Don't go to war.

Article: Moral Injury:

...[N]ew ideas are vying for legitimacy, a whole new theory of war’s worst ravages. It’s called “moral injury,” and it comes from clinicians who spend their days speaking with soldiers who have been in battle. These veterans rarely mention fear. Instead they talk about loss or shame, guilt or regret. They had tried to be heroes, to protect the weak, save their buddies, take the hill. But then they mistakenly killed civilians, forced themselves to drive past wounded children, sometimes missed their moment of truth. Even after the Battle of Fallujah, in 2004, where William Nash served as a combat psychiatrist, fear wasn’t a factor. “Survivor’s guilt, moral injury, feeling betrayed by leaders,” says Nash, the lead author of the current Navy and Marine doctrine on stress control, “That’s what I saw every day.”

Here's a Wonder of the World

The new Genghis Khan Statue in Mongolia.  I don't know how I never heard of it.  It was completed in 2008.

Definitely on the list of things I want to see.  Put it on my bucket list (whoever's doing that for me).

No, I don't honor the murdering scumbag as such, and don't think anyone should obey a leader to the point of being a murderer for him - or a thief or a rapist, which his soldiers were all of - but...  It's a cool statue.

Mark Thornton on "Scandalous Regulators"

Scandalous Regulators

Regulation simply does not work. It is designed with hopes of success, but with no mechanism to achieve this success. We hope for efficiency, but what we get is bureaucracy. We hope for effectiveness, but what we get is rules and red tape that serves neither producer nor consumer. We hope for safety, but what we eventually get is chaos. Let us take a look at the prominent cases where regulation was supposedly lacking and examine the real cause of chaos.

The Bernie Madoff scandal involved Madoff’s tightly controlled firm taking client money and supposedly generating spectacular and consistent investment returns. However, Madoff was not really a great investor; he was running a Ponzi scheme where he used investors’ money to pay for redemptions by his clients. Most of the money apparently went into his own pockets.

First, how did he get away with this scheme for so long? It was not because he was unregulated. He was officially under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and probably other government regulatory agencies. Despite ever-increasing budgets and staff, and even warnings from outsiders, the SEC failed to act.

Second, how did he finally get caught? He was only caught after the stock market crashed and investors sought to redeem large amounts of their funds. He confessed to his sons that he was operating a Ponzi scheme and his sons turned him into authorities.[1]

I think those links will work.

I just finished Paul Johnson's Socrates

Full title: Socrates:A Man for Our Time. 

Great book.  Johnson is a conservative, but I don't think that afflicts his writing here much.  He accepts more of the standard understanding (conventional wisdom) of the early Christian era than I do, but I like summary at the end:

Happy among people, Socrates did not seek to turn them into pupils, let alone students.  He was not a teacher, a don, an academic.  There was nothing professorial about him.  He had no oeuvre.  As Cicero said, "He did not write so much as a single letter."  There was no body of Socratic doctrine.  He spurned a classroom.  The streets and marketplace of Athens were his habitat.  Unlike Plato and Aristotle, he founded no Academy or Lyceum.  The University, with its masters and students, its lectures and tutorials, its degrees and libraries and publishing houses, was nothing to do with him.  He was part of the life of the city--a thinking part, to be sure, a talking and debating part, but no more separated from its throbbing, bustling activity than the fishmonger or the money changer or the cobbler, its ranting politician, its indigent poet, or its wily lawyer.  He was at home in the city, a stranger on campus.  He knew that as soon as philosophy separated itself from the life of the people, it began to lose its vitality and was heading in the wrong direction.  An academic philosophy was not an activity to which he had anything of value to contribute or in which he wished to participate.  The notion of philosophy existing only in academic isolation from the rest of the world would have horrified him and probably would have produced ribald laughter, too.  "That," one can hear him saying, "is the death of any philosophy I can recognize."

I could quote some of the last paragraph of the book - it gets better - but I'll leave some pleasures for you to discover on your own.  Read it.  Paul Johnson's a great writer, it's not a long book and the story of the man who brought philosophy down from the stars, and how he did it, is too important to our future to let go.

Libertarian Redistribution?!

I need to come back to this article: http://c4ss.org/content/12961.  I like this bit:

Transactional redistribution is just a description of what happens in a genuinely freed market. Markets undermine privilege. Without the protection afforded by monopoly privileges (including patents and copyrights), subsidies, tariffs, restrictions on union organizing, protections for long-term ownership of uncultivated property, and so forth, members of the power elite, forced to participate along with everyone else in the process of voluntary cooperation that is the freed market, will tend to lose ill-gotten gains. They will retain wealth only if they actually serve the needs of other market participants. And they will be unable to use the legal system to protect their wealth from squatters (by enabling them to maintain uncultivated land indefinitely) or to limit vigorous bargaining by workers (both because workers will be freer to organize without statist restrictions and because the absence of such restrictions will give workers options other than paid employment that will improve their negotiating positions).

While unfettered competition obviously will not create mathematical equality, it will make it much harder for vast disparities of wealth to persist than at present. The state props up the power elite, using the threat of aggression to shift wealth to the politically favored. Removing the privileges of the power elite will lead, through the operation of the market, to the widespread dispersion of wealth members of the power elite are able to retain at present in virtue of the protection they receive from the political order.

The means of transactional redistribution is the market. The direct agents are ordinary market actors, while those responsible for the elimination of statist privileges that distort the market and prop up the wealth of the power elite are the indirect agents. The rationales for transactional redistribution include thevalue of freedom and the injustice of the privileges transactional redistribution corrects.

600# York Olympic Barbell set for $300 in Brooklyn Center, MN

I selling it.  If you live in the Northwest section of the Twin Cities area, I'll even deliver it.  Say, within 10 miles of Brooklyn Center.  Otherwise, you'll have to make the arrangements to get it.  I'm not going to pack it for shipping.

In fact, if you live in the area, I'd be willing to hire out myself and my pick-up to haul things, as long as they'll fit under my topper or on my trailer.  $50 for the first hour - $20 per half hour after that.  I'll adjust my prices later if that doesn't work out.  I should make a separate entry for that.

I also have a live trap for raccoons.  I've trapped and removed a couple from my place.

Four More Years of the Same Old S***

F*^&in' great.

Of course, I could have said the same thing if Romney had been elected.  At least we've got the "cool black guy" rather than the white-bread Ken Doll - who claims to be all about free trade - in while the economy goes down the s*&%$$# and the Military Industrial Complex marches on.

Ha! Cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sharona

RIP Russell Means

We've lost another hero. 

At least I got to meet and speak with Mr. Means at the LPMN Convention in 2000.  I think I bought his book, Where White Men Fear to Tread, directly from him, but I may have got it at Barnes and Noble after meeting him.

A quote from page 486:

 We believe that the U.S. Constitution can and should evolve to keep pace with the times, but what it says at any given time is inviolate.  We believe in self-defense, but we're the most peace-loving people in America.  Our country doesn't need an enormous, costly military establishment, because most of our "foes" would be friends if we stopped treating them like enemies.  The National Guard should return to its original mission-militias assembled in time of need to protect states against incursions by the federal government.  If we honored the Second Amendment, which guarantees us the right to bear arms, we the citizens would be better armed than our government.  It could never force us to do anything.

"Judge not..." is true in another way.

This thought rousted me out of bed.

