Marian Kester Coombs

"Animal Lexicon" now available on Etsy!

2011-08-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

My longterm project, ANIMAL LEXICON, is now in its second edition and is for sale on Etsy at http://www.etsy.com/shop/animallexicon .

It's a handmade book, 136 pages in length, 8.5" by 6.5" in size, stitch-bound, with original and public-domain artwork, including some hand coloring and stamping. The book is a humorous yet massively informative lexicon of English words and phrases based on the animal kingdom, arranged by taxa - that is, Kingdom/Phylum/Class/Order/Family/Genus/Species.

The cost is $20.00 plus $3.00 for domestic s/h and $5.00 for overseas.

Here's what a cover looks like:

And here are a few pages from the inside:

And a few more:

Available in a variety of colors:

Blue, too!

And a few more pix for the road:

To order a copy, the address is ANIMAL LEXICON, 1470 Crofton Parkway, Crofton, MD 21114. Checks and money orders welcome.

Thanks!

Marian Coombs

--------------------------------------------

Some commentary:

From Georgie Anne Geyer, Washington, D.C.: "Your book is charming - I love it. So original ... so much fun and really informative."

Janet Kester Peoples of the world, this Lexicon was inspired by an animal god -- you must have it! February 21 at 1:28pm ·

It's so very wonderful! I'll be curling up with the precious Lexicon
tonight, gray and black cats purring at my flanks.
xoxoxox,
S

From D.R.B., Sacramento: "It's wild! It's wacko! It's so cool! A great book! Great art! Great binding! Brilliant! Obviously a labor of intellect and love. I cherish my copy."

From T.C., Philadelphia: "The Lexicon is half consumed - I can't wait to go back for more. I love when I read and can 'hear' the author's voice. ... The lexicon is a bargain at twice the price! Thank you."

From D.T., Maryland: "I love what you sent me! So many interesting tidbits and turns of phrases. I love the pictures of course also."

From J.M., Buffalo: "I got the Lexicon and it looks wonderful! I can only imagine the time and thought that you put into it. I have only begun to look through it but I expect to enjoy it for years to come."

From A.C., Maryland: "Your book is really GREAT."

From C.L., Berkeley: "your lexicon collection is lovely; I love the calligraphy and ponder your style of choices to include."

From N.O., Woodbridge, VA: "SO CUTE."

From E.T., Berkeley, CA: "adorable!"

From J. V., Denver: "We loved your book ... Beautiful."

Theses on the Scheme

2011-07-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

Credit rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's seem to be a player in the overall financial dilemma. They give the speculators, usurers, demagogues and thieves cover for their activities until it's too late.

Credit of course means belief. Creditworthy means believable. If you can't believe the connoisseurs of Belief, you'll have to believe your own senses.

There is no point in calling what's happening a dilemma, a problem or even a crisis. Because it is criminal, and even illegal, it should be called a scheme at the very least. Scam sounds too cute. It's been a long con. Conspiracy, or merely confidence game? Perhaps both.

The debt ceiling is obviously not a ceiling at all nor a limit of any kind. It exists to be exceeded. Even a fig leaf serves the purpose of hiding something. The debt ceiling no longer even hides anything. Like the agencies, it is an element of the Ponzi scheme.

The U.S. is "in danger" of having its credit rating downgraded from Triple A to Double A. Obviously even this rating is far too high; the rating should be BS, or at least BR for "bankrupt," because we are - bankrupt, that is.

A lowered credit rating will mean having to pay a higher interest rate to borrow. Why should the U.S. not have to pay higher interest to borrow? Higher interest is intended to curb borrowing (supply and demand). Isn't it a good idea for bankrupts to curb their borrowing?

What will happen if the U.S. defaults? First, it would not happen immediately, as there is so much revenue pouring in and already on hand. But default would mark the beginning of the end of government by Ponzi scheme. It is probable that we can't even begin to end it without taking the hit of default. Default is that cold shower of Reality that our "leaders" have been desperate to avoid for so many years now. Since the U.S. is not good for its debts, default merely acknowledges that fact. Isn't the first step in ending addiction the recognition that the addiction exists?

By saying "We are not Greece," Obama confirms that we are Greece - we are all Greece now. Dilemma ... problema ... krisis ... schema ... It's all Greek to us.

The Formula

2011-07-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

A beautiful summer it has been on this beautiful planet. What "summer" is on the other planets and their moons, one shudders to contemplate. What "summer" is for stars without planetary systems is even more problematic. I guess you have to be there.

I dreamed last night that I dressed up in an expensive outfit, got my hair and nails done, etc., strolled out in my designer stilettos and was immediately taken for Somebody. They asked how I had become so successful, and I answered, "I just decided that everything about Life is wonderful, awe-inspiring, blessed, a gift and a joy," or words to that effect.

I woke up feeling great! Now the trick is to remember the formula.

Divide et impera

2011-04-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

"Divide and conquer" is as old as the hills, which is why it's rendered above in Latin. The imperial Romans used it and so have all successful rulers of mankind. It's a classic strategy for gaining and holding on to power.

In the classless U.S. we call it class warfare, and it's been operating brilliantly since the era of Andrew Jackson to keep us headed in the direction of plutocracy. It's a simple formula: I resent you for making $7,500 bucks a year more than I do, you resent some guy for having a "Cadillac" healthcare plan, that guy resents me for not being "under water" on my mortgage, still another guy resents both of us for our "gold-plated" pensions.

It's chump change they've got us squabbling over, folks. Sure, public employee unions are by no means "heroic laborers" in the mold of coal miners, longshoremen, weavers, textile workers, teamsters or steelworkers. But that doesn't mean they're the enemy either. However "lavish" (compared to what?) the deals union leaders have cut with their state employers, it's just stupid to scapegoat other working people as the cause of all our financial woes. For one thing, they're not. For another, it's class-warfare, divide-and-conquer rhetoric, and we're falling for it. Again.

We need more unions, in fact, not fewer. Most existing unions may well be corrupt, job-destroying slush funds for politicians - but they are among the last forms of self-organization We the People have. A society without grass-roots, local, voluntary associations (if you ever studied history, they used to call them Friendly Societies, and along with churches and synagogues they were the origin of credit unions, savings and loans, insurance companies, unemployment and disability compensation, fire departments, schools, hospitals, homeless shelters and many other fine things) is a society already divided and conquered. Think thrice before you support breaking up Big Labor. Organize yourself instead of disorganizing others.

Another example of that insidious D&C rhetoric: The New York Times is not what you'd think of as a populist broadsheet, so when it runs articles like "Enriching a Few at the Expense of Many" (April 10, 2011), you have to wonder. Companies should exist, the article argues, for the benefit of shareholders, not insiders. Shareholders and investors are the owners of a company; "excessive" executive pay robs these owners of their fair share of company profits and may even bankrupt the company in the end.

The general outrage at "Wall Street" in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-present takes a similar form. People feel they have the right to condemn private corporations for "overcompensating" their CEOs and other top employees. The government should "do something" about it.

Hell, the government would love to. They're always trying to take over the private sector and dictate its every move. The populist ressentiment spawned by the 2008 crash finds favor with an administration whose upper reaches are more populated than ever by literally dozens of revolving-door alumni of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, etc. Capitalism for the ruling class, socialism for the masses - that's what we need to be looking at, not who got some chump-change million-dollar bonus. If shareholders own these companies, let them deal with how much the brass gets compensated. It's amazing how laserlike people's attentiveness becomes when their own money's at stake.

The point is, rich people aren't the problem. Personal wealth is not the problem. Most of us want to get rich; just because someone else is rich doesn't mean you can't be rich as well. Not only do most rich people get rich from being smart and inventing things and processes - and then invest their riches to create goods and services and jobs - but people ascend to riches and topple from riches all the time. It is not a static category.

More crucially, there's a difference between being powerful and just being rich. The powerful are rich, but not all the rich are powerful. Archimedes, the famed Greek mathematician and inventor, once stated that if he had a place to stand and a lever long enough, he could move the earth itself. It's not how much personal wealth you possess, but whether you are in a position or are motivated to leverage it: to wield it like an instrument, a weapon to force "change," to crush opponents, to buy loyalties, to suborn consciences, to seed the media with Big Lies, to scare off advertisers and investors and supporters, to sap the value of currencies, to suck dry any remaining pockets of independent power, to orchestrate fictitious conflicts, to betray secrets, to corrupt ideals - and to rip off the little people of all nations.

Some of these leveragers aren't even super wealthy. All they've done is maneuver themselves into top decision-making spots at big foundations and trusts and hedge funds. A few billion bucks in the right hands is a great force-multiplier, a major magnifier of intent.

