Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Excellent!

I'm not in the habit of posting cartoons in this space, but in this case I'll make an exception:









Since this looks like a series, why not two:










Res ipse loquitur.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

I'll Thank Them....

The six hundred pound gorilla of the world's problems -the one that seems to be consensually suppressed in the world's press- is population. It is the real core of "green," the sine qua non: with population control, the other problems can all be ameliorated; without it, they just get worse & worse. Resource depletion, energy, food supply, endangered species, pollution....even theories with untenable conclusions like global warming.
Population theorists like Paul Ehrlich have long passed from favor, yet they haven't been disproven. In the long haul, they maintain the carrying capacity of the Earth is probably no more than the current population of the United States.....and perhaps less.

Well, the Chinese have brought it up, and good for them.

As an aside, the Euros -among others- are becoming more deeply mired in highly questionable programs like establishing carbon markets for "cap & trade." As with all sweeping government economic manipulation it sounds good on paper......and it might just send the world economy down the same path that destroyed the economy of the Soviet Union, and was on the way to doing the same for China until they wised up.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Whitman in jeans

A fascinating juxtaposition in the new Levi's ads is the poetry of Walt Whitman sandwiched with the consumerism of "We're funky; buy our duds!"

An even more fascinating element of the choice of Whitman's Pioneers! O Pioneers! as the audio track to gangs of mænads galloping over verdant landscapes, or rushing with torches through the night like some deconstructed Sturmabteilung.

In particular, I wonder how much flak Levi Strauss will receive for the use of the stanza:

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Whitman of course is now a darling to some because of the homosexuality that has been deconstructed from his work. However, given the intent of the Levi's ad, and its obvious political connections, one cannot help but wonder at the apparent advocacy of the ownership of firearms and melée weapons....although I approve of it.

Friday, December 4, 2009

You wouldn't kid us......surely

Seen on the cover of a print edition of The Economist while shopping (paraphrased): "Doing something about America's economic tailspin."

Apparently it will take a magazine of that name, no doubt staffed by numerous Economists, interviewing or quoting from Economists, to tell us what should be obvious....but somehow we can't face it, and apparently on any level:

STOP SPENDING.

There. Now I'm an "Economist."

Economics has slid into repute as a putatitve "Social Science" (when no such thing exists), and treated as a secular religion. A half-century since the rise and fall of Keynesian theory (which should have killed off Economics as anything but stargazing, but didn't), some of its practitioners are regularly elevated to the eminence of shamans in our culture. And that's exactly what they are: the shamans and druids of a false religion. And they will retain their eminence because of that most powerful force in the universe: the human will to believe in something, even if demonstrably wrong, false-headed, and destructive.

This Just In- all people MAY not need to attend college

.....and that is all. (But you'd sure never know it to read the current bleatings about "underrepresented minorities" -whatever that means- in the graduation statistics.)

Mobil 1 5W-30, 5,528mi, 02 Dodge Dakota 3.9L V-6