Ayn Rand pointed out that a corollary of Jesus' saying, "Judge not that ye be not judged," is "Judge and prepare to be judged."  I think of this often and it occurred to me tonight that it's true psychologically as well.  Your criticism of others reveals your own weaknesses to the psychologically astute.

I offer this infinitely copiable arrow to the intellectual quivers of the masses in this election season.  It behooves us all to become psychologically astute - it's our best defense against manipulators...as well as it defends us from falling into the trap of being manipulators (which burns up our stock of good will, if you need to have the selfish, utilitarian argument spelled out).

MTCM 2012

Well, I finished the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon today. No PR, and no real idea why not: http://www.mtecresults.com/runner/show?rid=4882&race=1146.   I was completely wasted at the end - I almost passed out - so I couldn't have done any better.  Maybe it was the layers.

I wasted some time in a port-a-potty once.  Just in case that discomfort was something serious.  Stopping out of the wind did kind of even out my hot and cold spots, so it wasn't all bad.  That stop does account for the 14+/mile  section, though.

2:12:29 for the half isn't bad.  I'll have to run a half to see how that would go when it's my goal.

I was reminded, today, why I don't wear boxer briefs for running. It was cold out - 29 degrees (F) at the start - so I thought, "Oh, these will be warm." They work like mechanical tweezers. 

That is, however, my worst discomfort.  I've got "water" on both knees, but not a major case.  The duct tape and Body Glide worked like champs.

Excellent article by Arnold Kling

In Libertarians and Group Norms,  Kling pulls out many of the biggest guns of libertarianism  to debate what we should do with/about our inherited social tendencies and institutions.  Adam Smith and F.A. Hayek take the side of dealing gently with them, while J.S. Mill and Ayn Rand argue for overthrowing them if they interfere with personal freedom.

Gaol Time

I just want to know why somebody thought this was a natural way to spell 'jail.'  It completely flies in the face of all the spelling rules.

It's an outrage.

More Spencer

See the link in previous post. This is from p. 53 (Sorry, I've been reading other things for a bit):

...[T]he objection which I have to the current utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of morality–does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of moral science.

Doubtless if utilitarians are asked whether it can be by mere chance that this kind of action works evil and that works good, they will answer no; they will admit that such sequences are parts of a necessary order among phenomena. But though this truth is beyond question; and though if there are causal relations between acts and their results, rules of conduct can become scientific only when they are deduced from these causal relations; there continues to be entire satisfaction with that form of utilitarianism in which these causal relations are practically ignored. It is supposed that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results; and that there is no possibility of knowing by deduction from fundamental principles, what conduct must be detrimental and what conduct must be beneficial.

Spencer says that morality can be a science if acts and their consequences are studied with regard to their benefit or harm - short-term, long-term, short-range and long-range.  People are studying these things, even now, but they do so haphazardly in narrow fields (e.g. all of the social sciences, business management, finance, environmental sciences), never bringing their findings together in any systematic way.  Particularly with regard to promulgating their findings to the masses.

From Herbert Spencer's Ethics

Similarly of the education given to them, or provided for them. Goodness or badness is affirmed of it (often with little consistency however) according as its methods are so adapted to physical and psychical requirements, as to further the children’s lives for the time being, while preparing them for carrying on complete and prolonged adult life.

These ethical judgments we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong, and often overridden, do need moral enforcement. Hence results a contrast. On turning to that second class of adjustments of acts to ends which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or inefficient. The expressions good nursing and bad nursing, whether they refer to the supply of food, the quality and amount of clothing, or the due ministration to infantine wants from hour to hour, tacitly recognize as special ends which ought to be fulfilled, the furthering of the vital functions, with a view to the general end of continued life and growth. A mother is called good who, ministering to all the physical needs of her children, also adjusts her behavior in ways conducive to their mental health; and a bad father is one who either does not provide the necessaries of life for his family or otherwise acts in a manner injurious to their bodies or minds.

Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics (1887), Vol. I, p. 33.

The Heights Theater

In Columbia Heights, MN.

This here is how you treat an old theater.

An idea does not become an action unless the individual actor believes that the idea is worth acting on.

That's a sentence from this article.  Here's the end of that paragraph:

To subjugate another human being, or to condone or allow the subjugation of one by another, one must first have the idea of subjugation and must believe that acting on it is preferable to ignoring or condemning it. Scarcity and natural death need no such human consent. The old saying about death and taxes turns out to be only half true.

Here's another good quote:

The Chinese army fired on their fellow citizens in Tiananmen Square. This massacre was not caused by political leaders and generals saying, “Shoot”; but by men in the Chinese army deciding to shoot. It was not caused ultimately by bad leadership, but by a belief in the necessity of obeying orders. There will always be people with a will to power; a desire to control. Only when the rest don’t believe that power to be necessary and therefore do not obey does freedom reign.

If Unilateral Disarmament is good for me

then it's good for government.

Oops!  They're coming for me.

Two good books to read in juxtaposition

H.G. Well's A Short History of the World.  A book to which I have misattributed the quote, "Grown men do not need leaders."  I'm pretty sure he's the one who said that, but it wasn't in that book.  Maybe it was the Outline of History.

The other book is The Wizards of Ozymandias, by Butler Shaffer.

And Mayam Bialik is better

than 99.999% of the rest of us. 

Admit it. 

She and her husband are doing it right; the rest of us did it wrong.  Follow her example.

Link.

Parents need to read this

Ask Dr. Sears.  Here's the blurb on the Discipline and Behavior page.

Discipline is more about building the right relationship with your child than using the right techniques. You want to put into place a guidance system that keeps the child in check at age four and keeps his behavior on track at age forty, and you want this system to be integrated into the child's whole personality, a part of him or her.

Here you can find what he thinks of spanking.  There are two other articles in that section that I think are pretty good, too.

George H. Smith on "Social Darwinism"

 Summarizing the thought of Spencer and Sumner:

In a free society people are able to pursue their own interests as they see fit, provided they respect the equal rights of others. As cooperation in a regime of contract replaces exploitation in a regime of status, the fittest prosper not by coercing others but by assisting them through voluntary exchanges. (Adam Smith had previously dubbed this process the “invisible hand.”) Here as elsewhere survival of the fittest is an iron law of social existence, but this standard of fitness is far removed from that invoked by the specter of social Darwinism. Voluntary cooperation, not coercive exploitation, is the standard of fitness in a free society.

Spencer and Sumner emphasized that market competition differs dramatically from biological competition. Market competition, unlike biological competition, produces immense wealth, thereby making it possible for many people to survive and prosper who otherwise could not. Moreover, the sophisticated division of labor that develops in a market economy generates specialization, and this specialization generates social interdependence — a condition in which every person must rely on the cooperation and assistance of others for necessary goods and services. The solitary individual cannot produce everything he needs or wants in a market economy, so he must persuade many others to assist him. This condition of survival cultivates the character traits (or virtues) necessary for peaceful interaction – those civilizingmores, as Sumner called them, that make social interaction not only productive and mutually beneficial but pleasant as well.

Smith doesn't defend Darwin against the charge of promoting bloody conflict between the classes (we know who really does that - typical case of psychological projection).  This guy does, at the same time showing how idiotic it is to call someone a "social Darwinist" in the sense its coiner intended.

Word of the Day: Casuistry

I was having a bi*** of a time trying to remember this word.  The desire to have it at hand has been recurring at least once a week for many months.  Google has been no help until today when I finally found it via Thesaurus.com.

