Shake 'em up baby

There is a really scary volcano, El Hierro, in Spain's Canary Islands that lately threatens to dump a large mountain into the ocean, setting off tsunamis that could wreak havoc in various places, including, possible, the U.S. East Coast. Jó Frímann, an Icelander I believe, runs a great volcano blog if you don't have enough miscellaneous worry in your life. Take a peek. A really big natural disaster should take people's minds off the economy; might even shut up the presidential aspirants.

Quick grin

From an agricultural cousin of herself, this funny vid.

On finality

You get to a certain point and you start to think about check-out time, not necessarily morbidly but with some close attention. Everyone I know of a certain age will tell you that the desideratum is not to avoid dying but to avoid dying slowly and miserably in the grasp of doctors and hospitals. If you've ever wondered how doctors feel about shuffling off, an essay in Zócalo Public Square by a doctor, Ken Murray, enlightens and maybe suggests a good idea for that next tattoo should maybe be 'NO CODE' across your sternum.

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

Read all here. It's really interesting.

Election season

Looks like a long, painful year for citizens of the republic, what's with the intensifying of the interminable presidential election. The two candidates are so annoying that the one I like least is always the last one I saw on TV. Obama's little back-door immigration stunt was a cheap play that particularly irritated. Mexico is in a presidential election now, but no matter who wins down there, the next Mexican president will continue unwonted meddling in American immigration policy. An engineer friend sends along an interesting vid on a border tactic with possibilities.

1K

I just noticed that this is Post #1000. Whoda thought it was gonna go on that long? Anyhow, this video tickled me inordinately; in a world of ugly, stupid public exhibitions, it's a lovely thing.

More crossdressing

Not up there with the lovely Miss Bayrat, a rather unattractive professor in Georgia has been popped for trying to peddle his wares – rather cheaply – while dressed up all girlie. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 'A highly acclaimed University of Georgia German professor was arrested Thursday for prostituting himself for $60, authorities said.' Read it all here and pipe the pic. Guy's got tenure; they probably can't do anything to him.

Water Safari

The first boat in, #314, came across the choppy bay to arrive at 11:30 p.m., Sunday night. Number 314 was a chalk bet if you could've found anybody to fade the action. Two of the paddlers are pro paddlers from Belize, the brothers Cruz, on the near end of the group pic. They are so well conditioned that one year I was down there, they were kicking a soccer ball around on the grass of the bayfront after they dragged the boat up the steps. Always an entertaining thing, watching the first boat come in. Guess we've had about all the excitement we can stand until next year. Had a small chat with the official photographer of the Water Safari, a nice girl from Austin. She isn't paid for the job but can sell pix if she gets buyers. Just the job for somebody with, maybe, student loans. She is married to a musician … a perfect Austin story if only the guy were her boyfriend and not her husband and not just a musician but a drummer.

Big weekend in **Adrift

This is our big-deal weekend here – Shrimpfest Friday & Saturday, followed by the Water Safari boats coming in late Sunday. Shrimpfest seemed a little repressed and smaller, maybe because a lot of the usual food vendors may have gone down the coast to bigger and more lucrative pickings in Rockport. It was still fun. The beauty above was the winner of the Miss Bayrat contest, usually good for a grin or two. My wife caught the shot before the contest. There was only one other contestant, but there is no doubt that this lovely could have swept a much larger field, given such attention to dress and makeup. Shrimpfest is always fun. A piratical pair from Houston joined us, the principal pirate being a qualified local. He found many, many old acquaintances to chat with. The first mate of the pirate crew held up with her usual dignified restraint. Music played until late, and I had a couple of you-kids-get-off-my-lawn moments with all the traffic and people parking on our street.

PoMo goo

If you occasionally have the misfortune to read anything current of academic writing in the squishier fields, you will – or at least I will – shake your head at the ornate, obfuscatory density of it all. Try this:

1. Smith and Lyotardist narrative In the works of Smith, a predominant concept is the concept of postconceptual culture. But Foucault’s model of capitalist nationalism suggests that language may be used to marginalize the proletariat, but only if the premise of postdeconstructivist dematerialism is invalid; if that is not the case, narrativity has significance. The main theme of the works of Smith is the role of the participant as poet. Sontag uses the term ‘neocultural discourse’ to denote a self-supporting totality. Thus, the subject is contextualised into a postdeconstructivist dematerialism that includes art as a paradox. An abundance of narratives concerning Lyotardist narrative may be found. But Lyotard promotes the use of predialectic textual theory to challenge hierarchy.

