chop wood, carry water

And They Wore Birks

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:59:04 GMT

Now, there is a plant growing in their country called cannabis, which closely resembles flax, except that cannabis is thicker-stemmed and taller. In Scythia, in fact, it is far taller. It grows wild, but is also cultivated, and the Thracians use it, as well as flax, for making clothes. These clothes are so similar to ones made out of flax that it would take a real expert to tell the difference between the two materials. Anyone unfamiliar with cannabis would suppose that the clothes were linen.

Anyway, the Scythians take cannabis seeds, crawl in under the felt blankets, and throw the seeds on the glowing stones. The seeds then emit dense smoke and fumes, much more than any vapour-bath in Greece. The Scythians shriek with delight at the fumes. This is their equivalent of a bath, since they never wash their bodies with water. Their women, however, pound cypress, cedar, and frankincense wood on a rough piece of stone, and add water until they have a thick paste which they then smear all over their bodies and faces. This not only makes them smell nice, but when they remove the paste the day after they turn out to be all clean and shining.

Herodotus - The Histories IV:74-75, tr. R. Waterfield, Oxford World Classics, 1998

Visit Ancient Rome!

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:00:36 GMT

Oh yeah. I was playing around in Ancient Rome last night, using the new virtual models set into Google Earth. This thing is really awesome. Many of the buildings are accurately faced, and have links for more info, interior tours, and the like. It's very extensive: someone would have to dedicate a lot of time to actually exploring the whole city as they've built it. If you needed an excuse to download Google Earth, here it is. Mucho neato.

LJ is the 10th Link

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:56:21 GMT

These are my three most-used links in each category:

Top News

Antidotes

Casual Reading

What are yours?

Light my fire

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:50:00 GMT

Miniature nuclear reactors could be on sale within five years, from a Los Alamos-derived technology. The new company is in New Mexico, but you have to read The Guardian to find out about it.

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.

'You could never have a Chernobyl-type event - there are no moving parts,' said Deal. 'You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it's too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.'

Trailing Hecate

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:28:07 GMT

My father, sister, wife, and myself took a road trip yesterday to seek out the final resting places of some of our relatives. My dad had some notes from the family Bible that stated certain individuals were buried in particular places, but subsequent searches on Internet lists were inconclusive. He has a big list: we targeted just two that happened to be nearby and sequentially located along the Interstate.

Our first target was Little River, now the conjoined Little River-Academy community. Located east of Temple in the midst of many small cattle ranches, a still active community continues to use the school, the churches and the cemetery. The old part of their cemetery went back to the mid-1880s but is now closed. The new side continues to gain new residents. We searched throughout the old side, only to discover it wasn't quite old enough for our relative. We found a number of related names only once in the whole trip -- here at Little River. But these names we already knew of from the Internet, and none of them were close enough relations to make mention of. The park itself was generally well tended, with broken stones mostly mended, and grass mowed, although the wooden gazebo for services set up on the 'old side' had a dangerous lean on it.

Further north, we sought out the Honest Ridge cemetery. I had originally located this on what turned out to be a 'forgotten' cemetery on private land. Fortunately, our excessively useful "Roads of Texas" atlas showed us exactly where Honest Ridge is currently located, and we found it good time. Located alongside a gravel pit operation with trucks both carrying and kicking up caliche, everything was coated in a fine, white dust. An impressive iron gate stood, latched but unlocked, with the words "Honest Ridge Cemetery" scripted in iron plate overhead.

My sister took pictures, I found a snake, scorpionis found a scorpion, and Dad pointed out that the ornate ironwork fences that surrounded these rural plots would cost a fortune today. Relatives, we did not find. Something we did find here were graves for "colored servants", Jews, and children. Again, we saw evidence of the horrific toll taken by the influenza epidemics of the late 1800s, with rows of children, or whole families, dead all around the same time. I started to really wonder about places where folks had set aside and marked a grave site, but then ended up dead somewhere else -- where did they end up?