They define it as "overgeneral reasoning," by the way.  I swear I looked for it there before under every synonym on that list.  Today I found it under 'equivocation'.  I probably looked for it under 'equivocate'; there may not be a verb form.  I know I looked for it under 'sophistry' and 'sophism'.

I don't like what The Free Dictionary and Thesaurus.com have become.

Russ Roberts

One of the points I make in The Invisible Heart is that those of us who want smaller government because we think it will make the world a better place are the allies, whether we like it or not, of purely selfish people who want smaller government in order to avoid taxes and who have no intention of giving to charity. That should give us pause. At the same time, those who care so much about others that they would run their lives for them are allied with those who would run the lives of others because of less attractive motives–for power and profit.


Link

St. Urho's Day isn't quite over yet!

Watch Jade Warrior to celebrate. It'll tell you everything you need to know about St. Urho.

[My wife's Grandfather would have said, in response to my foolishness, "Just watch the movie! Never mind the St. Urho!" That's good advice.]

Ides of March, People!

Got your daggers sharpened?

Bill Buckley never read this:

Liberty is not, as the German precursors of Nazism asserted, a negative ideal. Whether a concept is presented in an affirmative or in a negative form is merely a question of idiom. Freedom from want is tantamount to the expression striving after a state of affairs under which people are better supplied with necessities. Freedom of speech is tantamount to a state of affairs under which everybody can say what he wants to say.

At the bottom of all totalitarian doctrines lies the belief that the rulers are wiser and loftier than their subjects and that they therefore know better what benefits those ruled than they themselves. Werner Sombart, for many years a fanatical champion of Marxism and later a no less fanatical advocate of Nazism, was bold enough to assert frankly that the Führer gets his orders from God, the supreme Führer of the universe, and that Führertum is a permanent revelation.1 Whoever admits this, must, of course, stop questioning the expediency of government omnipotence.

Those disagreeing with this theocratical justification of dictatorship claim for themselves the right to discuss freely the problems involved. They do not write state with a capital S. They do not shrink from analyzing the metaphysical notions of Hegelianism and Marxism. They reduce all this high-sounding oratory to the simple question: are the means suggested suitable to attain the ends sought? In answering this question, they hope to render a service to the great majority of their fellow men.

--Ludwig von Mises, preface to Omnipotent Government, 1944

Actually, that's not the part that made me think of Bill Buckley (see the last third of this article). This is:

The distinctive mark of Nazism is not socialism or totalitarianism or nationalism. In all nations today the “progressives” are eager
to substitute socialism for capitalism. While fighting the German
aggressors Great Britain and the United States are, step by step,
adopting the German paern of socialism. Public opinion in both
countries is fully convinced that government all-round control of
business is inevitable in time of war, and many eminent politicians
and millions of voters are firmly resolved to keep socialism aer the
war as a permanent new social order. Neither are dictatorship and
violent oppression of dissenters peculiar features of Nazism. ey
are the Soviet mode of government, and as such advocated all over
the world by the numerous friends of present-day Russia. Nationalism—
an outcome of government interference with business, as will
be shown in this book—determines in our age the foreign policy of
every nation. What characterizes the Nazis as such is their special
kind of nationalism, the striving for Lebensraum.

Another quote from Brother Neil

L. Neil Smith, that is (I've linked the online beta version - this is from the Kindle version):

Anyone-including those who may fraudulently call themselves libertarians-who is aware of the Zero Aggression Principle and refuses to live by it, or promise to, is giving himself away. He is the badguy (sic, though I don't disagree with his usage), at least potentially, reserving to himself a right that he mistakenly believes he has, to beat you up or even kill you, should he deem it necessary or simply convenient sometime in the future. What he's saying is that he cannot be trusted, not as a friend, not as a neighbor, not as a colleague, not as a comrade.

...Unlike other ethical systems...the Zero Aggression Principle does not require us to turn the other cheek pacifically. Once an aggressor has revealed himself-by the initiation of force-he has crossed a morally qualitative boundary.

There can be no argument here about the specious, if ancient, doctrine of "degrees of force." You can be killed or maimed for life just as easily with a fist or a screwdriver as with a knife or a gun. The question isn't how much or what kind of force did your assailant initiate, but simply did your assailant initiate force. If the answer is yes, the degree of force you employ to stop him is up to your discretion.

An Independent, you say...

Let me count myself into his brand of independence. There've been but few more eloquent defenses of libertarians than this: What Type of Housepet Are You?

By the way, with regard to the cartoon that inspired the article, righties could say that they Left feels the same way about their corporate masters. The author's critique remains as incisive either way.

What my peers have been up to

Peers agewise, anyway:

Whitney Houston and Kathy Ireland.

Accept Good People; Reject Bad People

and be careful about using shibboleths to make your distinctions. We're all ajumble with good and bad ideas.

"Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito"

If you know what I mean.

Fun stuff from the Mises Institute FAQ:

Are you conservative, libertarian, anarchist, socialist, or what?

We are Misesians! The media will typically describe all non-socialists as conservatives, so we are usually lumped in among them, though the actual orientation of the Institute is libertarian. This designation can encompass a wide range of thought from Jeffersonian classical liberalism to the modern anarcho-capitalism of Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), Mises's American student and the founding vice president of the Mises Institute. (Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is the founding president.) Nor do we insist on the term libertarian, because it can often create more confusions than it clarifies. The core conviction is what matters: peaceful exchange makes everyone better off; private property is the first principle of liberty; intervention destroys wealth; society and economy need no central management to achieve orderliness. Given these views, it would make sense that some of our biggest critics, apart from the predictable ones on the left, are often from varieties of right-wing thought (protectionist, imperialist, Luddite, moralist, etc.) that have their own agenda for what they want the state to do. Though the editorial policy of the Institute is rooted in strict attachment to principle, there is a great deal of diversity among our 200+ adjunct scholars. This diversity is on display at such venues as our Austrian Scholars Conference. It is also correct to distinguish between Austrian economics as a value-free science and libertarian political economy, which is rooted in many different philosophical points of view. [ back to faq]

Are you associated with the Libertarian Party?

No, though we have nothing but good wishes for any voluntary association serving the cause of liberty. Murray N. Rothbard was involved with the Libertarian Party at one point, in the hopes that it would be a useful educational venture, though he was against its founding in 1972. The Mises Institute is satisfied to pursue its educational mission outside political machinery of any sort. [ back to faq]

Is the Mises Institute up to no good?

We've been accused of being (short list) the Queen's agent in the conspiracy to legalize dope, and/or a mouthpiece for the Money Power behind world finance capitalism that exploits the world's poor, and/or a shill for monopolistic big businesses such as Microsoft, and/or an apologist for and lover of the Confederate States of America and thereby slavery, and/or a front for the remnant of Jewish intellectual and financial interests driven out of Austria between the wars, a partner of the Vatican in its plan for a new inquisition, and/or in the pay of the fast-food industry to cover its ongoing animal massacre, and/or a sleek front for a hoary agenda of free love, prostitution, baby selling, and pornography. The kernel of truth in each is that Misesians generally favor drug legalization, capitalism, free trade, the right of secession as part of the freedom of association, property rights, religious freedom, and oppose antitrust regulation and prohibitionism of all sorts. And, yes, Mises and Rothbard were Jewish by heritage. The accusations stem from a failure to understand that the cause of liberalism is not about special interests but about the general interest. Yes, in our day of hyper politicization when everyone seems to be in the service of something or someone, just as in Mises's time, this is very difficult for people to believe. It is nonetheless true.