To return to the financial crisis, the state could gouge all the "excessive" cash out of every millionaire and all 400 billionaires in America, and that still wouldn't cover the interest on our sovereign debt for a single year. And the following year when the state returned for more, there would remain neither golden eggs nor geese for them to seize.

We need to ask different questions and quit lapsing into the same old tired whinging about who's "working class" and who's "bourgeois," who's "underprivileged" and who's "overprivileged." I frankly can't think of anyone more overprivileged than a U.S. congressman, except maybe the president. The main question we need to ask is:

To whom do we owe this amazing treasure trove of $14+ trillion? Who are they, where do they live, and where did they get those trillions - quadrillions - to lend to us and to the rest of the world? What do they expect for their unwanted largesse?

Here's the compound interest formula:
It's an exponential function.
It adds up dizzylingly fast.
And it's all perfectly legal!

The U.S. economy is now the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the planet. It works something like this:

The government demands to spend fantastic amounts of money on whatever Good Works pop into its head. The money is created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. The government then owes the money to the Fed (and our close friend China, among others). The government taxes individuals and businesses to pay back the debt - or actually, just the interest on the debt, or debt service, because they are in no position to pay back principal at this point. So the Fed gets repaid with real money in exchange for the fiat, ersatz, unsecured, digitized currency they've issued. This is a major way the transfer of wealth from working people - blue collar, white collar, professional, small business and corporate - occurs.

The debt service portion of the budget is far more untouchable than entitlement and defense spending. At least the latter two budget segments are mentioned as cuttable now and again. Debt forgiveness is unmentionable. Unthinkable!

But what would happen if we tried to renegotiate or even repudiate all that accumulated, compounded, usurious indebtedness, all those loans so heedlessly made in our and our children's and our grandchildren's names? What would happen if we declared bankruptcy, defaulted, just walked away? Who would come after us? The IRS? That handful of old guys at the Fed? The tanned septuagenarians of the Council on Foreign Relations, World Bank, IMF, Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome or Bilderberg Group?

Where are their legions? Do they command an armed force, which after all is what lurks behind all "promises to pay" and the "full faith and credit" of the financial system? Would their behest be enough to send troops on the march against fellow Americans?

The only threat mentioned when - horror of horrors - anyone brings up the "specter of default" on the sovereign debt is that the banks would quit lending to us. Perfect! We don't want to borrow any more. We didn't want to borrow any more $14 trillion ago!

Some believe we need our own billionaire, a People's billionaire, someone who can't be bought and can't be ruined by the scratch of a pen like the rest of us can, who will represent the little people of this country and stand up for us against the Great Indebtors. This is the allure of a Perot, a Bloomberg or a Trump.

But maybe we don't need such a savior. Maybe we can walk away, just walk away and see what happens. File Chapter 7-11 or whatever number it is. Push the reset button. Do-over. Clear the screen and reboot. You can come out now, all is forgiven ...

Is any banker going to starve because Citigroup took a bath on its bad investments? More likely a whole lot of little people will starve if we don't get out from under those suspiciously sacred obligations.

Forgive and forget: it could be our only way out.

Salt of the Earth

2011-02-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

SALT is a mineral (sodium chloride, NaCl) that most forms of terrestrial life need to survive. The idiom that means you are "entitled to live" is "to be worth your salt." Several cultures welcome guests with a dish of bread and salt - bread for hospitality and salt for friendship.

The hierarchy of eating at a table was long described as sitting "below the salt" or "above the salt." The value of salt and its scarcity in the ancient world were such that the Romans paid their legions partly in sal, root of the word "salary." (It is also the root of the word "salacious.") The discovery that salt preserved perishable food ("curing") was a key element in the transition of humanity from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists.

"To rub salt in a wound" is painful, but helps the wound heal. Rome made sure that Carthage would not rise again by sowing its lands with salt ...

Our blood, our sweat and our tears are all salty. So is the fluid that sustains us before birth - a brew that harks back to the oceans whence we came.

The human tongue possesses specialized areas for the tasting of salt. A salt craving arises just like thirst and hunger when the body senses its lack. Animals travel thousands of miles to reach deposits of salt. Drawing dramatic attention to the need for salt: In Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," the Spaniards root like hogs to get at a vein of salt in the ground, and in Peter Weir's "The Way Back" at least one man becomes obsessed with salt even as he wastes away. In my own family there are two salt-cravers and two salt-take-it-or-leavers, so there is probably a genetic basis for degrees of salt-savoring.

Places all over the world have been named for their abundance of natural salt - Tuzla in Bosnia, Salzburg in Austria, French Lick in Indiana (see poem by Stephen Vincent Benét below), Saline in Kansas, Big Lick in Tennessee, Paint Lick in Kentucky, Beaver Lick in Missouri and so on. One source notes that

The Romans ... called [the Celts] Galli or Gauls, coming from a Greek word, used by the Egyptians as well, hal, meaning 'salt.' They were the salt people. The name of the town that sits on an East German salt bed, Halle, like the Austrian towns of Hallein, Swabisch Hall and Hallstat, has the same root as do both Galicia in northern Spain and Galicia in southern Poland, where the town of Halych is found. All these places were named for Celtic saltworks. ... Like the ancient Chinese emperors, [the Celts] based their economy on salt and iron ...

(from Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky - great book!)

The word "hal" is preserved in the name for rock salt crystals, halite. (I wonder if it might also be the root of "Hail," healing and health.)

Desperate quests and wars and endless caravans have been launched to secure supplies of salt, and riots have erupted over taxes on salt. Surveyors in early America were instructed to "to make note of (the following): the quality of soil and the situation of all mines, salt licks, salt springs and mill seats which may come to your knowledge and are to be regarded and noticed in your field books.”

The Egyptians used what they called natrun (from the Wadi Natrun or Salt Valley, a source of naturally occurring sodium carbonate) to preserve mummies, which is where sodium got its chemical symbol Na (via the borrowed Greek nitron and Latin natrium).

Generations of schoolchildren have thrilled to the realization that sodium - a soft, light, sinuous silvery-white alkaline metal that explodes on contact with water - combines with chlorine - a burning greenish-yellow halogen gas - to form common ordinary table salt.

Sodium chloride not only preserves food and pharaohs but is essential to

transmission of nerve impulses around the body, regulating the electrical charges moving in and out of the cells. It also controls our taste, smell and tactile processes and helps our muscles, including the heart, to contract.

Chloride is important for a range of vital processes including digestion and the absorption of potassium into the body. It also helps the blood to carry carbon dioxide from respiring tissues to the lungs and preserves the acid-base balance in the body.
When the immune system is under attack, chlorine helps to fight off infection since hypochlorite, a chlorine-containing compound, forms in white blood cells and either attacks the germs itself, or helps to activate other agents that carry out the same function.

(from "Salt and Physiology" by the European Salt Producers' Association)

I've been thinking about Salt now that bans on added salt are being contemplated by various levels of government. The thinking is that money will be saved that would have been spent on the consequences of high dietary sodium, which some studies blame for hypertension and its attendant ills. Not all scientists believe sodium is the culprit, though. And clearly a lot of people ingest copious amounts of salt all their lives without ill effect.

The spectre of a Salt Czar has been raised, in any case. Considering the vital importance of salt to human history and the human body, it might not be a good idea to let any group, no matter how "well-intentioned," dictate whether we may savor our salt or not. We have learned the hard way the we must take schemes for the Improvement of Mankind cum grano salis.* One man's flavor is another man's poison; to each his own; there is no accounting for taste - nor should there be. For "if the salt hath lost its savour, with what shall it be salted?"

*with a grain of salt

American Names
by Stephen Vincent Benét

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy's horn,
But I will remember where I was born.

I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain.

I will fall in love with a Salem tree
And a rawhide quirt from Santa Cruz,
I will get me a bottle of Boston sea
And a blue-gum n***** to sing me blues.
I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard,
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman's Oast,
It is a magic ghost you guard
But I am sick for a newer ghost,
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.

Henry and John were never so
And Henry and John were always right?
Granted, but when it was time to go
And the tea and the laurels had stood all night,
Did they never watch for Nantucket Light?

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmédy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

What Is a Zombie, and Why Does It Want to Eat Us?

2010-12-08T15:19:00.000-08:00

The New York Times ran an article in its December 5, 2010, edition --

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html --

arguing that Zombies are in vogue because they remind people of their own repetitive, mindless everyday lives:

What if contemporary people are less interested in seeing depictions of their unconscious fears and more attracted to allegories of how their day-to-day existence feels? That would explain why so many people watched that first episode of “The Walking Dead”: They knew they would be able to relate to it.

