORKERS CONSTANTLY KEEP ON LOSING.
There is no labor or activity people can do that can generate a profit anymore, hence why invest in hiring people, why invest in people anyways since they are all total turds ? And the workers have no incentive to work anymore given such a low salary and high Health Care and Rents and others they have to pay, so why work anymore ? The economy is in a deadlock people aren’t hired because there is nothing they can do to generate profits and people don’t work because there is no work they can do that can make them profit from their work.
But the entire idea of investment, of something that improves, in the idea that you can do something to gain, to get something more back is at a dead end: not only in the economy but in all endeavors, in all social activities, in all possible activities, there is nothing worth doing anymore, nothing can be done to get more or improve or to get something better, all we do and can do generates not only diminishing returns, but negative returns, if you start out with 100 and do something, anything at all, in any possible activity you end up getting 70, and even less and less, so nothing is the best thing you can do, do nothing, give up real fast, watch TV, end of story.
All of the improvements that we expected to keep on having forever, all the huge contrasts that all of the novelties and improvements generated in the 20th century in all cultural affairs also, like in Music Elvis and the Beatles (the surprise factor, the novelty, the contrast with what was before) the contrast between generations, all the Modern Art, the Experimental, the Avant Guard, the new generation always having something new and better to do and new and better ways, the entire mythology of new is better, all kinds of new things, the drugs, the LSD, the experiences, free sex and love, you name it, all the novelties and inventions, Movies, TVs and Internet and books (an infinite amount of new books and ideas, a never ending array) and all kinds of new theories, Marx, Freud, philosophy, Women’s liberation, queers, you name it, all the new and better, and novelties and new is better and all the contrasts with what was before and other Science and Technology novelties (DNA, the Atom bomb, Nuclear Energy, Einstein, the Military Technology) all the improvements (imagined or real ?) the exploration, the Doors, Space exploration, the Future, 2001 a Space Odyssey, Pink Floyd, Progressive Rock (notice the word PROGRESSIVE used in the 1970s) a never ending array of novelties and cultural affairs that went towards the Future, Progress, Better, Newer, the entire idea of you can invent something new, you can innovate, there is something new and better that can be and will be done, well:
THIS IDEA OF NEW AND BETTER IS OVER, DEAD, EXPIRED, OBSOLETE, NO LONGER OPERATING, WAS A LONG FANTASTIC ONE TIME QUIRK TRIP WHERE ALL THE TECHNOLOGIES GOT DISCOVERED ALL AT ONCE AND APPLIED AND CREATED A MAGICAL VISION OF REALITY, BUT WAS AN EXCEPTION, IS THE EXCEPTION, IS NOW DEAD AND OVER.
Now there are only two things left to really do:
1) Free Salaries and Cheap Rents since the economy won’t generate jobs and the entire fairy tale of jobs even necessarily having to be generated (who on earth ever thought that jobs are a natural disposition of things anyways ? the idea is and has always been to do less work possible and technology is forcing this on everyone anyways), money will just keep on being hogged up and concentrated in fewer hands (there is absolutely no mechanism at all that can change this, in fact those that are losing are doing everything possible to lose even more and sustain the “moral” position that free salaries and cheap rents “are wrong” hence giving all that money completely for free to those already super rich, go figure). And huge public private projects hiring millions for Rockets to Mars, trillions of skyscrapers, high speed trains, you name it. Not because of the profit motivation or for gains but to give Pride, Ambition, Meaning, a Goal, a collective aggregated symbolic social meaning (and therefore Metaphysical goal, like Hitler gave the Germans under the Nazi myth) and a Function (give them a function they will be happy) to millions of unemployed worldwide so they don’t just throw themselves down the toilet, as Man is a Turd, so they know they are turds and hence they would just throw themselves down the toilet.
2) Modify the neural networks of minds, wether trying to follow some scientific and logical path, or more simply and bluntly through the Instant Singularity, sticking wild chemicals and signals and symbols in wildly modified brains – minds. These weird minds perceive a new universe, actually exit our universe and enter a new one that has nothing to do with ours anymore (hence the end of the idea of progress or a sequence of events that lead up to an aggregated conclusion, this disconnects the sequence, there is no longer any idea of time, or linear progress, or before or after, it can no longer be compared to what existed before because before is totally unrelated to the Instant Singularity), hence this is the end of our civilization, but even more so the end of Science and Progress, but even more so, a new Big Bang, a New universe with totally new laws of physics and logic and metaphysics and the very concepts of non contradiction and identity and existence no longer operate, hence even the Technological Singularity and the Big Bang and God himself are puny concepts and ideas compared to this one. On a side note, this idea of the Instant Singularity, Modified new Minds and Brains (or even the old fashion Technological Singularity) may be the very last and most deeply faith based concept of Investment, and Gain and Profit possible. The concept of Investment brought to its extreme consequence. The concept of doing A and getting something more, in this case a new universe – life – physics – metaphysics.
So the entire concept of investment is done, over, dead. We invent all kinds of make believe activities that simulated a kind of imaginary investment, a kind of imaginary activity, a chore, a task, a start point -> path -> target (often simple, so we are guaranteed to always win, like play a video game or watch a TV program, or go to the Mall and buy some crap), a kind of better, a kind of if I do A, I gain something, or make believe I gain something, so that makes you feel satisfied and OK. Now you are OK, etc. Well there is nothing left to do, no investment possible, nothing that will make you feel OK, now every activity is going backwards, you feel worse and worse, no matter what, you lose more and more no matter what, so the entire idea of better, do this and you gain (like jogging and exercise or whatever, anything else), invest in this you will gain, put effort in this you will gain (win ? be better ? improve ? ALL FALSE), is dead and gone, now it is only loss and losses forever. AMEN.
Quo Vadis, Baby ?
Great website, Babystrangeloop! I think you can count on more hits from me in the future. But today I have to get the ol’ permaculture plot ready for a week without me. Which probably means processing my first rabbits. I’ve been dreading this day since I brought the buck and doe home. Oh well, I now know I can raise rabbits without imported feed, so here goes!
“Happiness is a warm hose. Should have been house.”
Riiiiight…;)
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175781
2) Modify the neural networks of minds, whether trying to follow some scientific and logical path, or more simply and bluntly through the Instant Singularity, sticking wild chemicals and signals and symbols in wildly modified brains – minds. These weird minds perceive a new universe, actually exit our universe and enter a new one that has nothing to do with ours anymore (hence the end of the idea of progress or a sequence of events that lead up to an aggregated conclusion, this disconnects the sequence, there is no longer any idea of time, or linear progress, or before or after, it can no longer be compared to what existed before because before is totally unrelated to the Instant Singularity), hence this is the end of our civilization, but even more so the end of Science and Progress, but even more so, a new Big Bang, a New universe with totally new laws of physics and logic and metaphysics and the very concepts of non contradiction and identity and existence no longer operate, hence even the Technological Singularity and the Big Bang and God himself are puny concepts and ideas compared to this one. On a side note, this idea of the Instant Singularity, Modified new Minds and Brains (or even the old fashion Technological Singularity) may be the very last and most deeply faith based concept of Investment, and Gain and Profit possible. The concept of Investment brought to its extreme consequence. The concept of doing A and getting something more, in this case a new universe – life – physics – metaphysics.
God I was enjoying your absence.
[Published in serial form to get around the hall monitor]
All the suburb bashing around this joint drives me crazy. You guys, including JHK, are stuck on an idea that just doesn’t hold any water. The conversion from high-energy modern society to a low-energy, local, sustainable future will be so radical, and so drawn out, that there is likely to be about zero advantage to living in any particular kind of ‘hood.
Rural areas have serious drawbacks, long trips on bike or horseback to reach a viable marketplace not the least of them. Social isolation is another, along with its lack of access to culture and variety. Urban areas are probably the most precarious of all, with a lack of land for food production, and the need to get many people to agree on changes before they can be implemented. Havana did it, but can Atlanta? Not so sure. There is hope in the cities, but not as much as in the ‘burbs in my opinion.
First of all a suburb, in ecological terms, is an ecotone: the boundary between two distinct ecosystems where more biodiversity hangs out, and more energy congregates. The suburbs have ready access to both urban areas and rural production and natural resource land. Admittedly the scale is all wrong for a future without happy motoring, but even standing alone, suburban plots are typically 1/2 an acre or larger, which is plenty to grow all the food a couple needs, with a little meat included. The setbacks on the houses are amenable to solar retrofits, and there is no need to come to group agreement on these incremental changes. You just have to talk your spouse into it (which can be hard enough, so imagine the need to talk an entire high-rise building downtown into various austerity measures! Especially when some of the residents will no doubt still be doing well financially.) Suburban houses are spaced wide enough to get cooling breezes through the house when the AC no longer functions, and large enough to grow a fair amount of firewood for efficient heating using coppicing methods.
Most suburban parcels have garages, which, once the cars have been kicked out, can be turned into home workshops – smithing furnaces, bakeries, pottery shops, breweries, greenhouses, etc, and local marketplaces can form on the streets that will be safe to stroll about without the bloody cars ripping around everywhere. I could very easily see a 4 block area in the suburbs, or a closed suburban community forming a local free trading bloc, with more formal provisions for adjacent trading blocs.
This all takes lots of time, and a lot of general loss of economic buoyancy, but since that’s where we’re headed, and what we’ll have, I really don’t see the suburbs being in any worse shape than anywhere else. Potentially even better…
While I have a different political view than you, i agree that there are a lot of everyday people out there(tattoos or not) who have more native intelligence than many with college educations. I have doctorate and my dad went to eighth grade. I am not stupid but he excreted more brains than I will ever have. I keep that in mind when ever I meet someone. It makes your life so much easier when you realize you don,t know it all. When you act like you know it all your advertising your ignorants . You never know what you are going to learn from someone. My story is similar to yours having grown up in the south. Be open. Even Vladimir is not wrong about everything.
I learned a hard lesson years ago; people never change. I’m not talking in the meta sense, but I might as well be.
===============
Pilt, as many times as I’ve seen the word “meta” and thoroughly read its dictionary definition I cannot grasp its meaning. Using words other than meta please re-write the above so I may (possibly) understand.
I know many among the CFN like to US bash. I agree the military should be kept home to protect OUR borders. We have no business messin’ with other peoples shit. Either way ya gotta give em credit. It takes brass balls the size of your head to dip a chinook helicopter ramp into the sea to pick up your buddies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqqKe1AxfHk
I wanted to be a SEAL, instead I qualified to be a WALRUS. We Americans Like R Useless Shit!
Yo Tripp I agree , It must be the let -em out for the holidays policy at the nut-house. Hopefully Spider won’t gnaw off his foot to remove the ankle bracelet.
You people are entirely too negative. You should be happy that we got rid of that oppressive 2% tax rate that King George had imposed on our colonial forebears.
If we are in a rerun of the “Dark Ages”, please tell me the locale of the next Hagia Sophia being erected and where “ the space is not illuminated by the sun from the outside, but that the radiance is generated within, so great an abundance of light bathes this shrine all around”, and with “gilded tesserae from which a glittering stream of golden rays pours abundantly and strikes men’s eyes with irresistible force” (thank you very much Procopius and Paulus) ?
After all, doesn’t a thinking person always have to be on the lookout for that little patch of white rolling around in the greater dark and that little ball of black within the greater white? In other words, I want to be where that 1% is opening their wallets because I have something to sell them.
UBS I am glad someone remembers Fourbears, Threebears younger brother. The great Chief of the native american Fucawee’s.
How many IPO’s are they offering on Wall Street?
And whats being hyped?
LinkedIn, Groupon, Fbook……companies that, if they make $ its via advertising or sales….
The USA is in deep trouble but the Media wont admit it, instead they hype these companies and IPO’s.
ditto
you say discretion
i say discression
whats yr obsession
language cop
is yr profession
Hello Sweetie! I love our Qshtik!
JHK:
For a polar opposite of yr worldview
and a very corporate one at that
Detroit being one of the best things about Amerika:
100 great things about America –
Fortune Features
features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/…/
100-great-things-about-america/ –
ANYONE WHO CAN LAUGH AT CORPORATE LIES ..CHECK IT!
FM……………. American idea!
69. Michelle Obama
A formidable presence who’s brought her own form of glam to the White House.
72. The Kardashians
Only in America would the family of O.J.’s lawyer become an institution!
Clearly FM has declined.
I have doctorate and my dad went to eighth grade. I am not stupid but he excreted more brains than I will ever have. I keep that in mind when ever I meet someone. It makes your life so much easier when you realize you don,t know it all. When you act like you know it all your advertising your ignorants.
==============
Boss, I don’t want to be unduly unkind but where did you get your doctorate — from a box of Cracker Jacks?
I know you didn’t intend it this way but your use of the word excreted makes it sound like you’re father has shit for brains.
when ever is generally written as whenever.
“It makes your life so much easier when you realize you don,t know it all.”
Like when you use apostrophes rather than commas to form contractions and by not catching typos by not proofreading prior to submitting.
And WOW!, that last sentence of yours is a classic. The correct words are you’re and ignorance. Ignorant is generally used as an adjective but I thought about it and conceived this sentence in which “ignorant” could be a noun that could be made plural. Teaching the ignorant is difficult and I had a class full of ignorants.
P.S. Boss, you have a doctorate.
Science is not instinctive. So I read in a book – Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science. The brain is wired for superstition. And common sense is not very common. Whereas religious beliefs come “naturally”. Science doesn’t come naturally to most, and requires a lot of work. So here we are – an insignificant anthill drifting in the cosmic void at a precarious junction in our history. I’m inclined to think it won’t turn out well. We are too easily deluded by our own fantastic and irrational beliefs. That the Market will find a solution for our problems. That the saviour will return and rescue us. Etc. The list is long…
“There is nothing left to invest in.”
If you really(?) want something to invest in, i have a suggestion: Small/mini/micro hydropower.
Plenty of undeveloped sites and decent payback even today. Payback probably better in future, but plant may be harder to acquire/defend.
A recent site feasibility study is here:
http://hydropower.inl.gov/resourceassessment/pdfs/main_report_appendix_a_final.pdf
‘IT’S THE SECOND DARK AGE’
Why, with ‘all the technology, all the goodies’ is the US much worse than it was 50 years ago?
See my 2 posts just above this and my post on IPOs!
well said
Gramma made Uncle Ned plant some barberry in her yard once upon a time. She thought it was an interesting bush. Now barberry (an invasive) is everywhere, with its sharp spikes stabbing you when you try to pull it up by the roots. Maybe it was ok where it was native but it doesn’t belong in this yard. Its invasive tendencies and hateful barbs far outweigh it’s “interestingness.” If you can’t pull Vlad – uh, I mean barberry – out by the roots, for Gods sake don’t water it!
The great Chief of the native american Fucawee’s.
=================
As in F Troop reference: “where the fuh-cah-wee?”
This nation is mostly governed by egomaniacal, greedy fools. Mitch McConnell, who looks like the Wizard of Oz’ scarecrow. He has no brain. The nation is governed by haters of anything progressive and liberal. The nation was the most productive when taxes were high, and the least productive when the taxes were at its lowest-LilboyBush.
Ole Mitch and his band of bobbleheads did nothing about jobs, debt ceiling, etc. under lilboy, but look out today. They are loser-liars. Jefferson would be most disgusted by the likes of these current morons in government than most anything else.
None of these people have any leadership qualities. When one leads a country to nationhood (G.Washington), you get respect. Little else seems to qualify these days.
I don’t believe we have many solutions, since solutions appear to have been taken off the table for decades. No one wants to admit that the US will be just a fraction of what has now become a globally productive world economy. Because there is a diminishing hope for a national renewal program, the American Freak Show will continue.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
That will be enough out of you Agarn! Was it Where the Fuh-cah-wee? or Were the Fuh-cah-wee. I still have a crush on Jane.
More than you need to know below.