Listening to political talk on the radio today

I had a thought: if everybody listened to the anarcho-capitalist message, nobody would volunteer to die for powermongers' BS arguments.

That pretty much is the message: don't cooperate in your own (or anyone else's) murder.

WOD Time: Shibboleth.

I've talked about it before, actually. I'll track that down later.

Here's a definition of shibboleth. I have to say that I don't like definitions 2 and 3; they seem more like ignorant misuses than I care to see. Notice that the examples are all of those 2. There must be better words for what they're trying to say.

Amusingly, I'm using the word in a fashion similar to the Gileadites. (Well...no actual bloodshed... Yet.) For more on that, check this article.

I seem to be fascinated by [or hung-up on] this story and this word. I guess I can see how shibboleths can be useful, when used with care... but they, 'like fire, are dangerous servants and fearful masters.'

I gotta go back here (when it's not bedtime)

The Friendly Polymath.

All Hail the Invisible Hand!

The Great Metaphor for the collective actions of humanity in the absence of aggression.

That's the though I had when I read this passage of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell (p. 241, hardcover):

In mythology, whenever the Unmoved Mover, the Mighty Living One, holds the center of attention, there is a miraculous spontaneity about the shaping of the universe. The elements condense and move into play of their own accord, or at the Creator's slightest word: the portions of the self-shattering cosmic egg go to their stations without aid.

I like my words better, this is quite a ways into the book - the preceding 240 pages make sense of the weird sounding stuff. The rest of the paragraph is certainly true of people's understandings of each other's thoughts and actions throughout history, but I'm completely down with these first couple sentences.

...And, since I started this during family time, naturally I can't finish it. It's time to attend to the needs of my loved ones.

Hey! Solstice! 11:30 PM tonight (CST)

Very nice article here.

Are your robes clean?

I said this on FaceBook

Libertarianism is the philosophy that all bullying is wrong. A thought I had while listening to Porc Therapy.

It works better on Facebook. I wanted the link in there, though.

A wonderful tribute to Lysander Spooner

It's called "A Toast to Lysander Spooner". There's other good stuff on that page that explain 'our' perspective as well.

Well, crud. I tried to post the audio directly, but it doesn't seem to work.

Havel outlives Kim

in years anyway. Havel beat him in value produced for humanity as well.

I was thinking about why they ousted Havel. I think I'll have something to say, later.

Lynx schminx.

The trouble with

football analogies is that there's no clock in this game. And no boundaries to the field - the stands, the locker room, the parking lot and the road from your house to the field are all in bounds.

But it would certainly be unwise to completely ignore your point, Mr. Callahan - you've earned your bona fides [link to a pdf of his book there]. The theory has to explain the anomalies.

Hey! It's Bill of Rights Day!

Highest Law of the Land, ya'll!

[No, not rap. Actually the radio's playing the sappiest collection of holiday songs (not Christmas Carols) you ever heard. Probably why my inner Gangsta Rappa has taken over my keyboard.]

Everybody should be thinking about this

Standing Up for Children

A Philosophy everyone should know: True Epicureanism

Diogenes of Aonoanda (say that five times fast):

Having already reached the sunset of my life (being almost on the verge of departure from the world on account of old age), I wanted, before being overtaken by death, to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure and so to help now those who are well-constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number you choose, sir, provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I should address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But, as I have said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing (for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep) moreover, it is right to help also generations to come (for they too belong to us, though they are still unborn) and, besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here. Now, since the remedies of the inscription reach a larger number of people, I wished to use this stoa to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation. These medicines we have put fully to the test; for we have dispelled the fears that grip us without justification, and, as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute.

A stoa is a grand porch. I don't think this one produced any Stoics.

I got a couple issues with this guy

This guy.

Though I agree with the core of his argument that the compromise between the right and left ain't gonna get you anything you want and(/or) that half the centrists just aren't paying attention and shouldn't even vote. He didn't say that, I did.

Do.

The anti-partisan story is a seductive myth, and a dangerous one. Those who represent themselves as standing in the center have their own partialities. Many people who call themselves nonpartisan or independent actually lean left or right but for one reason or another resist coming out of the closet as Democrats or Republicans. Some people who tell pollsters that they’re independents don’t follow politics closely or care about it enough to risk taking sides. They’re hardly model citizens.

Besides this muddled middle, there are centrists by conviction, who can be just as ideological as people to their right and left. Moderation has its zealots, so convinced of their righteousness that they ignore the probable consequences of their actions. And these days, some fanatics of moderation seem to be afflicted by a strange combination of blindness and amnesia that has made them likely to do harm even to the values they profess.
...
The fanatics of the center wave away ... concerns. They believe so deeply in the spirit of compromise that their commitment to it is uncompromising. Every time Republicans move to the right, Democrats are supposed to be willing to find common ground by moving further to the right, too. Civic virtue positively requires it.

I appreciate him making that point.

What I disagree with is Starr's assumption that a few more government programs will solve all our problems. As long as they're lefty programs, not righty ones.

The trouble with left, right and center is that they all accept the legitimacy of cops sticking guns in people's faces to make them obey, whether they agree or not. The extremists on either end are more aware that that's what they're doing when they vote for a welfare or warfare program - it's just that they've got to get those dumb-ass/evil bastards on the other side to pony-up for what's right!

The centrists don't see that. Their way grows all ways.

A whole bunch of stuff has gotten in the way of me posting

(if that's proper English). The kids are getting bigger and taking longer turns on the computer is probably the biggest thing. So I get on at 10:00 after dealing with more mundane matters for several hours (or watching TV or reading a book), and by the time I've worked up an opinion on something I'm too tired to think of anything worth saying.

I bought all the Heroes DVDs and watched three seasons' worth. I stopped because I'm ahead of the rest of the family.

Read a bunch of Jung. My dreams are running scared. Working on Joseph Campbell, and I felt the need to take a detour into Elaine Pagels. I'm also enjoying a book about Pythagoras.

I see all of the latter as follow-ups to Jung. Jung doesn't say everything that's important in psychology (nor do I feel that he was always right), but I'm definitely finding him worthy of my time.

This is what the Knife River looks like

in my memory. I thought I was looking downstream, but what did I know? I wasn't even three. That would have been the Winter of '65. We lived right near the mouth of the river in a small cabin. There was a rotting rope bridge across the river. Unbelievably (perhaps), I crossed that thing once. My tiny feet were enough to break some of the boards. I tried several times. Once, I walked out on the ice and fell in. Mom had to come get me.

This'll have you jumpin' around the room!

Gracefully, or (as in my case) otherwise.


These guys love what they're doing.

Rothbard

From Syndical Syndrome in Mises Daily: Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Of the three major proposals for running an advanced industrial society — socialism, syndicalism, and free-market capitalism — syndicalism is the most blatantly unworkable and most rapidly disastrous. For in such a society, there must be some rational mechanism for allocating resources efficiently, for seeing to it that the proper amounts of labor, land, and capital equipment are employed in those areas and in those ways most efficient for satisfying the wants and desires of the mass of consumers. Free-market capitalism not only provides the most smoothly efficient way; it is also the only method that relies solely on voluntary inducements.

