The Secret Six | The Verge
Brunei
Monday, June 06, 2016
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: – Politically Short
https://politicallyshort.com/2016/06/05/the-perversion-of-the-law/
https://politicallyshort.com/2016/06/05/the-perversion-of-the-law/
Sunday, June 05, 2016
Friday, June 03, 2016
Wednesday, June 01, 2016
Monday, May 30, 2016
Bye-Bye Blue Pills: Nanotech Patch Could Deliver Viagra Via the Skin - Scientific American Blog Network
Bye-Bye Blue Pills: Nanotech Patch Could Deliver Viagra Via the Skin - Scientific American Blog Network:
That's why a generic equivalent called http://www.kamagratablets.com/kamagra-1.html" rel="nofollow">Kamagra was produced. Sildenafil Citrate, the main chemical compound of Kamagra, is the reason why men with ED are able to sustain erection for a sustained amount of time. Many online pharmacies today supply this kind of product. In fact, men can buy generic kamagra online without a prescription.
That's why a generic equivalent called http://www.kamagratablets.com/kamagra-1.html" rel="nofollow">Kamagra was produced. Sildenafil Citrate, the main chemical compound of Kamagra, is the reason why men with ED are able to sustain erection for a sustained amount of time. Many online pharmacies today supply this kind of product. In fact, men can buy generic kamagra online without a prescription.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Friday, May 27, 2016
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
At The Edge Of Time: This is Peak Oil
At The Edge Of Time: This is Peak Oil: 19 May 2016
This is Peak Oil
This is Peak Oil
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Formation of Texas Entities FAQs
Formation of Texas Entities FAQs: (2) If an application to register a partnership as an LLP states that the underlying partnership only has one general partner, the underlying partnership must be an LP. (General partnerships must have at least two partners, and every partner in a general partnership is a general partner.) If there is no record that a formation document was filed with this office to create an LP, we will reject the LLP application. An LP can only be created by filing formation documents with our office. An LP must be created and in existence before it can take the additional step of registering as an LLP.
LLC or LP: What's Best for Your Business? | legalzoom.com
LLC or LP: What's Best for Your Business? | legalzoom.com: If a member of an LLC dies or files bankruptcy, the LLC is dissolved. In an LP, the death or resignation of a limited partner does not cause the dissolution of the LP.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;' Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’
Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;' Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’: Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder;' Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’
Good article.
Good article.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Friday, May 20, 2016
I'm confused on the difference between transvestite, transgendered, transexual, etc? | Yahoo Answers
I'm confused on the difference between transvestite, transgendered, transexual, etc? | Yahoo Answers:
I can understand your confusion because many people will use these terms interchangably, not realizing the fact that there are noticeable distinctions between the two. Also, people who identify with such labels will also draw major division lines between themselves and the other groups and can even be downright hostile towards each other. The definitions I use are more or less in line with the American Psychological Association's website.
Transgender is an umbrella term that describes someone whose gender identity or expression is different from that of their birth sex. Transgender includes but isn't limited to crossdressing/transvestism, genderqueer, transgenderist, androgyny, transsexual, etc. It is a spectrum and not a "one-size-fits-all" category. Each individual transgender identity has some traits that are common to anybody who is transgendered, but at the same time there are traits that makes each transgendered identity unique of themselves.
Transvestism, alternatively crossdressing, describes somebody who wears the clothing or takes up the appearance of the opposite sex. While both men and women can in theory be transvestites, the term is almost exclusively used with men who dress as women. Transvestites vary greatly in how far they take their dressing and how often they do it. Even though crossdressing can be and is a sexual fetish for some men, a classic transvestite is someone who simply expresses a feminine component of their personality by the act of crossdressing. While both transvestite and crossdresser mean the exact same thing, transvestite at least in America can carry a negative connotation for some people because if the term's associaton with being a sexual pervert as well as other transgender identities that a transvestite doesn't want to be identified as.