But, wait … the whole thing is a shuck. Thing is, it reads like stuff that is published and taken seriously. The excerpt is taken from an entry in a site you'll find here, The Postmodernism Generator. Go there and snicker at the PoMos. A note at the bottom pages refers to a fine joke, a bogus article by a physics professor – that's a real field – that was accepted by a cultural-criticism journal. Those people are so annoying and grotesque.

And peace comes dropping slow ...

Well, Rancho San Fulano de Buffalo isn't exactly the Lake Isle of Innisfree, but it is generally peaceful in a chaotic and busy way. I've been here for a week and a half and mostly have accomplished the needful, to the point that I now get a few hours every day to sit very still in a lawn chair [loaned by a friend; i forgot to bring my own] and read while I listen to the robins and bobwhite quail and meadowlarks and even, blessedly, a couple of mockers who hang around the manor house [a FEMA trailer] to keep in touch with a homeboy. The meadowlark is the state bird of Kansas and a fine choice it was. As a new guy in a hamlet of fewer than 300 souls, I am the object of considerable curiosity to locals. They drive by slowly, eyeballing me, or stop and debrief me if they have some plausible pretext. Then they tell me their life stories. I don't think I so much represent a possible sympathetic ear as a fresh ear. Their stories are often sad; this part of the world is very poor and scuffles are the ordinary mode of employment -- cutting firewood [how many fireplaces can there be?], scrapping, doing pick-up jobs. Disability is the second-place employer. People look sound, but I guess inside they are unable to work. Another reaction is a fierce dedication to work, a frightening sense of industry. Sooner or later, you will hear the get-'er-done catchword. I mostly like the people, but they are of a different tribe from my own, maybe a bit less into kidding as a choice for communication.

Faraway places with strange-sounding names

We are in Okieabad, where we observed the spring rites followed by our people on the first Saturday in May. Despite close attention to the sacred writings - The Daily Racing Form - I failed completely to understand the signs and portents, especially the one that indicated I'll Have Another was due to win the Derby. Herself, in a nice lick of scriptural interpretation, hit a $66 ticket and was obliged to buy dinner. Them's the rules at our house. And that is where fortune smiled on us. She found some restaurant-review site that included a complaint about having to drive the 25 miles to Okarche to get fried chicken and what the food was like there. So, we nailed down the location of the place, Eischen's, a huge country-town beer joint and a valuable cultural experience. You want fried chicken, you order a fried chicken, thirteen bucks. No other choice, unless you want two chickens. No coffee, no tea ... beer, soda pop, and water. Principal side, okra, a massive tub for $6. There's some other stuff, a couple of sandwiches, Frito pie, like that, but that's mostly peripheral. The chicken comes with a little basket of light bread, pickles sweet and dill, and slices of onion. They bring you six or eight big sheets of paper, and that's the dishes. It's the kind of chicken that reminds you why fried chicken was our great celebratory meal when we were kids. It's a long way from KFC. So, if you ever find yourself in OKC, drive out to Okarche and eat fried chicken and salve the pains of life. Who cares if Daddy Nose Best finished up the track? Some things are more important. Tomorrow, herself will take the Amtrak back to Austin [a deal for 40 bucks], and I will press on to El Rancho San Fulano for a time of contemplation and reading. No, wait, further noddling around reveals that Guy Fieri, who does a food show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, has visited Easchen's. The publicity appears to have done no damage to the integrity of the food.

Breakfast of champions

Dewberry cobbler … what do the pore folks have for breakfast?

Back again

I've been busy for the last week on a little gig, pick up some cigar money. I come back to the world and find nothing but more horrors. For instance, a sorry bill that just slid through. Excerpt:

Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA. Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government's power.

Go and read the whole thing here and gag. The 4th Amendment to the Constitution has been effectively negated by the bogus War on Terror. And a story on the TSA vermin:

The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl who became hysterical during a security screening at a Kansas airport said Wednesday that the child was forced to undergo a pat-down after hugging her, with security agents yelling and calling the crying girl an uncooperative suspect.