The Hekawi tribe supposedly derived their name from an incident in which the tribe became lost, exclaiming “Where the heck are we?”, which then became “We’re the Hekawi” The original name for the tribe, ‘Fugawi’, was to be changed after the censors discovered the sentence “Where the Fugawi?”[1] They are partners in O’Rourke Enterprises and produce most of the company’s products. They are a peace-loving tribe, (mainly due to cowardice). The chicken-hearted braves of the Hekawis, “the tribe that invented the peace pipe”, are “lovers, not fighters”, according to their leader. Agarn has to teach them how to do a war dance. They have a 50/50 deal with O’Rourke and have a still which produces the whiskey for the saloon. As a sly jest based on the myth that Native Americans are the 13th tribe of Israel, many of the Hekawi Indians were played by veteran Yiddish comedians using classic Yiddish shtick. The regular “Indian” characters (none of whom were played by Native American actors)
Jim, once again you have raised very valid points in your “Happy Birthday America” column.
I am certain that if T. Jefferson were alive today he would be both delighted and horrified by the America that we live in today.
However, Mr. Jefferson almost certainly got it wrong when he saw an agrarian nation of small farms as some sort of ideal life. Cities have always have been and always will be the centers of our civilization. The problem is that in so many cases I cannot figure out where an American city starts and where it ends. This is what to my mind is most distressing. One thing is for sure, our current lifestyle is not sustainable!
Whose Johnson are you talking about? Answer the question! 😀
=============
Samuel’s Johnson.
More than you need to know below.
=============
I see you’re a real conna-sewer* of the show.
* Don’t feel like taking the time to look up the correct spelling.
What’s new is old again
Old69 that is. On my lunch break I’m taking a moment to check the thread and noticed some comments.
With all Old wants to say, one would think he’d want his own blog and not piggy-back on this one.
Why, he could set up a blog with whatever name he chooses and invite all his friends from the I LOVE PHILOSOPHY site. Then he could discuss all the wonderful progress we could be making without that pesky problem called physical reality and those darn resources–who needs’em they just get in the way of our imagination and unlimited growth, anyway.
Oh well one quiet week, now I’ve gotta scroll and scroll…
Well Huhhrrumphhh Q! I’ve been called a potty-mouth but never a conna-sewer! And I know you can spell that word blindfolded, tied by the ankles, and hung from the nearest maple or my name ain’t Jiminy- Cricket! So There ;o)
“I am certain that if T. Jefferson were alive today he would be both delighted and horrified by the America that we live in today.”
-at-
No doubt, artistic. Probably if he dug beneath the surface and projected trends he would be more horrified – but hey, TJ wasn’t a negative spirit – so he would have found something positive to say, do, and build upon.
One thing that T. Jefferson would have noticed almost immediately would be the similarities between horse racing and NASCAR. I’ve never seen anyone on this CFN mention the parallels.
But think about it. America in Jefferson’s day ran on genuine “horsepower.” Raising and racing thoroughbred horses took immense wealth and attention to detail. Only the uber rich of Jefferson’s day could participate in thoroughbred racing – just as only American Corporations can afford to sponsor NASCAR today.
Yet, most every plowboy and wheelhorse owner of TJ’s day was interested in the outcomes of thoroughbred racing – though they never got any closer to horse racing than when they climbed on a mule bareback for a ride back to the barn after a day’s work.
Just as those whose lives depend on cars and light trucks – are fascinated by NASCAR today.
Though their only racing occurs – as a fantasy – when pulling away from a red light on the way to work.
Pruning trees out front. Hard Rock Maple and Oak.
Nothing tougher. Almost like cutting thru steel.
-Marlin
To Eluthero and other CFNers,
What you need to do is mentally redact all the insults from Tootsie’s post(s) and consider the wisdom within the underlying content.
I agree with starving government except for its legitimate purposes. Of course we could argue till doomsday as to what constitutes government’s legitimate purposes.
Among a million things government should NOT have their hand in are: public education, foreign aid and subsidies of any sort.
MLK never advocated violence. He was not a proponent of hate. He was an intelligent black man who had lived through discrimination and saw a way for his nation to progress to better things.
Never once did MLK use the term “trans generational asshole.”
===========
“If a person kidnaps another person…. makes them work for free, treats them cruelly, is forced to let them go, and just goes on resenting them …. and their children resent that persons children….. that is a trans generational asshole.” suburbanempire
SuburbanE – even though the Civil Rights Act was passed into law over TWO GENERATIONS AGO – you still advocate that “children resent that person’s children….”
Apparently you think this hate should go on forever. This is vile, SE.
=========
“you don’t even have to add white/black to the story to get it
as a matter of fact it helps if you take it out.”
-SuburbanE-
But you won’t take it out, SE. And in doing this, you enable the OLD HATES to grow into fresh NEW HATES – in a cycle that can never end.
=====================
It is a good thing to call Vlad, or NewWorld, or anyone else – on their fear, hate, and racism.
But when you fight hate with hate
fear with fear
and resentment with resentment.
You produce only hate, fear, and resentment.
Oak and maple ? That be like butter. Try a locust some time. Shit be like quartz.
“What you need to do is mentally redact all the insults from Tootsie’s post(s) and consider the wisdom within the underlying content.”
-Q-
I keep trying to do that, Q. But all I get after all that redaction is about 5 points repeated endlessly by someone who listens to far too much talk radio.
I’m with you on eliminating all subsidies and all foreign aid. I don’t know about public education.
I envision huge hordes of underprivileged (undercapitalized?) children running loose, never receiving an education, and finally ending up in jail for life.
I know. I know. You can argue that we already have this system in place in many areas. But I think it could get a good bit worse.
“More than you need to know below. ”
===============
Tootsie, as bright as you usually are you can sometimes be incredibly dense (reference conversation on gold 1.5 years ago). I didn’t write “More than you need to know below,” I quoted it from someone else’s post as a lead-in.
I’ve admitted a precipitous White decline all along. But let’s face it, alot of it among the young is being led by Blacks. The Blacks have been glorified no end so naturally this lost generation has taken them as role models.
You are right: the change in girls is simply beyond belief. The White Girls are still at the vulgar stage but there are signs that they are moving toward the Black model of Female Gangs.
God help us if White Guys start doing the Black Flash Mob thing. Most are too wimpy, but not all.
The deeper question is why did we glorify Blacks to begin with? They obviously don’t live up to our projections at all. We obviously stopped loving our own traditions and shifted over to that old Romantic canard, the Noble Savage. Now we find out that he isn’t noble at all.
“Among a million things government should NOT have their hand in are: public education, foreign aid and subsidies of any sort.”
Just playing devil’s advocate here, because what the federal government should or should not do is probably a moot point now, but aren’t subsidies and safety nets of various sorts one of the things that generally defines an “advanced, complex society”? An inevitability of civilization, the very thing that makes a culture peaceful? The thing that keeps the disenfranchised from revolting? Whether that’s farmers’ incomes propped up by price supports, because high-energy culture is robbing the consumptive base of any sense of the value of food? Or whether it’s food stamps, or unemployment insurance? Aren’t these the activities that are most responsible for creating the peaceful, mostly law-abiding society, that makes it possible for so many people of different skin colors, different religions, different political ideologies, to get along?
I think so. And I also think the subsidies and safety nets that make peaceful, multi-cultural civilization possible are the very things that make it unsustainable. The reason that great civilizations always have a shelf life. But it’s not as if we could even take that information, act accordingly, and prolong our “great” civilization for any serious length of time, because if you remove the subsidies and safety nets, as is happening now whether we like it or not, you automatically lose the peace and law abiding nature that makes it worth being a part of. It devolves into chaos as farmers start to actually lose money every season, food prices rise precipitously to reflect that fact, the underclass loses their food stamps and section 8 support, and the wealthy start losing their privilege in large hemorrhagic chunks.
It’s the reason Obama won’t call time of death, just like W wouldn’t, just like the next jagoff won’t either. Because as soon as you do, you’re not really president anymore. Not of 50 some odd united states anyway.
And, just for my part, if Tootsie wants to be heard he should learn to speak like a grown-up.
Just some thoughts.
Well as Janis used to sing, Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.
Now you’re using the N word. You were ready to come unwound and my gentle nudge just pushed you over the edge. I hope you get the help you need.
A Hint: Loving yourself in a healthy was means loving your own People, Nation, and Traditions. It doesn’t have to be non-critical – but if it isn’t there in some kind of way you are simply without roots. And then you will end up loving alien peoples and traditions just as you have been doing – even to the point of taking their side against your own.
“I don’t know about public education.
I envision huge hordes of underprivileged (undercapitalized?) children running loose, never receiving an education”
My wife and I have been discussing our way through this topic lately, and it’s a doozey. We tend to see the benefits of literacy as self-evident, but only because we have a life mode that makes it necessary, and adaptive. I tend to agree with Fukuoka on this one. That formal education is only necessary when it is appropriate to the society. We’ve been more rapidly building up our library, particularly the classics and books on self-reliance, ever since we recognized the descent pattern, and I hope they will be useful for generations to come.
As long as they are required anyway. At some point there will be too few humans around to support a highly literate, erudite society, and although we think of “illiterate” as a bad word today, the idea that perhaps our literacy just shape-shifts is, I think, more appropriate.
Vlad obviously won’t approve of this, but when you live in the Australian bush in small bands of foragers, dining on wallaby and water lotus seeds, there is no need in the world for literacy as we know it. That is why the aborigines always do poorly on western IQ tests. But let them design a test that favors their particular skill set and see how we compare. They are most excellent at territory mapping, illustrating ecologies, and landscape pattern recognition. Some of their ecological art is just fascinating to me. Pluck one of them at birth and place them in an American family and they will take our tests the same, drive cars the same, and have a similar IQ. Alternatively, take an American child at birth and place them with an aboriginal family and they will not learn to read and write the same way we do, but will excel at all the things that bush culture requires of them. Things that an adult American would royally suck at, and be thought of as primitive and stupid for not understanding, like which mushrooms are delicious and which are deadly. Useful knowledge in the bush, not so much with a grocery store around the corner. But that grocery store around the corner comes with its own set of problems. Diabetes was unknown in aboriginal culture before the white man arrived.
So I don’t see the loss of literacy as such a terrible thing…when the cultural pressures don’t require it anymore anyway. Being illiterate today, in America, is sad, yes, but I’m not sure it will be in a hundred years. And I don’t think that will make us lesser people either, just different. Different pressures, different responses. If we don’t drive anymore, don’t have computers or many intact books, don’t work away from home much, and don’t live in densely populated regions with a highly specialized workforce, what’s the point? And even if we still have loads of books, in dry climates maybe, about civilization, or our road to civilization, what bearing might they really have on a society outside of civilization? They’re great to us because that’s the world we know, but they might be completely pointless to another kind of culture. And rightly so.
I have more on this topic, but I’ve taken up too much room already today, so I’ll save it for a blog post.
Try running your car, and all the other cars and trucks on the road, on coal. And don’t bother telling me liquid coal will save the day either, because it won’t.
“Loving yourself in a healthy was means loving your own People, Nation, and Traditions.”
What if your own people, nation, and traditions are maladaptive for a truly novel suite of ecosystem pressures, like energy descent? Is “going forth and multiplying” adaptive in a world of constricting resource availability? I’m not saying that embracing multi-culturalism is the answer, just questioning the consistency-hobgoblin approach.
If ‘subsaharan Africans’ and Africa are so
WONDERFUL then tell us more! – Asia
Who said they were wonderful? You can come to whatever conclusions you like based on your own observations. My own eyes tell me that they’re no better, no worse than the rest of humanity. They have a full complement of intellectual and moral faculties which, like the rest of us, they can use or misuse.
As I’ve said to Vlad in other posts, go back three or four thousand years and compare the civilizational achievements of northern Europe, the supposed stomping grounds of the alleged tall, blonde “Master Race” to those of non white, non Europeans ie the Chinese, the South Asians, Egypt, the Middle East.
What? I didn’t hear you. Did I hear you mumbling that northern Europe at that time had nothing comparable to the glittering civilizations built by these others? Did I hear you say that Stonehenge was an exceedingly crude edifice compared to the Pyramids or the Sphinx or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? What? Northern Europe of that era had nothing like the cities and civilizations in other places?
So what does this imply? That the people of the crude, barbarous north of Europe were genetically inferior to other peoples at that time? It implies no such thing. Environmental conditions in different parts of the world are radically different and they have a large impact on the progress of farming cultures and civilization.
Would you content that the Plains Indians of North America are racially inferior to Indians in central and south America that built spectacular cities and monuments simply because the Plains Indians didn’t do likewise?
As I say to Vlad and others over and over the clock hasn’t stopped ticking. We can’t foresee the state of civilization or lack thereof in different parts of the world in the future. Africa may be “behind” for now but so was Europe until Rome and Constantinople and their armies and monks “civilized” it. And their civilization, like most others, picked up a great deal from neighbouring peoples.
And remember the environment in Africa that people there have to contend with. A European colonial soldier had a life span measured in months as one other poster pointed out if he had the misfortune of being stationed in deepest darkest Africa.
And just to show I’m not a totally humourless, sanctimonious prick and in case you missed it last time, I’m going to re-post the link to this short youtube vid of that Korean chick playing kickass blues guitar. It illustrates that culture, in this case music, travels across racial lines. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI_fB2kY9Os&feature=related
So what did you think? Does she have Seoul or what?
I can love and respect my family, and physically position myself close to them for TLE, and at the same time reject their maladaptive traditions.
Just in from Rush: “Everything they believe in, they refuse to live” – Kerry, Gore, Pelosi et al
They wont fly coach. They wont cut down on consumption. They wont take public transportation, etc.
Well I disagree with you on some of the big issues. I don’t think culture is merely a response to the environment but also a series of choices as well. Have you decided that we’re going ALL the way back then? Because reading and writing have been revered for ages…If we give it up, that will be a choice – and a bad one. All this is just the prison of your Neo-Marxism. Let it go.
Many Aboriginees live a Western Life and have even been raised by Whites. They do miserably is school – their brains are VERY small and their IQ is even lower than the Sub Saharan Africans: 60 as opposed to 70. One interesting point though, the visual part of their brain is larger than that of Whites – evidenly an improvement to help them traverse the Deserts. Teachers have noted they are very observant and it is hard to hide anything from them.
Needless to say, the Traditionals had (have?) superb skills. I heard about one boy who would put a piece of food in his hand and take a nap – awakening to grasp any bird that had unwisely ventured on it. I like some of their art too but otherwise they are not very attractive: widespread cannibalism, constant raiding, brutality to women, ruled by taboos, etc. There was alot of linguistic and cultural diversity so maybe some cultures were better but most weren’t.
Yes we need to make some big changes – like the multiplying. But that might be transitional too if you get your way. Once we are real primitive most babies will die early on. So breeding and bearing will again be a great need and honor for the woman who can do it well.
Diamond himself admits that Primitives varied in their ecological wisdom. We DO have something to learn from the ones who lived within their means such as that Pacific Island Culture as opposed to the Abos who were always eating each other or the warlike Easter Islanders.
hello Helen, luv ya baby, who’s yur daddy. That would be a Janis cover of a KK song. I think we covered this a coupla weeks back ;o) Keep it on the high side girl!
Sheeeet Q,you damn put that man down! Some of your best work!
Interesting points about education, tripp. My original comment to Q was only concerned with the here and now. With our huge population, high unemployment, etc – public schools are an effective means of keeping children off the streets and out of the workforce until age 16 (drop out age) or 18, with a diploma.
Other public schools in other countries use other ages and endpoints for public education. I think Mexico uses 9th grade. Georgia only had 11 grades of public education until some time in the 1950’s. Full day public kindergarten is a fairly recent innovation. So is pre-K.
============
I take your points about energy descent, declining populations and the eventual decline of literacy to zero – but it makes me want to argue ideas and theories. (go figure – hehe)
I see the thrust of western civilization as a generally good thing. And I see literacy as having functions in maintaining a people’s history and record keeping – but also as a goal to which some talented individuals have always aspired, and will always aspire.
=============
On another note – I wouldn’t be too shy about posting a lot of blocks of your blog posts here on CFN. I for one, don’t mind at all – your posts, or anyone’s that act as spring boards to discussion and keep CFN off of race/race/race and skyscrapers to Mars.
Anything to attract and keep more thoughtful posters is to the good, IMO, for the JHK comment board.