Transsexual is transgender identity where the person who is born complete mismatch between their gender identity and their birth sex. This is because classic transsexualism is a neurological intersex condition that is hardwired into their brain. The basic sign that one is transsexual is Gender Dysphoria (or Gender Identity Disorder), where one persistently identifies as the opposite gender of their birth sex and is uncomfortable with living as their birth sex. What makes transsexuals unique among the transgendered community is that the only proven method to allow a transsexual to have a quality life where they don't suffer from Gender Dysphoria is to allow them to medically transition from their birth sex to the sex that matches up with their gender identity. This is in contrast to other transgender identities where the individual is happy with less permanent changes. Transitioning is never taken lightly and involves rigorous psychological counseling to ensure the person would benefit from transitioning, hormone replacement therapy under the close supervision from a doctor, and living as their target sex for at least a year before SRS is allowed. Transsexuals sometimes do not go through SRS, primarily because of health or financial reasons. This is especially so with Female to Male transsexuals, because full SRS for them is extremely expensive, has a lot of imperfections, and can cause more health complications than those for Male to Female transsexuals.
Regardless of which gender identity one falls into, I believe that gender is a much more fluid concept than being either masculine or feminine, male or female. Even the most masculine of men have some feminine qualities to him, and vice versa for the most feminine of women. The same concept for gender in general holds true for transgender people. That is why it disheartens me when I see hardline transsexuals being hostile to and drawing divisions between themselves and the rest of the transgendered community, particularly transvestites. Of course I have seen the same hold true for a lot of hardline transvestites who hold extreme hostility towards transsexuals. They dwell on their differences so much that they neglect to see a lot of their similarities they have common struggles they go through.
I am a man who is a crossdresser (or transvestite). I have gravitated towards crossdressing since I was a young kid because I like the feminine expression it gives me. Like most men who are crossdressers, I am heterosexual and wouldn't want to give up being physicaly male or my masculine traits. Although I do crossdress quite a bit, I rarely take it to where I present as a complete female. I attend a transgender support group where all gender identities and expressions are welcome and come together to share their experiences and support one another.
Source(s): http://www.apa.org/topics/transgender.ht..
I can understand your confusion because many people will use these terms interchangably, not realizing the fact that there are noticeable distinctions between the two. Also, people who identify with such labels will also draw major division lines between themselves and the other groups and can even be downright hostile towards each other. The definitions I use are more or less in line with the American Psychological Association's website.
Transgender is an umbrella term that describes someone whose gender identity or expression is different from that of their birth sex. Transgender includes but isn't limited to crossdressing/transvestism, genderqueer, transgenderist, androgyny, transsexual, etc. It is a spectrum and not a "one-size-fits-all" category. Each individual transgender identity has some traits that are common to anybody who is transgendered, but at the same time there are traits that makes each transgendered identity unique of themselves.
Transvestism, alternatively crossdressing, describes somebody who wears the clothing or takes up the appearance of the opposite sex. While both men and women can in theory be transvestites, the term is almost exclusively used with men who dress as women. Transvestites vary greatly in how far they take their dressing and how often they do it. Even though crossdressing can be and is a sexual fetish for some men, a classic transvestite is someone who simply expresses a feminine component of their personality by the act of crossdressing. While both transvestite and crossdresser mean the exact same thing, transvestite at least in America can carry a negative connotation for some people because if the term's associaton with being a sexual pervert as well as other transgender identities that a transvestite doesn't want to be identified as.
Transsexual is transgender identity where the person who is born complete mismatch between their gender identity and their birth sex. This is because classic transsexualism is a neurological intersex condition that is hardwired into their brain. The basic sign that one is transsexual is Gender Dysphoria (or Gender Identity Disorder), where one persistently identifies as the opposite gender of their birth sex and is uncomfortable with living as their birth sex. What makes transsexuals unique among the transgendered community is that the only proven method to allow a transsexual to have a quality life where they don't suffer from Gender Dysphoria is to allow them to medically transition from their birth sex to the sex that matches up with their gender identity. This is in contrast to other transgender identities where the individual is happy with less permanent changes. Transitioning is never taken lightly and involves rigorous psychological counseling to ensure the person would benefit from transitioning, hormone replacement therapy under the close supervision from a doctor, and living as their target sex for at least a year before SRS is allowed. Transsexuals sometimes do not go through SRS, primarily because of health or financial reasons. This is especially so with Female to Male transsexuals, because full SRS for them is extremely expensive, has a lot of imperfections, and can cause more health complications than those for Male to Female transsexuals.