Thus, suppose that a great number of new workers are needed in a new and expanding industry, say, plastics or electronics. How are these workers to be supplied? The market way is to offer new jobs at higher wages in these new areas and fields, while firing people or cutting wages in those industries that are in decline (say the horse-and-buggy industry). The pure socialist way is to direct the labor out of one industry and into another purely by coercive violence — i.e., by forced labor direction. The socialist method is both despotic and highly inefficient, and so even the socialist countries have been turning more and more to free-market methods in the allocation of labor. But at least socialism is an attempt at a rational allocation of labor in a modern, industrial society.

Syndicalism, on the other hand — i.e., full worker "ownership" of "their" industries — does not even attempt to achieve a rational allocation of resources. Both the free method of market allocation and the coercive method of central dictation are eliminated. And what is to take their place? In effect, nothing but chaos. Instead of a coordinating mechanism there is now only the chaotic will of groups of brawling monopoloid syndics, each demanding parity and control regardless of economic law.

I like this line, too, "...a libertarian society does not mean the total absence of coercion but only the absence of coercion against noncriminals."

Criminals, of course, defined as 'those who initiate force or fraud against others.'

Edit: Dr. Rothbard quotes from The Anarchists later in the piece. It promises to be a good read.

I'm sorry I dumped Jacob Hornberger and the FFF

about 8 minutes after I started this blog. I wasn't ready to accept their anti-war, pro-immigrant positions - at least, not to the extremes they take them. I repent of my pusillanimity.

Here's some Hornberger:

Additional message to statists: Even if you succeeded in building a solid wall along the Southern border — one that was better fortified than the Berlin Wall ever was — and even if it was manned by East German (legal) immigrant sharpshooters — and even if the entire border was monitored by tens of thousands of CIA assassination drones — even if millions of military boots were lined up side-by-side along the border — even if not one single illegal immigrant was able to enter the United States — your economic problems would still not go away.

That’s because, again, illegal immigrants are not the cause of America’s economic problems. They’re just your convenient scapegoat. The cause of America’s economic woes is the welfarism, militarism, imperialism, socialism, and interventionism that have pervaded our land for decades. Attacking illegal immigrants is not going to prevent the chickens from coming home to roost after decades of statism.

In fact, illegal immigrants actually provide a guide to Americans as to how to extricate our nation from its statist morass. Illegal immigrants are among the hardest-working people you’d ever find in life. They have a tremendous work ethic. That’s why Mitt Romney’s lawn service — and countless other American employers — love to hire illegal immigrants — because they work hard.

Have you ever noticed that in the midst of high unemployment, illegal immigrants find their way into the United States and find jobs that don’t exist?

Yes, I’ve heard the old canard: “Oh, Jacob, they’re just coming here to get on welfare, and welfare should be limited to Americans.” That’s just projection. It is American statists who love welfare. Both conservatives and liberals embrace the welfare state, adore it, and are firmly committed to saving and reforming it. It’s only libertarians who wish to dismantle it.

Ya know? I may have to set aside some time Sunday

to watch the Packers. I caught 10 minutes of the game two weeks ago (when I got home from the marathon), but otherwise I haven't been thinking about football.

Now that it actually feels and looks like Fall outside - not to mention the fact that they've got a 5-0 record and the best quarterback I've had the pleasure of watching in my life (sorry Brett) - I'm starting to feel like it's time for football.

Cato lives!

As Obama Goes Abroad Searching for Monsters to Destroy, Ron Paul Rightly Rejects Assassinating Americans

“I don’t think that’s a good way to deal with our problems,” Paul said in New Hampshire. “Al-Awlaki was born here; he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. Nobody knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually—that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys—I think it’s sad."

It was a lovely day for a race

My results are here. And in case you don't feel like clicking over there, here:

My feet were killing me after the race, but they're fine now. Now I just have tire legs - nothing unusual.

Analysing the splits, I see that I was speeding up through the Half, then I slowed down quite a bit. The second half took me 2:43:14. The splits are goofy after that, though the last 10K (20M to the end) can be compared to the first - 1:19:29 vs 59:11.

I ran a few more numbers, but I know when I hit the wall. It was about Mile 16. For almost an hour after that I just couldn't must any gumption. After Mile 24 I just decided I was going to keep moving at a pace that could be called a run until I finished.

Doug Casey attacks a common fallacy

The Gold Report, Sept. 27:

TGR: If panic erupts on the U.S. dollar, would products manufactured in the U.S. become super-cheap or super-expensive?

DC: They would become super-cheap. Everybody says that devaluing the dollar will stimulate U.S. industry because the products will become cheaper and foreigners will buy them. This is a huge canard everybody repeats and nobody thinks about. Yes, it is true for a while, but if devaluation were the key to prosperity, Zimbabwe should be the most prosperous country in the world as it has already collapsed its currency.

A strong currency is essential for a strong economy. Sure, a strong currency can hurt exporters for a while. But, a strong currency encourages manufacturers to invest in technology, and become more efficient. It rewards savings and results in the growth of capital that's critical for prosperity. A strong currency allows businessmen to buy foreign companies and technologies at bargain prices. It results in a high standard of living for the country, and yields social stability as a bonus. The idea that decreasing the value of currency to stimulate exports is a short-lived, stupid and counterproductive solution to the problem. People seem to forget that while the German currency was rising about sixfold from its level of 1971, and the Japanese yen about fourfold, those countries became the world's greatest export economies. It didn't happen despite a strong currency, but in large measure because of it.

I wonder if anyone's done a study like Friedman's and Schwartz' A Monetary History of the United States for Germany and Japan. I know about the hyperinflation and that Hitler ended it and I was watching Germany pretty closely from the mid-'70s on.

Constitution Day was last Saturday.

I wasn't feeling much like celebrating. I was kinda feeling like H.L. Mencken must have been feeling when he wrote this.

Cantillon's Essay

A new translation, by the Mises Institute. You might enjoy seeing page one:

I took a screenshot of the pdf. It looks like I chopped off the bottom, but that's all the info on the page, except for the page number.

Ooh, I like this guy! Dr. Ross Greene

I'll just print his front page blurb:

Be a part of the solution.
Lives in the Balance is the non-profit organization founded by child psychologist Dr. Ross Greene, author of The Explosive Child and Lost at School, and originator of the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach. This website contains a ton of information – streaming video, an extensive Listening Library, and a boatload of additional resources -- to help you learn about and implement the research-based CPS model and provide you with the support you need. Just CLICK HERE to get started.

And if you’re ready to help Lives in the Balance educate others about the true factors contributing to kids’ behavioral challenges...about why time-outs, detentions, suspensions, expulsions, restraints, and locked-door seclusion often make things worse (and about what to do instead)...this website has lots for you, too. Want to get involved? CLICK HERE to find out how.

Understanding and helping a behaviorally challenging child is a tough journey. No need to go it alone...we're all in this together.

I put in the Amazon links to his books. By the way, here's what I think is the most hard hitting video on his introductory page: Check Your Lenses.

And I should run you over to see his Hot Topics section.

This quote is from a different section, but, anyway:

When does the child exhibit challenging behavior? The CPS [Collaborative Problem Solving] model has an answer to that, too: He exhibits challenging behavior when the demands being placed upon him exceed the skills he has to respond adaptively. Would the child prefer to respond adaptively? Of course! Is the child choosing to respond maladaptively? Now why would he choose to do that? If he had the skills to respond adaptively, he would.

Hey! Look! The Tibetan Book of the Dead!

