I grew up under the security umbrella of the AFL-CIO MEBA

District 2.

That means US shipping in fresh water: basically the Great Lakes boats and Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri barges. (I would dearly love to hear from anyone who wants to differ with the latter categorization; I know nothing about them.)

The Union provided us with a wonderful living until the late '70s. I do, indeed, give them the credit. But then, it all went to He'll. As an interested party, I should do more research on the matter, but I've been more interested in conservative and libertarian politics since then.

Suffice to say that union economics look too damn much like classical communism to me. There's a place for collective bargaining, but unions need to fire their crypto-communist lawyers and accept the results of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, before I'll consider them respectable again.

This is a Heal of a long intro to a link to a Great Lakes sailing tale by Oldsmoblogger, but I just wanted to reiterate my credentials to talk about it. More on that in my comment on this post.

Tag! I'm it!

It's the dreaded book meme!

Liberty Dog tagged me, but Hamster Motor has the best explanation:

Most people seem to have forgotten what this means. In the end of the book, you find out that there exists a hidden society in which each person has preserved a book or several books in their memory. They literally become books. This society is the repository of human knowledge and thus they will be the ones to rebuild civilization after the nuclear attack. Accordingly, I must ask what is the most valuable thing to possess, what is the most important piece of information that can be passed down?

You're stuck in Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

Okay, assuming they survive the fall of Civilization (the world of Fahrenheit 451 is something other than civilization), and their chosen books are preserved, I would choose the Anti-Federalist Papers.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Dominique Francon gets me hot.

The last book you brought is:

Ho ho! You thought you'd catch me out! It was The Gulag Archipelago, by Solzhenitsyn.

What was the last book you read, and what are you currently reading?

All the way to the end, Blog, by Hugh Hewitt. Currently, I'm reading, in my usual scatter-brained way, The Gulag Archipelago, Economic Sophisms, by Frederic Bastiat, Aristotle I, from the Great Ideas Series [OK, that's not exacly what I'm reading, but it's about the series], and Guerrilla Capitalism (about a third of the way down), by Adam Cash. [Wow! Lot's of fun stuff at Loompanics.com! But, oddly enough, this book isn't there now.]

What five books would you take with you on a desert island?

Hopefully, before the plane crashes, I'll be able to get ahold of whatever Lileks is coming out with. We'll need a laugh. Atlas Shrugged is always worth rereading. The Bible never fails to reveal something you didn't notice before. Blackstone's Commentaries on The Law, edited by Bernard Gavit (a legal Positivist, whose comments on Blackstone constitute a lesson on how the law shouldn't be understood). And, finally, Selected Essays, by Frederick Bastiat: Sophisms has "The Petition of the Candlemakers", but it doesn't have "The Law". Both are included in The Selected Essays, and much more besides. That choice is made tougher by the fact that Sophisms is very well organized conceptually, but I want to restart civilization, and "The Law" and "The Petition" are the flint and steel. The other books are the char cloth, tow, tinder and wood. (Ha ha! See if you can carry out an analogy any further!)

Who are you going to inflict with this meme?

Oo-ooh! You can see by the evil glint in my eye that I'm going to tag the Cheesehead brothers and their uncle. Steve, Mister Pterodactyl and Lance Burri.

An exchange that doesn't deserve to Die The Death

customary to HaloScan comments. From this post (essential to read if you want to understand the conversation fully, but the links from there provide an even fuller understanding):

"To expect the government to prevent such fraud from ever occurring would be like wanting it to provide cushions for all the children who might fall. To assume it to be possible to prevent successfully, by regulation, all possible malpractices of this kind is to sacrifice to a chimerical perfection the whole progress of industry."

