So nice to have Monday off

I love my 4-day weeks.  And now that I can take Friday or Monday off, life is just that much more - flexible!

Trying to make the Google books app work on my iPad.  Crashes all the time.  Would be nice to have another whole source of books.  Multiple libraries I can carry in one hand.  Useful.

Learned to cook bacon in the oven, too.  This is going to come in handy!  And for Sherry, it means she doesn't have to stand at the stove tending bacon. 

One more long hot summer before we're free to avoid a good deal of it.

Football and more football

Porkchops and cognac make our Sunday perfect.  And Duck Dynasty!  World's largest duck call.

Still re-reading Antifragility, too.  Fed the veggie plants and it rained, too. No fires.

Saturday fire

Almost had a fire when some oil got overheated on the stove.  Makes one realize how uncertain life is and how quickly things can change.  Luckily I got it out without any great danger.

Football Saturday went on as usual.  Florida and Georgia won.  So the season goes on towards Thanksgiving and the bowl games.  Just like every other year, despite Obama and the other know-nothings.  Life goes on in the United States of America.

Raise

Stiil glowing after getting a little raise at work.  Bigger than I thought.  Nice to be appreciated.

Becoming very enamored of my writing skills, or, at least, my persistence. The three thousand words a day take precedence over everything else.  But they don't take so much time that I can't have a life, too.

Splurged on some Courvoisier.

Ned's not home yet after a light day of classes.  He's taking Geohazards and Mexican history.  So he'll be all ready if Mexico is swallowed up by a giant sinkhole.

Hints of coolness in the air, but still too darn hot.

Russian exceptionalism

Right.  So Putin has been telling us how we think too much about how America is exceptional.  What does he want?  Everyone gets a prize?

We all know what Putin wants.  Piece.  A piece of Ukraine - no, all of it.  A piece of Belarus, or White Russia to us traditionalists.  The Baltic Republics?  Not so much.  Too much trouble.  Moldova?  Too small, not worth much, full of Bessarabians.

Now I'm not saying Putin wants to reconstitute the Soviet Empire.  He would be satisfied with the extent of Catherine the Great - and really mean - from the 1700s. And he might even forego Poland.  Too much bother.  Full of Poles.  Right next to Germany, never a good idea.

So, no, Russia isn't exceptional today.  It's just doing what it's always done, being Russia.

Proper history

I like Mencius Moldbug:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/

Unfortunately, he doesn't post much.

Standardized tests

Vox Day today was going into the nature of standardized tests, in connection with his continuing (NOT "ongoing") war against a Mr. Scalzi.  So I thought I'd trot out my credentials, however irrelevant they may be .  I was a National Merit Semi-Finalist.  I got an 800 on the Graduate Record Exam (verbal portion, in 1974)  I passed two state bar exams, eighteen years apart, one in New Hampshire, one in Florida at the age of 55.  As to IQ, my parents wouldn't tell me the number.  They said there wasn't one.  I was "off the charts".

There, now, aren't you impressed?  C'mon, admit it!

Personally, I can't think of much of anything less relevant to my everyday life than standardized tests, except for the bar exams, which have enabled me to eke out a precarious living.

I am grateful for intellectual power and grasp, though, which, when combined with long-overdue persistence and perseverance, have enabled me to start writing something I think might be good.  See my other blog:  Europe1870.blogspot.com

Remembering twelve years ago

9/11 marked the first time I used internet news services instead of Dan Rather and the boys.  It happened in the morning, so the daily news wasn't able to deal with it.  But Drudge and Instapundit were.  No need to listen to local news to get a distorted picture of events.  Now we could get raw facts, from a lot of sources and do our own analysis.  Talk about scales dropping from eyes!  Even the New York Times would never be the same.

September coming on

September is such a traitress.  Promises cool breezes and delivers 90-degree humidity.  But at least we know there's something cool out there waiting for us.  I am looking forward to some tap dancing tomorrow trying to fit Nietzsche into the events of 1870.  There must be some connection, right??

Back to Work

Is Obozo still whingeing about Syria?  Will a real man called Putin have to pull his donuts out of his coffee?  Well this is the first Monday night football game and my wife is out doing something called Zoomba, so, hey, does it get any better?  I think it involves automated vacuums, so when She (who must be obeyed!) gets back, I expect the rugs to be really clean!

Will Australia emerge from down under?

Heard that Tony Abbott will be Prime Minister of Australia!  Now I have to go read Tim Blair.  Haven't read him  in a while.  Excusable, since who wants to read about Julia Gilliard or Kevin Rudd?  Nobody sane.

Go check it out.

Jobs numbers - an incompetent delusion

I love the first Friday of each month, because hen we can delude ouselves anew that government job numbers have any meaning except as a cryptogram encoding some demonic prediction of the end of the world.  Well, then at least we'd know what the future held.  I especially like the people asking themselves, "Gee, I wonder what the real numbers are?" As though there are real numbers out there.  Reminds me of people opposing global warming who think there really is some number corresponding to the "Temperature of the entire surface of the world".