A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies.

The author goes on to suggest that such modern tasks as deleting unwanted email resemble Zombie-killing in that they're simple, easy, mechanical - and yet endless: "The zombies you kill today will merely be replaced by the zombies of tomorrow."

I have a different interpretation. I think horror is all about our fears, whether unconscious, preconscious, semi-conscious or conscious - that's why it's horrific.

What do Zombies do? They eat you. You can't feed them anything else, like apples or dog food, or get them to feast on one another. No, NO, they want to eat YOU out of house and home and all your substance. They want to turn your vibrant, thriving individual person into a heap of decaying remains.

The most ghastly thing in the world to just about every human being is a corpse. We fear Death and we are terrified of the Dead.

The second most ghastly thing is the prospect of being eaten - not just eaten, but eaten ALIVE.

The Zombie Apocalypse brilliantly combines these two horrors, but adds a third element: a MASS of Zombies, slow-moving and defenseless but so numerous and ravenous as to be unstoppable.

Why is this vision so compelling? Because in the back of our minds, we know that there really is such a threat. We are constantly warned about it and commanded to feel responsible for it, and even told we deserve to be destroyed by it. At the same time we aren't supposed to talk about it.

What is this threat? The near-starvation of millions in the "underdeveloped" world. No longer are teeming poverty-stricken masses sitting put and quietly dying as they wait for rescue. In the age of mass communication and mass transportation, they are on the move.

They have already begun coming. As the horror movie line goes, "They're HEE-ere ..." We see images of them all the time - thin bony people wearing ragged clothes, scrambling through tunnels and across fences, lurking in the darkness waiting for a break, taking huge risks to reach the (over?)developed world and -

grab a bite to eat.

The best-quality Zombie treatments at least hint at the uneasy relationship between the Living and the Undead, the Pure and the Infected. George Romero kicked off the franchise in 1968 with plenty of tragedy and irony. Shaun of the Dead managed to tame his Zombified "mate" Ed and turn him into a tolerable telly-watching companion. I didn't go to see "Zombieland" because the trailer showed Zombies being simply soullessly mowed down. But American Movie Classics' new series "The Walking Dead" is showing signs of sensitivity to the fact that there but for fortune and a drop of blood or saliva may go any of us: its Zombies need more to be put out of their misery than brutally terminated.

The tension between the person the Zombie was and the Thing to which it has been reduced makes for great if horrifying storytelling. As with the tension between human and machine ("I, Robot," "The Terminator," "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), we yearn to respond to any humanity we detect, even in cyborgs or the Undead. It is a bitter lesson when we learn we can't afford to do that.

Who will win World War Z? Is there a remedy for Zombie invasion other than a bullet to the brain? I wonder what popular culture is telling us.

It's Not Just the Full Moon Any More

2010-11-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

L.S. came up with this title as we were yukking it up about our "adventures" teaching in the public schools, so I thought I'd steal it since she, like everyone else on the planet, does not read my blog.

What the title refers to is this:

Just as ZOMBIES are the psychic manifestation or personalization of our fear that starving hordes in hand-me-down clothes are coming to devour us,

so the various contemporary story lines about werewolves, feral children and people being "bitten" by something and infected by some rabies-like RAGE virus and going mad ("28 Days Later," "28 Weeks Later," "I Am Legend," "30 Days of Night," etc.) intensely resemble - at least to L.S. and me and probably a lot of other "educators" - the kids we confront on a daily basis at all levels of the U.S. educational penitentiary.

Like those bitten and infected unfortunates, there are just so many kids out there who seem to be on some perpetual mindless treadmill of disruption, defiance, destruction and chaos. They are violently allergic to peace, quiet, order, learning, reason ... they break it up the second any of these blessed states takes hold in the classroom. One pities the poor tormented little creatures.

Cloudy with a chance of bubbles

2010-09-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

What is "the cloud"? It sounds too good to be true: a Happy Place where data are stored without ever perishing or degrading or running out of space.

But what have we been told about things that sound too good to be true? Oh yeah, they turn into bubbles, and bubbles burst, and burst bubbles create chaos and pain and poverty.

Looking for a precise definition of cloud computing, a definition that would avoid the telltale ecstatic dreaminess of proto-bubblistic thought, I found this (see link at http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/so-what-is-the-cloud-exactly-experts-want-to-know/13662 ).

Seven experts were asked to define the cloud, and their answers were, and I quote:

1. A way of delivering value and monetization efficiency.

2. The notion of data and applications and hardware sources being accessed remotely.

3. 20 years ago your typical knowledge worker got 80 percent of the info needed to do their job from inside the company. Today, it’s completely flipped. Cloud computing is the technical response to this reality.

4. Providing value with computational devices.

5. I agree with Larry Ellison, I think cloud computing is a lot of hype.

6. Cloud computing is getting all the advantages of computing [without one]. ... Cloud computing is all about making it easier for people who create applications to provide them without the headaches of hardware.

7. Cloud is the worst buzzword I’ve ever heard. Vapor, something you can’t touch. I think it’s a lot of hype, but then again, here I am offering that service.

8. Extracting applications from hardware and networks.

9. Almost inevitable – self-serving technology on demand.

10. The solution to what you have in your basement.

11. As more and more people need it, it makes sense to provide it as a utility.

12. Virtualization is the promise to compute, but it is not actually computing.

13. To some degree, we’re talking about capacity … at some point, hardware becomes obsolete.

The moderator of this forum makes it confusingly clear from the outset that "although cloud computing is hard to define, it’s the reality of how it affects us on a daily basis — rather than its definition — that is important." Maybe that's why he didn't extract a coherent definition from any of these guys. Just dramatically invoking "reality" trumps concrete use of language in this universe.

One of the participants later adds, helpfully if a bit alarmingly:

We’re not so concerned with the hype or what you call it – for us, what it amounts to is real. The best example for us are the cybercriminals – they’re the ones who are the most effective users of the cloud today, with botnets and tens of thousands of zombie computers. That kind of power. That’s what we’re dealing with.

Another participant demands, "What are we putting in place to make sure we have a stable system? There’s only so much electricity, silicon, storage. It’s systemic in our society, but not everyone understands." Is cloud computing supposed to be that "stable system"?

So ... the cloud is everywhere because it can be nowhere, and nowhere because it can be everywhere. It is computing without a computer. It is a "promise" to compute, not computation itself, as our money is now a "promise" to pay, not payment itself. The cloud is information from "outside." Right now it is the playground of cybercriminals (but that will change?). It provides stability without utilizing "electricity, silicon [or] storage." It is even more "virtual" than computing, which I'd thought was virtuality itself. It is the magical solution to the physical limits of power generation, bandwidth, processors and silicon chips.

Despite their lack of physical existence, "there will be private clouds," assures one expert. Down-to-earth computers already lack any privacy whatever; supposedly firewalls made of cloud will prove more unbreachable than those of mere circuitry?

No matter how "remote" the location, the cloud must still exist somewhere. Mustn't it? Unless it's a mathematical point, which has no mass, or an electron, which has no fixed location. All of earth's knowledge contained in a massless point, a placeless particle, virtual virtuality ... Businesses as well as individuals might well feel insecure about relinquishing their data to be "stored" and accessed from such a no-man's land.

The cloud is external and universal. It is the concept that all data will be "outsourced" to some vague mega-processor in the sky (cloud cuckoo-land, I believe the British call it). The Information of all the world will be up for app. But the cloud is, first and foremost, a business opportunity. The next big thing! We know the warning signs by now: the glazed dazed look, the beatific smile, the catch in the throat when speaking of the Beloved, the absolute certainty, the blissful imperviousness to logic, the beautiful belief that this time, this time, there WILL be something for nothing ...

Sharon Who?

2010-08-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'd heard of the famous Port Huron Statement made by Students for a Democratic Society, but not, until very recently, of the Sharon Statement made by its antagonist, Young Americans for Freedom.

Sharon Tate? Sharon Stone? No, the Sharon Statement was a political position paper arrived at by a small group of YAF members who met for a couple of days at the Buckley family home in Sharon, Connecticut. Written up by M. Stanton Evans, the statement was issued on September 11, 1960.

The Port Huron Statement, named for the town in Michigan and written largely by Tom Hayden, appeared about two years later, in mid-June 1962. It was the product of months of rancorous wrangling within SDS -- although nowhere near at the level such infighting rose to toward that organization's disintegration a mere seven years later.

Clearly the New Left was aware of "Sharon" at the time and were determined to counter it. Not that the mainstream media was giving YAF the time of day. As a high school student I was actually able to read the Port Huron Statement, but heard very little about YAF.