Casey found innocent – another travesty. The smartest person in the world by the recorded number (185), Marilyn vos Savant (fake name I assume) suggested once that we adopt the European System of trial by judges as opposed to trial by jury – our moronic peers.
No guarantee of course – look at the railroading of Amanda Knox in Italy. None of her DNA was found in the murder room and tons of the Negro Rudy Gude’s was. Yet they couldn’t resist the titilation of putting of an American Blonde in prison. Why? She’s American, she’s pretty, she blonde in a dark haired country etc. And then there’s the PC. People are tired of Negro rapist/murderers. The idea of a blonde baby face is so much better copy – the cold, icy blue eyes!
And once begun, they dared not turn back – careers were on the line as well as egos.
Kunstler actually believes that people with spider web tatoos are Reagan worshiping Republicans!! LOL!
Yet another instance how our rights are systematically being yanked away from us! And in the name of “security”, mind you!
http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com
I guess writing in general terms is communicating with someone in the future. So a lack of literacy isn’t necessarily fatal but doesn’t help matters. Of course, post collapse, what do we write on and what do we write with? Paper? I would think probably a relatively scarce and expensive commodity. Pens? Maybe quill pens.
Archeologists have found in Roman garbage dumps “letters” between Roman soldiers and their far away families. These letters were written on thin slabs of wood and transported by pack animal from army camp to town and back. What they did apparently is to scrape off previous messages and write new ones. They went something like: Dear Father, lion among men, Dear Mother, virtuous matron and example to us all, how are you? I am fine? Send socks. Your devoted son, Marcus.
I think people will make use of memorization a lot more like the old days when poets put long poems to memory. I think the human mind can be hugely elastic.
http://digbysblogspot.com/
Having some technical difficulties! http://digbys.blogspot.com
The American judicial system often seems to have little if any concern for the innocent who are destroyed and cannot speak for themsleves.
Somehow in this country we can put up with 15,000 murders a year, 40 or 50 thousand suicides, millions of abortions, God knows how many traffic fatlities, but not a couple of hundred executions. The liberal wack ninnies just go nuts over execution.
Execution worked, and lynch mobs did a pretty good job too.
I guess little Caylee was killed by the Mexican Mafia.
RipT, never cut Locust, don’t believe we have any on the property. Have some Hickory, though, which is plenty hard, too. Pruning and tree removal is the most dangerous thing I have to do around here. I use just hand tools, no chainsaw, and proceed very slowly and carefully. Several weeks ago a guy in Litchfield, the Fire Chief I believe, was killed taking down a tree. For the real big ones I bring in a professional.
-Marlin
Who is John Galt?
Ayn Rand was ahead of her time and describes accurately our current breakdown crisis. Our destroyers hold us captive by means of debt and a false allegiance. And we exhaust ourselves to help build the kind of world that we see around us now.
Force, ignorance, and empire are the great evil. We have allowed our world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal, but that fear and force are more practical. We’ve allowed men to occupy positions of power in our world who preach that all men are evil from the moment they’re born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please.
Understand that the enemy uses an inverted morality and that the acceptance of this morality is its only power.
To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives morally, you have the chance to make the same choice offered in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Examine your values and understand that you ALWAYS choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.
I have guns and I’m prepared to use them.
==
Good luck with your guns and bullets when EVERYTHING around you is invisible poison.
i have a doctorate but i can’t type and talk on the phone with my wife looking over my shoulder all at the same time. hell, to be truthful i can’t type.
Love it when Uncle Ned cuts down locusts. They are nasty buggers, hate their prickly, pop up everywhere saplings. Also they practically cure themselves when they hit the ground. You can burn ’em soon, and clean.
I think if it’s done right you can pack an awful lot of education K-12. But what we have now is, as you say, mostly just a means to keep kids off the streets.
I don’t think the traditional readin’, writin’ etc approach is good for everyone. I grew up with one guy that could barely read even in high school. Roy would open a book and before he’s read one page would be yawning and yawning. He just wasn’t wired for the readin’ thing. But I also took shop one year (to make my father happy) and Roy was in my class and he was an absolute artist with wood and metal. I remember machine shop. We had to make a hammer with a steel handle and steel head. Most of us clowns would be tormenting slabs of metal and picking steel splinters out of our asses. But Roy showed up all us smartypants. He was done and finished with a great piece of work before the rest of us had hardly started.
“I just doubt that the dog bed is actually recycled plastic, since the tag says something different.”
According to a Google of ‘plastic bottle recycled into polyester’, plastic bottles are indeed recycled into polyester filling.
The strange thing I found, was that not a single link on the first 2 pages had been ‘cached’ (???)
Tripp: “but if you can reuse the plastic, or even burn it, I’m guessing we’d all come out ahead energetically.”
BURN IT?!? I think we’re already taking enough of the Earth’s solid carbon, and pumping it gaseously into the atmosphere/ocean/deep space. Besides, have you ever smelled burning plastic? Lotsa nasty carcinogenic toxins created/distributed there.
“I have guns and I’m prepared to us them” -TrippT
That’s what I like to hear, Tripp. Protect what is yours and all the hard work you’re putting in, a true American Son of the South. Nothing like a good firearm within easy reach to make you more confident for the future.
And Metuselah, what’s with all this apocalyptic talk and threats against Americans, home and abroad? I showed my wife what you said a few weeks ago about American tourists being attacked on the streets of Europe. She still wants to go. I might insist we stay home. Don’t you know, we’re armed to the teeth here and in no mood to take any shit from anybody? We’ve had it! And I don’t think Georgia is engulfed in ‘invisible poison”. They have some of the best farmland in the world down there, and a good climate. Tripp and the southern boys are the core of this site; go after someone else.
-Marlin
… but that fear and force are more practical – Mika
Are you surprised?
Who was it that said that you can get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone? Capone? As Mao said power emanates from the barrel of a gun. Do you dispute this?
Are you in Nevada? do you collect yr own rainwater?
‘One of the things that strikes me as odd is the idea perpetuated around here that things were Better in the Past and that the USA is now teetering on the edge of disaster’
hahhahahahawhawhaw
WHAT ME WORRY?
DoBee says US better 1950-60-70s.
I’m not interested in kind words and I’m not interested in force. I’m interested in truth.
Your talk about racial purity, as though the goal is pedigreed Jews or Englishmen or Kikuyus, is sick. It has a depraved Nazi vibe, and there are people alive today who have seen where that sort of rhetoric leads when it becomes the basis of policy–specifically, to Auschwitz, Srebrenica, and the killing fields of Rwanda. – AMR
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him too. BTW thanks for jumping in.
S/he was perhaps offended by the truth that
young white Americans are being gamed by the
media and its ‘commons’ and ‘mosdefs’.
And most young [under 50] blacks dont listen to blues.
Check the FORTUNE article I noted above.
Then get back to us.
And Metuselah, what’s with all this apocalyptic talk and threats against Americans, home and abroad?
==
You can’t protect against GMO contamination. You can’t protect against poison chemicals in the air, the water, the soil. You can’t protect against nature manipulated to turn against you. And that’s a very short list.
Mr. T. doesn’t seem to understand this.
‘MLK never advocated violence’
I have read otherwise, I cant cite the source,
It was something I read many years ago.
No, not yet. I’m interested in moving to Nevada largely owing to how cheap land is in northern Nevada along route 80. I go canoeing out west down various desert canyons such as Big Bend’s Boquillas Canyon on the Mexican border and the San Juan River canyon in Utah in the Glenn Canyon Nat’l Recreation Area.
Pertaining to the other comments I am also skeptical that it was actually better in the past. I got my degree in history and I think it’s been totally fucked up for 90% of the people pretty much all of the time. I also think that the Judeo-Christian civilization is sick, and that as time goes by it gets sicker in some ways, owing to its perverse linearity of outlook. In other words, false premises tend to amplify themselves if acted upon over time as if they’re actually true, which of course they’re not.
I’ve been at work today getting nearly zero haircuts and missed out on “DooBee” but if DooBee likes the occasional doobie then he can’t be all bad.
Im pasting this so not sure it will be posted:
By NIKKI BATTISTE and SARAH NETTER
Sept. 2, 2010
A former FBI agent who once believed Amanda Knox was guilty of murder now says he has no doubt that she is innocent.
retired FBI Special Agent Steve Moore told “Good Morning America.”
“The evidence is completely conclusive.”
Moore, a 25-year FBI veteran who investigated murders around the world before retiring two years ago, has independently researched and analyzed her case for the past year while Knox waited for her appeal.
“I was watching C-Span the other day and someone called in to say this. He said he was invited to a dinner party comprised of seven couples. He said the one with the least amount of money had a mere $500 Million and I’m not getting that wrong–no typo here.”
LOL! The 2010 ultra-filthy-rich 7-14 top earners in the US invited some poor schmuck over for dinner – perhaps as some sort of annual penance for fleecing them blind?
http://www.chron.com/entertainment/photogallery/Forbes_top_earners_of_2010.html#24572191
#1 – Oprah Winfrey – $315 million
#2 – James Cameron – $210 million
#3 – Tyler Perry – $125 million
#4 – Michael Bay – $120 million
#5 – Tiger Woods – $105 million
#6 – Jerry Bruckheimer – $100 million
#7 – Steven Spielberg – $100 million
Hmm, so those 7 (and their significant others) were the “dinner party attendees”? Quite the h00t, they should have sold tickets!!!
Even if they were ‘coupled’ with the ‘lesser earners’ from #8-#14, there’s no way the minimum was $500 million – more like
casey could hook up with o.j. and look for the real killers.
Ahh, OK wealthiest – I suppose there’s around 2,000 folks with more than $500 million saved. Still sounds like a hoax call-in to me.
http://www.forbes.com/wealth/forbes-400#p_40_s_arank_-1_
I’d suspect the last thing they’d want to be talking about is the lower 99.998% of Americans. I’d suspect, rather, they were discussing their “fallout” bunkers, supplying them, supporting them with security, etc. And they certainly wouldn’t want to invite one of those 99.998% poor slobs into their inner circle of discussion – that’s absurd.
It appears that Bugarach, at the base of Pic du Bugarach in southern France is the place to be to survive the coming apocalypse on Dec. 21st, 2012.
Hikers and climbers, along with the concerned and curious, are pouring into the town. Real estate is soaring.
A couple of weeks ago, one climber reached the peak and died of a heart attack. The mayor said, “the end of the world came earlier for him”.
Coyote waits, but sometimes gives us a laugh, if you can appreciate dark humor, that is.
Richmond International Raceway was once a Fairgrounds. My bet is that it will be again in a localized future.
Maybe we’ll race “hosses” again there in Ol’ Virginny after we rip up the tarmac on the oval to make tar for our shack-roofs. We Southerners didn’t need us no oil, Yankee cheese-steaks, or beer-can hats to rip and roar back in them-there good ol’ days, Mister!
Besides, NASCAR is just dumb. Figure-Eight racing is the only motor-sport worthy of a Southern Man, while we still go the gas: more crashes!
I do hope we retain them cheese steaks.
During World War II allied troops in New Guinea noticed that the illiterate inhabitants there had superior vision compared to civilized people. Learning how to read small print is probably bad for your vision, at the very least.
I’m going to have to bust you for faulty semantics. “Public education”, by definition, is education provided free of charge by THE GOVERNMENT. Unless you are referring to the quaint English notion that public schools are private boarding schools which prepare obnoxious rich fuckers for their anticipated role in public life, that is, but we know that that’s not the definition of “public” to which you refer.
More accurately, people have forgotten that the real concept behind so called public education originally was that it was in fact the charity schools for those unfortunates, or the overhwhelming majority of the population, who COULD NOT AFFORD PRIVATE SCHOOLING. It is for this obvious reason, that is that the public schools are actually charity schools, that they should operate for the benefit of the deserving academically talented, at least beyond the primary or intermediate levels, and with THE UTMOST ECONOMY OF EXPENDITURE, lest they become an odious burden to the taxpayers, AS THEY CLEARLY HAVE.
I know of no filthy rich people who would willingly subject their kids to the public schools anywhere. They send their kids away to boarding school so that they can meet others of their same station in life. They are not interested in hanging out with poor people who cannot afford private schooling. That such people tend to be assholes is entirely besides the point. Assholism is in the eye of the beholder and they are patently NOT INTERESTED in making a good impression on us poor folks.
What Vlad meant to say…..
“I’ve admitted a precipitous Honkey decline all along. But let’s face it, alot of it among the young is being led by Niggers. The Niggers have been glorified no end so naturally this lost generation has taken them as role models.
You are right: the change in girls is simply beyond belief. The Honkey Girls are still at the vulgar stage but there are signs that they are moving toward the Nigger model of Female Gangs.
God help us if Honkey Guys start doing the Nigger Flash Mob thing. Most are too wimpy, but not all.
The deeper question is why did we glorify Niggers to begin with? They obviously don’t live up to our projections at all. We obviously stopped loving our own traditions and shifted over to that old Romantic canard, the Noble Savage. Now we find out that he isn’t noble at all.”
And Vlad, I have been using “naughty” words All my life… And I am not usning “the N word”….YOU ARE!
“What it does indicate is the gift of time.”
I’ve read that the resource base was so dense in the Pacific NW’s coastal regions that it supported the only state level political organization on the planet for a culture that used a hunting and gathering food acquisition mode. All other states have relied on agriculture. Impressive.
“During World War II allied troops in New Guinea noticed that the illiterate inhabitants there had superior vision compared to civilized people. Learning how to read small print is probably bad for your vision, at the very least.”
Plus a far more mineral-dense diet and a lack of sunglasses, would be my guess. Did you see where I posted the other day about gaining 5 points in my vision since I decided to stop wearing sunglasses, even though I’m approaching 40? I’ve never heard of anyone gaining visual acuity as they age.
Lots to give up with literacy and civilization in my opinion. Lots to gain too, but I’m not sold on a net gain.
Weren’t you supposed to go away and enter a Monastary or something? You are going downhill rapidly. Soon you’ll be calling yourself Vlad and yelling the N word in the ghetto.
You can’t be me. I’m unique. You can only be unique when you find yourself. Until then, you’re just a knock off.
Yes, Ixnei
I was just trying to make Q feel that something good could be said about the rich–glad you got a laugh.
“During World War II allied troops in New Guinea noticed that the illiterate inhabitants there had superior vision compared to civilized people.”
-BHM-
My dad saw duty in New Guinea during WWII. He acquired dengue fever (the GI’s called it “break bone” fever) and he thought it was going to kill him for a while. He mentioned several things about his service overseas – but the superior vision of the natives was not on his list. The main thing that impressed him about the New Guinea natives was how the breasts of the women with children hung down nearly to their navels.
He also retained a fondness for Australia, because of some leave time he had there. I have a picture of him and a GI buddy on the beach with a couple of “Australian girls.” They look pretty happy, especially considering that they are in the middle of a World War.
Dad always wanted to go back to Australia, but he died in ’84 and never made it. I’ve always wanted to go back in his honor. If I can get TS to move slowly enough toward TF, I may yet get there.
If I ever go, I’ll take that picture and try to find that beach for him. Any of you Australians have any other suggestions?
Did you ever see Woody Allen’s existential movie called “Antz”?
“BE THE BALL!”
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-12/14/content_11696624.htm
“Whose Samuel Johnson? 😀
============
P.S. It’s Who is.”
LOL! I was curious when Q’d correct that, and also, how long it would “take”. The ‘Spelling *B*’ (wonder why it’s not ‘Spelling *A*’) has been hard at work *grading* his supposed English *CLASS*. (He and) PoC are disturbed by the racism discussions today/yesterday? Oy Vey!!! How the times, they are a’changin’…
But, the true ‘fix’ should have been “Who’s”, as the confusion/error root-cause is between “whose” and “who’s”, not “who is”. Come on Q, try opening up again – it wasn’t so long ago, you were discussing, rather than *correcting*./.
PS – LB, I did ‘bust a nut’, if’n Ya NO wut Ah m33n!!! That was hilarious – I bet all 7 couples were argue-bragging about the number of lobbyists they self-employed, and how much “net profit/profit margin” (as in tax exemptions/AMT marginal rates/ludicrous deductions) it bought them, concerning (on-shore?) tax havens/loopholes…
AMT – Alternative Minimum Tax – It is *NOT* an alternative, and it is *NOT* a minimum – go figure that Orwellian SH!T out.
