For that price someone should come and plant them too!

My chickens want to thank you for the giant red mustard, it's their favorite.

I'd like to put out an alternative strategy to the military one being offered in Afghanistan. That's the big problem that Obama was faced with, picking a military strategy, when "none of the above" was the the best option. When politicians rely on the military as a solution, they are abdicating their responsibility as politicians to come up with a political solution. I call my alternative strategy the "Hong Kong solution" because it evolved out of the British-Chinese war.

The British really wanted to conquer China and add it to their empire, along with India, much as the United States wants to add Afghanistan to the "Coalition of the Willing". However, they were realistic about how much control they could have in another vast, populous country half a world away, so they settled by just grabbing Hong Kong. Although the Chinese were none too happy with it at the time, it did turn out to have long term benefits for them. And by limiting British territory to the small area of Hong Kong, it only insulted the pride of the Chinese and did not result in a countywide insurrection against the British.

There are many other small enclaves that offend the host, but end up facilitating cultural connection and understanding: Macau, Guantanamo (at least until the torture started), Gibraltar, Ceuta, Goa (until it was annexed), and others. Sometimes a small toehold is all that is needed instead of lots of "boots on the ground". That is behind much of the reason that the military has bases in 190 countries all over the planet -- they don't just want a refueling stop, but they want to have a presence to build an alliance with an ally.

It's not a fool-proof strategy, Okinawans have pretty much had it with Americans raping and murdering their teenagers. Soviet satellites were also not to thrilled to have their Warsaw Pact ally camped in their territory. It really boils down to knowing how to be a guest and not burn out your welcome: (1) impose as little as you can; you can't sleep in the master bedroom (2) know when to make yourself scarce; you are not King Solomon and you can't mediate all arguments (3) don't freeload and (4) wait to give your opinion until you are asked.

So how would this work in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
1) Have the US negotiate a long term lease for one (and only one) territory that would be more than just a military base.
2) Have a teaching hospital at the territory that could train local doctors and offer medical care to locals.
3) Have a school system through university in the territory that allows locals to learn about American culture.
4) Have an agricultural experiment station in the territory that offers help to local farmers.
5) Have a corps of engineers that can provide advice on infrastructure projects.
6) Make it clear that all local factions are welcome to visit and don't take sides.
7) Make the perimeter of the territory a defensive position, and don't "fight 'em there" by going beyond the territory.

Done properly, only a small number of personnel would be needed for military defense of the territory and the vast majority would be involved in humanitarian projects that would be the projection of "soft power". A plan like this would cost much less than a million dollars per person per year. The difference between what a mercenary wants and what a Peace Corps volunteer will do is staggering. For the price of one Blackwater contractor, you could have 19 Peace Corps volunteers and one soldier and you would get a far better result.

There are a lot of things those handy with tools can do to make themselves more energy independent. I'm doing it and if you want to collaborate with me, send me a PM. You can follow my progress here: http://www.solarpowerforum.net/forumVB/sho...

One of the most difficult things to get an organization to do is adopt a different technology, as you have to admit that you didn't think of it first. On a country wide level, the process is even more daunting. Japan was really humbled by World War II, so when they desperately needed to improve their crappy industry in the 1950's, they invited an American expert (W. Edwards Deming) to teach them about quality. In Europe, with so many countries bordering each other, if one gets a good idea, the other ones notice and feel no shame in copying what works well.

In contrast, Americans have no humility at all, still proudly proclaiming that they have the best health care in the world. They see no need to adopt anything foreign, except foreign wage scales so they can buy crap from Wal-Mart. I don't think American companies will be doing HSR, because they have no clue what is involved. The relatively small number of American railroad workers are specialized in moving freight, which is as different from passenger service as FedEx is from Delta airlines.

European countries have a 65 year history of continuous improvements to both passenger and freight railways. World War II left the railroads in a rough state, but they were repaired, rerouted, and improved into reliable public infrastructure. I remember taking the train in the US as a small child, but 50 years of neglect has left the US at the point the Europeans were at just after the war -- with a devastated system. It would take the US several years to catch up to even the former Soviet Union, where the trains are slow, but at least they are reliable.