Turgot's commentary is perhaps even more poignant in light of the doctrine of strict liability, n'est ce pas?
Ken Hall | Homepage | 04.26.05 - 3:52 pm | #

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I am only slightly aware of the works of Turgot. Looks like he is certainly someone that is deserving of more study.
Liberty Dog | Homepage | 04.26.05 - 4:08 pm | #

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Agreement! Well done.
Todd | Homepage | 04.26.05 - 9:02 pm | #

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It is possible, Turgot conceded, that, on the free market, there will sometimes be "a cheating merchant and a duped consumer." But then, the market will supply its own remedies: "the cheated consumer will learn by experience and will cease to frequent the cheating merchant, who will fall into discredit and thus will be punished for his fraudulence."

Yeah, right.

Tell that to all the people taken in and robbed by the Corporations and individuals who have gone unpunished. What was Enron if not fraud on a massive scale?

Tell that to all the people who were killed in Ford Explorers before the tyre problem was sorted and Chev Corvairs before they were discontinued. (If selling junk merchandise is not fraud then what is it?)

Tell that to the people who buy junk bonds on Wall St on a daily basis. OK, so they are stupid - should know better... Tell that to the millions who were fleeced by fraudulent share issues in the 1920s.

Tell that to the people taken in by the NZer who fleeced them of $5 million (at latest count and still going) with fraudulent hedge funds...

So, decriminalise fraud - caveat emptor applies.

Would I buy American? Not on your life would I. Would I buy Japanese? Not on your grandmother's grave would I.

Which Bank would you trust? Citibank? How much would be lost by how many before the "honest" banks were sorted?

No. Turgot (sure it was not Turbot? He makes as much sense as a poisson) is wrong.
probligo | Homepage | 04.26.05 - 11:16 pm | #

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Nobody is talking about decriminalizing fraud. Nor about abolishing courts. You are arguing against anarchy, which I occasionally claim to support when I'm being silly, but English common law had solved all these problems 200 years before Turgot.

History didn't begin with Hegel, and our understanding of it wasn't much improved by his successors.
Old Whig | Homepage | 04.26.05 - 11:35 pm | #

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"The Wealth of Nations" owes a lot to a book Turgot wrote, and Adam Smith knew him and counted him as an influence. Actually I had never heard of him either, but I saw a highly praised book advertised at THE Online Book List (see sidebar); fortunately for me, the public library had a copy.

The book's not perfect, but has a great list. I will try to post a book review soon, with the list.
invadesoda | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 12:32 pm | #

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Oh, you mean MY sidebar. I was looking around over there to see what he had on Turgot on the site.

That Site is actually an advertisement for The Triumph of Liberty, but he has a lot of material right there, and links to more.
Old Whig | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 5:54 pm | #

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"But then, the market will supply its own remedies: "the cheated consumer will learn by experience ..."

Well, you sure fooled me with your quotation.

I assumed that your quotation in fact was promoting the principle of market remedying wrongs rather than the enforcement of law.

"To expect the government to prevent such fraud from ever occurring would be like wanting it to provide cushions for all the children who might fall. To assume it to be possible to prevent successfully, by regulation, all possible malpractices of this kind is to sacrifice to a chimerical perfection the whole progress of industry."

Ok, so if you are not talking about prevention of fraud, about the application of justice to the crime of fraud, what does this para mean?

Oh, I get it.

The whole item is in American - where words mean different things to different people. Caught out again Bob.
probligo | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 9:39 pm | #

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Actually, it's translated from French, where they're known to speak in flowery language.

We old whigs are fond of law being discovered in the course of living, not imposed by geniuses from above who are in reality no smarter than the rest of us. We like juries of peers and humble judges and we are suspicious of administrators, regulators and bureaucrats. Also policemen and prosecutors. And any other investigators who might bring the power of the government on the heads in innocent people.

I realize that there are people who believe that a government title embues a person with greater wisdom than the rest of us.

Those are the people I politely call "Liberals."

Just because I believe in politeness, you see.
Old Whig | Homepage | 04.27.05 - 11:44 pm | #

Anybody know where to get Turgot's book?

Or, while I'm talking about my wish list, Benjamin Franklin's book on how to succeed in business?