The Navigator surveyed the region and selected Horn Hill as our next, most reasonable, target. This one made us realize just how well kept the previous two cemeteries were... because this one wasn't. It looked like several years had passed since the last time anyone cleared out the weeds over the majority of the field: only the most active areas had been recently cleared. Stepping around through that was unnerving, and ultimately disappointing. Dad was surprised that the overgrown area had so many relatively recent stones in it: the land around two recent additions on either end of the field was recently cleared, but only as much as needed to accommodate the respective funerals. Very sad in several ways: I suddenly understood the desire to simply be cremated than to leave behind a half-dissolved stone hidden under thorns and underbrush and forgotten.

From here, we drove into the nearest town to regroup. Stopping at the Dairy Queen (naturally), we enjoyed some non-moving, non-standing time eating our cold, creamy delights. I spotted a group of older gentlemen clustered near the front and knew that I had possibly located the brain trust of this community. Politely interrupting before I became a touristy eavesdropper, I told these gentlemen our quest and misadventures, then inquired if they had any suggestions. They tell me the name of a certain fellow, and his general address (next to last house on the left). I am informed that this fellow has personally marked a number of cemeteries in the area.

Intrigued, we all tumble back into the car and rumble down brick roads -- across town, no doubt -- and I end up talking to this fellow for five or six minutes. He's friendly and laughs that he only marked a few of the cemeteries before he got sidetracked. A friend of his was visiting from California in a few weeks, I'm told, and he knows everything about the all the cemeteries in the county. Then he invites me to return on the 20th to visit with him and his friend to see what he might know. The weird thing is -- I'm really tempted to take him up on this. After some chatting, I'm able to get some information about where my relations lived in the area, so now we have some more clues.

We stopped by several more cemeteries in the area around where the old man had mentioned. However, the larger sites we found had few German sounding names, although they would have one corner for "servants" and another for Catholics. The smallest one we found was just one family, with only a few stones. Another was well marked by the road, but some distance onto private property, so we skipped it. The Kirk cemetery was notable for housing virtually the entire population of Kirk -- only a single occupied house remained. We presumed that the folks in that house were the ones that took such good care of this very nicely tended -- and sizable -- cemetery. Criswell still had its church -- now empty except for funerals -- and it, too, was well cared for. It was obvious who the major families were in each particular community, and sometimes, one found the marital connections that would bring the various names into the yard.

With the sun descending, we had to call a halt to the quest and head back into the tangled nest of civilization. Even after a full night of sleep, I'm still very sore from all the driving and hiking about. At least we have some verification about where they aren't, and we have some clues about where they might be, so the quest will continue. In the meantime, I understand there's some relatives buried in Zephyr... Imagine that.

Behavioral Residue

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:46:51 GMT

Where you live and how you vote is predictable by personality types, say NY political psychologist John T. Jost, Columbia University professor Dana R. Carney, and UT prof Samuel Gosling. They gave a 44-question personality test that measured across five scales to nearly half-a-million people. The results are surprisingly similar to the electoral result maps that have been so popular in recent election seasons -- Dems cluster in urban areas, are more open and communicative; GOPs are high on tradition and regularity and stick to the rural areas.

People who described themselves as political conservatives occupied rooms that were cleaner, more organized and more brightly lit, displaying the Republican trait of conscientiousness. The right-wingers were also found to have more cleaning supplies, calendars, postage stamps and laundry products. The liberal participants of the study, perhaps predictably, had more cluttered offices and bedrooms with more color. They also had a greater number of CDs and DVDs, and more eclectic taste in music and movies.

[source]

Johnny, tell 'em what they've won

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:19:49 GMT

The Iraq that has emerged from the American invasion and occupation is now a thoroughly wrecked land, housing a largely dysfunctional society. More than a million Iraqis may have died; millions have fled their homes; many millions of others have been scarred by war, insurgency and counterinsurgency operations, extreme sectarian violence, and soaring levels of common criminality. Education and medical systems have essentially collapsed and, even today, with every kind of violence in decline, Iraq remains one of the most dangerous societies on earth.