The two statements make an interesting and still useful contrast. For one thing, Hayden rattled on 12 times as long as Evans. But compare for yourselves:

http://www2.fiu.edu/~yaf/sharon.html

http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/huron.html

Paradoxes of the Marxian Belief System

2010-01-25T18:44:00.000-08:00

There are several. Here are four; please feel free to add more.

1. "The People must rule" - and because we know what the People want better than they know themselves (i.e., because they're stupid), we are justified in taking power in Their name and governing against Them whenever necessary.

2. "The People are innately good" - and this is why the People must be tricked and coerced and forced into Doing the Right Thing and never allowed to have Their own selfish petty-bourgeois way.

3. "We love the People" - as an abstraction, that is, not as individuals; in fact socialists are notorious for their antisocial, unmannerly, boorish behavior toward flesh-and-blood human beings.

4. "The capitalist system is inherently doomed to collapse" - but because it never quite seems to do so fast or furiously enough, we need to help it along with Cloward and Piven strategies, designed to overwhelm and crash the system with impossible demands.

The Parasite

2009-12-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

I came upon a book called The Parasite (1982) by Michel Serres, a French philosopher. He examines parasitism of all kinds, from natural to existential, using language, fables and everthing else he can think of. One chapter in particular reminded me of the famous "healthcare debate":

Serres recounts the fable of the man who picks up an apparently freezing snake and takes it home to warm it by his own hearth. The snake wakes up, is startled and angered, and bites the man. Serres continues:

"The serpent was not a lessee; he was not looking for a haven; he was answered without having called. He was given an uncalled-for opinion. Someone made himself the serpent's benefactor, savior, and father. You are sleeping quite peacefully, and when you wake you find yourself in debt. You live with no other need, and suddenly someone claims to have saved your country, protected your class, your interests, your family, and your table. And you have to pay him for that, vote for him, and other such grimaces. ... Who has to pay? The litigation is serious. Who is the host and who is the guest? Where is the gift and where is the debt? Who is hospitable, who is hostile? ...

"Who among you allows himself to be displaced, carried from his home territory, permits himself to be the passive object of another's whim? ... Who would thank, moreover, the one who decides for you? That would be the same as giving recognition to professional politicians. To those who see and consider others as if they were rocks, cold stones. To those who force others to be only objects, which then can be carried. To those who are astonished when the passive object suddenly wakes up and lashes out in anger. The one who did not lash out against his benefactors, saviors, and fathers would be forgetting all his duties, as would he who did not pass from cold passivity to the heat of battle. Ready to die."

2012

2009-11-23T05:50:00.000-08:00

It's only 3 years and one month away. As Neil Cavuto pointed out on his show the other day, one of the lures of the 2012 scenario is that it functions as a massive reset button - we've got more than a few "fine messes" on our hands, and wouldn't it be handy to be able to dump them over the side and watch them vanish forever into a huge fiery gape in the earth ...

Spoilsports keep repeating that the Mayan calendar does not end in 2012, but merely begins a new cycle. Ah, but the advent of a new cycle may well be an occasion for turbulence, dislocation, realignment - "the end, when God untunes the sky" - if only temporarily.

Belief that the world we know it is about to end, or has to end because it is unsustainable, is at a very high point. There is a longing, not yet overwhelming but tangible and growing, for radical simplicity and renewal. And if we have to look at images of California sliding into the Pacific in overbuilt chunks to stir up our juices, so be it, I guess.

The film itself manages to turn people from just about every continent into stock figures: the earth mother, the waffling pol, the clandestine-murderous pol, the selfless scientist, the blonde bimbo with toy dog, the obnoxious overweight rich kid, the absentee father, and so on. Millions of tiny computerized human figures die terrible deaths by fire, earthquake, volcano and tsunami as our heroes escape by airplane. Then their sneaky breach of one of the "arks" intended to save the elite of the earth and man's cultural treasures nearly gets everyone aboard killed. Then the selfless scientist risks all the arks by suddenly deciding to let in the thousand or so folks about to be abandoned at the ark site. Everyone feels better about himself (forget the other billions) and of course the rescue succeeds without a second to spare and miraculously there are no ill effects from having taken on extra hundreds of people.

The director reportedly just laughed when asked if he were going to include scenes of Muslim holy sites undergoing destruction; he commented, "My co-writer Harald [Kloser] said, 'I'm not writing this to get a fatwa on my head.' We have Jesus falling apart in all kinds of forms. The Vatican falls on people's heads, and we can do that because we're a free, Western society, but if there would be, like, Mecca destroyed, there would be an outrage. And so you don't do it." Yes, the film shows the Pope, all the cardinals, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's basilica and the whole square full of praying believers being crushed and buried in mid-prayer. One thing you can say about modern Christians, they sure can take a joke.

I have a strong weakness for end-of-the-world scenarios, but usually prefer those with more realistic and achievable odds for survival. Of all the world's-end narratives I've heard, the "planetary alignment/solar flare/neutrinos mutating into microwaves/core boils/crust destabilizes" one is by far the least likely. I have to agree with Robin Cook that, barring a sizable asteroid that just blunders in out of nowhere, our most likely big die-off will come of a mutated influenza virus combining the high transmissibility of one strain with the high lethality of another.

There really are a lot of dooms to choose from, though. So many ends, so little time.

Distracted from distraction by distraction

2009-11-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

Eliot accused us of this back in the 1920s or 30s. How he'd writhe now! I haven't blogged in ages since "joining" Facebook and trying in vain to keep up ... Twitter is not in my future (but that's also what I said about blogging and Facebook, and earlier about CDs, email, DVDs, etc.). Love that too-true t-shirt that remarks "More people have read this t-shirt than read your blog" ... Am mainly writing (writhing?) this to get the previous stale title off the blog, where it greets me each time I log onto the internet. Visiting myself, automatically. Because I care.

Revolutionaries without Revolution

2009-07-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

As a former student radical, I had always thought that The Revolution must be bred among and led by the masses - the poor, the disenfranchised, and most particularly the working classes alienated from the means of production - against the bosses, the elites, the "bourgeoisie." But we now have the daily unfolding spectacle of The Revolution being led and imposed from above, against the will (and interests) of the masses, which of course in the case of modern America are the working "middle" classes.

Why does this revolutionized concept of Revolution make us so uneasy? For one thing, it is too easy. It substitutes fiat money (inevitably to be "made good" by much higher taxes of all kinds) for class struggle and the valuable lessons of solidarity, self-organization and class consciousness that genuine political movements bring. And for another thing, it benefits the wrong people: bureaucrats at every level of government; "middlemen" of every sort; officials and functionaries; planners planning, managing and directing social and economic activities of which they are fundamentally ignorant; self-serving "service providers"; those dangerous souls who crave power over others and for that precise reason should never be allowed to acquire it.

When Andre Thirion wrote Revolutionnaires sans revolution in 1972, he was looking back in sorrow at the dashed dreams of Surrealists and Stalinists alike in the 20th century. Thirion at length became a Gaullist. He concluded that "The antagonism between capitalism and Socialism is merely the result of poverty."

This statement might be interpreted in many different ways. The way America's current government interprets it seems to be "We can buy Socialism with other people's money."

Why Statists Always Do the Wrong Thing

2009-04-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

"Statists" are those who believe that society, economy and culture flow from the actions of the state, who believe that without the state to manage and organize and regulate and ration, human existence would not be possible. Statism is the viewpoint of the parasite: No parasite could ever conceive that its activity is inessential to the body as a whole, much less deleterious. That idea is simply beyond its ken, like asking someone to imagine the world that will exist when he is no longer in it. Of course there is no such world! The world began the day of my birth and will come screeching to a halt the moment I die! Which will be never!

Because the parasitic viewpoint is so skewed and blinkered, statists are constitutionally incapable of generating the right response when things start to go haywire. (This may also be due to parasitism having caused the breakdown to begin with.) Surely now we must do more!, cry the statists. More of what we do so well: tax and spend, tinker and "experiment" (as the Obama administration is doing, in explicit imitation of FDR's New Deal), forbid and compel, stipulate and decree - then tax and spend some more.

As with all human behavior, the bottom line is self-interest. For instance, statists cannot comprehend the need for individual or national self-defense, and - for obvious reasons - feel very threatened by it. Is a man's own home his castle? Does a man have a right to secure the borders of his own territory? Is a man's own property inalienable? Does a man have a right to the fruit of his own labor? What is this word "own?" wonder the statists, sincerely. What's yours is ours, and what's ours is ours. It's all just lying around here to be taken. What's the problem? Why would you want to keep anybody else out? After all, that's how WE got in ...