Update: I neglected to mention that force and fraud are both impossible to prevent without prior knowledge and the prior application of force.

Know anybody who's omniscient, Probligo?

Here's a brilliant Pro-Life argument from the libertarian perspective.

Although you might not think that's where he's headed at the beginning.

[Can I put links in my titles anymore? Oh, well, here.]

I agree with the argument on the moral plane, but I still want the police to reserve their efforts to combatting violent murderers, robbers, rapists, batterers and arsonists (and also the less violent property violators: burglars, vandals, shoplifters...). I hold abortion to be a greater moral wrong than prostitution and drug-dealing, but I consider all those, and gambling, to be too difficult to combat with the limited resources of the government.

Are any starlets offering "special services" for that political opinion?

That Mises: Such a Shrinking Violet!

From Lord Keynes and Say's Law

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the "deficit spending" policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.

Yet no effusions of authors however brilliant and sophisticated can alter the perennial economic laws. They are and work and take care of themselves. Notwithstanding all the passionate fulminations of the spokesmen of governments, the inevitable consequences of inflationism and expansionism as depicted by the "orthodox" economists are coming to pass. And then, very late indeed, even simple people will discover that Keynes did not teach us how to perform the "miracle ... of turning a stone into bread,"[3] but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.

Seed corn?

Great Frenchmen in History: Turgot

Link. H/T invade soda (via email).

It is possible, Turgot conceded, that, on the free market, there will sometimes be "a cheating merchant and a duped consumer." But then, the market will supply its own remedies: "the cheated consumer will learn by experience and will cease to frequent the cheating merchant, who will fall into discredit and thus will be punished for his fraudulence." Turgot, in fact, ridiculed attempts by government to insure against fraud or harm to consumers.

To expect the government to prevent such fraud from ever occurring would be like wanting it to provide cushions for all the children who might fall. To assume it to be possible to prevent successfully, by regulation, all possible malpractices of this kind is to sacrifice to a chimerical perfection the whole progress of industry.

Turgot added that all such regulations and inspections "always involve expenses, and that these expenses are always a tax on the merchandise, and as a result overcharge the domestic consumer and discourage the foreign buyer." Turgot concludes with a splendid flourish: "To suppose all consumers to be dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect of authorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of the community."

There's more, RTWT.

Heck, I bet you can understand this.

Trying to find a Belgian report on the previous post, I ran across a bit of Belgian humor:

HET BUITENBEEN [FVN]
Volkswagen wil een gepantserde pausmobiel bouwen voor Benedictus XVI, en dat ter gelegenheid van de Wereldjongerendagen in Duitsland in augustus. Indien de nieuwe paus dat wenst, zullen we voor hem een gepantserde wagen bouwen, zei een woordvoerder van het bedrijf. Het zou gaan om een Touareg 4x4 of een Phaeton en niet om een Polo, gaf hij nog mee. Eerder bouwde een andere Duitse autoproducent, Mercedes, al een specialegepantserde wagen voor paus Johannes Paulus II. Haha... daarom wordt Ratzinger ook Panzerkardinal genoemd...

My Dutch is bad (the difference between Dutch and Flemish is minimal - I can't see it), but I got the joke. I highlighted the punchline.

Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do!

Spies lose licence to kill after drunken agent opens fire

Not ours. And since it's the Telegraph, you're thinking it's the British.

Nope, it's the Belgians.

The civilian agents of the Sûreté de l'Etat, the equivalent of Britain's MI5, are already among the most powerless intelligence operatives in the Western world, with no right even to tap telephones.

Now, they have had their handguns confiscated on the orders of their general administrator, Koen Dassen, a Belgian newspaper reported. A working group has been established to work out who is armed and why, after Mr Dassen realised that controls were "worse than approximate".

Tsk tsk.

They'll have to start thinking like MacGiver. Hopefully they've got a lot of magnesium lying around for those daring escapes they'll be doing so much more of.