The only economics paper that I have ever seen that uses mathematics correctly is the Black-Scholes model of options. However, it wasn't very difficult for them to get that right, because it is essentially a diffusion equation which Fourier solved 150 years prior. Economists make horrible, shitty mathematicians partly because they are in such haste to get a result, that they hardly ever examine their assumptions and axioms. Many of their "proofs" involve restating a given, which they trumpet as a great result. A few of them have learned to use MATLAB or some other crank-turning algorithm, oblivious to the caveat of the programmer: garbage in, garbage out.

The way economics is taught is not scientific at all. The appeals to the "rational economic man", the assumptions of monotonicity, the poorly defined variables. Economics of today is as scientific as the astrology of 10 centuries ago. Just as economists have lots of "data" so too did the astrologers. They could predict when Mars would go into retrograde with great accuracy. But just as Mars going into retrograde did not correlate with the propensity of war on Earth, so too does a lot of economic "data" fail to correlate with some fundamental principle of theirs.

Economists need to quit flinging bullshit around and do much more observing before they try to draw conclusions. Biology is not as advanced mathematically as some of the other sciences, partly because there was a whole lot of stuff to observe before taking pen to paper to write an equation. Economics is just about as complex as biology when one tries to describe an economic transaction. Their simplification about price being where sellers and buyers come into equilibrium in the "market" is about as vapid as a biologist explaining evolution as "two organisms mate and then they have offspring". However, biologists, unlike economists, have a lot more stories to tell along the way, full of detailed observations.

Since economics is a "social" science, politics plays a great part in the desired outcome. They aren't afforded the luxury of examining an economic system and positing a relationship between two variables and then testing it. Their hypotheses already start out loaded with a viewpoint, be it "price is determined by supply and demand" or some similar schlock. Where are their studies that examine the nature of the function that maps the two variables supply and demand onto price? There aren't any, because they don't understand the topology involved in that last sentence, or why it would be necessary to investigate it.

I don't see any improvement in the situation any time soon. People inclined to study economics only learn enough mathematics to get by and are not the Hardy or Russell type of deep thinkers. Mathematicians who can analyze a subject in that level of detail shy away from mathematics partly because it is a swamp full of fetid axioms and ridiculous assumptions.

These aren't "my" wars, I thought Gulf War I was a lie and protested then, I thought Afghanistan was unnecessary 8 years ago, and I protested the invasion of Iraq (not that anyone in government listened). Do you understand? I don't think you do.

When presented with unrelenting violence, there is no pacifist answer. In that way, violence and militarism are like rabies, there is no cure for the disease, only a bullet to the head. Sometimes the rabid are their own executioners (Hitler, Himmler), the rest of the time an everyday Joe has to do the task and it affects them the rest of their lives. There were a lot of World War II veterans who saw and did unspeakable horrors, but they regretted everything they had to do and did not take glee in "kicking ass".

And how should intelligence react when confronted with violence? If violence is unavoidable, intelligence has to summon up greater violence to prevail. When a bully shakes his fist in your face, you pull a knife on him; when a mugger flashes a knife, you show him your gun; when you are attacked by the world's largest armada, you develop the atom bomb.

Don't tell me I'm "free" either. In this country, I'm NOT free to marry someone of the same sex and it's not "free" to get medical care or express an opinion. The only people you fight for are the moneyed people who want to control the oil in Iraq. You should read more of what Smedley Butler has written. Here is a link to Butler's 'War Is A Racket', maybe it will open your eyes: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisa...

All I see here is a toddler who is fascinated with dirty diapers and puts his hands in them and smears shit on the walls. Just as you slap the toddler's hands and put him on a time-out while you clean up, the same needs to be done with Tanenhaus. If his claim to fame is a biography of Whittaker Chambers, he's spent too much time in the outhouse and has gotten delirious from the fumes. Not every thick book with lots of footnotes and obscure details is scholarly -- some of it is just stupid bullshit.