The idea that wealth can only be created by human labor is something no statist has ever grasped. For this reason, when wealth seems to be in too short supply, the statist idea of how to increase it is typically parasitic: Take more from the rich! Then print more money! The facts that wealthy societies mean increasing numbers of increasingly wealthy people, and that too much money paradoxically impoverishes all with inflation, are as foreign to statists as the Man in the Moon.

Taxation is literally sacred to statism. Even statists who have no personal intention whatsoever of paying the actual amount of tax they owe feel a shudder of sacrilege coming on when others complain about the tax code. Gloria Steinem famously said that if men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. Likewise the payment of taxes, those beautiful "voluntary contributions" that make statist life so deeply rewarding, is a "rite of Spring" for statists, their Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving all rolled into one.

Some people are born statists, and others become statists or are recruited to statism. Those who were statists at birth must surely include Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham. Both of them just knew from an early age that they were going to grow up to be parasites.

Civil Servants in some cases do worthwhile things, and certainly don't think of themselves as parasites; but of course their good deeds are done coercively at the expense of others. Statist beneficence can only be conducted with funds extracted from the labor of persons and businesses by means of various taxes, backed up by the threat of dispossession, imprisonment or worse.

There are two main types of statist: politicians (who are usually lawyers) and financiers (who are often lawyers).

When the financiers screw up the economy too badly, they run to the Treasury Department and become politicians. As soon as profitability has been restored, they run back to the "private sector" and begin dreaming up still more "exotic instruments." Pure capitalism, which exists mostly in theory, does naturally generate cyclical profitability crises; as the system decays under parasitic pressure, these cycles become more frequent, ragged, unpredictable, irrational and extreme.

Can a parasitized state-capitalist economy be saved? "Victory," of course, for the parasite, is Pyrrhic at best. Victory for the parasite means death for the host. If the parasite could be a host, i.e., could be a self-sufficient productive organism, then it would not be a parasite. Predator, parasite and prey: all forms co-exist at all levels, high and low, of life, always have and always will.

And in Vodka, Even More Veritas

2009-04-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

A 2002 thriller called Vodka by Boris Starling is a goldmine of lore about the great spirit and its spiritual homeland, Russia, as well as the intricate ins and outs of privatization in the early 90s. Too bad the novel has to drape all that good stuff on a framework of sick and far-fetched murders ... The passages about vodka (which Russians offer by asking "Will you take a hundred grams?," much as Scots, another world-class drinking people, ask "Will ye tak' a wee dram?") are so good they instill a longing for Happy Hour to arrive already ...

Here is a distillation of Starling's vodka veritas; most of the passages in quotes are from the mouth of Lev, a Moscow mafioso who happens to be the director of a major vodka distillery:

The vodka in the glass lurched as he sat heavily into the chair opposite her, but the preservative balance innate to the hardened drinker ensured that not a drop was spilled.

Vodka is just about the only recession-proof industry; the worse the economy gets, the more vodka people drink. In many of Russia's cash-strapped regions, vodka was a stable currency, making it as profitable as diamonds or oil. ... [T]eachers in Murmansk were receiving their salaries in vodka ... The nation's consumption of vodka borders on the heroic, and the figures remain staggering no matter how many times you hear them: Russia accounts for four-fifths of the world's vodka; a million liters are downed in Moscow each day; the average Russian (including women and children) drinks a liter every two days.

"...[V]odka's our lifeblood, the defining symbol of Russian identity. It's our main entertainment, our main currency, our main scourge. Vodka affects every aspect of Russian life, good and bad: friendships, business, politics, crime, and the millions of Russians whose lives are lonely, embittered, and tough. If there's one thing that unites the president with the frozen drunk found dead on a Moscow street, it's vodka. Vodka's always been the great equalizer, from here in the Kremlin down to the hovels. ... No matter what's going on up above - monarchy, communism, capitalism - there's always vodka, and all life goes through it. Our history and our future depend above all on one thing: vodka, and our relationship with it."

"Vodka is all things to all men. It can be a folk medicine, a hallucinogen revealing the mysteries of the soul, a lubricant more commonly applied to sophisticated machinery than any conventional liquid - and of course it can simply be vodka too. Every aspect of the human condition finds its reflection in vodka, and its exaggeration too. Russians drink from grief and from joy, because we're tired and to get tired, out of habit and by chance. It warms us in the cold, cools us in the heat, protects us from the damp, consoles us in grief and cheers us when times are good. Without vodka, there'd be no hospitality, no weddings, no baptisms, no burials, no farewells. Without vodka, friendship would no longer be friendship, happiness would no longer be happiness. It's the elixir sipped sociably, spreading gregariousness and love; it's also the anaesthetic without which life would be unendurable. Vodka's the only drug that enables the dispossessed to endure the monstrously cruel tricks life's played on them. It's the only solace for desperate men and women for whom there's no other release."

"Isidor, the inventor of vodka": A cleric, Thessalian Greek, who was imprisoned by Vassily the Third and rationed to water and grain. Isidor distilled the two together to make an alcoholic spirit that he offered to the guards. When they were comatose, he escaped. ...

Okhotnichaya vodka [dark brown in color] was drunk by hunters returning from the hill. She sniffed at it and smelled aniseed; swirled it in the glass and sniffed again, finding ginger and pepper. When she drank it, she tasted the other ingredients - port, cloves, juniper, coffee, orange, lemon, tormentil, angelica.

Vodka owes its popularity in America largely to its suitability as a cocktail base, which in turn stems from what Americans perceive as its lack of aroma or taste. For Russians, drinking vodka with mixers is [the greatest of crimes].

Ultraa ... was distilled using the pure oxygen-rich waters of Lake Ladoga ... and its recipe was based on one that had been used in the czar's imperial palaces ... delicate, lightly sweet aroma, touches of needle in the smooth taste, very slight oiliness of texture.

"Why do I like vodka? That's like asking why it snows in Russia. Only a foreigner could ask such a ridiculous question. It's like asking for a definition of the Russian soul."

... Two vodkas to taste. Russkaya had been filtered through birch-tree charcoal and quartz sand, and tasted of cinnamon. Altai Siberian was sweet, rich and oily, smoothed with glycerine and lingering long on the palate, without a background burn worth mentioning.

How not to get drunk: "Smell the vodka first, take a sip and hold it in you mouth for a couple of moments. Then you swallow, and right after that you eat something. After every toast, a chaser; it's the beauty without which the beast is incomplete. Getting drunk is all well and good, but it's not the entirety of what vodka's about."

They broke for lunch ... discovering with unexpected pleasure the way vodka brought out certain flavors in sausage, dill cucumbers and pickled mushrooms ... "Vodka's a wonderful drink. It's good with food, before food or after food. ... There's no such thing as Russian cuisine, just things that happen to go well with vodka."

He offered some Pertsovka, nut-brown with red tinges. It contained infusions of cubeb berries and pepper pods, red and black. Touches of aniseed and vanilla played on the nose ... surprisingly sweet on the lips ... the aftershock from the pepper suddenly ignited the gums and tongue. ... "Pertsovka highlights the seasoning and nuttiness of rice. Vodka does that, you know, brings out the flavors in food. If you have herring and sour cream, the vodka melts the cream's richness and slices through the herring's oiliness. Or take caviar. Vodka promotes beluga's creamy, nutty relish, together with a hint of sweetness that recalls almonds and marzipan. The lightly fishy, brie-and-roquefort taste of oscietra becomes even smoother with vodka. And vodka softens the sea-salt flavor of sevruga, which can be a little harsh."

When she looked back toward St. Basil's, she saw the domes as vodka bottles. Vodka, not religion, was the true opium of the masses. ... When she looked again she saw the onion domes - Russia's other perfect symbol. Onions have multiple layers, and the more you peel away, the more you weep.

There was no quicker or surer method [of rising to a big occasion] than vodka, the cold rushing river that swept her away from the dangerous rapids of trouble and stress and into the calmer pools of happiness and contentment. A quick dab of the elixir, and gone was her gauche and tense self ... Vodka was a liquid makeover from the inside out.

"Two-thirds full only. Only philistines fill to the top, because they don't mind spilling vodka down their shirtfronts. And this is good vodka - Kubanskaya, made by Cossacks in the Kuban lowlands, a little bitter."

"There are two types of vodka: good and very good. There can't be not enough food; there can only be not enough vodka. There can be no bad jokes; there can only be not enough vodka. There can be no ugly women; there can only be not enough vodka. There can't be too much vodka; there can only be not enough vodka. The first glass is drunk to everyone's health; the second for pleasure; the third for insolence; and the last for madness. So - to your health!"