Maybe I should send over my flint and steel.

Oh, why, you ask?

"For the moment, everybody has had to hand in their guns because we had this incident, in October or November last year, during which an agent shot at another."

Mrs Onkelinx was reportedly distressed that she only learnt of the incident, in which no one was hurt, from the press four months after it took place in Brussels.

The agent suspected of firing his gun in the general direction of his colleague's head was said by the media [? They knew this before his employers did? What is this? Euro-Affirmative Action?] to be an alcoholic with a dependency on anti-depressants.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to discover that I don't think this guy should have been employed in a gun carrying profession. I don't want people like this packin' anywhere.

I like their collectivist reaction: one nut goes off and they disarm all the sane trained, government agents. Actually, that's an idea!

Belgium's internal security arrangements have proved a source of frustration for their Western counterparts.

We had a Belgian in our school. He was a sorry excuse for a human. But, then, he's always said the same of me. I tried to like the guy, but I couldn't. I couldn't hate him even though he seemed to consider me his nemesis. He just seemed so cuddly.

[You realize that I hope he reads this.]

Why I hate the f*%$in' government and the UN:

If God Was Process Oriented
by Joe Gandelman

[Grammarian's note: should be 'were,' not 'was.' It's a condition contrary to fact. Fortunately.]

Do you remember that boy with cancer that I was praying for?

His father has a blog.

And his daughter has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Daniel's Neuroblastoma is pretty much incurable, but "they" have a good record with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Two kids. Two cancers.

Help me pray for them.

Ah, here we go:

Anti-Human Earth Day
By Edward Hudgins

Executive Director
The Objectivist Center
ehudgins@objectivisatcenter.org

Today is a religious holiday that should make us all into atheists. April 22, 2005, marks the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. For many people it's simply a day to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about clean air, crystal lakes, verdant forests and soaring eagles. Until the 1990s May Day marked the worship by the communists of an abstraction called the "workers" at the expense of real flesh-and-blood workers and every other human being on the planet. The result was human carnage. Now Earth Day marks the worship by eco-extremists of the planet itself at the expense of all we [ed. note: this is the object of the preposition 'of' and should be 'us'] humans who inhabitant it. If the cult continues to grow, the results will be the same as that wrought by the Reds.

There is nothing wrong with individuals wanting to keep woods, flowers, ponds and the like on their own private property for their own enjoyment, nor with wanting to reduce the real, measurable damage caused to humans, for example, by air and water pollution. In any case, the worst pollution problems have pretty much been dealt with in past decades.

But today the eco-extremists have converted legitimate concerns into a cult. Tell someone you don't recycle, for example, and they treat you like someone might have a century ago if you made fun of Jesus. When recycling makes economic and environmental sense, a market develops for the recycled items and there is no need for government involvement. (As a kid I collected newspapers to sell to recycling centers to earn spending money.) But often recycling imposes millions of dollars in net costs and harms the environment. What with fleets of trucks to collect your bottles, which you're first supposed to waste water washing out, and those energy-gulping facilities that grind up or melt down the glass, it is often better just to bury the stuff.

Much has been written about the inability of environmentalists to show how many alleged problems actually harm humans. Does reducing the amount of some substance in the water from two parts per billion to one part really make any difference?

Much has been written about the bad science behind many environmental programs and serious problems those programs create for humans while delivering microscopic benefits. DDT is not the danger some made it out to be, but failure to use it to eradicate disease-carrying insects has resulted in thousands of deaths.

What requires more attention is the fundamental values problem with environmental extremism. The ultimate source and standard of all values is human life. Rocks and mud, oceans and mountains, fish and fowl are of no intrinsic worth in and of themselves. They're neither good nor evil. They just are. It is in relation to we [object of the preposition again: should be 'us' - Leonard Peikoff would not make this mistake] human beings that things are of value.