As its crisis deepened, the various areas of social and technical devastation became ever more entwined, reinforcing one another. The country's degraded sewage and water systems, for example, have spawned two consecutive years of widespread cholera. It seems likely that this year, the disease will only subside when the cold weather makes further contagion impossible, but this "solution" also guarantees its reoccurrence each year until water purification systems are rebuilt.

In the meantime, cholera victims cannot rely on Iraq's once vaunted medical system, since two-thirds of the country's doctors have fled, its hospitals are often in a state of advanced decay and disrepair, drugs remain scarce, and equipment, if available at all, is outdated. The rebuilding of the water and medical systems, however, cannot get fully underway unless the electrical system is restored to reasonable shape. Repair of the electrical grid awaits a reliable oil and gas pipeline system to provide fuel for generators, and this cannot be constructed without the expertise of technicians who have left the country, or newly trained specialists that the educational system is now incapable of producing. And so it goes.

[source]

rats, sinking ship, etc.

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:03:02 GMT

Bankers and brokers looking to escape the financial meltdown are scrambling to relocate their families, possessions and rarified talent far from Wall Street to places such as Florida, Chicago, Milwaukee, Virginia and Asia.

(...)

Corporate headhunters say Wall Street's malaise will lead to a permanent talent loss for New York. It could help small boutique firms become bigger players with employees they would never have been able to lure from the city long-regarded as the world's financial capital.

(...)

Escobio said in the past few months, one out of every four or five resumes comes from top Wall Street firms - compared with about one out of 100 in years past. [Source]

It's a start!

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:34:23 GMT

We have got to get ourselves an Indigent Defense Coordinator. Heck, every county in the state should have one, but I'd be grateful if just the larger counties had them.

Basically, these guys act to ensure that those arrested actually receive their rights to counsel. It seems outrageous to me that we can be so high and mighty about the "fairness" of our criminal justice system, but then "forget" to assign lawyers to the defendants. I'm without clue regarding what the process would be needed to put someone like this in place, but I think it's high time we had one right here in Travis County.

eliminate the negatives

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:48:26 GMT

We haven't been properly insured for health coverage since the last proper employer I had. Since going contract, the cash-flow has become less regular and we've had to carefully examine our expenditures. One of the things we decided to jettison, early on, was health insurance. It cost too much to get a plan with low deductibles -- which is, when you look at it, the whole point of insurance (i.e. lowering personal exposure to risk).

One has to ask whether going to the doctor constitutes risk or if it's not just a maintenance fee. We rarely see a doctor: maybe once a year, one of us might have to see one. For instance, we just took Z in for an antibiotic for her chest cold gone bad. We're out a couple-hundred dollars now.

Had we paid for a high-deductible plan, we would have paid more than that over the course of the year just for the coverage... and we would have had to pay the couple-hundred dollars anyhow. Had we paid for a low-deductible plan, we would have been paying over three times that per month -- and would still need to come up with another $50 for "co-pays".

I had been grateful for the insurance when Zoe's delivery became a c-section. On reflection, it's hard not to see my wife's delivery "complications" as part of a ten grand insurance swindle on the part of the hospital.

So how has that privatized health care been for you? Have you started saving any money yet? Impressed by the vast array of choices for care (for the extremely wealthy)? If socialized medicine is the new "funny KoolAid", I'd gladly take it over what we've got now.

Not Invited

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:18:52 GMT

Two interesting conversations on the state of the American political system and the place of the 'common man'.

Here, the publisher of Harper's Magazine explains the premise of his new book, You Can't be President.

Below, Noam Chomsky explains why participation is better than avoiding the election -- despite the fact that the system itself is horrifically biased against most of us.

Modern Theological Discussion

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:10:05 GMT

Brought to you by chris2342: the interdenominational, theological discussion of the ages. It's full of win for the Catholics. Protestants may wish to avert their eyes (if they weren't already doing so).