The cold simplicity of vodka was an invitation to toss a glassful down the throat and wait, eyes watering, for the lovely blast in the stomach as the liquor explodes. Vodka lacks the subtlety of whiskey and the bourgeois splendor of brandy, but in its craggy purity it stands on a peak of its own.

[Brendan Behan likewise observed that "There is no such thing as a large whiskey."]

"When it comes to mixing vodka with food, you can take the high road - caviar, smoked murlofish, veal Apraksin - or you can take the low road: herring as bony as you can find, or pink Ukrainian fatback. Both paths are equally worthy of respect. Whichever one you choose, you'll find tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, cabbage and sauerkraut. All are honest, upstanding chasers, as beautiful as any Grecian urn and as virtuous as a pre-Nabokovian teenager. Do you know why vodka goes so well with food? Because so many foods are suitable base materials for vodka. You can use anything with a starch content that can be converted to sugar: barley, rye, maize, wheat, beet, onion, carrot, apple, pumpkin, bread ... even chocolate."

[Not to mention grapes, a la Ciroc.]

"You don't need medicine in Moscow. Vodka's the cure for all known ills. Stomachache? A glass of salted vodka. Flu? Peppered vodka and a hot bath. Fever? Rub vodka all over your body."

"A Russian's like a sponge, you see. You don't know his true shape until he's soaked."

"I'm trying out a new process of triple rectification. The first distillation takes the purity up to eighty percent, the second and third to the high nineties. Try some ... Exactly! It emphasizes purity at the expense of character. Peter the Great loved triple-distilled vodka. Maybe we need to dilute it with some anise, perhaps some other congeners too, because as it is it tastes like Absolut. Typical Swedes - take the danger out of driving and the character out of vodka."

"Have you ever heard the saying Ne pesh, ne mesh - if you don't drink, you're not one of us? In this case, it's slightly different. Ne beresh, ne mesh - if you don't take bribes, you're not one of us."

He picked up a three-and-a-half-ounce glass. "Handwashed in spring water - no scented detergent, please. The glass is stemless, and fits neatly into your palm. This warms the liquid, which is good; room temperature is best for testing. Long-stemmed glasses are better for pleasure, when the vodka is freezing and the afterburn icy. ... The easy way to detect faults is to cut one measure of room-temperature vodka with two measures of pure, bottled spring water in a wineglass, swirl it to release the vapors, and then inhale."
"It smells of toffee ... a faint layer of caramel too."
"They both mean the same thing: diacetyl, burned sugars from incomplete fermentation. You're right, that batch is not good. We'll have to throw it away. Perfumes are a dead giveaway. Amyl alcohol smells of nail polish remover, DMTs of boiled cabbage or drains. Acrolein is sharp, acrid and pungent. The scent of green apples means acetal. Methyl thiazole, you can't mistake that one, it smells like cats. What else? Oh yes, ionone, that's heavy and sweet. All are bad news. Now, how about this?"
"Too heavy, too greasy."
"We've overdone the fusel oil. It's a combination of butyl and iso-amyl alcohol. We use it in tiny quantities to make the vodka smoother. Last one." It was vodka infused with horseradish.
"Flawless - flawless."

There was nothing quite like the first proper vodka of the day ... It was a ritual. It was passion, it was sensual pleasure, it was paramour.

They drank Sibirskaya, distilled from winter wheat and repeatedly filtered through birch-tree charcoal. The wafts of aniseed on the nose were repeated on the palate, this time with liquorice tones attached: a delicate and light aroma giving way to a large, fragrant taste, quite sweet and almost creamily smooth until the extra alcohol began to bite through a long finish.

"There's an old conundrum that goes like this: 'If they raised the price of vodka to the price of a suit, which would you buy?' 'Why, vodka, of course. What would I need with such an expensive suit?'"

"This is pear-drop vodka. The process is very simple, really; we spread a handful of pear-drop candies across a sieve, place the sieve in the vat and let the alcohol pass over it. Ester impurities are sweet and fruity - we've kept a small amount in, to complement the pear drops. Some distillers prefer maceration, but I've always believed in circulation: six times a day for a week, and then the vodka's pumped into barrels to let the flavors fuse and settle for a couple of months. Of course, you get evaporation and a corresponding loss of strength ..." Any aroma of pear drops was submerged under a slightly meaty smell, not unlike stock cubes. This was due to the unspent yeasts burned during the distillation.

He offered her some Smirnoff Black, just about the best vodka in Russia. [!!!] It's made from the highest quality neutral grain spirit, distilled in a copper-pot still to preserve the grain's natural mellowness and flavors before being filtered through Siberian silver-birch charcoal ... tones of light rye overlaid with creamy charcoal and the slightest hint of acetone, tanginess ending with a brief sharp burn.

The real healing effects of vodka, the Russians say, begin only after the second bottle. Vodka in excess, brain in recess.

She was warmed from inside, a great molten core of vodka. Her thoughts seemed to flow down endless rivers of distilled spirit. Vodka was her friend. No one else really understood her, but vodka did, vodka made everything better - until it made everything worse.

The Morally Hazardous Economy

2009-04-05T19:31:00.001-07:00

Aw, I only just read David Leonhardt's article in the March 11 New York Times, so the newspaper is no longer taking comments, but I gotta say ...

First Leonhardt praises the distinguished authors of a book (Looting, published in 1993) which "argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government."

Then Leonhardt notes, "This form of moral hazard — when profits are privatized and losses are socialized — certainly played a role in creating the current mess."

("Moral hazard" is an economist's term for "risky behavior" caused by such things as the existence of taxpayer guarantees of losses. For instance, the FDIC uses taxpayer money to insure individual bank accounts up to $100,000 [now $250,000] - just as the Fed is now using yet-to-be printed trillions in taxpayer money to buy - again - toxic "assets" that shouldn't have been bought in the first place.)

Finally, Leonhardt repeats his prescription to cure this lamentable tendency of Wall Street to "take advantage" of the poor old well-intentioned government: "If we don’t get rid of the incentive to loot, the only question is what form the next round of looting will take." And his prescription?

Nationalization!!!

Non sequitur, to put it mildly. Statism turns the "incentive to loot" into the only operant motive for economic behavior and the entire economy into a moral hazard. Nationalization will make Ponzi schemes look like good old-fashioned bootstrap capitalism.

The American taxpayer, that stolid, solid, plodding workhorse of the world. Oh, we are Fortune's fool! The world seems to be betting that we'll keep on being played for one, too ... which is the saddest part.

Of Course You Realize This Means War!

2009-03-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

A Bugs Bunny line, said with an FDR-like flourish. Bugs zinged several cartoon enemies with it over the years, including Marvin the Martian.

In the real-world cartoon we inhabit, much of what is now happening will mean war. It always has in the past, and there is no reason to believe it won't in the future - the fairly near future, in fact.

Pat Buchanan included this quotation from Ernest Hemingway in a recent column:

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

“War is the health of the state,” wrote Randolph Bourne, the prophetic American thinker who died of war-borne "Spanish flu" just after the Armistice. Time and again the behavior of the political class sickens society to the point where peoples are driven to war as a purgative. Lives are destroyed - fewer mouths are left to feed. Credit is destroyed - crushing debt can be written off. Cities and factories and farms are destroyed - wildly profitable investments can again be made, particularly by the victors. What remains of life arises from the ashes, less free, less fine, less human.

Countless voices like Bourne's have warned against wars to come. Many a war has been finally fought to a standstill and many a nation has sworn "Never again." Just as we are doing now, people have ever walked with eyes open toward destruction.

What's up, Doctor Strangelove?

"In This Economy, Fear Is Rational"

2009-02-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

Title of a Feb. 23 article in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/23views.html?ref=business

This is a curious piece, because despite feints at a conservative, i.e., rational, understanding of economics, it never once mentions the market. It's as if that whole concept has suddenly just dropped out of the picture (down the Memory Hole), an unfact, a datum non grata (gratum?). What better way to abolish the market than to silence the very word?

Unfortunately the market cannot be bypassed in this way; the market, in fact, is the reason the lords of finance are having such a devil of a time "managing" the world economy. You can't fool the market; the market is reality, and it's having its revenge.

I read a sci-fi novel once, I think it was called "Virus," which posited a financial meltdown caused by a computer virus. The solution in the end was that the world agreed to set the value of everything back to what it was before the virus struck, and proceed from there.

There can be no solution to the current panic without allowing the market to operate, painful though that may be for some, and perhaps for all.

Marianalysis!

2009-02-05T16:04:00.000-08:00

Below is a list someone forwarded of many if not most items included in the stimulus package being pushed by the ruling class.