Right here!

Or, maybe it'd behoove me [you've never seen me in hooves] to do this:

Nicely put.

Sanford Ikeda explains the proper uses of micro- and macroeconomics. The first commenters said something that roused a thought:

But in the overall “Macro” economic world, the drag of the Welfare State and the Warfare State has led to the economic problems we have today. There are just too many non-producers. Too many wars,too many Welfare Recipients,too many Social Security recipients,too many people on Food Stamps,Unemployment Compensation etc.,etc. plus much,much too many government employees and retired government employees,who may be deemed necessary for a “civilized society,” but in the end produce no real wealth.

My thought is that somebody ought to mention that a huge part of the American economy pays for government employees whose job it is to actively destroy wealth. The only way that could work for us is if we followed the WWII model and destroyed all other industrialized nations. I think that's what our Keynesians and Neocons actually have in mind (though, perhaps, hiding in the back). Our commenter, Libertarian Jerry, goes on to say:

Its a classic example of the imbalance between the Economic Class that creates the wealth and the Political Class that lives off of that created wealth. Add to this “Macro” economic problem the “Too big to fail” mentality of the plutocracy that use government connections to try and thwart the rules of economics,then you have the sorry mess of the American Economy.

I'm going to have to buy a WSJ today. I see the Swiss are buying Euros to keep their Francs cheap. Hey! Speaking of 'nicely put', here's Larkin Rose doing what he does best:

On an individual basis, most people understand and accept that threatening people and using violence is justified only when used defensively. It's not okay to use force to steal someone's stuff. It is okay to use force to stop someone from stealing your stuff. It's not okay to violently assault someone. It is okay to use violence to stop someone from assaulting you. Yes, there can be occasional gray areas, but the general idea of the non-aggression principle is pretty simple. So no, killing innocent people, because the regime they live under does bad things, is not okay. It's not okay if you're a middle eastern terrorist, or if you're a U.S. soldier. On the other hand, using violence to try to stop aggressors is justified, whether the aggressors are private or "government." (In most cases, trying to forcibly resist thugs who imagine themselves to be representing "authority" tends to be very hazardous and counter-productive, but that doesn't mean it isn't morally justified.)

The parenthetical point is important to mention. I don't know any anarcho-capitalists who advise starting a war with the police, nor looting any non-violent business. We preach education and negotiation, not aggression. The problem of violence will never be solved by warmongering. I'm sorry if I haven't made it clear that I've made about a 170° turnaround since I started spewing my guts all over this page back in '03. I sincerely doubted then that the government would go about seeking justice for 9-11 efficaciously, but I agreed that they should try. Now I think that Clarence Darrow (of Scopes Trial fame) had the right of it, when he published his book Resist Not Evil a hundred years before.

Elise M. Boulding

Sounds like somebody worth studying.

Good

Woman who recorded cops acquitted of felony eavesdropping charges

Study links bad parenting to binge drinking

http://www.demos.co.uk/press_releases/parentingbingedrinking I got that from Stef who got it from the Daily Mail who got it from Demos. The Demos article is the best. It actually defines the parenting styles discussed. Stef just gave the link and the Daily Mail's summary of the summary isn't informative enough. It might even be a little misleading. I think it is, without this:

Tough love or authoritative parents: Parents falling into this category tend to expect that their children will conform to household rules and boundaries but that these will be set and negotiated within a context that encourages autonomy in the children’s decision-making. Such parents have high standards but support their children warmly in adhering to them; in their enforcement of rules such parents are assertive without being aggressive.

Nicely said, Mr. Greg

August 2, 2011
Mises Daily

Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending
by Anthony Gregory on August 2, 2011

[LewRockwell.com, July 29, 2011]

As Obama demonizes the wealthy and pitches a dozen plans to restructure the economy, opponents of this program need a reminder of what exactly we're fighting for. We are resisting bureaucracy, central planning, and encroachments on our freedom and communities. But this does not get to the heart of the matter. We are not only an opposition movement, countering the president and his partisans' agenda. More fundamentally, we stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: capitalism.

Many regard "capitalism" as a dirty word, and it is tarnished most of all by its supposed guardians. Wall Street giants fancy themselves capitalists even as they live off the taxpayer and thrive on the state's gifts of privilege, inflation, and barriers to entry. In the military-industrial complex, they champion capitalism by name as they produce devices of murder for the state. In the Republican Party and every conservative institution, they talk it up while making such vast exceptions to the principle as to swallow it whole. When many think of capitalism, they think of the corporatist status quo, leading even some who favor economic freedom to abandon the term.

But we should not abandon it. For one thing, most opponents of capitalism do not merely oppose Goldman Sachs or Halliburton or even McDonald's. Rather, they oppose free enterprise as a matter of principle. They object to employers' liberty to hire and fire whom they want, at whatever wage is mutually arranged. They protest the right of entrepreneurs to enter the market without restriction. They disapprove businesses designing infrastructure; providing energy, food, water and other necessary commodities; and running transportation without government meddling. They lament the rich getting richer, even through purely peaceful means. They oppose the freedom to engage in short selling, insider trading, hostile takeovers, and corporate mergers without the central state's blessing. They begrudge the worker who dissents from the labor establishment. It is exactly the anarchy of the free market they despise, not the consolidated state–big business nexus they most want to smash. For every liberal who hates monopoly capitalism for anything approaching the right reasons, there are ten who deplore the capitalism part of it more than the monopoly.

I only stopped quoting out of copyright concerns. The next paragraph is harder hitting. Ah, hell...:

It is simply a fact that capitalism, even hampered by the state, has dragged most of the world out of the pitiful poverty that characterized all of human existence for millennia. It was industrialization that saved the common worker from the constant tedium of primitive agriculture. It was the commodification of labor that doomed slavery, serfdom, and feudalism. Capitalism is the liberator of women and the benefactor of all children who enjoy time for study and play rather than endure uninterrupted toil on the farm. Capitalism is the great mediator between tribes and nations, which first put aside their weapons and hatreds in the prospect of benefiting from mutual exchange.

Perhaps you're not getting his point:

The socialists of all stripes argue that real socialism has never been tried, and some say we market radicals are stuck with no better a response than to say that real capitalism has never been tried, either. However, unlike "real socialism," which Mises demonstrated was impossible on a large scale, capitalism simply exists wherever it is left unmolested. It is the part of the market that is free.

Regardless of how we define it, in terms of feeding the masses and sustaining society, I will take flawed capitalism over flawed socialism any day. I will take state capitalism, crony capitalism, or corporate capitalism over state socialism, democratic socialism, or national socialism.

Hm. Meant to put this on the other blog.

Had another interesting dream - probably about a month and a half ago, actually.

I walked up to this big house - kind of my "dream house" (as opposed to merely a house in this dream): fachwerk, stucco - and went in the door. My father and elder relatives were in the basement, gutting it, presumably in preparation for renovation. I could see most of the basement from the landing inside the door. I was above them. Then I went down the rather treacherous stairway, which went straight ahead from the landing. It was very solid concrete, but the steps were rounded off as if they were very old and worn. They'd had risers and runners over the top of them, but the men had removed them. There was a landing about six or eight feet down where the steps turned left, but there was a ladder there which I took the rest of the way down. The wall, floor and stairs were a dingy grayish-bluish-green.