Strange Fruit

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:10:11 GMT

[The inhabitants of the islands of the Araxes River] have also discovered a kind of plant whose fruit they use when they meet in groups. They light a bonfire, sit around it, throw this fruit on the fire, and sniff the smoke rising from the burning fruit they have thrown on to the fire. The fruit is the equivalent there to wine in Greece: they get intoxicated from the smoke, and then they throw more fruit on to the fire and get even more intoxicated, until they eventually stand up and dance, and burst into song.

Herodotus - The Histories I:202, tr. R. Waterfield, Oxford World Classics, 1998

Music to My Ears

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:43:08 GMT

I could seriously put this thing on repeat and listen to it over and over again. All day. Conservatives dissing the McCain campaign and saying things about how Obama is the one who looks presidential, Obama was the one with decorum, Obama is the one to win in a landslide. This isn't the Obama campaign folks saying these things -- it's the far right crying out in anguish. (Gnashing of teeth, etc.)

Now we've done it

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:18:24 GMT

As most of you probably already know, the nearly 40-year-old "War on Drugs" has failed, at any time and for any duration, to eliminate any illicit drug from public consumption throughout the United States. An increasingly militaristic response has resulted in the development of increasingly militaristic drug gangs working in Central and South American countries.

These gangs have long been working across the Texas, Arizona, and California borders. At this point, even marijuana is such an high-value, high-demand commodity -- and the borders are now so tight -- that drug gangs are just growing it here in the US in otherwise unused land. The BLM workers who stumbled upon just such a farm in Nevada had a tense, 10-minute standoff with the armed gardeners before being directed back the way they came.

Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the United States, more valuable than corn and wheat combined. Using conservative price estimates domestic marijuana production has a value of $35.8 billion. The domestic marijuana crop consists of 56.4 million marijuana plants cultivated outdoors worth $31.7 billion and 11.7 million plants cultivated indoors worth $4.1 billion.

Marijuana is the top cash crop in 12 states, one of the top 3 cash crops in 30 states, and one of the top 5 cash crops in 39 states. The domestic marijuana crop is larger than Cotton in Alabama, larger than Grapes, Vegetables and Hay combined in California, larger than Peanuts in Georgia, and larger than Tobacco in both South Carolina and North Carolina. [2006 source]

Here's a few things to note. First off, federal authorities naturally assume that a group of Hispanics growing cannabis on federal land are members of a "Mexican drug cartel". There's a good reason for this. After the breakup of the Columbian cartels from the 90's, dozens of smaller operations took their place. Many of these have their own operating turf, but share tunnels and trade networks. Due to their numbers, they have spread far and wide.

Secondly, there is so much of this going on that it wasn't worth it to them to hang around or try to hold on to any of it. Once they realized their cover was blown, they high-tailed it out of there. How many "pods" of 1000 plants each are out there? A dozen? Hundreds? All they need is sunlight and access to water.

Third, not only did the armed gardeners not shoot the researchers, they directed them away from another group of (presumably armed) folks on the path the researchers were taking. Were these more gardeners, or a larger, armed contingent? If they were gardeners, it would indicate that there are, in fact, many of these "bud pods". If they were the protective detail assigned to the gardeners, then the big picture here is that we've got armed, foreign military units schlepping about freely in the American Southwest.

They're here because the biggest cash-generating commodity in the United States is technically illegal. Were cannabis to be legalized and allowed to be produced on a scale appropriate to its consumption, it would have a moderate price that would still bring in respectable tax revenues while the South American gangs would lose a significant income stream. But, of course, if people were generally allowed cannabis, even encouraged to use it, the Feds would gradually lose the ability to scare the general public into following unpopular policies. I can see now the wisdom of preferring armed gangs over a calmed populace.