I have gone through and highlighted in red those portions of the listed items that do appear to be the kind of make-work but useful sorts of things that might actually function as stimulus (e.g., "modernization, renovation and repair" of existing productive facilities and infrastructure). I left out military-related items on the theory that such spending is inherently of negative value, that is, wasteful. I also left out government-sponsored research on the theory that if the market (real demand) can't or won't support it, it will ultimately prove a waste of time and money.

The Wall Street Journal has estimated that only 12% of the almost $1 trillion total will be truly "stimulating" spending. My calculation is that $42,816,000,000 or about 4.67% of the currently mentioned amount might be stimulus-producing. However, since most of the facilities to be built or renovated are themselves government-related, the REAL value of that building and renovation is much less than if actual farmland or manufacturing (plantings and plants, so to speak) were involved. For instance, renovating Dept. of Agriculture edifices only strengthens an agency that has always had the effect of damaging, distorting and destroying agriculture in the United States.

Also, the Carrying Capacity Network and others have pointed out that nothing in the bill prevents many of the proposed construction jobs from going to illegal immigrants, which of course will do nothing to help our fellow Americans get back on their feet - quite the contrary.

Thus even the most generous definition of stimulus amounts here to less than one-twentieth of the amount being so loudly demanded.

My favorite quip that's come out of the Crisis so far is the anti-Keynesian "You can't get rich by writing yourself a check."

Note: Daniel Guerin was a fiery French anarchist whose 1939 book Fascism and Big Business remains a fascinating analysis of the "capitalist crisis." He noted that capitalism goes through regular crises of profitability, prevented from making new investments or introducing new technology by the need to amortize (and pay off the compound interest) on previous investments and technology. "The authors of the New Deal," he wrote, seventy years ago, "temporarily succeeded in restarting the capitalist machine only by arms purchases even more gigantic than those in Germany. With the return of peace, American capitalism could survive only by remaining on a war footing" (this last sentence was added to the 1945 edition).

"[The state]," Guerin continued, "is always ready to come running whenever these [capitalist] gentlemen cannot pull through by themselves. In any such crisis, it is immediately at their service, 'socializing' their losses, refloating their enterprises, and keeping them alive with its orders."

The "paradox" is that this function is now being performed by self-professed socialists and "unrepentant" leftist revolutionaries!

Guerin's tombstone bears the epitaph "Ni dieu ni maitre" (Neither god nor master) ...

See if your pet project is in this list!

Just Some of the Economic Stimulus Bill By Jamie Dupree

What follows are a number of the spending projects included in the economic stimulus bill filed by Democrats late on Friday, which will be voted on in coming days by the House of Representatives.

This is Not a Complete List.

Instead, it is an overview of some of the major items found in this bill in terms of spending.

No judgments are made about the need for these expenditures.

That is up to you, the voter, and your elected members of the House and Senate.

You can find the full text of the bill, H.R. 1 at

http://www.rules.house.gov/111/LegText/111_hr1_text.pdf

Here is a sampling of what we found:

$44 million for construction, repair and improvements at US Department of Agriculture faculties

$209 million for work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities

$245 million for maintaining and modernizing the IT system of the Farm Service Agency

$175 million to buy and restore floodplain easements for flood prevention

$50 million for "Watershed Rehabilitation"

$1.1 billion for rural community facilities direct loans

$2 billion for rural business and industry guaranteed loans

$2.7 billion for rural water and waste disposal direct loans

$22.1 billion for rural housing insurance fund loans

$2.8 billion for loans to spur rural broadband

$150 million for emergency food assistance

$50 million for regional economic development commissions

$1 billion for "Periodic Censuses and Programs"

$350 million for State Broadband Data and Development Grants

$1.8 billion for Rural Broadband Deployment Grants

$1 billion for Rural Wireless Deployment Grants

$650 million for Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Program

$100 million for "Scientific and Technical Research and Services" at the National Institute of Standards And Technology

$30 million for necessary expenses of the "Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership"

$300 million for a competitive construction grant program for research science buildings

$400 million for "habitat restoration and mitigation activities" at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

$600 million for "accelerating satellite development and acquisition"

$140 million for "climate data modeling"

$3 billion for state and local law enforcement grants

$1 billion for "Community Oriented Policing Services"

$250 million for "accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey."

$50 million for repairs to NASA facilities from storm damage

$300 million for "Major Research Instrumentation program" (science)

$200 million for "academic research facilities modernization"

$100 million for "Education and Human Resources"

$400 million for "Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction"

$4.5 billion to make military facilities more energy efficient

$1.5 billion for Army Operation and Maintenance fund

$624 million for Navy Operation and Maintenance

$128 million for Marine Corps Operation and Maintenance

$1.23 billion for Air Force Operation and Maintenance

$454 million to "Defense Health Program"

$110 million for Army Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$62 million for Navy Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$45 million for Marine Corps Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$14 million for Air Force Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$302 million for National Guard Operation and Maintenance

$29 million for Air National Guard Operation and Maintenance

$350 million for military energy research and development programs

$2 billion for Army Corps of Engineers "Construction"

$250 million for "Mississippi River and Tributaries"

$2.2 billion for Army Corps "Operation and Maintenance"

$25 million for an Army Corps "Regulatory Program"

$126 million for Interior Department "water reclamation and reuse projects"

$80 million for "rural water projects"

$18.5 billion for "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy" research in the Department of Energy. That money includes:

$2 billion for development of advanced batteries

$800 million of that is for biomass research and $400 million for geothermal technologies

$1 billion in grants to "institutional entities for energy sustainability and efficiency"

$6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program

$3.5 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants

$3.4 billion for state energy programs

$200 million for expenses to implement energy independence programs

$300 million for expenses to implement Energy efficient appliance rebate programs including the Energy Star program

$400 million for expenses to implement Alternative Fuel Vehicle and Infrastructure Grants to States and Local Governments

$1 billion for expenses necessary for advanced battery manufacturing

$4.5 billion to modernize the nation's electricity grid

$1 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee Program

$2.4 billion to demonstrate "carbon capture and sequestration technologies"

$400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Science)

$500 million for "Defense Environmental Cleanup"

$1 billion for construction and repair of border facilities and land ports of entry

$6 billion for energy efficiency projects on government buildings

$600 million to buy and lease government plug-in and alternative fuel vehicles

$426 million in small business loans

$100 million for "non-intrusive detection technology to be deployed at sea ports of entry

$150 million for repair and construction at land border ports of entry

$500 million for explosive detection systems for aviation security

$150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges

$200 million for FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter program

$325 million for Interior Department road, bridge and trail repair projects

$300 million for road and bridge work in Wildlife Refuges and Fish Hatcheries

$1.7 billion for "critical deferred maintenance" in the National Park System

$200 million to revitalize the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

$100 million for National Park Service Centennial Challenge programs

$200 million for repair of U.S. Geological Survey facilities

$500 million for repair and replacement of schools, jails, roads, bridges, housing and more for Bureau of Indian Affairs

$800 million for Superfund programs

$200 million for leaking underground storage tank cleanup

$8.4 billion in "State and Tribal Assistance Grants"

$650 million in "Capital Improvement and Maintenance" at the Agriculture Dept.

$850 million for "Wild land Fire Management"

$550 million for Indian Health faculties

$150 million for deferred maintenance at the Smithsonian museums

$50 million in grants to fund "arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn" through the National Endowment for the Arts

$1.2 billion in grants to states for youth summer jobs programs and other activities

$1 billion for states in dislocated worker employment and training activities

$500 million for the dislocated workers assistance national reserve

$80 million for the enforcement of worker protection laws and regulations related to infrastructure and unemployment insurance investments

$300 million for "construction, rehabilitation and acquisition of Job Corps Centers"

$250 million for public health centers

$1 billion for renovation and repair of health centers

$600 million for nurse, physician and dentist training

$462 million for renovation work at the Centers for Disease Control

$1.5 billion for "National Center for Research Resources"

$500 million for "Buildings and Faculties" at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington, D.C.