We must use our reasoning minds as individuals to discover the means of our survival and flourishing. An animal is of value because we can use it for food or admire its beauty. Water is of value because we can drink it or swim in it. Rocks and trees are of value because we can build houses with them for our shelter or climb them for our enjoyment. Swamps might not be of value because they are at just the spot on which we want to build a house.

[Or, if we enjoy just looking at them enough, we might spend our own money to buy them an preserve them as is, or form an alliance with others to do the same.]

And, of course, "we" does not mean some abstract collective. It means each of us as individuals. That's the point of private property. We each should be free to own and use assets for our own good as individuals.

Eco-extremists take human individuals out of the picture. They speak of the value of eco-systems, habitats and wetlands without reference to humans in general or to specific individuals who might own and make use of material assets. In effect, the eco-extremists create an Earth cult that puts humans second. Many eco-extremists now say as much openly, for example, labeling people as pollution on the planet. There's even a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Its creed: "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health."

[Please do. I'm all for voluntarism.]

Most individuals who celebrate Earth Day by cleaning up trash beside the road no doubt mean well. But they and all of us must recognize that the philosophical premises on which one acts will lead inevitably to certain consequences over time whether one intends them to or not. The premises behind the eco-extremists are anti-human and, if acted on consistently, would lead to worse carnage than that wrought by communists. On Earth Day we should reflect not on the planet but on the inhabitants who can make it of value.

Emphasis added.

I didn't know Camus was one of us.

Pedro Blas Gonzalez says he was, in this Friesian.com review of Camus' last, unfinished work: The First Man (Le Premier Homme).

One question: does anyone know what trevialations are? An attempt to anglicize a Spanish word maybe? Trivializations?

Oh, well, it's not important. I just wanted a WOD.

Not sufficiently utopian

A phrase used in this post at Anti-Strib.


Everybody who reads this needs to consider this phrase and write a blogpost about it. Or email a letter to your favorite blogger about it.

Why is this an insufficient reason to embrace Socialism or Communism or anybody's idea of a "Third Way"?

For research, I recommend Ludwig von Mises' Liberalism, Socialism and Bureaucracy.

Or use your own favorite sources.

Post results on May Day.

The future of Conservatism may depend on it.

Speak of the Devil! No sooner do I mention Ralph Raico

but he pens another good article for Mises.org: Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century. After some interesting, introductory comments about Liberal thought in other nations, he introduces us to the German tradition:

A master-concept used by many historians in recent decades has been of the Germany's Sonderweg—its special or peculiar path of historical development. Whatever heuristic value this concept may have had, there is little doubt that it has been very much over-applied. Germany after all is not Russia. The German experience included: the free towns of the Middle Ages; scholasticism and the doctrine of natural law taught in the universities; the Renaissance and the Reformation; the rise of modern science; and an outstanding role in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.

The twelve-year experience of National Socialism, with all its atrocities, was terrible. But it should not lead us to forget that for a thousand years before Hitler, Germany was an integral part of western civilization.

Dietheim Klippel is a leading scholar of German liberalism in the later eighteenth century.[10] He has suggested some of the political factors that have at different periods conditioned the acceptance of either a negatively—or sometimes a positively—charged concept of the German Sonderweg, or special path of historical evolution. In particular, Klippel has effectively criticized the view of Leonard Krieger, author of an influential work on German ideas of freedom.[11] This book, Klippel complains, pitted "a peculiar German attitude towards liberty" against an (undefined) "western" conception. But the fact is, that, besides the publicists and scholars influenced by the French Physiocrats, there existed in Germany in the eighteenth century "a wide stream of democratic and liberal ideas in all possible shadings."

Klippel has paid particular attention to the younger German school of natural law, which succeeded the older, absolutist-oriented natural-law doctrine of the school of Christian Wolff. Methodologically under the influence of Kant and contentatively inspired by John Locke, this school provided a theory of the priority of civil society as against the State; of private property, private enterprise, and competition as the essence of the self-regulating society; and of the need to protect social life against state usurpation.