Edit: Oh, look. Those nasty Mexican marijuana cartels are despoiling our national parks. It's not just an outrageous failure on the part of the ONDCP, it's a mockery of the whole idea of 'Homeland Security' if you can't keep foreign armies off your own soil. Do we have to starting arming the BLM monitors now?

Belief and Manifestation

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:13:27 GMT

What sets me off this morning is a post in contentlove's journal, in which she compares the gullibility of someone believing that a government could possess powers that it wouldn't use, as someone who would be surprised that Santa Claus wasn't going to pay their rent every month.

While the latter suggestion may seem outrageous, I need only read any article on the new 'Prosperity Gospel' that is sweeping up believers around the country. (Believe me, bad economic conditions such as these only feed these groups!) Here are great rooms full of people who actively pursue the philosophy that if they only believe hard enough, that God will pay their bills for them. These folks freely give what little money they have to feed their need to pass tests of sincerity worthy of the 'Great Pumpkin' -- in hopes that they'll hit the jackpot.

During my time of study in esoteric, medieval spiritualism, one thing I focused on was something I call 'manifestation technology'. In short, this is the set of practices used by people to get the things that they want. Quite a lot of it is common and predictable (i.e. Want money? Get a job). But there are also some surprising, indirect practices that provide unexpected leverage. One thing I noted early on was that people like to cling onto the 'fulcrum' parts of the technology while ignoring the reaching and lifting levers. When they get nowhere, they either blame the technology or themselves as faulty. This is unfortunate, and it can lead to some disturbing and self-destructive behavior.

Unfortunately, this isn't about intelligence or poverty. It's human nature to look for the jackpot. That's how we survive. Something with only a slim chance of success and no chance of danger will be tried by everyone, all the time. It's what we do. I have known many erudite, self-educated specialists of arcane and esoteric arts who have performed at least one ritual or another in the vain search for lottery numbers. At the turn of the 19th century, it was a great fad among the wealthy to hold seances to contact the dead so that they might be quizzed regarding locations of any hidden pots of gold that might lay buried nearby. Let's not even talk about the hoards of senior citizens that crowd the one-arm bandits in every casino from Maine to San Diego. It's human nature to behave this way.

But for those who limit themselves to these no-risk or low-risk methods, there is very little hope for success. These things are part of manifestation technology because they act as leverage points -- but they do no work on their own. The actual lever is whatever work is done by the person toward their goal -- shoe-leather and phone calls for the job-seeker, plowing for the farmer, etc. The prayers, the meditations, that lottery ticket: these all serve to keep hope alive for a person from one success to the next, and help keep a person looking up.

The mindset of a person trying to accomplish something is incredibly important. Staying focused on the tasks at hand and not getting distracted or depressed is generally required in order to properly manifest something. Rituals that speak to the hope of success and remind the person of their goals can keep a person buoyant, even in times of great difficulty. Simple tasks or tricks that the mind can practice consistently build the internal certainty of success, even to the point of providing a momentum toward completion. In this manner, even a 'Prosperity Gospel' can have its place.

The problem is that in most 'Prosperity Gospel' setups, prayers and supplication are given precedence, or even take the place, of actually working toward the goal. Thus this practice becomes like a poison. If one is given to believe that prayer alone will make them rich -- then one will inevitably fall into a depression upon realizing that one will never be 'good enough' for God to grant a great boon. This crushing of self-worth often leads to self-destructive periods, sometimes even suicide. Such a practice as this is neither a healthy religion, nor is it practical in a monetary sense (unless you're the joker collecting the money).

So should this sort of the be banned? I don't think so. It can serve a purpose when done in a balanced way. It's also a slippery slope when one starts to determine which religions are valid. Further, there will always be people who will try to cheat whatever system is in place. Since there is simply no substitute for actually doing the work, it's really rather harmless, for most, to let them try to 'pray' their way into wealth, so long as they get up on Monday and go to work on time.

Championship Round

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:49:30 GMT

Tonight's debate, the second between the two presidential candidates, could very well be the end of the campaign. Everything between tomorrow morning and November 4th will likely be entirely irrelevant if John McCain cannot walk away from tonight's debate as the clear leader.