$700 million for "comparative effectiveness research" on prescription drugs

$1 billion for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance

$2 billion in Child Care and Development Block Grants for states

$1 billion for Head Start programs

$1.1 billion for Early Head Start programs

$100 million for Social Security research programs

$200 million for "Aging Services Programs"

$2 billion for "Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology"

$430 million for public health/social services emergency funds

$2.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control for a variety of programs

$5.5 billion in targeted education grants

$5.5 billion in "education finance incentive grants"

$2 billion in "school improvement grants"

$13.6 billion for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

$250 million for statewide education data systems

$14 billion for school modernization, renovation and repair

$160 million for AmeriCorps grants

$400 million for the construction and costs to establish a new "National Computer Center" for the Social Security Administration

$500 million to improve processing of disability and retirement claims

$920 million for Army housing and child development centers

$350 million for Navy and Marine Corps housing and child development centers

$280 million in Air Force housing and child development centers

$3.75 billion in military hospital and surgery center construction

$140 million in Army National Guard construction projects

$70 million in Air National Guard construction projects

$100 million in Army Reserve construction projects

$30 million in Navy Reserve construction projects

$60 million in Air Force Reserve construction projects

$950 million for VA Medical Facilities

$50 million for repairs for military cemeteries

$120 million for a backup information management facility for the State Department

$98 million for National Cyber security Initiative

$3 billion for "Grants-in-Aid for Airports"

$300 million for Indian Reservation roads

$300 million for Amtrak capital needs

$800 million for national railroad assets or infrastructure repairs, upgrades

$5.4 billion in federal transit grants

$2 billion in infrastructure development for subways and commuter railways

$5 billion for public housing capital

$1 billion in competitive housing grants

$2.5 billion for energy efficiency upgrades in public housing

$500 million in Native American Housing Block Grants

$4.1 billion to help communities deal with foreclosed homes

$1.5 billion in homeless prevention activities

$79 billion in education funds for states

Scot free?

2009-01-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

Since the latest financial bubble popped so loudly, commentators have been recalling a gentleman named John Law. Law was an adventurous Scot who back in the very early 1700s came up with the "Mississippi Scheme," a speculative investment project which ended up just about bankrupting the French nation. The project had so many repercussions that the first 45 pages of Charles Mackay's classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds ( 1841) are devoted to it.

Was Law then an economic criminal in the class of Charles Ponzi, Alexandre Stavisky or Bernard Madoff? Mackay himself is ambivalent, on the one hand saying that "Historians are divided in opinion as to whether they should designate him a knave or a madman," and on the other asking, "How was [Law] to foretell that the French people ... would kill, in their frantic eagerness, the fine goose he had brought to lay them so many golden eggs?"

A recent book by Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, terms John Law "the man who invented the stock market bubble." In Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Law is portrayed as "a dreamer who never let details get in the way of a good plan," a visionary who "convince[d] the French crown to set up the Bank Royale."

Where does the truth lie, I wonder. Not all financiers are swindlers. But even if high finance can be a good thing, we have had much too much of it.

Mea taxima culpa

2008-12-11T13:21:00.000-08:00

As a middle-class American, I know it is my fault. What is? (Ask rather, What is not?) In this case, "it" refers to sluggish sales at this most sacred retail time of year, the Holidays.

I should be out there buying, purchasing, acquiring, getting; I should be stretching every last atom of what credit remains to me helping to prop up the giant edifice and grease the vast machinery of American Consumption, without which, apparently, the economy of the entire world is grinding to an ungainly halt.

Yet I confess to confusion: I am told I neither save enough nor spend enough. With impatience I await the far more specific orders that are bound to emanate profusely from the Obama White House. Perhaps these orders will be simplified by Obama's new tax policy. If I have no money left after taxes to misuse, surely I can't make any more bad decisions, and the great ship of State will right itself and sail forward once again ...

Voltaire's Candide

2008-11-08T05:49:00.000-08:00

. . . offers us, 260 years on, a way to look at the world and a way to act in it that can scarcely be improved upon.

Everything is for the best
in this best of all possible worlds.

And,

We must cultivate our own gardens.

Mystery post

2008-11-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs Marian K. Coombs Marian Coombs

Marian Kester Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian Kester Coombs Marian Kester Coombs

A blessing in disguise?

2008-11-01T07:58:00.001-07:00

It sure does look as though the mighty powers aligned behind the B.H. Obama candidacy will get their way next Tuesday, although - oddly - a majority of voters seems to be shuddering at the prospect. According to a recent poll (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/63_say_obama_more_likely_to_restrict_gun_rights),
most Americans think Obama will increasingly ban guns - and we also know that most Americans don't care for that sort of thing.

But imagine what the election of John McCain would mean.

Four more dismal years of Bush-Republican rule. Despite McCain's protestations to the contrary, he is more like Bush than any other of the Republican candidates he defeated. His election would mean no well-deserved repudiation of the Bush experiment in preemptive war, currency debasement and throwing ersatz money around like a drunken apparatchik - all the while calling it "conservatism" and wrecking the rep of the GOP.

Continued malaise on the right. Sure, the GOP would be "in power," but with what mandate, and with what energy? Let the Democrats take over the mess; conservatives need to regroup, buck up, and take a long hard look at how the past eight years could have happened, so that it may never happen again.

Misuse of Sarah Palin. Peggy Noonan may not fancy Sarah, but most conservatives do - a lot. Is suddenly being made vice-president the best use of this tremendous natural resource? Palin should be allowed to develop, gain experience, and truly blossom as a leader. She has the potential to be our Maggie Thatcher - but not just yet.

1992 all over again. An Obama presidency would rejuvenate, resurrect, resuscitate, reenergize, reanimate and re-you name it the conservative movement. Especially if the Dems contrive a trifecta, the makings of the 1994 Republican Revolution will once more be in play. And this time we will not be saddled with Newt Gingrich: May we learn from his disgraced example, both political and personal.

And last/not least: We would be deprived of the spectacle of Barack Hussein Obama playing the role of President of the United States.

Where does government end and the market begin?

2008-10-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

The most careful writers are seeming to have trouble making a rigorous distinction between governmental economic actions and private economic actions. Where do the activities of the state -- regulation, taxation, oversight, arbitration, civil and criminal prosecution -- stop, and the independent, profit-seeking, "capitalist" private sector's domain begin? In terms of the present financial crisis, which came first, the corporate fat cat or the corrupt pol? Or are they even two distinct classes of person?

Pat Buchanan (The American Conservative, October 6, 2008) also finds a blur where this divide should be:

"'Government must save us!' cries the Left, as ever. Yet who got us into this mess if not the government -- the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy? [emphasis added] ...

"An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. [emphasis added] We are just spectators."

Whose responsibility is it to rein in Wall Street? If it is the state's, as Pat implies in the first paragraph, then our system is not free-market capitalism; thus we should hand even more authority over to the state to regulate economic decision-making. If it is Wall Street's responsibility, as he implies in the second paragraph, then why blame Congress for not doing Wall Street's job? These "elites" are a confusing concept, and therefore not a concept at all.

Pat's final paragraph, however, is clear as a bell and impossible to deny:

"What the Greatest Generation handed down to us -- the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved -- the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away."

Keep talking happy talk

2008-10-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Even before the current Financial Meltdown, there was scare talk out there in abundance. But here are some quotes from an article by Brian Kaller ("Future Perfect" in the mid-August issue of The American Conservative) that are heartening in any "crisis" environment:

"[Doomsayers]' long-held note of dread is useful only to the extent that it inspires people to do something more practical. The world we create will be, up to a point, whatever we were preparing for ...

"A critical mass of Americans who believe in an imminent zombie apocalypse runs the risk of making the future more difficult than it need be. Just as a Depression-era panic could crash a bank that would not otherwise have failed, so a widespread belief in a violent and hopeless end could actually make Americans less likely to work together during the next outage or shortage.

"... Say that Americans make only a third as much money, cut driving by two-thirds. Assume that extended families have to move in together to conserve resources and that we must cut our flying by 98 percent.

"Many would consider that a fairly clear picture of collapse. But we have been there before, and recently. Those are the statistics of the 1950s -- not remembered as a big time for cannibalism.

"Happiness, as defined by survey responses, peaked [in the mid-20th century] ... and has plummeted even as our incomes tripled.

"The tight bonds and sanguine outlook of young people in the '50s ... originated in their shared experience on the home front during World War II. Working together during a national crisis made them lifelong model citizens, who swelled rates of optimism and civic activism at every age as they passed, like a pig through a python, across a demographic lifetime. ...

"... Handled right, peak oil [which is the crisis addressed by this particular article way back in August] could bring a revival of small-town America, local farming, small businesses, and an economy that centers around Main Street rather than Wall Street."

Brian Kaller is apparently an Irish journalist who lives in County Kildare; more of his writing is at http://www.restoringmayberry.blogspot.com . I enjoy zombie apocalypse at least as much as the next person, but as a real outcome? Not so much!

Note to self

2008-10-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

Never a dull moment. Having missed the fact that my website had fallen into the public domain, I awoke this week to find an interloper camped upon it, writing as -- Marian Coombs. So far the content is surprisingly innocuous, but the incident has prompted me to start this site instead.