It's getting late, and my brain is frying, but let me throw in this section, and perhaps I'll think of good editorial comments to throw in tomorrow.

Given this flowering of liberal ideas in eighteenth century Germany, what happened to change things? Why did such a reversal of opinion occur in German political culture?

There is no doubt that a major—perhaps the major—reason for the change lies in the political and military history of the period: basically, the attempt of revolutionary France to conquer and rule all of Europe.

The Jacobins who rose to power during the Revolution undertook to force their ideas onto Europe at the point of French bayonets. The rights of man, popular sovereignty, the French Enlightenment with its hatred of the age-old traditions and religious beliefs of the European peoples would be imposed by military might. To this end, the victorious, irresistible French armies invaded, conquered, and occupied much of Europe.

In the nature of things, these invading armies, bringing with them an alien ideology, produced hostility and resistance against that ideology, a militant nationalist reaction. That is what happened in Russia and in Spain. Most of all, that is what happened in Germany. Individualism, natural rights, the universalist ideals of the Enlightenment—these became identified with the hated invaders, who subjugated and humiliated the German people. This identification was a burden that liberalism in Germany had to carry from that time on.

The lesson that one could reasonably draw from that experience is this: if you wish to spread liberal ideas to foreign peoples, in the long run example and persuasion are much more effective than guns and bombs.

Like most of Raico's articles, it's a wonderful bibliographical essay.

I missed commemorating a great day in American history!

Oldsmoblogger has posted the entire Longfellow poem The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

I found him while checking the BS (BlogoSphere, I mean) for comment on Joseph Ratzinger's ascension to Pope. I always look to Ayn Clouter to stretch my intellect when I'm in that mode, and, though she has nothing on her own site yet, there were more commenters on the last post I linked.

As an aside, I added a second comment to Ayn's post:

I'm beginning to believe you're serious. Although your apparent repudiation of Lincoln belies that somewhat; he and the American Whigs, whom I repudiate, pretty much founded American corporatism and, hence, Progressivism. (Read historian Gabriel Kolko.)

[Anti-War.com's Ralph Raico does a better expose on that than I ever have. So read him, not me.]

I agree with what you say in that our corporations, in their current state, aren't actually enslaving people and that they now spend a great deal of money trying not to discriminate or pollute, and they try way too hard to cater to anyone who claims they aren't doing enough on those scores.

But...they're still too entwined with the Guys with Guns (I mean the government - yeah, I'm a nut) for my taste. Subsidies, tariffs, taxes and regulations - that exclude the little guy from entry into their field, and thus solidify the current class structure - are their tools.

And Oldsmoblogger has a great post on "the nature of evil: more precisely, the difference between the Boethian (from Boethius, author of The Consolations of Philosophy) and the Manichean (or dualist) views." It's a summary of a book, if not quite a review, but worth a look.

Congratulations to Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI

and the Catholic Church.

I know there are many disappointed people who wish the Pope weren't Catholic. Better luck next time.

"We're sorry for the inconvenience."

Update: Look to the round-up of round-ups at The Moderate Voice. (Oops, forgot the link. Now fixed.)

How do I feel? I'm happy the Catholic Church has decided to remain Catholic. If you want to disobey Catholic teachings, you should leave.

Look, the future belongs to the people who reproduce at at least replacement level. "Liberals" are taking themselves out via the "Roe Effect," and conservative religionists will take their place. Let me speak plainly: conservative sex is the only safe sex for the future of YOUR kind (whatever your kind is). That is, sex must be restricted to very carefully and thoughtfully chosen partners. If you don't do so, you end up having to use birth and STD (sexually transmitted disease) control and abortion to control the consequences. Failure of the method of birth and STD control, or failure to practice any method, leads to the abolition by Nature [and Nature's God] of your genetic strain. Either through disease or the stupidity of your offspring, who will most likely eliminate the strain via either disease or the embrace of violence.

Update: sorry, I got tired.

