I came around the corner of the house this afternoon, carrying tomato cages to the tool shed, to find a porcupine waddling across the yard. By the time I could get the camera, it had climbed into a pile of scrap lumber on the back of the shed. Cute little bugger. They look cuddly, but I know better. Hard to resist giving him a pat, though.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Porcupine hiding behind the tool shed
I came around the corner of the house this afternoon, carrying tomato cages to the tool shed, to find a porcupine waddling across the yard. By the time I could get the camera, it had climbed into a pile of scrap lumber on the back of the shed. Cute little bugger. They look cuddly, but I know better. Hard to resist giving him a pat, though.
The Future of Human Civilization
The middle class is shrinking because it is becoming obsolete. That which serves no purpose atrophies.
The most efficient industrial society has a small ruling class and a large working class. The small ruling class controls manufacturing and distribution. The working class provides labor. It has only the buying power granted it by the ruling class. Under streamlined management, large corporations can operate their manufacturing facilities and big-box retail stores with a minimal middle management class. The economy can be manipulated to keep even these slightly elevated functionaries under sufficient financial stress to keep them in control.
The labor class doesn't need to be well educated, so the ruling class doesn't need to spend a great deal on public schools. Design engineers and other technical people will come from the ruling class, but part of their challenge is to design systems that can be operated by people who are trained, rather than educated.
Preserving the illusion of a free society, the labor class may believe it has mobility and free will, but freedom, as they say, is not free. You have to fight management's wars for them. And you are only as free as your budget allows.
It's essentially a slavery economy with free-range slaves. They don't run away because there's nowhere to run and they don't know they're captives.
The most efficient industrial society has a small ruling class and a large working class. The small ruling class controls manufacturing and distribution. The working class provides labor. It has only the buying power granted it by the ruling class. Under streamlined management, large corporations can operate their manufacturing facilities and big-box retail stores with a minimal middle management class. The economy can be manipulated to keep even these slightly elevated functionaries under sufficient financial stress to keep them in control.
The labor class doesn't need to be well educated, so the ruling class doesn't need to spend a great deal on public schools. Design engineers and other technical people will come from the ruling class, but part of their challenge is to design systems that can be operated by people who are trained, rather than educated.
Preserving the illusion of a free society, the labor class may believe it has mobility and free will, but freedom, as they say, is not free. You have to fight management's wars for them. And you are only as free as your budget allows.
It's essentially a slavery economy with free-range slaves. They don't run away because there's nowhere to run and they don't know they're captives.
Low-Guilt Lighting
We've been slowly replacing most of our light bulbs with "soft-serve" fluorescents. You know, the little swirly ones. In the process, we found some outdoor ones that have a glass capsule that looks like a regular outdoor flood. We put one in the the light beside the basement door, shining on the woodshed and driveway.
Especially on a cold night, you have to make an appointment to have light. In other words, turn the light on several minutes before you plan to go out. But when it reaches full power, it throws much more light than the incandescent bulb we had before. I doubt if it saves much energy for us when we're at home, because we'll leave it on all evening, to illuminate our trips out for firewood. It will definitely save money when we have to turn the light on early in the day and leave it on so we have light when we come home from work in the dark.
Our electric company offers a cheap deal through an online program, so we're waiting for a big box of bulbs for inside fixtures. Kind of a funny thing to get excited about, but it's like collecting anything. More! More!
Especially on a cold night, you have to make an appointment to have light. In other words, turn the light on several minutes before you plan to go out. But when it reaches full power, it throws much more light than the incandescent bulb we had before. I doubt if it saves much energy for us when we're at home, because we'll leave it on all evening, to illuminate our trips out for firewood. It will definitely save money when we have to turn the light on early in the day and leave it on so we have light when we come home from work in the dark.
Our electric company offers a cheap deal through an online program, so we're waiting for a big box of bulbs for inside fixtures. Kind of a funny thing to get excited about, but it's like collecting anything. More! More!
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Rethinking the Modern War
Young adult humans need quests. In the past, leaders could satisfy their need for pawns and the young adult's need to pursue some glorious aim by putting the adventurous youth into armies.
Humans seem to have a desire to die colorfully in conflicts they imbue with deep significance. It beats rotting in some retirement home.
Humanity made a mistake by taking these wars too seriously and making the killing machinery too efficient. Getting blown to smithereens by an impersonal bomb or cannon shell lacks the fantasy-game satisfaction of flowing swordplay, or even just stalking each other with firearms through a forest or cityscape.