CREATING BULLSHIT OUT OF THIN AIR
AM Radio has the power to create fertilizer where only the aether existed. Several honorary gasbags will be featured.

CREATING EXCUSES WHERE NONE CAN BE MADE
Larry Craig leads a panel discussion of how nasty tea-room sex can be explained away as "family values".

CREATION SCIENCE AND OTHER SUCKER BAIT
F. Flintstone and B. Rubble will present their new documentary 'Jesus rides a brontosaurus'.

BOOTSTRAP PULLING
Personal testimonies from people who have won the Lotto on how to shame family members who want to share in on your hard won success.

REAGAN KNOB POLISHING SESSION
Carrots carved in the likeness of Rt. Hon. St. Ronald Reagan the Magnificent will be waxed and placed in offering to the Invisible Hand of the Free Market.

SHIT SELLING CONTEST
Monsanto will present new research on genetically modified pigs which shit chocolate pudding. The attendee eating the most bowls will win an internship with the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee.

I'll go out on a limb here and defend capitalism where I think it works well -- for things that don't matter much. In a complex society with a plethora of consumer products, capitalism does a pretty good job of the manufacture and distribution of things like toasters, toilet paper, tin foil, tomatoes, tennis shoes, tampons, turkeys and turkey basters, t-shirts, towels, toothpaste and toothbrushes, tea, teacups and teapots, tables, turnips, TVs, TV dinners, TV trays, and TV remotes.

It would be a nightmare to try and centrally plan an economy to provide all of the items on the above list, and it would sap time and energy from planning things that really matter: health care, roads, education, housing -- you know, the things that people depend on.

When I was young, 'Negro' had replaced 'colored', which came to be associated with segregation in the South. However, 'colored' was much preferred to the word it replaced, 'n****r', which today can only be referred to obliquely, and not printed out directly.

Not complying with their wishes may indicate that the speaker is too old to change, as in Reagan's Q&A with school children, in which he used the already outmoded 'Negro' in one of his answers. I refer all these questions of terminology to what George Carlin said on the subject, basically that words are not the danger, but the thought and meaning behind them that they are intended to convey. It seems any designation of a less favored class of people takes on a derogatory air after a couple decades of use, as children grow up hearing themselves referred to as that class and discriminated against because of it. They naively think that by changing from n****r to colored to Negro to black to Afro-American to African-American, it will turn the page on discrimination and the situation will improve.

But getting people to change their speech patterns, such as from 'oriental' to 'Asian-American', is only a cosmetic fix on the underlying problem of xenophobia. If people are taught to celebrate diversity instead of fear it, then it really doesn't matter what you call some ethnic group because that difference is not a detriment, but an asset. The height of xenophobia is when you can take the word that people use in their own language when talking about themselves, like 'gook' or 'polack' and make it an ethnic slur in your own language.

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” -- Winston Churchill

Actually, democracy is a great improvement over royalty, which relies on the assumption that great men will have great children, not a succession of dimmer and dimmer bulbs until the light barely flickers. Democracy though, requires a knowledgeable voting public that takes the time to learn the issues and reason out what the best course is. If done right, it can reach a consensus decision where everyone is happy with the outcome. Such a consensus was reached with Medicare and Social Security, since few if any of the participants in those programs opine that it is so bad they would rather not participate.

But democracy is vulnerable to emotion based arguments, advertising, and lying. One man, one vote will not progress very far unless the vote is taken in Lake Wobegon, where all the people are above average. No, the better way is to embrace a meritocracy, one where more reliance is given to those who get things right. We have been schooled to think that this is wrong, but no matter how much we want to believe in the equality of all human beings, we know there is something wrong with a severely retarded person standing in line to vote who is all exited to "vote for the nice guy who looks like grandpa". Those people have no business voting, and insightful people that can write on public policy might deserve a fraction more than one single vote.