I had to file AMT, 2 years in the late 90’s. There was no alternative, as I *HAD* to file that AMT form. It was also not a minimum, as it drove my tax rate up from ~30% to around ~60% or so.
In ‘collapse’ will you be able to stand the heat?
grow food? will there be water?
I know people who cant walk in Las Vegas in
120 degree heat of summer.
I hear some rich guy just spent 2,000,000
to ‘lunch with the Oracle of Omaha’.
How much do you charge for the standard 1/2″ (or so) buzz-cut? I just found it such a hassle ‘driving’ 5+ miles away, and paying $15+ for a haircut, then driving home (over an hour time), when I can just do it myself with an el-cheapo Wahl razor in about 20 minutes (and *immediately* shower/wash all the fine itchy hairs down the drain)…
Hey fucktard, I made $1039.52 this morning trading gold. What the fuck are you talking about?
==================
Ooooooo sore-reee … and sooo close. I made $1039.53 this morning trading silver.
😉
Public Radio…..Dengue [?] fever in Florida..
so they are introducing GMO bugs.
An open poast to Q – I find that when he *actually* has something legitimate to say, I agree with him on a lot of thangz. (50%? More? Less?)
However, he kinda leaves that taste in your mouth, much like *Corexit*. As in, 50% more poisonous slurry toxin added to the toxic sludge, which causes it to slowly sink away, out of site, 1 mile deep – and eventually resurface over the next XXX years as a mega-annoyance…
“Hey fucktard, I made $1039.52 this morning trading gold. What the fuck are you talking about?
==================
Ooooooo sore-reee … and sooo close. I made $1039.53 this morning trading silver.
;-)”
I think I just spewed beer out my nostrils – that was classic!!!
“I hear some rich guy just spent 2,000,000
to ‘lunch with the Oracle of Omaha’.”
To whom? Hathaway/Berkshire? Well, at least he still takes *PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION*. That’s about the only positive thang I will say about Buffett/that.
Hehe, Q? that’s “corexit”? I mean, corporations are now essentially individuals with *FREE SPEECH*, n’est-ce pas?!…
“the silly kerfuffle we see at work
===========
Perhaps you are unaware that the word kerfuffle may only be used once per day on this blog and that I got there first at 12:02AM. Sorry.”
OK, this is pure douche-baggery!
Yet, I got another dose of beer-out-the-nostrils – LOL!!! Low brow, indeed.
You guys and your gold and silver. I just put 3 rabbits in the freezer that I raised from clippings from my garden. I’ve cleaned plenty of poultry but this was my first foray into mammals in over 20 years, so I was a bit reluctant, but I got it done. Not bragging, some of you guys probably do stuff like that all the time, but this city boy is still slowly making his way back into contact with the death that eating in the real world requires. ALL eating.
And for the veggie types who might be appalled by killing rabbits, I would say that I have at least as much respect for the plants around me, the autotrophs that make the system actually work, as I do for the animals that just cycle nutrients. There is plenty of scientific evidence that plants do everything they can to avoid being killed. Not being able to move, they actually employ a much more sophisticated suite of tactics for survival than animals do. Why do you disrespect them so much? Without plants we wouldn’t be here. You owe them your life.
Anyway, back to the rabbits. I would say we can feed our family of two adults and two young children comfortably on one rabbit, and they are light-years easier to clean than poultry. Even my unpracticed hand only required about 10 minutes per rabbit (maybe 15 for the first one). But a word of advice to all the would-be rabbit raisers out there: don’t lay them on the ground while you’re cleaning them. After the hide is pulled off they are super sticky, and it is damn near impossible to get all the grass and dirt off of them if you do.
Now the 6 new pullets can go in the big chicken tractor (that the rabbits were in), and not run wild scratching up the garden, while we’re in the mountains. Those Auracanas are pretty athletic! Think about that too, maybe getting a fat, heavy breed of chicken that is easier to contain. The roof structure I’m going to build over the chicken run is costly, in terms of time if nothing else, salvaging the wood to build it with. Heavy chickens like the blue-laced wyandottes I have (so beautiful), or Black Australorps, wouldn’t require that expense.
There. Rabbits in the freezer and chickens in the tractor.
Mischief managed…
“And I drink tap water, bizarre as that is in this day and age. I won’t touch water in a plastic bottle.”
Very smart move. New plastic bottles outgas/diffuse carcinogenic hydrocarbons into their contents. This contamination is on an exponential scale, so if you continue using the same plastic bottle 50+ times, you’ll barely get dosed by carcinogens on the 51’st fill-up.
However, if you drink *solely* from brand new plastic bottles that you toss, you are getting the maximum carcinogenic hydrocarbon dose possible, every *bottle*.
I see no issues with using old plastic bottles, that have been filled with water for long times, then *emptied*, and filled with what gets *DRUNK* (in other words, don’t fill with water, let sit for weeks [in the *SUN*] and *DRINK*). I find it ludicrous that these foo-foo jackasses think they’re getting higher quality water by drinking (plastic) “bottled spring water.”
Don’t tell them – just let them *DIE*. It has to start/end *somewhere*…
When I’m substituting at the inner city Greek barbershop I charge $10 for all haircuts. At the inner-ring suburban shop I charge $16 for all haircuts. If all you want is a butch it makes sense to go to a barber college where they probably only charge $5. Doing it yourself is easy if you’re only getting a butch. Try doing 3/8ths of an inch on top, 1/4 inch upper sides and back, and 1/8th of an inch at the bottom of the taper. You can do that by looking up the lengths of the guards which came with your clippers. If you go over everthing at least three times you should avoid any really unsightly patches of missed hair.
The heat in Northern Nevada isn’t nearly as bad as Las Vegas. Some areas along I-80 are at a pretty high altitude–I think Wells is at about 6500 ft. My family has owned land in Tuscarora, Nevada for over a hundred years.
I really don’t want to get into this Kaylee bit – I mean, for every ultra-cute little white missing girl, there are hundreds of black/asian/latin american children missing in the US.
However, Wasn’t “TOT MOM” Casey aware that her daughter had *accidentally* drowned? And then, wasn’t she out partying for the next couple days (photo-documented)? And, didn’t it take weeks for her to report her daughter missing to the authorities?
This certainly sounds like a clear-cut case of guilty “conspiracy to manslaughter”? She knew her kid had drowned, did nothing, and (supposedly) let someone else dispose of the remains, *WITHOUT SAYING A THING* for weeks.
Or, is that not a legitimate charge?!… LOL, enough, enough *ENOUGH*!!! How about those other hundreds of missing minority boys/girls… /sigh
“Yet, I got another dose of beer-out-the-nostrils – LOL!!! Low brow, indeed.”
Oooo, sorry, wrong again, it’s spelled Löwenbräu. And it tastes better in the mouth than in the nostrils. Just so you know;)
Those groups already exist. Why do you people want to get rid of them or rather just get rid of the Englishmen? You are without shame.
Northern Nevada is much colder than the Las Vegas area. Then if you are on the eastern slope of a mountain range you will get water in the rainy season.
To be honest with you, I believe that nearly everyone will starve if in fact industrial society suffers a total collapse and organized agriculture ceases to function. Being in a pleasant area where you are obviously a prosperous and competent small farmer will only attract the wrong sort of attention once everyone has become extremely desperate. I would rather be hiding out in a less obvious place with a large store of beans & rice or what have you. In such a grim environment I very much doubt whether or not I’d even live long enough to eat all of my stores. Chances are I’d be murdered by others who wanted what I had. Nevertheless, I do believe that persons in isolated areas in that region could grow vegetables, and that furthermore, such vegetables if well hidden would prove more survivable than perhaps larger quantities of vegetables grown outdoors in plain view to the marauding hordes which inevitable would show up. In such an environment I believe that you’d have to grow your food in secret locations much like current marijuana farmers must usually grow their crops in secret but for mostly different reasons. One reason for secrecy in both cases though would be a desire to thwart foragers or “rippers” if you will. Northern Nevada is more like southern Idaho which is right next door across the border.
The Rabbit is a higher order of being. Animals aren’t plants just as people aren’t animals. We have higher needs beyond just survival – like the quest for knowledge for example. That’s why books are good – not just for survival tips.
I’m going to have to bust you for faulty semantics. “Public education”, by definition, is education provided free of charge by THE GOVERNMENT.
===============
I hate when people say that [something] has been provided free of charge by the government. NOTHING is free.
In my town, as in most, public education is paid for primarily by property taxes. I live in a slightly better than average house in our town and my property taxes are almost $11,000 per year.
With rare exceptions I believe anything that can reasonably be done by the private sector will be done more cheaply and effectively than if done by government. Profit is not an additional cost but rather the driving force in superior performance.
The complaining by people at this site, such as Eluthero and yourself, who have worked in the field of public education or been exposed to the near illiterate product of public education, is legion. And yet whenever it is suggested that government should not have a hand in Public Ed (i.e. that there should only be Private Ed) up goes a great hue and cry. We don’t have Public Shoes and we don’t have Public Groceries but for some reason we must have Public Education.
“I just put 3 rabbits in the freezer”
If I could do chickens here, or rabbits, or any other livestock, I’d have no qualms slitting their throats and bleeding them out/field dressing them. You do have to be careful, not to get too attached, tho. I understand that.
But, alas, I can’t – or I could, until the neighbors complain. Rabbits don’t make much noise, so they’d be better for me in my situation. However, I really only liek eating chicken or fish as meat. I’m not a big fan of mammalian meat-gorging. I also love organic chicken eggs – but you, as I know, even hens make a *LOT* of noise (not gunna cut it here).
I never once claimed that books weren’t good. I love them; I read books all the time. And I personally would miss them if they disappeared. But 4 or 5 generations from now, if they find themselves in small bands of human foragers, reading just might not be a part of their experience of the world. Just as knowledge of wild mushrooms isn’t generally part of ours.
Agriculture spawned sedentary life. Sedentary life spawned villages, spawned cities, spawned the military, spawned trade, spawned alphabets to record trade, spawned literacy, spawned hierarchical society, spawned despotic regimes, spawned reductionism and Cartesian dualism, spawned hubris, spawned cancer, spawned biospheric destruction and the compromise of human life support systems. Some of that was good, yes, but some of it obviously isn’t. If it’s unsustainable it’s inferior. Period. I don’t see any way to argue that.
Our quest should be for the balance that both inspires and perpetuates our kind.
If farming, written language, and material affluence bring about destruction of the biosphere then what good are they? I, personally, will always be able to read and write, and I will most likely maintain a certain level of affluence till the end, but I can tell you this from a first-hand perspective: there are modes of existence that are superior to farming – superior physically, spiritually, intellectually. Horticulture is the next phase, a phase where we will almost all garden at small scales, and once you engage a horticultural reference point, the rest will follow.
hey Marlin, a fellow FF , a tough ol’ yank got flattened by a tree last fall. Luckily his son was with him. He is the dude I make wine with. We are both EMT’s with about 65 years experiance behind us. His son is on the job now and is a paramedic. Coupla broken ribs.No biggy. Although ribs hurt like a bastard. I think that is where the saying “It only hurts when I laugh” came from. He was lucky. I never wear a helmet and he always does. I just got off the bone-box after 31 years. Now I am just a lowly FF. It really gets old after a while. A cut in pay but I really sleep better at night. I have a lot of relatives in town and I was always concerned that I would have to pick them up.
“You can’t be me I’m Unique”
If only that were so… David Duke, if only that were so.
so you dumped 50 plus oz of gold? you are an ass !
“We have higher needs beyond just survival”
Dolphins have sex just for fun, and speak to each other in highly complex languages. My horses play games with each other. Who are you to delineate the biota?
“my property taxes are almost $11,000 per year”
You gotta be roughing it, like *dear old Dad*, in your(/his) 6,000 sq ft Mc Mansion. I grin, as my property taxes are 30% artificially high, at $2,400/yr. I expect them to go down over the next 6-10 years, *EVENTUALLY*.
I suppose you really need your SS then, just to pay off the annual property taxes – *HAH*! I plan on not ever using *either SS, or MC/MA*. But then, I’m still annually pulling from my *rollover IRA* – hehehehehe!!!
I’m rolling in the red, about -$2k/year, after dividends/interest. And that’s *all* costs (all insurance/property taxes/water utilities/gas/electric (maxed green +40% cost)/phone-tv-internet)…
The *ABSOLUTE* first thang I’m thinking of giving up is the *INSURANCE*. 20% profit margins? FSCKING CROOKS. They’ve never given me *SH!T*. *PERIOD*
Plants emit pheromones that attract hunting wasps when they are being munched on by caterpillars, and build molecules of foul-tasting antioxidants and flavonoids in a matter of seconds that make them unpalatable to browsers (which is why browsers always move on to the next plant instead of decimating that one, and one of the many reasons organically grown produce is more nutritious).
Not as much difference as you’d like to believe.
Humans can’t even tell real food from poison…
By the way, Jim, I’m sure you’re not reading this thread anymore, but I really loved the “barbeque bubble” phrase!
God Jim will you STFU about the tattoo’s already. Christ man, it’s just body art but you put it in Every. Single. Fucking. Blog. Are you really that scared of ink on skin. Mother of God, give it a rest.
That burning feeling, in the back of your throat, the one you take pills to control? Yeah, that one. It’s not supposed to be there. If it is it’s because you’re eating poison. Change your diet. The “lower” animals don’t poison themselves. They’re not that stupid. When someone says we’re not like other animals, they’re right. Only humans have lost the way. It’s been a very interesting tangent, for sure, but temporary, and correctable.
I do wonder, however, if belief in god(s) is the norm for humankind, and agnosticism based on hard evidence the exception, flowing from the science enabled by high energy culture. Once we trade book literacy for landscape literacy will belief in the local deity become mostly unavoidable?
“There is nothing left to hold the American Empire together now; its people are divided in a thousand ways, such as no lasting nation can be. In the parlance of our times, America has sacrificed everything for the creed “get rich or die trying”, and now she must surely die….”
I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with a Satanist. But truth is wherever you find it. And it is satan that has divided us in a thousand ways, but it is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah who will unite the world with an IRON FIST, so the earth can enjoy a 1000 years of peace.
Tripp, if your worldview is correct, a violent, disorded society will develop no matter if we have subsidies and safety nets. So why bother with them in the 1st place if they ultimately won’t work? Wouldn’t it be better to use that government spending on programs, that according to you, would help more and more people to survive the coming bad times, like teaching people to live with far less energy usage, or providing goods and services to help our citizens adapt to a permaculture lifestyle?
You might say that the feds aren’t capable of organizing something this radical, but I’m saying that even though your own efforts are admirable, shouldn’t you and many aware others try to adopt a political agenda, because the greatest concentration of resources TODAY lies with the government? Maybe you could launch a “Permaculture Party”. This way you could maximize the number of lives you save.
BTW, I’m not saying I agree with your worldview, just that the next humanitarian step would seem to be a politicalization of your beliefs (if you want to act as a humanitarian).
I am more optimistic about technology advancing in the future than you, but I do realize we’ve entered a pretty scary and hairy period where something got to give. From my perspective it would seem wise to educate myself about alternative lifestyles.
“Humans can’t even tell real food from poison…”
You underestimate the explorers/*readers* that can ID any plant or mushroom species. And even then, many plants are poisonous, unless you know how to produce *tinctures* from the roots or seeds…
Don’t put all us humans into that *generic* bin. I know about barks and seeds from various weeds/trees that grow wild here. I’ve just not felt lucky enough yet, (or needing), to cook the witches’ brew from *wildlife*…
I’ve eaten many ‘shrooms’ around here, but mostly teh hallucinogenic ones (liberty caps/amanita muscaria[fly agaric]). Eyes are open, wanna *talk*, or *read*…
Q, I also agree with you. American civilization today has advanced(?) to the point where we hire people to clean our house for us and mind/pay attention to our children for us while we work. It’s not so strange that we pay for others to educate them as well.