This is the 'townhall' meeting: it's McCain's favorite format that kept his foundering primary campaign buoyant. If he can't pull off the folksy, crowd-pleasing performances tonight, something that will completely overshadow Obama, then he may as well hang it up for the rest of the year.

With his national lead estimated between 5% and 8%, Obama needs to simply avoid drooling onto his clothes. Should Obama fail to break down spectacularly before the cameras, and McCain fails to emit sunshine and strawberries with his every pained grimace, it's going to be a long month for the Republicans.

All Better Now?

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:16:56 GMT

Well, the congresscritters passed that odious bailout. So things are all better now, right?

Uh, not quite...

The economy won't begin to recover until real estate stops falling, which will be difficult while credit is tight.

Investors are having a hard time.

Bank failures are likely to continue.

Car dealerships, usually heavily leveraged to begin with, are folding at an increasing rate, due to credit restrictions.

Oil falls below $90. (Although, it's arguable that higher oil prices are actually helping us to make better choices.)

Meanwhile, the Treasury is scrambling to come up with yet more money to give away to the richest of the world's rich.

Investors are having a really hard time.

And best of all, it appears that no one on the global stage seemed to think for an instant that the way congress tried to 'fix' this situation was useful in the least.

As I told a friend this weekend. When you're falling into a 500 foot hole, it doesn't really help to have someone throw a 100-foot length of rope in after you.

Oh, Hadrian!

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:10:30 GMT

Re: the new icon -- I've actually been following this story for the last year, since the dig first uncovered Hadrian's head. Hadrian had this bath complex built for Marcus Aurelius that included colossal statues of himself (5m tall!), his mother, and several others. Read more here at Archaeology.com.

Maverick

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:55:27 GMT

"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya

I grew up in an area heavily invested in cattle ranching. Although I lived in a city and never had to rope a steer, the culture of cattlemen was deeply embedded into my own from an early age. I don't think I ever realized how deeply this ran until I was older. In situations where cows are involved, I generally know what to do and what to expect. When I find myself having to deal with a cow that everyone else is freaking out about, I am reminded that not everyone was raised around cattle. (For the record: I like cows. I think they're tasty.)

In the parlance, a maverick is a unbranded cow. Usually the reference is to a lost cow, or a very young one. Ranchers like to brand their cattle because there's really no better way to prove ownership. I could chew your ear off telling stories about how rustlers would re-brand cattle in order to change existing brands into other ones. Even so, brands continued to be widespread because of a certain Samuel A. Maverick.

Maverick was one of the earliest Texas pioneers and he started buying up land pretty soon after Stephen F. Austin established his first land grant. He fought alongside the Texians against the Mexican army, and was one of the last people to leave the Alamo alive. He signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, was elected several times to the Texas congress.

At one point during the revolution, Maverick was among a group of Americans captured by the Mexicans and forced into labor camps for over a year. He returned to San Antonio with the chains that had confined him. From the get-go, he is certainly a storied, Texas hero.

Maverick was also a land baron, buying up land at an enormous scale. He ran vast herds of cattle, notoriously without branding any of them. In the day, ranchers didn't use fences and not all of them used brands. Cattle were generally moved in great numbers across the prairie along trails to places where they would be loaded onto trains for the East coast.

Any loose, unbranded cattle near any of Maverick's lands would be rounded up and sent on the trail as Maverick's cattle. Because he was a War Hero, and a Congressman, as well as filthy rich and exceedingly well connected, Maverick could say that all the unbranded cattle are his, and everyone else had to brand their cattle or lose them. It's difficult to say that he didn't make the bulk of his wealth by taking advantage of the poorest ranchers.

So Samuel Maverick was this rich guy who capitalized on his war record to stick it to the little guy. His name is remembered for the trick he used to steal cattle from others. Hmm. Maybe John McCain is a maverick after all.