I walked over to my dad and grandpa (his dad) to find out what was going on. Grandpa seemed to be directing everyone and he seemed pretty cheerful. (Not his normal demeanor.) Uncles and cousins and others I didn't know were moving objects around and carrying tools, but I really couldn't tell what everybody was doing. There were a bunch of guys doing something in an alcove to the right. Grandpa didn't give any directions to me, but he seemed pretty pleased that I was there.

I went over to see if I could help Dad, who was all business, when suddenly he took off for the stairs. He ran up the stairs as fast as it was possible to go, pulling off and throwing his clothes willy nilly. I followed as quickly as I felt was safe, collecting his clothes as I went. Dad got to the top of the steps and sat on a toilet in a bathroom there that I hadn't noticed before. I tried to hand him his clothes, but he didn't take them.

There's more, but I'm out of time for now.

Hey, it's August! All right?

The Europeans are all on vacation... I'm thinkin', "Hey! Me too!"

No, not really. I kinda wanted to leave that post about Dan on top for a while. I was on vacation last week, but I used the time catching up on my reading - two Jung books and a fantasy novel - and yard work. Started to clean the house, but then we went up to the Lake.

I towed the girls across the bay and back. They were on inner tubes. I was swimming. Took me an hour. Sunburned the crap out of my head. (Go ahead - take the opening.)

I am poorer now, by one friend

Dan Leroy died this morning.

I don't have all the facts yet. I'll find out more after work.

He was the best story-teller I've known.

Gotta check out this film and this guy's links later

I do.

Link.

Running stuff.

Edit (much later - time for bed, in fact): I watched it, favorited it on Youtube and posted the link on Facebook. [Wait. Will that embed it here? Oh, no it won't. Good. You know, on the old preview page, you could click the links to see if they worked.]

For two and a half minutes of this video, you get to watch all these young, good-lookin' people. Then there's big, fat, old Al. I dragged that lard-a** for 31 miles over some of the gawd-awfulest [two l's? ...Naw.] hills known to man. It won't surprise you that each circuit took me a half-hour longer to complete than it's predecessor. The first took 1:52. [Error Alert!! That was what the gal linked in the post below did. I was there at 1:58.] You're welcome to do the addition after that. It comes out pretty close.

I only face-planted once (landed in sand, so no big), tripped on a few roots (but caught myself) and had my feet slip out from under me in the big ditch-y thing coming down the final slope before finishing. That fall didn't hurt... but getting up again did.

Going down hills like that? Every bit as tough as going up them. I mean, unless you're actually suicidal.

Ran the Afton 50K Trail Run today.

OMG, that was a b****! Road running is inadequate preparation for trail running. I may say more later about it, but I'm still effin' shot from it.

They've got the preliminary results here. I'm at the bottom of the second page.

I prefer to think that I was 98th out of the 169 who entered, rather than the 99 who finished.

Oh, actually I was 96th out of 97 finishers.

Awesome description of the race here.

L. Neil Smith:

What would a real libertarian tell those who've counted on Social Security and Medicare being there when they get old? What I've always told them: it's a hard, cruel world, but when you've allowed yourself to be conned out of your life's savings, your more intelligent, less gullible neighbors—not to mention your own grandchildren—have no obligation of any kind to make you whole again. Not out of their own pockets. Not through the sticky-fingered middleman of government bailouts.

The Libertarian Enterprise.

El Neil also makes this interesting historical point, about the three just wars America has fought, in his online book Down With Power:

America had no choice about the Mexican War, which was declared by Mexico against the United States because it had annexed Texas—the independence of which politicians in Mexico insanely refused to recognize despite their defeat by Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto and the utter humiliation of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Mexico deserved what she got, her whimperings to the contrary, notwithstanding.

James Pyrich has a post on why Wikileaks is "meh."

Link

Wikileaks may help some people shake off the shrouds of indoctrination, which is great for them… but real change does not start there.

Real change starts when you make changes to your actions in your personal life. Going to therapy, getting good relationships, working to know yourself, acting with courage, being honest with yourself, acting in ways that evoke self-pride… these are the things that matter.

And, as he says (my paraphrase), much harder than opining about matters three degrees removed from your own, real life. This is the real call-to-action.

Sita Sings the Blues is a great movie

by Nina Paley. Watch it here.

It's the story of Rama's wife Sita and the difficulties of their marriage. Nina Paley, if you weren't aware of her, is otherwise famous for Copying is not Theft.

There are four levels of animation in the movie, which are used as themes for different story lines ...and such. The levels run from crude to incredibly stunning.

I spoke too soon.

Some hellacious tornadoes hit the midwest Sunday. Joplin was just destroyed. I like that town. We go through there at least once a year on the way to Mom's. My co-worker's in-laws live real close to there, too.

I hate to say it, but it was hard to take it seriously until tonight when I jogged through some of the damage from the one that went through North Minneapolis. A lot of big trees were down - thrown every which way. I had to climb over several. I guess it kind of hit me Monday morning, too, when I had to detour around a big tree that was down across the street on my normal route to work. A tall house lost its shingles. I don't know if the damage is worse than that or not, they had a big tarp over it.

I was running in the park along the river, skirting the edge of the residential area, so I didn't see anything but downed trees. Lots and lots of them. I also noticed the Mississippi is way up tonight. It was high before. Now it's higher. More flooding headed downriver.

We were at my younger daughter's dance recital during the storm. They announced that the tornado sirens were going off and that a tornado had touched down in Fridley, but they told us that the auditorium was the storm shelter at the school, so they'd just go ahead and put on their show. When we came out, it was clear and sunny. You couldn't tell anything had happened.

Oh, S**t! The World Ended in a Horrible Cataclysm Today!!

And I missed it!

I meant to ask my brother-in-law about that, but I forgot. It's for the best, I suppose. It'd be pretty hard to bring that up without coming off as gratuitously insulting.

Well, I did 24 miles today.

It took me four hours and forty-nine minutes, but I got it done. I consider that not too bad for a training run. Keep in mind that I'm training for a 50K. It kinda sucks that I'll have to throw away Grandma's Marathon as a training run, but it looks like I may be able to do that in around five hours, so it's not a complete loss. Who knows? Maybe there's something about that course that'll bring out a little more from me.

My sister's coming through town today. We're meeting them for dinner at Old Country Buffet in Roseville. They live in Germany, but they have a house in Superior that I've never seen. And they're headed back to Germany next Saturday, so I don't guess I'll get to see it any time soon.

Have I mentioned that they're missionaries for the Assemblies of God?

Well, I the word is that the sweats I'm wearing right now aren't going to cut it for dinner, even at OCB, so I've gotta go change.

Welp, I did 7:38.6 in the TC 1 Mile last night.

Legs had no problem, but my lungs didn't want to go any faster. I'm not at all sure now why I didn't kick harder at the end. Once again, I left some juice on the table. [Mixed metaphor, really, but it kinda works.]

Spring is here (finally)!

I have proof!

Notice the feet!

My friend Claire told me that [i]Calumet K[/i]

is available as a free audio book! It's a great story about a guy building a grain elevator back in the 1890s.

LibriVox recording of Calumet "K", by Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster. Read by Betsie Bush.

"A novel, with several elements of rather unusual interest. As a tale, it is swift, simple, and absorbing, and one does not willingly put it down until it is finished. It has to do with grain-elevator business, with railways, strikes, and commercial and financial matters generally, woven skilfully into a human story of love." --The Commercial Advertiser"
'Calumet "K"' is a novel that is exciting and absorbing, but not the least bit sensational. It is the story of a rush.... The book is an unusually good story; one that shows the inner workings of the labor union, and portrays men who are the bone and sinew of the earth."--The Toledo Blade.