It is true that it’s not the government’s responsibility to provide education for children. It’s the responsibility of the parents.
But what I find most offensive about public education is that it forces ALL children to a standardized education. Every child has different aptitudes and likes. Many of today’s students shouldn’t be students.
It’s cruel to make kids sit at a desk for hours at a time; it’s cruel to force kids to study something they have no interest or ability for.
It makes no sense to force children to a standard 12 year education. For some, it’s necessary, for others, maybe 5 years is enough.
And it is not fair to seize part of people’s income who either have no children or no school-age children to pay for other people’s children’s education.
Q said: “We don’t have Public Shoes and we don’t have Public Groceries…”
———–
We most certainly do and, before I reduced my income, my taxes paid for the large part of the federal budget that went to pay for those government issue (GI) shoes and military meals shipped around the world. There were government toothbrushes, government paid for pillows and government paid for babysitters called drill sergeants.
But I imagine those hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent on those things have never been protested by you.
The words of the wizard Gandalf, from Tolkien’s classic series, come to mind here [paraphrased]: “Do not offer me this ring, Frodo! Understand, I would wield it with the intention of doing good, but it would consume me.”
Bill, you’re obviously a wise man to consider educating yourself in alternative modes of life. I understand your techno-triumphalist view, and agree that it would be the easiest way out. Attractive if nothing else. Unfortunately I think we’ve got ourselves backed into a corner here that unlimited free energy would only exacerbate. If there is free energy available humans will expand into it. As would any other organism. It’s just our nature. So we go on about our business for a while longer until we reach carrying capacity again, and we’re forced to take a long hard look at our options once more. Except this time even more people starve to death. This outcome seems inevitable to me, now or later, and if I had my ‘druthers, I’d just as soon watch it come to a head now, before we bring any more species down in the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth. If for no other reason than the selfish one: that every species that disappears around us makes our persistence on this planet that much more precarious.
It’s a complex thing you offer up for scrutiny here, a national political permaculture movement. And my response should be predictable. Long food chains, like what you have with imperial governments, simply waste too much energy to be sustained in the long term. The metabolic waste of governance at that level can’t be avoided, no matter who is in charge. I have to wonder if the first order of business for a permaculture governor might be to disband the government in order to remove a link from the food chain, and bring energy use one step closer to a sustainable plateau?
I wish I had more to offer, and I hope that permacultural thought will infiltrate local governing bodies as we enter a more ecologically-oriented future, but our ideas of what “humanitarian” mean are obviously vastly different. To me the ideal of humanitarianism is a swift and decisive movement toward a sustainable level of political organization, and the one we’re operating under currently just ain’t it. Pleasant as it might be to think about.
If there is excess capacity there will be despots assuming control of it. If there are despots in control there will be oppression and slavery. Permaculturalists are not despots, and so we go about the business of reworking this operation from the bottom-up. The primary goal of agriculture is the production of excess capacity. That can only continue for so long, when excess capacity is converted to more humans, as it always is. So if farming is what supports political organization greater than the tribal level, and larger governments have, without exception, always brought the local ecosystem to its knees, ending eventually in collapse, tribal organization is where we are probably headed. And the scariest part is, this time “local” means Earth.
Who knows how long it will take, but I would consider making friends with some permies, and learning some new skills. Just in case.
Frodo: Take it!
Gandalf: No, Frodo.
Frodo: You must take it!
Gandalf: You cannot offer me this ring!
Frodo: I’m giving it to you!
Gandalf: Don’t… tempt me Frodo! I dare not take it. Not even to keep it safe. Understand, Frodo. I would use this ring from a desire to do good… But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine.
OK, maybe that’s a bit more than an elected permie would leap to, but you see where I was headed.
“We most certainly do and, before I reduced my income, my taxes paid for the large part of the federal budget that went to pay for those government issue (GI) shoes and military meals shipped around the world. ”
Well said, Soak. I too am willing to live in poverty to avoid the blood of war on my hands. This is the beauty of civilization we’ve been talking about? Blood for oil to make the machine spin? Not from my wagelabor. I’d rather just stop spinning, thanks.
It is the Tribe of Judah that opened the borders to let in the alien hordes. They are proceeding likewise in Europe. Thus divided, the West falls and they can rule a divided, mongrelized population.
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Spectre
‘To be honest with you,’ [well I hope you are]
I lived in Hawaii as a teen, on beaches and plantations so I know what subsistence farming is.
Even if you had 5 tons of Brown Rice and 5 tons of Miso [I think those id be 2 of the ‘A’ list foods]
Ya still need fire to cook, water and if anyone sees you are ‘fat and happy’, will come around to steal yr food.
Yes?
Are you gonna live alone and kill anyone who
walks past the ‘keep out’ sign?
You can forage greens I guess.
It would be nice to maintain the best of what we have now in terms of knowledge at least. Some hi tech for certain common purposes would be nice too if possible. Otherwise the whole ten thousand year spree was for naught.
Probably both thing will happen – as well as a hundred other scenarios. Very high tech enclaves surrounded by low tech populations doing agriculture and/or permaculture.
To a charity I think..its a lunch thats auctioned off, so do a search.
He has a private jet called the “Indefensible”
so no he dont take the bus.
I say hes a real creep!
Do you clip yr birds wings?
are pix of the coops [if you have] up at yr site?
do you have to buy them any food [external costs?].
“It is true that it’s not the government’s responsibility to provide education for children. It’s the responsibility of the parents.”
I couldn’t agree more. With two very young children we’ve taken a long hard look at the education system in this country, and have found it seriously wanting. My wife and I will educate our children by ourselves. Maybe we’ll form a tiny school with a few other children, and a couple more smart adults to help teach them, but public school is right out. So is private of any scale. If for no other rea
There was a sad news story of asian immigrants in nor cal..they hunted for mushrooms and died..
the asian edible and the american poisonous look the same.
And in LA some young guys made datura tea
[its like LSD]..they died..it was a very strong batch of alkaloid that they brewed.
I was thinking along the lines of what you said: Pool some kids from other families together and get some adults to teach them.
And now, goodnight – busy day tomorrow.
You gotta be roughing it, like *dear old Dad*, in your(/his) 6,000 sq ft Mc Mansion.
============
I bought my house in June 1978. It’s 100 years old (construction began in 1911, ended in 1912) and nothing like a McMansion. NJ has the highest property taxes in the country.
Alright. Enough is enough. Vlad can bloviate endlessly in his psychotic rage about the USA but his forays into other cultures need to be called out on. I’ve been reading Jim’s blog for years, and it’s becoming all about Vlad the Invalid, Vlad the Vague, Vlad the Verminous.
‘as opposed to the Abos who were always eating each other’.. this is simple ratbag nonsense from a mind that has no discipline, no analytical skills and no capacity to make up even a believable scenario. There is no record, no songline, no dreamtime, no painting, no message stick , no storytime of this event among any of the more than 800 tribes that make up the Koori people. Vlad cant even bring himself to use their correct name. ‘Abo’?? What kind of low iq mentality uses this term? Vladish Bloviation.
‘Many Aboriginees live a Western Life and have even been raised by Whites. They do miserably is school – their brains are VERY small and their IQ is even lower than the Sub Saharan Africans: 60 as opposed to 70. One interesting point though, the visual part of their brain is larger than that of Whites – evidenly an improvement to help them traverse the Deserts. ‘- Moving over the hideous spelling of the writer here ( Vlad), which points out more than I could of the IQ and size of brain of the writer (VLAD), the proposal is not borne out by research of any recognisable kind. In other words, it’s Vlad Bloviation yet again. It is Vlad EmotionalBloviate. As to the Desert part of the VladBloviate, Vlad ignores completely the non desert dwellers, no doubt because Vlad just doesn’t know anything about that, either.
Speaking as a part Pitjinjarra, part Arunta, of whose language I have invited Vlad to join me in a discussion on this blog in times past, he seems unable to respond except to bloviate on other unrelated matters made up entirely of created nonsense. Time to fold up your makebelive tent, Vlad. Take your medication and stick to what you can fool your fellow Americans with and leave out your fabricated bullshit that you think you can get away with due to some crazed idea of distance. You can’t. It’s the Internet, old chap, your time is long past, and blown away as it should have been.
Thanks for the weekly insights, Jim. Always a pleasure and a necessity, and greetings from Sydney, Au.
p.s., Jim. From the land of a booming economy, 4.9% unemployment, a trade surplus, no bank failures, no home foreclosures, etc, what can I say? my sympathies, genuinely.
p.p.s. The quota allotted by Australia in regard to USA immigrants to AU is very very small, for a very good reason. Think about it, get back to me why you think the reason for that could be. However, USA citizens can become refugees seeking asylum in AU on political grounds perhaps. Maybe. Sometimes. Once , in recent memory, actually. Otherwise, it requires a graduate degree, $500,000.00, ( thats AU dollars, worth currently $1.34 currently) no criminal record, ( ironic, ey? we can grow our own, thanks )under 30 years of age, and of good health. Good luck.
p.p.p.s . For those who wish to suddenly spew out a whole lot of rubbish about Australia, please check facts first. Don’t make a bigger idiot of yourself than you can afford. Again, Good Luck.
progress,conserve = ‘Dad always wanted to go back to Australia, but he died in ’84 and never made it. I’ve always wanted to go back in his honor. If I can get TS to move slowly enough toward TF, I may yet get there.
If I ever go, I’ll take that picture and try to find that beach for him. Any of you Australians have any other suggestions?’
AU has 36,000 kilometers of beaches. That’s 23,000 miles. Could you be more specific? It’s a big island. Luckily for me. You’d be more than welcome as a tourist, and any information you may be seeking re your father’s leave and location could be found at the AU war memorial in Canberra. They have many websites that address your query. As to any other suggestions as to your desire to find a particular beach in AU, no. I don’t have any at all. Except to say his leave was most likely in Sydney, and the beach is most likely to be Bondi, a short tramride from the guest barracks provided for US troops on leave at the time by the NSW Government.
It seems unlikely his leave was in Brisbane, as Brisbane has no beaches within cooee of the City.
It could have been Melbourne, in which case the beach would most likely be St.Kilda beach, again, a short tramride from the barracks provided by the Victorian Govt for US troops on leave in Melbourne.
But I am betting heavily it was Sydney, as Sydney ladies ( my Grandmother included) were inclined to be hospitable to all visiting troops at that time. Whereas your Melbourne ladies were more circumspect, and the Brisbane ladies wouldn’t have a bar of US soldiers at all.
Good luck in your search.
Right Wing Thug says:
“They will PISS IT AWAY, like they always have and always will.”
I answer:
Tell me in what instance money is “not pissed away” ? Money is pissed away always, no matter what, it is always wasted, it is defined as “pissed away” from the outset as it can only ever and always be pissed away (it really can’t do anything else but be wasted, only some think that it is wasted if it is used for C and “productive” if it is used for D while others think that it is wasted if it is used for D and “productive” if it is used for C (and it often coincides nicely with who gains by C and D as in if I gain by C then using it for C is not wasted, you get the idea)), only that the guy getting it always thinks that it is spent wisely since he is getting it, and the guy not getting it always think that it is wasted, go figure.
There is nothing productive that money can do anyways, it is always just a fight, just a contention of resources, just A against B, A wins B loses, A gets “more money”, B gets less money, end of story. Now what is morally, politically or logically – spiritually or metaphysically correct about any of this ? Nothing at all, it is just your same old turdy people with their turdy minds, and that old obsolete clunker of their brain acting like the turd that it really is and just being greedy and hogging up all they can no matter what the excuses and/or the theoretical – moral – religious, you name it models they present to justify that they just want more, want more than you, want to win, want to win the contention of resources and money and goods, and directly or indirectly the distribution of pain and pleasure in such way that more pleasure is handed to the greedy turd of the moment that wins and less pleasure is handed to the pissed off loser of the moment.
Therefore fabian, go build your Rockets to Mars and Trillions of Skyscrapers and stick wild symbols and chemicals and wild electrical signals in that puny brain – mind of yours, misunderstand everything, tear the mind apart, blow it up into billions of pieces and just stick it all back together again in the most crazy random fashion, you will enter some really wild, incredible, unknown universes with laws of physics and experiences beyond any possible thing you can imagine! and this is what all 7 billion turds on earth must do, now, right away, you can do it, go man go, do it, be a good little boy, do it for Mommy, while she cooks in the kitchen and you play in the backyard of your suburban house and your Daddy works at that crappy corporate job that always wants to hose him, go figure.
Another infinite recursion of metaphysical and logical short circuits and mental computer programs got crashed when you said that I write a lot and say little, interesting, I am trying to figure out the difference, wow, that is driving me nuts, go figure.
Quo Vadis ? Baby …
Tom Bombadil could take it and not be corrupted.
Would like a one way ticket to Pandora.
“Diabetes was unknown in aboriginal culture before the white man arrived.”
No, diabetes and a never ending array of “problems” and “sicknesses” were not even perceived as such, were not even considered wrong, or a defect or a sickness until a very specific way of thought created abstract models of perfection or correct or “healthy” that most people should abide too according to pure statistics and consensus as the majority rules, what the majority does or is or how they live or whatever is defined as correct by shear numbers and as such becomes some kind of spiritual and metaphysical value, a target to reach for, a model of “correct”. But in other civilizations or cultures or whatever, they didn’t even notice the difference or maybe just assigned it different meanings or most likely just ignored it all together as in simple cultures you just live and die end of story, there are no complex goals and models and targets to reach. Science and Information has created more problems by simply defining them into existence, inventing them, information invents reality and invents problems and or solutions to no end, and comparing them to some kind of “normal” which in nature doesn’t exist: in nature everything is wrong and abnormal, there is no normal, everything is wrong and bad, there are no models or targets to reach. All of these sicknesses and targets and new targets, new discoveries, new sicknesses and such are all due to a very particular and quirky form of thought our civilization invented, as Man is the Infinitely Programmable Machine.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175781
[quote=”rackedrick”]How do you know that progress is done with? You stated that it was done with many times but where is the evidence?[/quote]
Well I don’t see any really new processes and inventions that can make such radical changes that have been achieved in the last 200 years, so progress is mostly over, we are now just optimizing, just improving, just perfecting the details, etc. Case in point, Facebook or IPHONE etc. are just new combinations of previous applications, Facebook is just a sophisticated forum – blog form, and IPHONE is just a computer put in a small package, etc.
Another case in point, if there was all this research and science and all of this return on investment by putting money and resources in Science, Technology, Research, etc. then why does Google and Microsoft spend billions to no end in just buying up other corporations and not in the new great discoveries that are still to be made ? Because they know that it is over, that now it is just fun and games seeing who wins and loses, just the contention, the fight counts, A against B and who wins, end of story.
Why did the FED give trillions to banks and not invest it all in the new great imaginary Return on Investments that Research and Development and Technology should give back ? Because they know that is is over, 90 % of the really important results have been discovered, applied and achieved, now we are left with breadcrumbs, therefore split the brain (like the atom), crack it open, change it wildly and crazily, connect it all backwards, upside down, in the most crazy random way possible, like a turbulent flow of liquids, like a stellar plasma that is going crazy, in all kinds of directions, no patterns, no models, no rules, no logic, and this new mind will enter a new universe with new laws of physics, new laws of philosophy and metaphysics and existence and contradiction, wild symbols going crazy, and on and on…
Little Fabian found some spelling errors in my previous block of text, so I have to repost it again. What a pain in the ass he is and all these little pests always correcting me, go figure. First gear its all right, Second gear hold on tight, third gear out of sight (and Groovy too). Sock it to me!
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175781
[quote=”rackedrick”]How do you know that progress is done with? You stated that it was done with many times but where is the evidence?[/quote]
Well I don’t see any really new processes and inventions that can make such radical changes that have been achieved in the last 200 years, so progress is mostly over, we are now just optimizing, just improving, just perfecting the details, etc. Case in point, Facebook or IPHONE etc. are just new combinations of previous applications, Facebook is just a sophisticated forum – blog form, and IPHONE is just a computer put in a small package, etc.