So there's no point in a 2000-year-old institution catering to your blip of an aberration in human thought.

Liberty Dog's 25 for Freedom icon

is an online quiz all it's own.

Let's see how many I can name (avert your eyes, if you want to take this test yourself):

Murray Rothbard, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Ayn Rand, Frederic Bastiat, ...is that James Buchanen? ... , Aristotle, Ludwig von Mises, and I don't know who that chick is.

A little pre-packaged Blogger Helper.*

Personality Disorder Test Results Paranoid |||||||||| 34% Schizoid |||||||||||||||| 62% Schizotypal |||||||||| 34% Antisocial |||||| 26% Borderline |||||||||||| 42% Histrionic |||||||||| 38% Narcissistic |||||||||| 38% Avoidant |||||||||| 38% Dependent |||||||||| 34% Obsessive-Compulsive |||||||||||||| 58%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Wow! That's a lot of code!

Sorry to say, except for a mild tendency toward Schizoid and Obsessive-Compulsive behavior, I'm sub-par. I tend to agree with this diagnosis, but they recommend that you take it several times. I can imagine answering some of the questions differently at different times of the day.

*And you thought I wasn't learning anything from you, LibertyBob.

Oh! I forgot to credit The Teflon Man for this find. The guy who convinced me that I should stop padding my blog with online quizzes.

And hey, Singapore's getting two casinos! The shopping and the food weren't enough, eh? Now they gotta import stupidity.

So I decide to check the links over at Bourgeois Philistine...

And I'm nonplussed by what I find at Falafel Sex.

Seriously, what did I expect, after all.

What's a "round onion?"

It rained most of the day.

Reminded me of home. Superior, Wi has weather very similar to Seattle. Maybe worse. We got much, much worse winters.

Although, there's something to be said for those sunny, below zero days in February, when the snow on the swamp is hard enough for a big guy like me to walk on like pavement. You get to look at things that the muck and the mosquitoes usually drive you away from. Unfortunately, those days all look gray and white in all the pictures I've tried to take. I'm afraid the pleasure I've taken in them cannot be shared vicariously.

Well, let me try.

The air is clear, clean, still and cold. You're dressed warm - in long-johns, undershirt, jeans, t-shirt, flannel shirt, a snow-mobile suit and gloves, thermal socks, boots, hunting hat.

The cold isn't a problem beyond your nose, lips and cheeks. When it starts to settle in somewhere, you walk a little faster. Sometimes you need to close your eyes and face the sun directly. It's always amazing how much that helps.

There are no natural barriers to any part of the property, so you examine every square foot of the swamp, the deepest woods. It's not deer season, so you wander onto the neighbors' land. None of them mind hikers. Or, if they do, they'll let you know.

I'm trying to express a feeling of freedom, I guess. Freedom from the usual natural constraints. On those days, you were allowed several square miles of free roaming. Of course, the list of winter-wear needed comprises another sort of natural constraint, but this comprises my notion of freedom.

The spring brings another kind of freedom. The Little Amnicon River always overflowed in the spring. It washed out the road about every other year. Unfortunately, we lived on the school side of the river, so we never got a day off because of it. Nor did anyone else, due to the course it meandered.

The beavers were always blocking it up on our property as I was growing up, hence the swamp. They moved across the road when we sold the house to my uncle Dave (an Oklahoman, who got into 'sailing' because of my Dad). There's only a chronological relationship there, not a causal one. Beavers are what they are. We didn't feel any need to change them, though the DNR did, once or twice.

But those are the natural restrictions. The natural freedoms are mostly related to the clothing. I still take advantage of that first opportunity to run around the yard barefoot and to work or play for hours outdoors in shorts. As I get older, I find I have to push harder to pretend to be working, but work and play sort of run together now. They're both outdoor activities. But of course I have the little girls now, so I also have an excuse to play.

"Look at that old, grey-bearded Grandpa out playing with the kids!"

That's my advice on how to enjoy life.