A meritocracy could take many forms, from allowing more votes from the more educated (level of education does correlate positively with doing things right), to the weeding out of the incompetent as they climb the political ladder. At this time, the only weeding out that operates on politicians, selects out those who commit crimes or are highly sexed. Crimes of greed, bribe taking, graft, and other financial shenanigans are more serious than say, DUI, which a few politicians have been able to skate by with. While crimes of greed probably do not make for a good politician, a politician can be competent with a high or low libido. As we are just finding out, it really doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom, as long as you haven't built your career condemning those who do as you like. No, sex isn't a big disqualifier, but a history of failure should be. People who have failed over and over can conservatively be expected to fail again if given a fifth or sixth chance. Meritocracy would make it much less likely that a leader could get to a position of political power where he could invade the wrong country, let a city drown, and wreck the economy.

If instituting democracy is hard, instituting a meritocracy has to be next to impossible. It is easy to give each adult one vote; it's harder to come up with a rational system to give the more competent bonus votes. How do you measure competent other than some utilitarian 'greatest good for the greatest number' type of criteria? And how do you keep the privileged class open to entry from the newly meritorious and prevent them from keeping the economic benefits for themselves? The corporate world appears to be a meritocracy -- they reward intellect and ambition. But the CEO class have shown that no matter if they got there on merit or on connections, they intend to take the lion's share of the benefits.

I don't know yet whether I'm ready to ditch Democratic Underground and start hanging out on Meritocratic Underground, but I may have to give it a try. At least on Meritocratic Underground, they would know what to do with teabaggers, birthers, town hall ranters, and gun toters.

There has been a bewildering array of new species of 'conservative' in recent months from "birthers" to "teabaggers" to "town hall disrupters" and I thought it would be good to put a post up to educate DUers as to these exotic new fauna. I'll make the disclaimer right up front that I am not a professional biologist, so anyone having any corrections or additions is welcome to add to this post.

All conservatives belong to the genus Fascisti, an offshoot of the primates which displays evolutionary regression to cruder tools, less reasoning ability, and inability to spell. They can be distinguished from normal humans by their irrational outbursts at logic, their determination to defeat their own self-interest, and their fear of new things.

There is some confusion as to the maturation process of the conservative, which is understandable, since while their physical appearance can change, there is never, ever, any change in their mental processes. The most valued stage of the conservative is the fetal stage, which the male of the species will protect with lethal effects to any perceived threat. However, once the juvenile conservative emerges from its brood hatch (see google images "vagina is not a clown car" for a visual), it is pretty much ignored if it needs school, school lunches, or health services.

Conservatives can be distinguished by their prominent cranial feature, the "numbskull". Evolutionary pressures have resulted in the bones of the skull being much, much thicker than in normal humans. In certain individuals, the bones are so thick as to prevent any facts from penetrating. However, rather than protect the brain, this thickening has resulted in atrophy, which explains the evolutionary regression already noted.

The white hood is absent in adolescent stage of the fascist known as the "skinhead". As the skinhead matures, it becomes too unstable to engage in daily grooming rituals and the hairs of the numbskull begin to lengthen into the "flattop" stage. The flattop tries to disguise other features of its appearance, usually behind mirror shades, a big, fat beer belly, or a uniform with a badge, but generally leaves the top of the numbskull open for the sun to bleach to a brilliant white. While incubation in the flattop stage can take a long time, the conversion to the "white hood" stage can be fairly quick, sometimes occurring over a single "night ride". With the white hood, the fascist has reached adulthood and begins to look for a mate by emitting its call of 'ditto-rush-ditto' over AM radio.