Another case in point, if there was all this research and science and all of this return on investment by putting money and resources in Science, Technology, Research, etc. then why does Google and Microsoft spend billions to no end in just buying up other corporations and not in the new great discoveries that are still to be made ? Because they know that it is over, that now it is just fun and games seeing who wins and loses, just the contention, the fight counts, A against B and who wins, end of story.
Why did the FED give trillions to banks and not invest it all in the new great imaginary Return on Investments that Research and Development and Technology should give back ? Because they know that it is over, 90 % of the really important results have been discovered, applied and achieved, now we are left with breadcrumbs, therefore split the brain (like the atom), crack it open, change it wildly and crazily, connect it all backwards, upside down, in the most crazy random way possible, like a turbulent flow of liquids, like a stellar plasma that is going crazy, in all kinds of directions, no patterns, no models, no rules, no logic, and this new mind will enter a new universe with new laws of physics, new laws of philosophy and metaphysics and existence and contradiction, wild symbols going crazy, and on and on…
Uh oh, Alexandra (HOT bitch) found an error in another block of text I wrote, it is correction time again, go figure. And blog hog time again…
Sounds familiar doesn’t it ? Sock it to me! It is so Groovy and out of sight…
Give me five!
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/07/birthday-card.html
Right Wing Thug says:
“They will PISS IT AWAY, like they always have and always will.”
I answer:
Tell me in what instance money is “not pissed away” ? Money is pissed away always, no matter what, it is always wasted, it is defined as “pissed away” from the outset as it can only ever and always be pissed away (it really can’t do anything else but be wasted, only some think that it is wasted if it is used for C and “productive” if it is used for D while others think that it is wasted if it is used for D and “productive” if it is used for C (and it often coincides nicely with who gains by C and D as in if I gain by C then using it for C is not wasted, you get the idea)), only that the guy getting it always thinks that it is spent wisely since he is getting it, and the guy not getting it always think that it is wasted, go figure.
There is nothing productive that money can do anyways, it is always just a fight, just a contention of resources, just A against B, A wins B loses, A gets “more money”, B gets less money, end of story. Now what is morally, politically or logically – spiritually or metaphysically correct about any of this ? Nothing at all, it is just your same old turdy people with their turdy minds, and that old obsolete clunker of their brain acting like the turd that it really is and just being greedy and hogging up all they can no matter what the excuses and/or the theoretical – moral – religious, you name it models they present to justify that they just want more, want more than you, want to win, want to win the contention of resources and money and goods, and directly or indirectly the distribution of pain and pleasure in such a way that more pleasure is handed to the greedy turd of the moment that wins and less pleasure is handed to the pissed off loser of the moment.
Therefore fabian, go build your Rockets to Mars and Trillions of Skyscrapers and stick wild symbols and chemicals and wild electrical signals in that puny brain – mind of yours, misunderstand everything, tear the mind apart, blow it up into billions of pieces and just stick it all back together again in the most crazy random fashion, you will enter some really wild, incredible, unknown universes with laws of physics and experiences beyond any possible thing you can imagine! and this is what all 7 billion turds on earth must do, now, right away, you can do it, go man go, do it, be a good little boy, do it for Mommy, while she cooks in the kitchen and you play in the backyard of your suburban house and your Daddy works at that crappy corporate job that always wants to hose him, go figure.
Another infinite recursion of metaphysical and logical short circuits and mental computer programs got crashed when you said that I write a lot and say little, interesting, I am trying to figure out the difference, wow, that is driving me nuts, go figure.
Quo Vadis ? Baby …
To the knee-jerk fake conservatives now known
as Republicans I say … DAMNED RIGHT IT IS
“CLASS WARFARE”. And that “warfare” has been
conducted by the rentier and CEO classes (whose
jobs are immune from offshoring so they get
Socialist protections while the “little people”
must fight each other for crumbs in the capitalist
piranha tank) against the middle class.
It’s a global “race to the bottom” to see which
tribes/races/nationalities will be sold out by
their governments for slave wages and horrendous
environmental degradation like the maquiladora
towns of Northern Mexico or the farms in China
irrigated with SLUDGEWATER.
So my message to these Randian/Straussian/
Friedmanian pricks is that it’s time to take
the money back that they’ve systematically
LOOTED from their countries. And the biggest
looters are NOT free-market producers. They’re
the financial service jerks all over the world
combined with state-subsidized, politicized
industries like the US CORN ETHANOL industry
which is an intellectual and ethical DISGRACE.
Yeah, it’s class warfare ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
BY THE RENTIER CLASS. The fact that the middle
class wants its money back is cited as Commie
mania by the radio Republikooks. They forgot
who started this class WARFARE and if Obama
doesn’t wake out of his stupor and TAX THE SHIT
OUT OF THE EMBEZZLERS OF AMERICA, the “war” will
end soon with 10% STRUCTURAL unemployment and a
permanent underclass that’s 200% larger than
even ten years ago.
Then again, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin are
closet Straussians like the Project for a New
American Century sociopaths … we are all the
expendible “little people”. It makes me barf
to hear guys like them PRETEND that they give
a shit about Gulf War vets, truck drivers,
manual laborers, etc.. I’ve met people like
this all my life. They clink glasses with the
millionaire punditocracy at Beltway parties and
chuckle about their entertainment SHTICK.
And the greatest horror of all is that some of
their liberal “adversaries” clink glasses right
along with them because the MO’ MONEY PARTY can
APPEAR to be Democrat as well as Republican.
That’s why I think our Republic as lost. It’s
toast. The hiring of Summers, Geithner, and
the rehiring of Bernanke and Gates tells you
how “progressive” Obama is. That is … he’s
a fraud.
E.
Vlad,
Noble savage worship seems to have started in
the 1960s in a culture-changing way. Texts
disingenuously started portraying history as
a conflict between “bad” land grabbers and
“good” primitives.
Take the American Indian, for example. Long
before the Honkie entered North America, these
tribes were annihilating each other with quite
awesome efficiency. Their social organization
was weak which is why there were innumerable
tribes and no “we are all one people”
egalitarianism.
You see similar sorts of revisionist histories
of many other ethnic groups and it’s all
nonsense. It’s intellectually offensive to
see many groups in the world today portrayed
as oppressed “Bambis” when the history of their
native lands is all genocide against their own
brothers.
Finally, whether we’re talking Asians, Blacks,
Honkies, Latinos, or whatever … no one can
dispute that it was, and still is, the dreaded
Honkie who invented all the things modern peoples
want from Ipads to cars to stereos to flush
toilets to modern medicine to scientific progress.
Even the much-vaunted Asian tribes are mostly
amazing COPIERS of the innovations of others
than innovators themselves.
And I repeat to my liberal comrades here on
CFN … there aren’t a hundred people of ANY
race who are HONEST about issues of race and
ethnicity … especially the issue of WHO is
racist. We ALL are … and always have been.
Yet hardly a word is uttered herein about the
racism of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians against
… EVERYONE else. Do you think Asians, as a
rule, like Blacks?? Heh, heh, heh. There’s
an OCEAN full of bullshit about race. I refuse
to swim in that ocean. I refuse to put blinders
on my intellect and ignore DATA.
E.
Fabian, besides being a sandbox-level potty-mouth,
is so stupid that he doesn’t even know American
history back to 1980. Sorry dude, but the
“redistribution” that you think I stand for
HAS ALREADY HAPPENED AND HAS BEEN HAPPENING
FOR THIRTY YEARS.
Supply side economics your fave, eh? When Geo.
Bush ran against Reagan even HE called it “voodoo
economics” and old Muddlehead was ABSOLUTELY
CORRECT. The rich, in America and everywhere
else throughout history are known, statistically,
for their LACK OF CHARITY and for RESOURCE HOARDING, especially money.
They do NOT, and NEVER have, “created jobs” with
their extra lucre. Banks right now are HOARDING.
You fail to understand that government ARISES
because of the tendency for greed and malfeasance
in the powerful to get out of hand. Government
is the Newtonian RESULT of “absolute power
corrupting absolutely”. Sure, when things get
out of balance and we get a bloated PUBLIC
SECTOR, that’s no good either.
However, a BALANCED point of view is never of
interest to a polarizing, sensationalizing,
scatological bastard like you now, is it?
E.
With regards to:
“These weird minds perceive a new universe, actually exit our universe and enter a new one that has nothing to do with ours anymore (hence the end of the idea of progress or a sequence of events that lead up to an aggregated conclusion, this disconnects the sequence, there is no longer any idea of time, or linear progress, or before or after, it can no longer be compared to what existed before because before is totally unrelated to the Instant Singularity), ”
Actually, automatic for the people always disconnects a sequence from another, you turn the corner and see a new house, the sequence of events that constructed that house occurred step by step sequentially but in parallel to you, but the information you obtained, you got all together, in one shot, all of a sudden, instant information, a new configuration of information that is disconnected from the previous (but occurred in parallel) so an instant new world (just like the Instant Singularity). Also a sequence in time or space is equivalent they are just snapshots of information whether organized spatially or temporally (or mixed, hmm.. new ideas?).
But then cause and effect, the step by step sequence of life just makes it reasonable, makes it a slow gentle flow that justifies each step according to the previous, but these steps are arbitrary, are not connected at all, they are just one snapshot after another of a configuration of Matter, Mass Energy showing itself off in a new combination, in a new style, but the style changes slowly so you can follow it and compare it (and judge it) to the previous and can remember it and deal with it (no sudden changes and sudden emotions or pains/pleasures) so you can rationalize it and put it into some fairy tale model of reality that is supposed to be linear, smooth, cause and effect, mathematical: but nothing is further from the truth, reality is chopped up, no logic, no cause and effect, no model, and all of a sudden, when an instantaneous change occurs and surprises you, you realize this and stop believing in the symbols and denotations and religions. On a side note, a modified mind used to constant wild changes (and wild swings of sensations, emotions, wild swings of pain/pleasure, etc.) would feel completely lost (or bored ?) in such a slow linear moving world as ours is (or is our world just a game between fast changing and slow changing, information is fast changing – instantaneous, the physical world is slow changing, light weight material (information and energy cheap) against heavy weight material, the information economy, ever faster changes (to hose you quickly?) and the old economy based on manufacturing heavy weight goods that have inertia ?).
Actually most of the myth of new and better and innovation and progress is based on the comparison and confrontation of a new configuration to the previous one, or to what was previously known: so when a Progressive Rock group like Henry Cow made their music, what counted was the contrast and surprise with what was known previously, was the surprise factor, the comparison, the way the information was set up, in such a different way that gave it its novelty and worth and value. But you need just one example of contrast to do the trick, all the others that imitate this just repeated a contrast that created diminishing returns, since the first one is the master contrastor. Same with so many other items and entities, the first Personal Computers greatly contrasted with the previous configurations, now each new model contrasts less and less hence a diminishing return, and so on.
So, most activities, endeavors, inventions, configurations, whatever have mostly run their course, now we just combine the elements in different ways, but the results are diminishing and we get diminishing returns: that your car has 4 airbags is such an abstract and hypothetical value of novelty compared to the luxury cars of the 1960s, there is no comparison, each new luxury car of the 1960s really seemed so new and interesting compared to airbags.
Note to Fabian, read the writings of Jefferson
to get a handle on the idea that part of the
“checks and balances” system of America was
to counterbalance, and I *quote* Jefferson
himself, “… monied interests”.
You’re just another fake conservative Republikook
whose knowledge of the origins of BOTH the
Constitution (and the ideas behind it) and
the origins of our current ECONOMIC DECLINE
haven’t the faintest overlap with factual history.
But you’re amusing because people who use your
kind of language are NEVER over 30 and the
under-30s in the United States are rhetorically,
historically, intellectually, and civically
“challenged”. In other words, you’re RETARDED
in the very literal sense of the word because
you mouth hackneyed talking points of your
favorite talking heads and I doubt that you
haven’t read five books cover to cover in your
sad LIFE.
You’re just an incendiary KID. That’s all.
If you debated without all your “fucktards”
and “morons” and “asshats” and so on your
words themselves wouldn’t carry enough weight
to get a response so you do what all you
Gen-Y monkies do … you throw tantrums to
get attention.
E.
Pepp
Completely agree with your characterisation of Vlad the Bloviater.
Vlad
your pseudo intelectual rants can’t disguise your narrow minded bigotted view of the world. It must be infuriating to have all these non anglo saxon people (of colour to boot) not giving you the respect that you so crave and believe is your birthright as a result of your white skin.
How do you feel after each time you have to pay that coffee coloured lady Laquisha, she of ill repute, to feign interest in your shrivelled penis? How does it feel to know that despite your deep seated racism, its only those coffee coloured ladies that get your inner Nascar motor running?? How do you feel knowing that should your Klaven buddies find out about your regular trysts with ‘a dark person’ they’ll likely beat you within an inch of your life with a baseball bat for having committed ‘race crime’ and that will be the end of the only circle of friends that you have?
Well Vladdy you know you can give up slender leggy Laquisha anytime for one of the sisters of your good old boys from the Klaven provided you like ladies weighing 300+ pounds who are missing their front teeth and shave their multiple chins once a week and have swastikas tattooed on various interesting (when under 170 pounds) parts of their bodies.
Now Vlad the man with verbal diarrhea do your best.
Second note to Fabian … one of the most
hilarious aspects of your philosophy in
defending against “redistribution” is
that it made a lot of sense … A HUNDRED
YEARS AGO.
When the titans of industry like Henry Ford
were around, these people were involved in
PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY and deserved to keep
their lucre far, far, FAR more than the
sociopaths who hit the money lottery now.
Look at the, to use your filthy jargon, “asshats”
who strike it rich now … Zuckerberg,
subsidized corn ethanol farmers, banksters …
you seek to allow THESE kinds of people
protection from Federal taxation??
By inference, this is EXACTLY your point i.e.,
that money is “neutral” and if you strike it
rich, well, good on ya, right?? Yet because
of your profound lack of financial and
historical education, you fail to see that
plutocrats now create MONEY for themselves
but they create NO CAPITAL. Real capital,
the kind created by real CAPITALISTS, can
be CAPITALIZED UPON by all of society because
their work represented breakthroughs that
made EVERYONE’S lives more opulent. Note
how my LANGUAGE illuminates for you what
CAPITALISM REALLY IS … when it existed.
You haven’t a clue.
Capitalism has been DECAPITALIZED and replaced
by “money-fication”. Mark Zuckerberg is hella
rich but he ain’t no capitalist. He’s just
another kid who started a fad which adds no
value to society and, indeed, may SUBTRACT
a helluva lot. Remember MYSPACE? Once worth
$500M it disappeared with hardly a whimper a
week ago for THIRTY MILLION … six percent of
its putative “value” of just three years ago.
What “capital” is Citibank creating right now?
How about Google … they’re terrif, right??
The Fabians of the world (and the Limbaughs
and Hannitys) haven’t the faintest notion of
what CAPITAL really is nor do they have the
slightest idea what the difference is between
it and MONEY.
Capital innovates and liberates, money doesn’t.
Capital multiplies through the principle of
UTILITY, money doesn’t. Fabian’s Neoconservative
pals in the Republican party are SOCIALIST
flaks like Paul Wolfowitz … Marxists who
“reincarnated” as “globalists”.
REAGAN created modern big government. Yup,
Reagan. The ruse was that because it inflated
the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT it could be infinitely
rationalized as “national defense”. Eisenhower
warned us about this. Nobody, and I mean
NOBODY, listened.
So we have the specter of a Democrat, Obama,
rehiring Gates, promoting Petraeus, and getting
involved in the same game as PNAC what with
Libya, Yemen, and so on. He might as well
apply to be the adopted son of Bill Kristol.
E.
I think that you’re full of shit with your privatization rant. First of all, yes, the schooling is free to the family using it at the time, irregardless of their income or contribution to the tax coffers, because it has been provided by the government. So although it is not “free”, just like nothing is free, it has been provided to the family in question for free even if they are on welfare. And private industry is not more competent than government. The people who run the navy, for instance, are infinitely smarter than the fuckups running the merchant marine, which of course is private industry. Also, the government built all the streets we drive on as well. The streets were not built by the trucking companies, were they? In fact if the government had neglected to build the streets there would be no trucking companies. And I still maintain that the airlines should’ve been nationalized after 9/11. Would you claim also that the airlines are well run? I don’t see how the government could possibly do a worse job of running the airlines frankly.