Read all of that one here. Some happy day, those who have worked for the TSA will be spat upon in the streets. They are as slimy a lot as we've had in this country for a long time. Makes you hate to fly. The world's unhappiest sight is a moron with a badge and a clipboard. And, as long as I'm on this tear:

The perfect googoo headline

I get a couple of lefty newsfeeds. They often have stuff on certain financial happenings that are less likely to show up in the big press. I read them wearing the same skeptical spectacles I wear for everything I read, right or left [or, in an old adage of the trade, 'If your mother says she loves you, check it out']. A headline on one story today tickled me unreasonably:
Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming People Among First, Most Affected by War on Terror's Biometrics Craze
Now that's the occasion for alarm in Austin and sheer panic in San Francisco. There's a joke about a make-believe NY Times headline:
World to end Wednesday, women, minorities to suffer most
NB: That's a joke, but it rings true to the Times' grotesquely slanted reporting.
In the middle of all the Titanic centennial hooha, I recall a joke at the Vicad [or maybe it was a real Advocate headline]:
Titanic sinks; no Victorians hurt
Was amused by the big front-page story in the Vicad this morning, a hard-hitting, scrappy, courageous exposé on a honkytonk's dress code. I mean really, people. It'll probably win an award.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds

I've passed springs on the high plains of eastern New Mexico, where the relentless wind can disturb the psyche, going on for days and days and days at a time, the howling a background to every other sound. The last few days here in **Adrift haven't been that bad but bad enough to get on the ole nerves.
It's not just us. To see how the rest of the nation fares, take a peek at http://hint.fm/wind/ and see what's blowing in the wind all across the country.

Ennui

So, a friend complains, legitimately, that I've not said a word here for too long. So, a word [or more precisely, a vid]:

For anyone who's ever been annoyed [did you know that annoy and ennui are etymologically related way upstream?] by a snotty cat.

Asian Aggies

A bit of fascinating grassroots engineering that makes small but real improvement in quality of life for poor Asians [Filipinos, I take it].

Gods of the Copybook Headings

“You have only always to do what is right. It will become easier by practice, and you enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure of an approving conscience.” ~ Robert E. Lee (1807-1870)
"Always do right. That will gratify some people and astonish the rest." -- Mark Twain
And Kipling's poem:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Spring

in the South is pretty spectacular. We just made a great loop through Louisiana to Mississippi to Arkansas and then back home. My wife, devotee of natural beauty, went to Garvan Gardens in Hot Springs when we stopped off there. As our ostensible aim was to see the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn, I stayed in the room and studied the scriptures, called by some The Daily Racing Form, hoping to divine the intentions of the gods of the track. We were both rewarded, she with an aesthetic experience of the first order, I with some good tickets on a round-robin parlay. She took pictures.




In Mississippi, the dogwoods and wisteria and such were all over abloom. It was a fine trip.

Maybe she thought crack meant something else

Headline from world's worst newspaper:

Woman arrested for allegedly hiding crack cocaine in buttock area
She may have thought that the name of the drug was an instruction for application. The copy editor who wrote the headline was having a little fun with a routine drug arrest.

Herders

A quickie I couldn't resist.

I am just fascinated and amazed by border collies. One of my favorite stories ever was one I wrote about a border collie field trial in Elgin, outside of Austin. The funny thing about this vid is the dog herding the flock of men in just the way that it would herd a flock of sheep. The narrative mimics a popular Brit TV show, called something like 'A Man and His Dog,' that features working dogs in competition.

Road trip

We're off on our big spring trip. We took off Monday morning and drove to Lafayette, La. Every time I go to Lafayette I ask myself why I never lived there. I lived in places I couldn't stomach but did anyhow, so why not a place I really like? The problem is life is both too long and not long enough such that I'm almost certainly not going to get a degree in geology or live in Lafayette, both interesting prospects. Just rambling here. As my mama said not long before she died, 'The trouble is we live too damn long.'
We are in D'Iberville, Miss., having spent yesterday afternoon hacking around Ocean Springs, Miss., which town I recommend. Maybe 1970 I was working in Chicago and the Tribune Sunday roto mag ran a piece on an artist named Walter Anderson who lived on the Gulf Coast. He was such an intriguing character and his art so appealing that I swore someday I'd go see it. Forty-odd years later I made it and will testify that Walter Anderson's art is wonderful. I did something very similar with Frncisco Goya's art. Fell in love with it in my late teens and made it to the Prado at age 60. Today: On to Vicksburg. Mamaw's chasing ancestors and I just read a book about Grant's western campaigns, so there's something for everybody.

This is likely raggedy post, given it happened on a lobby computer.

Which way does your compass point?