Money for blood and iron

So now the Administration says its ok to go into Syria because the Arabs will pay for it!?   In what universe is that a policy  for a major power?  I always ask myself, "what would Bismarck say?"  In this case the explosion of German cursewords, from a Godly man, would be difficult to believe.  "You do not have a nation," he would say once he had calmed down.  "You have a force of mercenaries serving a bankrupt butt of international ridicule."   And what could we reply?

Still waiting on Syria

It seems like weeks now since Zero got all excited about going into Syria, or at least bombing it with a stern expression.  Will he ever figure out whether he's going to do anything or not?  Oh, and then he'll have to figure out what to do.  Could be a while.  I bet he just votes "present" with his thumb in his mouth!

Aaron Clarey

I like Aaron Clarey's blog, Captain Capitalism.  (http.captaincapitalism.blogspot.com)

I even like his podcast, though I do object to his overuse of expletives.  I favor civil language at all times, maybe with an exception for the presence of idiot liberals (but I repeat myself).

I am "enjoying the decline" (the name of Clarey's book) although I am hoping the decline may hit bottom and come back up, perhaps while in the mean time moving the clock back a couple of hundred years.

He is certainly right about the proliferation of useless college degrees (Worthless, another one of  his books).  Still some good ones out there, though.  Everyone's looking for that golden ticket.

Minimum wages and strikes and robots

Lots of stories lately about fast food workers striking for higher wages.  For flipping burgers?

I also found a story about the new robots being developed to drive trucks, and flip burgers!  Now what could influence McDonald's to buy a few million dollar robots who (which?) will work all night instead of paying ten workers $15 an hour who get sick, show up late and give surly customer service?  I know, how about a strike?  Where will all the truck drivers and burger flippers go?  What will they do to keep entertained?  Time to move out of any conurbation?  Now!

Syria and Schleswig-Holstein

I cannot help but be struck by the contrast between the diplomacy of Bismarck in the 1860s and our so-called administration today.

Bismarck always had a goal and always realized where he was in the progress toward the goal.  That is why he was always so nervous in the middle of military action.  He knew very well how important military success was.  He also knew he could do nothing to assure military success.  His painstaking and highly ingenious diplomatic preparations depended entirely on the luck of battle.  This often caused him much anxiety, notwithstanding his run of astonishing success.

By contrast the pathetic mess in Washington - one can hardly call it an administration, since it refuses to administer anything, much less the medicine this poor country, sunk in debt and hopelessness, needs.  John Kerry?  Hillary Clinton?  Please.  One won't even mention Buraq the White (!) Stallion of Mohammed!

Counter-Revolution

During my reading of Bismarck's Table Talk for my book, one of his quotes sprang upon me some wonderful wisdom.  "What we want," the old Junker said, "is not a counter-revolution.  We want the contrary of the revolution!"

And that's exactly it.  The Enlightment cannot be undone by another, different kind of Enlightenment.  For what was the Enlightenment, much like the Sixties, but an angry, childish rejection of traditional religion, of reality itself?  What would the true contrary of that sort of thing be but an embrace of tradition and reality, of a re-establishment of old religion, old truths and old, enduring reality?

So the best way to build for the future is to reinforce the lessons of the past.  The so-called Enlightenment must not be fought.  It must be ignored and bypassed, allowed to slip into the dustbin of history where it belongs.

Partant pour la Syrie

Odd, isn't it, that the French have been noodling around about sending bombers and cruise missiles and all those wonderful new devices into Syria?  From the point of view of a historian with an addiction to the "Carnival Empire", Napoleon III's reign as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870, this is particularly ironic because the theme song of that Empire was "partant pour la Syrie", making the point that overseas adventures were part and parcel of the greatness of France and of Louis Napoleon.  Whether in Nouvelle Caledonie or Pondichery in India or Algeria or Central Africa, bringing the benefits of French civilization to the heathen was a privilege, nay, a duty of every Frenchman.

And the US, of course, must tag along.  Even the supposed anti-imperialist Zerobama must tag along, again, as a duty or a privilege or yet another stupid mistake it's difficult to tell.  Perhaps he'll just go along with whatever the military suggests, as he did with the attack on Pakistan to get Osama, of which I fully approved because of the light it shone on the empty hypocrisy of Zero's attacks on the Bush way of doing things in the Middle East.

No, not empty hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy full of meaning for those who seek insight into men's souls.

Conundrum again, or still.  We have not solved the puzzle of life.  And I still own Swiftcurrent!  Not in the best of shape.  Still getting too many flat tires.  It's a bit dangerous to ride with all these big SUVs around.

Speaking of dangerous, I started this blog shortly after the 9/11 attack.  Here in 2013 we are about to start another war that may lead to more attacks.  One thing you can say about these Islamic terrorist  characters, though, they sure don't seem to care if they accomplish anything to, for instance, spread Islam worldwide, which was supposed to be their job description.

But Obama's going to do something unspecified to Syria to accomplish some (secret!) unspecified goal.  But at least he accomplished something, or will no doubt take credit for it.  He found George W. Bush's weapons of mass destruction!  I, like Hillary Klinton and John (Magic Hat) Kerry, always knew they did exist.  But nobody still seems to know what to do about them.  Anything effective, that is.