True, if there were no public education then new types of private schools would emerge. These schools would probably be priced to a level where most coould afford them, as of course you cannot sell a service which costs too much money.
Public education should be rationed in the sense that those who are uneducable, a sizable chunk of the population, would NOT be permitted to attend school. Public policy should encourage creation of jobs for stupid people who cannot cope with school, as we are never all going to attain middle class status.
According to the tax rates we have around here if you’re paying $11,000 in property taxes then your house must be worth $ 550,000. I’m sorry but you’re not going to get me to feel sorry for someone who lives in a half a million dollar house. Maybe you should sell your house and move to something smaller if you hate paying taxes so much.
Again, public education costs so much because we’re misguidedly trying to school all the dumb-fucks. Yes, dumb-fucks do really exist; everyone is not intelligent. In fact, only about 2.5% of the population is considered intellectually gifted on standardized I.Q. tests. Private schools are not going to do any better teaching all the dumb-fucks. And they are dumb-fucks. That’s why they don’t learn. You can’t blame everyhthing on the teachers especially when the brighter kids in their classes are actually learning.
I think you’re kind of missing the point. I’m nearly sixty. If this goes down I probably won’t make it. Consequently I don’t really give a shit. Most other people aren’t going to make it either, and that includes all of the diligent vegetable gardening homesteaders. But no, I don’t anticipate shooting anyone and everyone who comes wandering down my dirt road.
I am actually more concerned with tax avoidance prior to collapse. If and when the collapse comes I will probably be too old and feeble to do much about it, and would probably accept the fact that I was basically a goner. But in any event, far northern Nevada has a climate more like Idaho than Las Vegas.
I envy you growing up in Hawaii. I lived there in ’78 & ’79. Do you know how to surf?
Oh no, I had a typo in my post! Beat me up I’m one of the dumb-fucks! I’ll have to come back under a new name like Spidey and start proof-reading my posts better!
Bravo, E., bravo!
I’m sitting here clapping at your posts.
Your post to me could not have been more perfectly stated and what a dystopian view for the future of civilization these people have. As W. said “Sometimes money trumps everything.”
Of course they call it class warfare when you try to change course, let’s see, I’ve quoted some people I’ve heard in the past to those are against globalism: you’re a protectionist, you’re an isolationist. That was a tactic that Milton Friedman used against any opposition.
The idea behind the shock doctrine is to tear a society down and remake it for the economic benefit of global oligarchy. Oh and if they can get people to all embrace one religion that would serve their purposes even more.–making the world safer for McDonald’s.
Yes, I don’t know why people understand that all the principles of conservatism are of a different era. Things don’t work the way they used to because we’re global and in the process of destroying the compact of the people with their governments, while making the corporatists more powerful.
Forget about peak oil for just a moment because this is going to destroy us before that will.(that will be the coup de grace)
I’m wondering whether you have done any reading of Michael Hudson. He has been describing the mechanics of this neo-feudalism for some time.
It’s absolutely laughable to think that a bunch of iPhone wielding, WalMart shopping, air conditioned softies could compete for one second with people who actually had to think through, cradle to grave, what they wanted out of life. It becomes clearer to me every day that people like you are so out of touch with the physicality of how things work that you would be a ward of someone responsible within 24 hours of a collapse scenario. It’s utterly pathetic, the way you attempt to philosophize your way out of responsibility for yourself. The very notion that someone should be GIVING you a salary and cheap rent belies the uselessness damn near everyone around here attaches to your name. Inwardly you are ashamed of who you are, and you should be, that makes sense, because you and your “philosophy” are wholly useless. To use Eleuthero’s words, the system you promote creates no capital, and worse, it destroys every shred of capital that man molded and Nature provided.
No need to respond. I’m leaving for the mountains for a week in a few hours and have a lot to do between now and then. I need just a bit of rest from a life that requires intelligent thought and planning, a whole lot of initial labor, and most importantly, doesn’t rely on others to function.
Stop being a parasite.
It’s pointedly germane to internalize the concept that folks like the resident nigger-hater and Pud-Pud (in one of several incarnations) are simply here to make the rest of us GO AWAY and STOP READING AND DISCUSSING KUNSTLER’S IDEAS AND THEIR RAMIFICATIONS.
That is their focus; that is their desire; it may be what they’re PAID to do.
Alrighty then… continue, and please attempt to keep that in mind.
“Tom Bombadil could take it and not be corrupted.”
Sure, that goes without saying. But unfortunately we finds ourselves short of even one Tom Bombadil in this culture.
Marlin (and many others).
I’d like to respond, but no time right now!
Lllllllater on.
I’ll second my appreciation of your recent rants here. Also, is there any greater word than honkie? Whoever first coined that word is to be congratulated.
The rich bastard lobby loves to point out that 55% of income taxes are paid by the rich. They are overlooking all of the taxes other than property taxes and income taxes paid by the rest of us, who pay most of the sales taxes and government license fees.
Other young people I know just don’t get it when it comes to politics and economics since the Reagan fiasco. A 35 year old lawyer girl I went to barber college with thinks I’m nuts when I rant that it’s been “downhill since 1973”, much as if I’m mourning the passing of Jerry Garcia or something equally inane. She’s a Republican from a family with no money. She’s now shacked up with money though. The people I watch the Browns with are all Republicans. They think that Democrats are effeminate! Why do I put up these imbeciles? My three closest buddies are all either democrats or else socialists though. All is not lost.
“Very high tech enclaves surrounded by low tech populations doing agriculture and/or permaculture.”
Destroyers surrounded by creators. But probably true. Should be interesting to watch unfold at the very least.
“Do you clip yr birds wings?
are pix of the coops [if you have] up at yr site?
do you have to buy them any food [external costs?].”
No, no, and yes. For the poultry, not the rabbits. I’m going to try to grow the grain and beans for my poultry, but haven’t done so yet. I feed them a lot of insect-ruined produce though. I’ll work on getting some pics of the animal systems posted soon and let you know.
“Capital innovates and liberates, money doesn’t.
Capital multiplies through the principle of
UTILITY, money doesn’t.”
Yes, but that cycle is over, done, dead, capitalism for the most part has run its course, it was so very connected to Technology and Science and Innovation, but even more so to Consumption and Consumerism, and all of these “growing” markets, but most of these have run their course at least in the mostly developed world (the “adult” world that can’t “grow” anymore) USA, EU and JAPAN (along with some others like Canada, South Korea, Australia,etc.). In fact the only hope for some more growth is coming from China, India, Brazil and other developing and growing countries as they increase their consumption of consumer goods (and corporations profit from this), but even those countries will hit a wall, I phantom that not more than 300 million people in all will become middle class before all the negative feedback loops start kicking in, like high House prices and Rents (already happening in China), high government expenditures, debts, outsourcing to the next cheapest turd country available etc.
So this is a systems problem, I would phantom to say that not even the rich and corporations and capitalists know what is going on anymore, they don’t even have the slightest clue of what is happening to that cycle, that repetitive pattern of new invention, commercialization, growing markets, investment into it, profit, jobs, etc. that really worked so well for the last 200 years or so: now we are at the end of the cycle, the pattern, the game is mostly over, now we are in something new. I don’t even think the rich do it really “on purpose”, they could care less, they just get the cash automatically because the systems and decisions operating just hand it over to them for free, like the FED and Europe’s BANK simply printing trillions and handing it over to banks which hand it over to the rich, all for free, all for fun and games.
What they really should have done is kill all real estate values, slash them all down violently worldwide by 90 %, and call all real estate loans a total loss, and completely fail the banks and all the investors who put money into these things.
On another note, why do the HOT bitches ph*ck ? Why do people ph*ck ? Why do they enjoy and have pleasure and gain, and have fun ? Why not me ? Why am I the loser and a puny pussy whip, puny impotent shrinking violet, puny crap that is grateful that the next heartbeat actually occurs ? Why do I then hate all their guts so deeply, why does Bustin (and the other HOT bitches on this blog like Alexandra, San Jose Mommy, you name it, all and everyone) ph*ck and enjoy ? Why does he do that to me ? (and all the Niggers and Latinos and all others) why does everyone do that to me and kill me ? why do they have pleasure, why are their needs satisfied, any needs, even like if they are hungry they eat and then are satisfied, and all other possible needs and wants ? Why does that make me crazy with hate, rage, envy and anger ? Why do I think they all should burn in hell for infinite time and infinite pain while only me, out of thousands of trillions of pleasure balls enjoying, only me be one pleasure ball, and all of the others become pain balls ? I hate everyone’s gut, kill them all kill and destroy and demolish this total reality, I win, you see, even Mommy says I win!
This is what Matter did to me. This is what the Laws of Physics did to me. Now how can that be fixed ? It can’t therefore I am a pissed of loser, I have been defeated by Mass Energy and Matter (or maybe if I split my brain and change its design I can win).
Therefore kill Nature and Mass Energy and Matter, kill all and everything, if all dies I win, finally, but I wouldn’t be there to enjoy (but could suffice if I just kill one, namely myself maybe).
On another note, what is the speed of Time ? How fast does Time travel ? Well information has infinite speed, it is faster than the speed of light which is always associated with some physical entity, but information is pure abstraction and has infinite speed, since all travel in space is just a configuration of information changing constantly as you move and all sequences in time are also a configuration of information changing constantly, hence time travel and space travel are one and the same, hence the real speed limit of the universe is not the speed of light, but the speed of information which is infinite by definition.
Amen, may GOD be with you.
“It would be nice to maintain the best of what we have now in terms of knowledge at least. Some hi tech for certain common purposes would be nice too if possible. Otherwise the whole ten thousand year spree was for naught.”
Not to beat a dead horse, but permaculture aspires to do just that. Take the best ideas from all cultures, not just the modern high-tech version, and integrate them into a working model that maintains a fairly affluent, ultra low impact, if not net-productive, lifestyle in the descent context.
It’s the classic “drop back and punt” move. Freely adopt some pretty serious austerity measures now while we can work out the details without starving to death, so that we can hang onto some sense of affluence post-collapse. As an example, I just spent $250 and two hours of my time to install a solar attic fan, which will run until it doesn’t, and probably not be replaced. The assumption of course is that air conditioning will be a no-go in a lower energy future, but that spending that $250 now will keep our house about 5 degrees cooler than it would be otherwise. Affluence of a lesser sort than today, for sure, but meaningful in a post-industrial future without AC. That’s a classic “high-tech” permaculture move, all 12.6 watts of it; the low-tech version might be building an earth integrated, passive solar, thermal mass home, and giving both AC AND fans a miss. Although most of us are doing it because we want to at this point, not because we’re being forced to. I have mega connections in this little town. I could get another “real job” if I wanted one. But I don’t. I really like what we’re doing, I feel good about it, peak oil or not, and I definitely work hard in my own ways.
And like I said, we’re building up our library quite rapidly, both with useful post-industrial and preparation literature, and the classics of our age. I’ll be adding Earth Abides to the list. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
And now, if you fine folks will excuse me, I have a cool mountain stream to make my way towards. See you next week. Or not…
I’m certainly no TrippT, or Rip, but I gotta admit, for an amatuer, my garden is coming up pretty nice. Yesterday, after cutting trees, picked a basket of snow peas, wife sautee’d them up in butter whilst I barbecued 3 Brown Trout, caught in the AM by my brother in the Farmington River, on the grill (charcoal, not gas).
Now that’s good eatin’!
-Marlin
FYI: Elaine Meinel Supkis rips JHK a new one in her offering today under “Links”, Culture of Life News. Kind of echoes your (and others’) sentiments about the tatoo wearing masses! No mention of Cheez Doodles, however.
“Inwardly you are ashamed of who you are, and you should be, that makes sense, because you and your “philosophy” are wholly useless.”
“Stop being a parasite”
Ok, criticism accepted, I am so ashamed of myself, I know, I suck and so forth and so on, it is all fine with me, it is all ok for me, I am worthless, useless, but tell me:
1) What other possible mechanism besides Free Salaries and Cheap Rents is available for millions of unemployed and poor worldwide in a world economy that is eliminating all kinds of labor worldwide ever more by using technology, automation and cheap third world salaries ? Do you know of any other solution that could work ?
2) Weren’t all the bubbles that were created by Real Estate prices going up for no reason, and all those who gained, all the trillions the FED gave to banks and others for free, and all the trillions the rich and corporations have worldwide from profit (read using 100 dollar a month factory workers at FOXCONN China for example to build IPHONES, etc.) by parasites ?
How may parasites are there in the world ? And even if I am a small parasite, I am small, how many BIG parasites are there in the world ?
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/07/birthday-card.html
“True, if there were no public education then new types of private schools would emerge. These schools would probably be priced to a level where most could afford them, as of course you cannot sell a service which costs too much money.”
Yes you can: services (and goods) that cost “too much money” are sold all the time to create the loan and debts, just look at Health Care and Real Estate prices. And I corrected a spelling error, say thanks.
People who are highly motivated and who have demonstrated that they are capable of handling academic work will take out loans to attend college. That is not the same as persons of limited means borrowing money to send their overwhelmingly dysfunctional rug-rats to elementary school where they of course will inevitably fail to learn anything. So, if there were no public schools such people would probably neglect their children’s education entirely. This is why we have public schools. That people expect too much from the public schools is not a convincing argument that they should be abolished. Rather, our expectations should be right-sized to something more in accordance with reality, and the fact is, very few people are academically inclined. Those who are anti-intellectual will engage in such activity only reluctantly and then only if forced by a much larger adult who has the power to punish them for their indifference or recalcitrance. Why do people who once taught school for a few misguided years have to explain this shit to everyone else ad infinitum ad nauseum?
This is the value of public schools: when I taught basic reading and G.E.D. at Job Corps virtually everyone entering the program could at least read the racing form. We were told, “if they don’t feel like working today don’t fight with them, just let them read the sports page that day.” Do you think these people could have read even the sports page if they hadn’t been literally forced to attend school? Everyone deserve to at least be coddled through elementary school to give them a chance to demonstrate their ability. Once they’re big enough to beat the teachers up however, all bets are off. If they become violently disinclined to cooperate then they should be tossed out. This in no way translates to eliminating public education entirely just because perhaps half of the high school kids are shit-heads. Let the shit-heads get crappy little jobs for awhile until they realize that maybe a G.E.D. would be a good idea. In any event, our public schools are way too fancy and cost way too much money. Even if education were entirely privatized all the poor people would be getting vouchers from the government anyway.
And, to return to your customary “free salaries & cheap rents” rant: we already do have such things. They are called [1] social security disability and [2] public housing. How about if we try trade policies which discourage off-shoring of jobs and homesteading, both urban & rural.
Why did you change your screen name from Spider to OLD 69? Maybe I should change my name to something more entertaining like “Professor Driftwood”, my nickname in the navy. Now I’ve given my identity away to those few who know that name.
“How about if we try trade policies which discourage off-shoring of jobs and homesteading, both urban & rural.”
Badly constructed sentence so sorry to you all. It sounds like I’m trying to discourage homesteading as well as off-shoring of jobs. As pointed out repeatedly this skein by “E” in the old days before Ronnie Rayguns we didn’t need to come up with policy initiatives to rectify some sort of all pervading governmental stupidity because Reagan hadn’t yet had a chance to fuck the entire country up the culu, as the Mexicans are fond of saying. That we’ve been forced to address this sort of shit today is simply beyond belief to anyone born before say, 1970. And we do need homesteading both in the inner cities and in rural areas.
i wish our immigration requirements were like australia’s. do those requirements apply the same way to non european/ american applicants. besides being virtuous societies, both australia and canada have relatively small populations on gigantic land masses. if that can be maintained along with their virtuous dominant cultures then they will remain prosperous. i have never been to australia, but in canada both capitalism and socialism seem to work better there than here in the u.s. i know a lot of posters on this blog say that there was never a “leave it to beaver” society, but we did have a more virtuous society in the past. both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of its demise.
i believe both canada and australia retain some of what america has lost in the last forty years. nothing stays the same and you can’t turn back the clock. obviously, what the u.s. is doing now is not working. the larger and more diverse the population becomes the harder real reform becomes. sheer inertia makes it hard to steer the ship away from the iceberg. if australia ever faces a chinese invasion force sailing over the horizon, its old ally will probably be flat of its back powerless to help.