Here's an entertaining little test of your political leanings. It's on two axes, one for economic left/right, one for social libertarian/authoritarian.
Try it at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and see what you get. My leftish friends think I'm a reactionary and my right friends think I'm a communist. They may all be kinda right, as I fall very close to the 0-0 of a perfect moderate. I am –3.50 on the left/right axis, which makes me a little bit to the left, and –1.54 on the libertarian/authoritarian axis, which makes me just a tad libertarian. Try it and see what you are. I fall in the southwest [corrected, Sugar. Thx.] quadrant.

Leave your kid

with Mamaw Mad-dog from **Adrift, and you're likely to come home to a kid with purple fingernails.

Solar storms

According to the public prints, cosmic disruption is afoot, if we can believe the story,and I think we can. The Roomba just ran amok in the livingroom, making a silly humming sound and then setting forth on a quest of its own, determined only by the desires of a Roomba's heart. I pulled plug and smacked the off button to silence it. Then the TV started talking in a quavery voice. Is the cosmos making war on me? Who can know? It often feels like it. This could be interesting.

Feeling whiny about weather?

Or first mosquito hatch or whatever vagary of nature offends just now?
Take a peek at these little half-minute vids of an avalanche in Alaska. That'll scare the hell outta you. Reminding us to be fearful of the hurricane season … been a long time around here since we got good and scared by weather.

Only little people pay taxes & wait their turn

Some researchers have once again come with a well, duh finding about the sense of entitlement of the wealthy.

The rich really are different from the rest of us, scientists have found — they are more apt to commit unethical acts because they are more motivated by greed.

Read it all here in the LA Times. Now, this study comes from UC-Berkeley, so is as suspect as a NYTimes immigration story, but – let's face it – the findings accord with my observations of life, good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon empiricism. Hey, the way to get rich is by going light on the pot, cheating, chiseling, trimming, constantly seeking advantage. You may be contemptible, but you'll be rich.

Tibetan cranial

I know for a long time a woman whose life has been the constant accretion of half-baked spiritual ideas, one stacked on top of the last like geological strata. I suppose, at the very bottom, there is a layer of orthodox Episcopalian. She has an amazing capacity for belief untainted by any capacity for critical thought. Her posted stuff features mostly wackawacka Eastern ideas and dreamy photos with lots of mist. The latest enthusiasm is Tibetan cranial manipulation. For the writings of an eminent practitioner, go here. As herself says, makes you want to manipulate your cranium with a big ol' slug of brandy.

A year's worth of seismic activity

This site, Dutchsinse, has the major earthquakes of 2011, set up so that you watch the year go by, complete with sound effects. Get a load of Fukushima on March 11 and following, about 1:53 in. My goodness, but the Internet's a great thing. There are worse things than $4 gasoline, one of them being a major earthquake by your nukes.

Oh, the weird stuff my correspondents send me

http://www.youtube.com/v/WlEzvdlYRes
Cut it and paste it.

Lies, lies, lies

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, an Army officer who traveled extensively in Afghanistan and spent a lot of time looking at the situation there, publishes in the Armed Forces Journal an assessment of the situation there that shows optimistic press releases and 'we're-winning' speeches by senior officers as pretty much a pack of lies. Davis writes

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.
Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.

Go here and read the whole scary article. We must stop meddling in places we don't understand and where we have no business.

Bomb Bomb Bomb

The Israelis are apparently just spoiling to bomb Iran, purportedly to stop Irani progress on nuclear weapons. The loathsome American neo-cons have never seen any evil done by Israel, and a contingent of religious nutcases here seems to favor any kind of violence in the Middle East. Take a look at Tai-Wiki-Widbee here and scroll down to the map of U.S. military installations surrounding Iran. Can't say I blame them for arming themselves, gven the apparent threats they are facing. I went through the first two-thirds of my life with total sympathy for Israel, a common sentiment for those of us who grew up immediately post-WWII. A young friend pointed out about ten years ago that the Israelis were another bunch of expansionary militarists. It doesn't sound completely wrong. I appreciate the virtues of the Israelis, but we can't give them a blank check to act as they will.

Serendipity

The wonderful thing about the Net is the way you wander into strange territory; you go looking for a snowshoe hare and happen on an agouti, and that's fun sometimes. A comment on a politicalish blog led me to this:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2011/10/download-ten-secs-of-every-hit-song-of-the-60s.html, a New Jersey radio-station site where you can go hear ten-second clips of the top 100 songs of each year of the Sixties. Ain't that a hoot.

My money was on viruses

Herewith a story on antibiotic-resistant bacteria that have popped up here in the U.S. of late. I always believed that nature's response to excess human population would be viral, but I may have been wrong. Anyhow, the story will give you pause if you were thinking about routine anything in a hospital.