Incidentally, ranchers finally began using fencing at the convergence of three factors: increasing numbers of farmers, increasing miles of railroad track, and the invention of barbed wire. Before barbed wire, it was too difficult and expensive to build fences that would effectively retain cattle. Cows are big: so heavy that stone fences were required to keep them ensconced -- consequently, no one bothered to fence cattle ranges. (Although they would frequently build stone fences around their homes to keep the cows out of their gardens.)

Fences made moving cattle along the great trails extremely problematic. When farmers started to move out to the prairies and discovered cattle eating their grain and cutting through their fields, they built the first barbed-wire fences. When the cattlemen drove the herds through, they'd cut all the fences along their path -- and the farmers would find hoof prints in their fields again. Only after farmers had developed a political plurality that could compensate for the wealth of the cattle ranchers was fence cutting made illegal and effectively prosecuted. These issues were generally only finally assuaged when railroad tracks were built close enough to the ranchers that the cattle trails became unnecessary.

Today, ranchers use barbed wire mostly to keep cattle off the roads -- but they still brand their cattle to fend off rustlers.

Order up

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:04:08 GMT

Have you been waiting for the layoffs? Here they come....

The reduction in payrolls [159,000 jobs lost in September, the most since March 2003] was much sharper than the 100,000 cuts economists were forecasting. They expected the jobless rate to be unchanged.
It marked the ninth straight month that the economy has lost jobs. The drop underscores fallout from a long slump in the housing market and a dangerous credit crunch that intensified last month throwing Wall Street - and the economy - into chaos.
So far this year, 760,000 jobs have disappeared.

[source: AP]

I got yer plan right here

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:10:11 GMT

This has got to be the very best bailout plan EVAR.

Dear Wall Street,

Hi, this is the lobbyist for a group called The Taxpayers, Debtors, and Insured People of the United States. Now that we've rejected the first bailout plan, I'm sure that in the spirit of tough, free market capitalism, and spirited negotiations, you'll consider our second offer. Here are some terms that I'm SURE you will find reasonable:

1) We are willing to loan you money at a very low, introductory rate of 8.9%. If you are even one nanosecond late on your payment, your rate will go from 8.9% to 32.9% instantly. You will have no right to appeal this. The interest rate increase will be retroactive. None of this "but I mailed it out Friday" nonsense. We must get it, and the check must clear, for your payment to count. A reminder: transactions that occur after 2pm are not credited until the next business day, so be sure to make your payments before then.

2) If you are late on any of your other payments to your other creditors, your rate will also be spiked to 32.9%. I know it has nothing to do with us, but if you are late paying someone else, then OBVIOUSLY you are a bigger credit risk to us.

3) We will send you onerous terms and conditions 148,000,000 pages long in 6 point font. Of course, those terms can change on a whim, at any time, so we'll be sending you hourly updates to the contract, which we expect you to read and keep up with. Sorry, we will be the only ones that can amend the contract; you cannot.

(read more...)

privatising the gains and socialising the losses

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:06:00 GMT

Here's a brief blog article summarizing an IMF study on banking crises around the world.

If you've been paying attention, there's nothing to see here. If you're wondering why so many are opposed to the bailout, take a look.

R-A-M-B-L-I-N-apostrophe

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:50:54 GMT

This was a funny from the BBC:

You find something similar in Amarillo, the city that perches high in the thin air above the baking wilderness of the Texas panhandle.
It is, of course, internationally known as the setting for that pop song which somehow manages to combine thumping urgency and wistful longing.
I ate in a restaurant there, where a western-swing trio wandered from table to table, offering to play any song you cared to request.
When I asked for Amarillo, there was a moment of slightly awkward silence.
They had heard of the song, of course, heard good things about it too, but they did not actually know it.
And of course, when you think about it, they would not, a song about a yearning to reach Amarillo does not mean much to people who are already there.

Tickled

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:19:17 GMT

Radio talk show host Ed Schultz reports:
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

[source: HuffPo]