Vlad
your pseudo intelectual rants can’t disguise your narrow minded bigotted view of the world.
=================
Dos, when expressing your contempt for someones intellect and views (bigoted) it is extremely important that your own writing be pristine. Your failure on this score is downright comical.
Besides your misspelling of intellectual and bigoted please be reminded that sentences begin with uppercase letters.
P.S. Based on your spelling of colour and characterisation I’m guessing you’re from Canada, Britain or Australia??
My 4th was spent similar to Jim’s. I too noticed the contrast of a resort area complete with a nearby jet port and the surrounding beauty of National and State Parks. As a follower of global catabolic collapse (thank you John Michael Greer) the new normal is all around us. Contrast a $4.3 million estate in foreclosure and our meeting a cascading water fall after a two mile hike. It reminded me of Jim’s earlier entry about the state of things in Greece. Tear gas on the street, but the goat still grazes in the meadow. Overlooking it all and completely unconcerned.
The play money is gone. On to the next new normal.
Badly constructed sentence so sorry to you all. It sounds like I’m trying to discourage homesteading as well as off-shoring of jobs.
=============
Bub, I’d like to respond regarding these two issues but I don’t know what “homesteading” is. Please inform me.
I already have opinions on discouraging the off-shoring of jobs. Namely, that it cannot work to a meaningful extent in a world shrunk by technology. This problem will not go away until the salaries for transferable jobs/labor/work reach a common sea level.
Personally, I could be an isolationist in a heartbeat, giving the rest of the world the finger, but the realist in me knows it will never work.
Nice going Fabulicious,You really are quite the financial wizard. Gold is up another 20 bucks today. Keep up the good work and you will soon spend all of your allowance for the week. Nice going. Better go see Mommy and see if you can get an advance.
They dont know the fate that awaits them so they dont fly away.
Poor birds!
Hi ya Marlin, That is good eatin’! ya gotta love those fresh snow peas, I just wish they could take the heat. Mine are just about done for the season. I’ll do them up again for the fall season. How big were those Browns? Did you know The Farmington River is the only river to flow in all four cardinal directions in the Northern Hemisphere.
‘be reminded that sentences begin with uppercase letters.’
who made you king?
ANYONE HAVE COMMENTS ON THE DUST STORM IN ARIZONA?
Photos at Yahoo. 50 miles wide?
“I think we all need to start providing our ideas too, and somehow try to generate a consensus as to the direction we want to head.
Then of course we have to start working to achieve those goals.
Anybody else want to work at some goals? Big effort, but nothing happens until someone starts.”
Prior to to goal-setting, I believe, we will do well to figure out just who we are before deciding what to do. I trust we have the genius, gifts, and potential for enthusiasm to solve all our problems. I derive my inspiration from this:
Avatar Meher Baba, from Nov 1944
“In the one undivided and indivisible Ocean of Life, you have, through ignorance, created the pernicious divisions based upon sex, race, nationality, religion, or community; and you allow these self-created divisions to poison your heart and pervert your relationships. You are already parts of one life, and, as such brotherhood is not something which is to be brought into existence through laborious efforts, but is the supreme fact, which claims your recognition and wholehearted allegiance as soon as you have the candidness and the courage to face the Truth.”
we have romantic view of education. many think if we just spend a little more money, try a new program, or build self esteem everyone could be a nasa scientist. wrong. but a sweet thought. we should focus on the first four or five years. that is where a kid gets it or not. we should include second languages early on. it is three times harder to learn a second language in high school. later those who are not interested or academically inclined can learn a skill. it may pay them better than college .
i wish our immigration requirements were like australia’s.
==============
Disregarding the content of your comment, there are two things about your post(s) that piss me off … things for which I’ve chided even great writers like Orionoir (who, to my regret, has largely disappeared from these pages) … viz:
Are you too cool or just too fucking lazy to press your pinkie on the shift key to form uppercase letters? Are you trying to signal that you’re a very busy guy who does not have the time for such nonsense?
And ditto for the lack of breakdown of your comment into paragraphs. Do you enjoy some sense of power in creating an unnecessary burden of understanding for the reader by displaying a continuous wall of words? Did your doctoral dissertation look anything like the piece of shit you wrote here?
FYI:
paragraph
— n
1. (in a piece of writing) one of a series of subsections each usually devoted to one idea and each usually marked by the beginning of a new line, indentation, increased interlinear space, etc
Vlad I love you and hate you, you post then the blank slate children of unicorn utopia post long rambles of pure anti-white hatred. So I guess anti-white hatred is the anti-semetism of the partially educated.
So listen children if being asked a question is so injurious to your mental/emotional being how will the Long Emergency treat you when your Mommy Prof. world view has been completely overturned?
busy and lazy. hows that for an incomplete sentence? just getting to the point as fast as possible.
ANYONE HAVE COMMENTS ON THE DUST STORM IN ARIZONA?
=============
Yes, it appears to be very dusty. Duhhh. Were you hoping for something more profound?
BLOG IS EATING POST AGAIN…TESTING,ONE,TWO,THREE
“Passenger pigeon”? What the fuck is a passenger pigeon? I thought those blue-and-gray things that cover Manhattan in the summer are native American pigeons. Golly, you mean America had its own, native, plentiful (billions) pigeon, 99.999% OF WHICH WERE SHOT, BURNED, CRUSHED, or STARVED TO DEATH BY ABOUT 1880? Hmmm, why, nobody taught me that in school Perhaps because not even the natural history museum located in the nation’s capital has one on display. If that isn’t fucked up, I don’t know what is.
Apparently, at certain times, if you copy and paste a post it might be rejected. But if you type it in directly, it goes straight through.
Where there is parental involvement, schools thrive. – Fabian
Absolutely agree. And where schools are crap and kids do lousy it’s because parents don’t give a damn.
I have not much patience with throwing money at education. You don’t need tons of money to educate kids. Way back when I was in elementary school we didn’t even have a gymnasium. The school was a rudimentary, one storey brick building with 8 classrooms and a playing field. And that’s it. Physical facilities that were below par by today’s standards. But we had great teachers and parents that were on the ball.
I take SILENT NOTICE of all men’s failures being discussed in this week’s comments.
The particular message in the Gospel of the Kingdom that needs to be proclaimed in order to give the world a genuine view of the heart of God is not the message usually given of threats of hell-fire for all sinners [ law-breakers 1 John 3:4 ]. It is the message that Paul advocated in 2 Cor. 5:18-20,
“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
The Gospel of the Kingdom [ a form of government where the citizens have ALL learned to be self-governing under God’s Law ] that Paul preached had no threats. It was about the good news of what Christ had done [finished – completed – acknowledgement only needed] in “reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” It was a message about the love of God, and what God had done for them in Christ.
God never fails.
It is different from: sitting on the sidewalk for hours with your children to be admitted to the court room, telling them that lies are punished, and lies made to the government are punished justly.
Then the liar is found not guilty of murder, but guilty of lieing to the government. What do you suppose is the consequence of a child witnessing the adults around him being so __________ .
I am at a loss for words, please help me out.
“Oh well, life can be tough.”
I’ll make it easier for you. Buy some silver and bury it in the earth. You get more for your money and you won’t have to wait as long.
“…we have romantic view of education.”
“I want to see Sweden become the first country in Europe to introduce instruction in Chinese as a foreign language at all primary and secondary schools,” said Jan Bjoerklund, who heads the Liberal Party, a junior member of the centre-right ruling coalition.
Getting Swedish pupils to learn Chinese was vital to strengthening Swedish competitiveness, the education minister told financial daily Dagens Industri.
“Not everyone in the business world speaks English. Very highly qualified activities are leaving Europe to move to China. Chinese will be much more important from an economic point of view than French or Spanish,” he said.”
What about teaching them English?
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/lifestylenews/view/1139237/1/.html
“Think he might have a thing or two to say to her?”
I am asking the question from a child’s perspective. Can you help with this? Take it one step at a time.
That means he had already studied trig by the 8th grade. You want to tell me the school system where this is occurring in the year 2011? – Fabian
We have an over supply of slack jawed graduates with diplomas in self esteem. Socially “aware”, marinated in political correctness, brined in anti Americanism, innumerate, sub-literate, unable to find Africa on a map and as fucking useless as can be.
Not a new problem. I saw a documentary not long ago about a pioneering educator from the early 20th century. She was moaning in the early 1950s at the end of her career about education that was drained of content. Not demanding enough of the little dears. So it was becoming a problem a long time ago.
Uber Liberal Roger Ebert today lamented the fact that the “Great Gatsby” is taught today in an edited edition (I never read it).
Two things stick out on his delicate rant, first the school children are brown and black with little use for white man’s books, second not everyone has the intellectual capability to sort thru nuance and the Three R’s would be way more approriate for our globalized consumer workforce of the future.
They never ask the kids or their parents if shoving books by whites at them is what they want, why do white liberals presume this? Why do white liberals presume anything at all?
Good fences make good neighbors. Borders are absoultely necessary. Because I’m me and you’re you, we can have a relationship. As Ramakrisna said, I don’t want to be sugar, I want to eat sugar.
Have you read about Baba’s work with the Masts? Many of them craved privacy. And even though highly advanced, they were often very angry and abusive at being endlessly disturbed and misunderstood. I’m not a Mast but rather a Mast Like Pilgrim or Salik. The depths of my being are filled with love but this can’t be shown to the ignorant. And like the Masts, I’m infuriated at the moment to moment idiocy and superficiality of the world.
Real Love wants the best for the Beloved. Those who claim to love all races desire to enact the means that will end the White Race. To will the End is to will the Means. And vice versa except in the case of ignorance.
Now that we’re on the topic of education…
Muslims want the cafeteria of a Toronto middle school to be used for Friday payers for Muslim students of the school. The Toronto school board says they’re bound by human rights legislation to allow it.
Bullshit. They’re too paralyzed by fear to say no. The only people with the balls to take this on are local Hindus.
If it were Christians who wanted the cafeteria for prayer meetings the answer would be an immediate unequivocal no with taunts, sneers and jeers and a lot of piety about separation of church and state. And not a peep about human rights codes either.
Now for dozens of posts illuminating the ignorance of the masses. Intern at work, her school’s valedectorian thought Alaska was an island. (maps show it this way)
Ditto the Theater and the Symphony. The Blacks and Browns have no interest in our higher arts. Why was it assumed they would – especially when everything White was made out to be of the Devil?
The East Asians like Classical and produce many musicians of technical genius. Many have said that these are somewhat lacking in spirit – but I’m not qualified to judge. Yoyo Ma is said to be one who has transcended this mental prison and found his heart.
Why do you hate me btw?
If you don’t behave, I’m going unplug you.
RipT, trout 12″-14″ range.
Ya I knew that about the Farmington. Where it bends from North to South is just across the way here. Water stays cold enough all summer to support a sizable trout population. No August die-off like in the Housatonic.
-Marlin
Do your plants play games with each other like the horses? And do the horses play intellectual games like chess?
The plants have life but not consciousness. The animals have consciousness but lack intellect. We have intellect but lack wisdom – exept for the Saints and Sages.
Primitive men also believe in the Great Chain of Being – though they express it more simply in terms of animal spirits and the Three Worlds (Underworld of the dead, the Physical World, and Paradise). My views are much closer to their’s than your Darwinism and Neo-Marxism.
Glad you want to retain the best! Sometimes you seem to gravitate towards the Hunter Gatherers exclusively. Glad to introduce you to “The Earth Abides” – a real classic to be read and reread.
Another one you might enjoy which I haven’t gotten to yet myself is “The Starship and the Canoe” about a Father who is Physicist who dreams of L5 Colonies and his son who is drawn to the past and the incredible workmanship of the sea canoes of the Pacific Northwest. Not a novel – the scientist is Freeman Dyson.
To my untrained eye it look unusual and dangerous.
I dunno how rare it is.
And what are the immigration requirements for the Muslim rapists and the Chinese hordes? Not so strict I bet. You people are doomed – taken over by the Globalists just as the United States has been. Once the Chinese are in power, you’ll be dreaming of the generous and kind White Masters you used to have.
An Australian Professor told my class about the Abos eating the Chinese workers. And even if can’t be easily sourced, you can’t deny this practice was common with your people. Sure, maybe not all of them – I know there were many cultures as I already said.
If it were Christians who wanted the cafeteria for prayer meetings…
——————-
Then they wouldn’t be Christians.
Jesus gave explicit rules about prayer:
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:6
Muslims deserve the cafeteria because Muslims have different rules about prayer.
Get over it and stop your whining, Cash.
Here’s yer “rare”…
http://www.weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/dustbowlpics.html
Dangerous? Abso-fucking-lutely.
More… from 2009.
Ya been hidin’ in a bomb shelter, or what?
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/dust_storm_in_australia.html
Some interesting thoughts on “self-control”:
“Issues that I used to see in terms of politics and morality, I am now seeing in terms of human psychology, and in a broad sense, ecology: in nature, if easy prey exists, a predator will appear. In the last few hundred years, humans have given ourselves powers and opportunities that we don’t know to use yet, and this makes us easy prey for things like cigarettes, credit cards, Michele Bachman, and the Apple logo. The solution is not at the top but at the bottom, for more of us to become aware of our own mental states.
For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about self-control and how I no longer believe it exists. Instead, people are acting from different perspectives and different stories about how the world works and what we’re doing here. Another way to look at this is that people are playing different games. If your game is to grab as much pleasure as possible in an unreliable world, you’re going to be terrible at saving money. But if you see money as your only protection against unspeakable suffering, you’re going to be really good at saving it. The key is not to find a perfect mental state and stay there, but to choose the right mental state for every situation.”
Another way of saying, learn to ask good questions.
http://www.ranprieur.com
little Miss Grammar-Mammar?
=============
Congratulations Tootsie, you spelled grammar correctly for the first time. This indicates you DO pay attention when I bust your balls. Good Boy. Here’s a gold star to stick on your forehead.
Intern at work, her school’s valedectorian thought Alaska was an island.
==================
Reminds me of 10-15 years ago reading about some California H.S. students learning in history class that Japan and Germany were the enemies that the US fought in WW2. The article said the students were “stunned and appalled” and some asked “who won?”
P.S. …dictorian
Thanks MD, those were great quotes on self-control.
I’m hopeful that people will eventually come to the realization that extra “stuff” won’t make them happy. Maybe for a day or two…but beyond that, is the debt worth it?
The Cannibals all say that East Asians taste the best btw. I eat horribly so that people wont want to eat me. If I bug gets into my mouth, I will spray Raid in there to get him.
I will outlive all of you – but at what cost? Longevity isn’t eternal youth. Who wants to be an old spider?
Last month our family went up to San Francisco’s Museum of the Legion of Honor to see the Magna Carta. The document’s first public appearance in the US! My kid’s friends didn’t have the slightest clue as to what it was.
So in other words, all Churches should be turned into Mosques. Jesus said alot of things – they have be weighed against each other in the Light of the Tradition that goes back all the way to those who knew Christ. All Christains worship together and not just alone in closets. Perhaps you don’t understand the concept of a parable or metaphor?
Another comment on the travesty of justice that was the Anthony rrial.
In the sixteenth century the Scottish King caught a large family of murderers/cannibals. They were brought back to Edinburgh by the King’s soldiers not for trial, the men were drawn and quartered and the women were incinerated. That had a nice sense of closure to it.
No Godamn murderers being turned into reality t.v. stars, no scumbag parastic defense lawyers making their blood money, no weeks of psycho babble, no cave dwelling imbecilic gutter trash on juries who can’t convict anybody, no squads of armchair detective talking heads second guessing the police, the forensic experts, the judge, the coroner’s office, etcetera.
God save the King.
Beautiful death…..are you saying theres enough global drying for another dust bowl in the USA?
the Magna Carta … My kid’s friends didn’t have the slightest clue as to what it was.
==============
…assumed it stood for “Big Car.”