In at least 37 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, doctors have identified bacteria, including E. coli, that produce Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase, or KPC--an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to most known treatments. It's much more prevalent in America than bacteria that produce NDM-1, the enzyme that has Indian doctors "hell scared," and, according to Alexander Kallen, a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the final outcome isn't much different: superbacteria that are hard to kill.

Read the whole thing here in a Yahoo news story from U.S. News & World Report.

Eric Holder

Ever since the financial world blew up behind funky house loans, some of us have waited eagerly to see the Department of Justice draw some blood from the bankers for fraudulent activity. Nothing. A sory from Reuters might help explain:

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

Imagine that, bankster influence in the DoJ. Read it all here. We ought tent DC like a termite-infested house and exterminate them all.

Yes, you can [or maybe not]

A lift from Joanne Jacobs, who found it somewhere else, a nice little jab at the half-baked idea that everyone is capable of anything.

Remember: Half of the population is of below average intelligence.

More piling on in the war on Alfalfa

Alfalfa, Mrs. Alfalfa, and the Alfalfa sprouts took a road trip. He blogged about it in the Vicad and ran the blog entry in print. They lived dangerously and went to strange and exotic places. He reports, '… We cruised along the 80 mph speed limit of West Texas and arrived the first night in El Paso in fine fashion. We had a pleasant dinner at the nearby Macaroni Grill …' The Macaroni Grill!!?? That's the place to eat in El Paso, one of the best Mexican-food towns in the U.S.? You can drive five blocks in any direction and encounter a joint serving Mexican food better than anyone in Victoria has any hope of ever eating, and they ate at the Macaroni Grill? Tsk, tsk.
I feel a little bad about taking little jabs at the Vicad when the whole world has risen up to smite them. A friend forwards this blog, devoted to what appears to be a sea war on the paper.
It's amazing for a paper to elicit such venom from their readership. Pore ole Advocate.

Ah, Newtie

Like a logorrhetic zombie, Newt Gingrich keeps on walking and talking. Someone wisecracked that Gingrich is the stupid person's idea of a smart person. One of his sillier ideas expressed is that we can somehow magically produce enough oil in this country to replace the petroleum we import.
Sometimes when I am threatened by rare sensations of optimism, I go to The Oil Drum, one of the best sites on the Webz for professionals' take on the petroleum situation in the world. Re Gingrich, Oil Drum says

During the CNN Republican presidential debate Tuesday, November 23, Newt Gingrich made statements about U.S. potential oil supply that reveal either total ignorance of energy or supremely dangerous demagoguery. He stated that the United States could discover and produce enough oil in 2012 to cause a worldwide oil price collapse.

Read it all here. There is no drill baby, drill possible in this world. The Oil Drum merits respectful study; those folks know a thing or two about oil, and they're not optimistic about the whole deal.

Res ipsa loquitur

Man named Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-bop-bop arrested
Wanna guess where?

Bad, bad law

Vacationing in Hawaii, Obama signed a miserable bill at the tail end of last year, a bill that will allow indefinite detention of American citizens. So much for habeas corpus. This is another chunk chipped off our rights as Americans. I would hope that a federal court will slap it down in the dirt. Bloggers from left to right are correctly damning the damnable law. You need to read these:
here
and here
and this one,
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/02/final-curtain-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-of-citizens-into-law-as-final-act-of-2011/
which I can't get to link but you can cut & paste. They're all interesting.
Governments, R or D, seek to expand their power and must be restrained. Only one Texas Representative voted against this bad ol bill. Wanna guess who? That's right, our very own Ron Paul.

Skipping to politics

A BBC columnist has a cogent piece on the Iowa caucuses:

A leading Republican, who was in Congress for more than 10 years, answered my question: "Who can beat Obama?" with a casual, "a mammal". Then he added sadly: "But they are all reptiles."

Read the whole thing here. Always interesting to get the cousins' take on our peculiar politics.
I'm not certain I can bear months and months of this arrant silliness. Perhaps I can pick up my SS cks in Ecuador or Argentina. It's funny as hell to watch the big-time press boys not talking about Ron Paul. They are upset with him because of his dangerous, extremist ideas: dismember the empire, bring troops home, throttle the crony capitalists, audit the fed. Clearly a nutcase. Of all the R candidates, the only ones who seem to me personally amiable are Jon Huntsman and ol' Ron, perhaps the only gentleman extant in politics in either party.