The aging conservative is a far more dangerous creature than the younger one which will disguise itself as 'libertarian' so as not to frighten normal humans. The "old coot" stage conservative makes no attempt to get along and actually seeks out logic and attacks it, similar to a rabid weasel in a henhouse. Humans that try to approach the old coot with logic are in a high level of danger as the conservative is know to respond to logic with screaming, tantrums, and physical violence. The best way to handle dangerous old coots is to give them some coupons to Cracker Barrel or put them on a bus trip to a casino. Video gaming machines have been shown to be the best method for quieting down an unruly flock of old coots.

Conservatives thrive best when fed a diet of 100% bullshit. The conservative never seems to tire of the same old weak sauce day after day, but will actually swallow anything put in front of them, no matter how ridiculous and nonsensical. If bullshit is not available, they can be fed something less nutritious for a while, like a bag of Krystals, but to be contented, they will want unlimited access to bullshit. Water quality is really of no concern to conservatives, as long as it is not fluoridated. In taste tests, conservatives have shown no preference between Old Milwaukee, horse piss, and Kool-aid.

While not generally tolerant of mind-altering substances, melanin has been shown to be a powerful hallucinogen to conservatives. The presence of melanin in a normal human will cause often trigger an instant seizure in a conservative where they get stuck yelling "Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-" at the top of their lungs. The melanin does not even have to be physically present, as even a picture of melanin shown to a conservative will cause a petit mal seizure. The half-life to melanin exposure in a conservative can vary over orders of magnitude. Conservative which have had severe melanin hallucinations will voluntarily go to northern Idaho and self-medicate with mashed potatoes and white gravy.

Conservatives are prone to most of the same diseases as all primates, however they are especially susceptible to "homosexuality". Fear of this disease runs high because it has stuck many of their prominent Senators (Larry Craig), Congressmen (Mark Foley), and preachers (Ted Haggard). Once stricken by homosexuality, the conservative must quietly disappear and go for 'counseling', a ritual in which other conservatives will gather around the afflicted one to "pray away the gay". A normal human would be tempted to try to introduce facts at this point, which would be a mistake, as a flock of conservatives confront facts in the same way piranhas confront a wounded tapir.

I apologize for the brevity of this exposition. If anyone wishes to add instructional video or picture links, I would welcome them.

The white hood is absent in adolescent stage of the fascist known as the "skinhead". As the skinhead matures, it becomes too unstable to engage in daily grooming rituals and the hairs of the numbskull begin to lengthen into the "flattop" stage. The flattop tries to disguise other features of its appearance, usually behind mirror shades, a big, fat beer belly, or a uniform with a badge, but generally leaves the top of the numbskull open for the sun to bleach to a brilliant white. While incubating in the flattop stage can take a long time, the conversion to the "white hood" stage can be fairly quick, sometimes occurring over a single "night ride". With the white hood, the fascist has reached adulthood and begins to look for a mate by emitting its call of 'ditto-rush-ditto' over AM radio.

I've had it up to here with your denials. You don't know, and you have no way of knowing. I have quit listening to you and become a pantheist -- I'm never going to badmouth another deity, and if you were wise, you would do likewise. With all the ones out there, one of them has to have some bona fides. Carl Sagan used to talk about how with all those billions and billions of stars, there were also billions and billions of planets that could support life, so we likely aren't alone in the universe. Similarly, with all the hundreds of thousands of deities that have attracted worship throughout history, so we likely aren't alone there either. Let me point out the advantages of pantheism:
* Every day on the calendar is a religious holiday to some group, so you can be excused from working if you celebrate them all.
* It's like being the house when you take Pascal's wager -- and the house always wins.
* If there's faith based money floating around, they can't exclude you from a share of it.
* If you don't want to eat something, there's probably a religious prohibition against it.
* If you do want a second helping of something, it's probably the food of the Gods in another religion.

I invite you all to attend Mass on Sunday and say some prayers to Aristaeus with me. That way, you don't have to have those plain boring Catholic crackers with your wine, but you can top them with some nice cheese, gift of the Lord Aristaeus.

Here's some good reading for those of you who have been castigating me upthread: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/...

Maybe after reading it, you will see how you have been and are being used as a tool, a dull tool at that.