We need to go back to wars of personal combat, where the dance means more than the body count. We can have both war and peace if we acknowledge that war is really just another hobby. Medical technology has advanced very well, forced to treat the grossly traumatic injuries inflicted by massively destructive weapons. Imagine how much fun a war with more primitive weapons will be now. You can get hacked, stabbed and stuck with arrows and then have a state-of-the-art helicopter evacuate you to a modern medical facility. Some people would die, but more would live. And you'd know at the end of each work day that you rose or fell based on your own skills, not some random insult like a land mine or a giant bomb.
Risk of death, and loss of comrades is necessary to keep the quest real.
The organizers of wars could decide what the stakes would be, just as the organizers of charity sporting events decide what cause gets the income from the entry fees. In fact, we could even have benefit wars that really do donate the proceeds to a charity.
Humans seem to have a desire to die colorfully in conflicts they imbue with deep significance. It beats rotting in some retirement home.
Humanity made a mistake by taking these wars too seriously and making the killing machinery too efficient. Getting blown to smithereens by an impersonal bomb or cannon shell lacks the fantasy-game satisfaction of flowing swordplay, or even just stalking each other with firearms through a forest or cityscape.
We need to go back to wars of personal combat, where the dance means more than the body count. We can have both war and peace if we acknowledge that war is really just another hobby. Medical technology has advanced very well, forced to treat the grossly traumatic injuries inflicted by massively destructive weapons. Imagine how much fun a war with more primitive weapons will be now. You can get hacked, stabbed and stuck with arrows and then have a state-of-the-art helicopter evacuate you to a modern medical facility. Some people would die, but more would live. And you'd know at the end of each work day that you rose or fell based on your own skills, not some random insult like a land mine or a giant bomb.
Risk of death, and loss of comrades is necessary to keep the quest real.
The organizers of wars could decide what the stakes would be, just as the organizers of charity sporting events decide what cause gets the income from the entry fees. In fact, we could even have benefit wars that really do donate the proceeds to a charity.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Go ahead, be true to yourself. No, really.
As I was scrubbing the kitchen sink this morning, rather obsessive-compulsively, lines to a 1960s pop song kept going through my head:
"You've got to
make your own kind of music
sing your own special song
make your own kind of music--
even if nobody else sings along..."
That's right, you freak. Be true to yourself (and keep it to yourself). If you wind up alone, it's okay. Why? Because that's where you belong. It only sounded like an encouraging anthem promoting diversity and creativity. It's really starkly Darwinist. Do your thing...and DIE, you social cripple! Or hit it big, in which case we'll all be HAPPY to sing along!
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Hillary's right about one thing
Many households are one missed debt payment or serious medical diagnosis away from financial collapse. But you can't lay the blame entirely at the Bush administration's feet.
The nation's prosperity under Bill Clinton sprang from multiple causes, few of which had to do with him. Most were not sustainable. The economy did rebound on a wave of optimism when we finally shook off the grasp of the Reagan era's ill-advised fiscal policies, but the boom that followed was not based on sustainable principles.
Factors like housing starts and a surging real estate industry can't last, because they don't put money in circulation widely enough, and they really just represent tumor growth in humanity's metastatic expansion in already overpopulated areas, and incursions into the few remaining uncrowded ones.
Politicians have a way of standing in front of the rising moon, pointing and saying "look what I did!" Priest magicians have been claiming credit for volcanic eruptions for a long time.
I don't have the answers, but I'd like to see us at least look for them in the right place.
In the meantime, I try to make all my few and carefully chosen debt payments on time and hope to avoid that medical diagnosis.
The nation's prosperity under Bill Clinton sprang from multiple causes, few of which had to do with him. Most were not sustainable. The economy did rebound on a wave of optimism when we finally shook off the grasp of the Reagan era's ill-advised fiscal policies, but the boom that followed was not based on sustainable principles.
Factors like housing starts and a surging real estate industry can't last, because they don't put money in circulation widely enough, and they really just represent tumor growth in humanity's metastatic expansion in already overpopulated areas, and incursions into the few remaining uncrowded ones.
Politicians have a way of standing in front of the rising moon, pointing and saying "look what I did!" Priest magicians have been claiming credit for volcanic eruptions for a long time.
I don't have the answers, but I'd like to see us at least look for them in the right place.
In the meantime, I try to make all my few and carefully chosen debt payments on time and hope to avoid that medical diagnosis.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)