"The heroine in this case is the hero's stenographer; but the action of the story grows out of the attempt of rival capitalists and grain men to balk the building of a grain elevator by a set date." --The Burlington Free Press

(Excerpts from the advertising material at the end of "The Merry Anne" by Samuel Merwin)



Note: This book contains racial comments that may be offensive to modern listeners.

For more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit LibriVox.org.

M4B audiobook of Complete Book

Hey! Just got my copy of The Austrian School of Economics

The Austrian School of Economics

I'm just looking it over. Here's a nice quote from the preface:

Based on the assumption that the individual was the decisive economic agent, and thus centering its research on individual preferences and on the intersubjective balancing of these preferences in the context of markets, the Austrian school has consistently pointed to the fact that institutions such as money, states [?, ed.], and markets had emerged without any planning, without any central purpose, and without force [in the case of states, maybe kinda sorta]. They had emerged on the basis of human interaction alone, and in a manner that was therefore natural, befitting both humans, and human logic. This basic insight counters all political and economic ideologies that view such institutions as working arenas for the establishment or development of authoritarian activity aimed at influencing or even controlling the direction of individual preferences or their intersubjective balance.

This meant that during the interwar period in Austria, the Austrian School was attacked, sometimes fiercely, by political parties of both the left and the right. the Austrian school not only denied the legitimacy, but also the efficacy of many economic policies. furthermore, the school had always identified itself with a universal science in which there was no room for national, religious, or class-oriented constrictions. In ways it even represented a kind of alternate world to many of the country's idiosyncrasies: it focused exclusively on the individual and asserted that individual action on the basis of subjective preferences was the starting point of r research; it was based on a realistic image of humanity that was not suited for inconceivable flights of idealistic fantasy and therefore not amenable to cheap political exploitation; it was free of magniloquent utopias, upheld the principles of self-determination and non-violence, and was united in its fundamental criticism of any monopolistic and forceful intervention of the state. In addition, it emanated a highly scholarly ethos which made possible the emergence of an uncommonly cosmopolitan and tolerant discourse.

Hah! Only five typoes. Considering the complexity of some of those terms, I'm proud. Oh yeah, the bracketed comments are mine (I'm sure that was obvious).

To elaborate on that point... I mean, maybe the original groups who first decided to conquer and enslave their neighbors found themselves together in one place without planning or force, but they didn't accomplish their conquest without force. Although I'll have to consider whether a hierarchic society can arise without that special case of force we call fraud.

Funniness

You may have to hang out in some odd corners to get this guy's bit, but I think anyone can understand this one.

Hey! Atlas Shrugged opens Friday!

Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication

is an important contribution to the development of interpersonal and world peace.

The Wikipedia article on him looks like a good place to start studying him and his works. And here's the article on Nonviolent Communication.

But back to Naomi Aldort

I thought I'd quote a bit from the intro to Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves:

When you have the courage to stop defending the way you are, or the way your parents raised you, you can open up to the possibility that you are much greater and more magnificent and capable than you thought you were.

The Dallas SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety) group

has a helpful page - they call it a toolbox.  Here's one that I use a lot myself:

Fear — use it if you get it. Don’t live in fear, but use it. The same goes for horror, shame, regret or any other negative thoughts or feelings that may come when you think about your drinking days. Don’t stifle or deny these states of mind. Use them as tools to reinforce yourself, not stumbling blocks.

Maybe I should add the link to the page where I found this; there are a ton of other useful links there.

I haven't mentioned lately that I'd like to get together with like-minded ex-drunks (perhaps I should put that in quotes - it's an ongoing struggle) for a stroll through one of our local parks here in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis. Or Minneapolis, itself, of course - wonderful parks there, too.

I really like Naomi Aldort

I'll link her own webpage - the articles page - but her videos on YouTube are great stuff too.

Progressive Parenting: get with it.  (Don't confuse true progress with that proto-Nazi crap Presidents Wilson and both Roosevelts were pushing.)

It's quite likely your parents raised you wrong.

Mourn.

If that's the case, you're probably raising (or already did raise) your kids wrong.

Apologize and make amends.

Here's how.  To do the latter, not the former.

I was looking at my photo albums of my German trips

Back in the early '80s and I came across some pics of myself that kind of blew me away.

I guess I always thought I always had the gut I have now.  I mean, yeah, it was bigger a couple times - and pretty huge when I was guzzling gallons of beer daily - but I saw it as pretty big even back before I graduated high school.

I find these pics rather inspirational!  I believe I'll go exercise more.

Well, not right now.  It's damn near 1:30 AM.  It took me this long to figure out where the h my scanner hid the pictures. 

By the way, even though it's been almost 30 years to the minute since I've seen the G-- family, I still remember their names.  That's Roland behind me, Frau G-- (I'm afraid that's as much of her name as I ever got), Birgit (yes, that's spelled right), and Herr (Joseph) G--.  If they give me permission, I'll put their whole last name here.  Interestingly, their name translates to almost the same thing as the town they lived in.

I enjoyed my stay with them immensely, and I learned a lot of German from them.  Heck!  They took me to Austria and Switzerland, with a heck of a long side-trip to Luxemburg!  And the Bodensee (Lake Constance) from Lindau to Meersburg!  Each of those was a daytrip.

Roland took a trip to Canada and the US the next year (1982) and stayed with us one night.  And I missed him on my second trip to Stuttgart, because I butchered the plans to meet.  I had arranged - well, I agitated for it anyway - the group tour of the Mercedes-Benz factory, because I wanted to tell my Dad all about it, so I didn't feel I could skip it.  But I was hoping to get away in time to catch Roland. 

But it was a big factory.  Whenever the guide said, "Now let's go see the blah, blah, blah..." my heart just sank with dismay.  I was the only one who cared and all I could think about was getting back to the D--s place to catch Roland.

The D--s, now...  Let's just say that that was about nail number 297 in the coffin of that relationship.  Not the final one, but one of them.  I pounded the last one home myself.  But that's a shameful story that won't ever be written down anywhere.

And I don't remember having any big conversation about the Mercedes factory with Dad either.

I just got the VLC Media Player

Seems pretty cool.  It's nice to be able to speed up Youtube videos.

It's free.  Here's their website: http://gofree.com/download/Video/Media-Players/vlcmediaplayer.php?gclid=CI_o_r3QzKcCFZFoKgodU27dFQ

Oh! Crap! We're springing ahead tonight?!

But I'm not ready!!

Out of the nest the chick must fly

The nest fits him not for eternity.

-Rhyme R Us.

It's likely that this couplet has been written before, but I claim to have come up with it independently. I like the double meanings in the archaic form.

I said this to my daughter this morning. She took her gloved hand off the doorknob and, rather flatly, asked, "What does that mean?"

"What do you think it means?"

"Uh...Leaving the house?"

That's what I get for offering my pearls in such a concrete situation.

Here's a fun quote

from Reimarus,

"Contradiction is a devil and father of
lies, who refuses to be driven out either by fasting
and prayer, or by miracles."

Pg. 76. It's a quick read. I've gotten this far since 9:00. About half the book.

You might want to look to the WikiPedia article to find out who Reimarus was.

Guess I'd better go to bed now.