Regardless of which gender identity one falls into, I believe that gender is a much more fluid concept than being either masculine or feminine, male or female. Even the most masculine of men have some feminine qualities to him, and vice versa for the most feminine of women. The same concept for gender in general holds true for transgender people. That is why it disheartens me when I see hardline transsexuals being hostile to and drawing divisions between themselves and the rest of the transgendered community, particularly transvestites. Of course I have seen the same hold true for a lot of hardline transvestites who hold extreme hostility towards transsexuals. They dwell on their differences so much that they neglect to see a lot of their similarities they have common struggles they go through.
I am a man who is a crossdresser (or transvestite). I have gravitated towards crossdressing since I was a young kid because I like the feminine expression it gives me. Like most men who are crossdressers, I am heterosexual and wouldn't want to give up being physicaly male or my masculine traits. Although I do crossdress quite a bit, I rarely take it to where I present as a complete female. I attend a transgender support group where all gender identities and expressions are welcome and come together to share their experiences and support one another.
Source(s): http://www.apa.org/topics/transgender.ht..
Glory Hole, Glory Hole, Hallelujah! - Taki's Magazine
Glory Hole, Glory Hole, Hallelujah! - Taki's Magazine: let’s get our terms straight. We’re not talking about “transgender people” being able to use a bathroom that corresponds to the sex of the person they’ve “transitioned” to. We’re not talking about Caitlyn Jenner or Christine Jorgensen. We’re talking about biological men being allowed to use women’s facilities based merely on the fact that they “believe” they’re a woman “on the inside.” The public associates the word “transgender” with people who have undergone some type of procedure, some type of transformation. That obfuscation is on purpose; let’s not play into it. We’re talking about belief, not physical state. If a man claims to think he’s a woman, he must be treated as such. He can be 6 foot 5 with a lumberjack beard and a bulging pendulous dirlywanger, and yet he is magically a woman in the eyes of the law by virtue of his belief alone.
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello:
Humor
Lots of people tell me I'm self-centered and egotistical. But enough about them.
Rather than just talk about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?
I've been told that I'm condescending. That means that I talk down to people.
If there's anyone more self-absorbed and less-concerned about his surroundings than I am, I certainly haven't noticed.
And anyone who thinks I'm confrontational should come and say that to my face.
Humor
Lots of people tell me I'm self-centered and egotistical. But enough about them.
Rather than just talk about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?
I've been told that I'm condescending. That means that I talk down to people.
If there's anyone more self-absorbed and less-concerned about his surroundings than I am, I certainly haven't noticed.
And anyone who thinks I'm confrontational should come and say that to my face.
Did Prince Die From Painkiller Addiction?
Did Prince Die From Painkiller Addiction?:
Opium Production Afganistan
an excerpt from wiki: After regularly producing 70% of the world's opium, Afghanistan decreased production to 74 tons per year under a ban by the Taliban in 2000, a move which cut production by 94 percent.A year later, after American and British troops invaded Afghanistan, removed the Taliban and installed the interim government, the land under cultivation leapt back to 285 square miles (740 km2), with Afghanistan supplanting Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more. Opium production in that country has increased rapidly since..As had been the case in Indochina during the Vietnam War the US invasion has in fact been causal in a massive increase in opium production, the aforementioned eradication efforts being largely window dressing... a threefold increase in area under cultivation between 2002 and 2014. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan#Present_war_in_A..
Opium Production Afganistan
an excerpt from wiki: After regularly producing 70% of the world's opium, Afghanistan decreased production to 74 tons per year under a ban by the Taliban in 2000, a move which cut production by 94 percent.A year later, after American and British troops invaded Afghanistan, removed the Taliban and installed the interim government, the land under cultivation leapt back to 285 square miles (740 km2), with Afghanistan supplanting Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more. Opium production in that country has increased rapidly since..As had been the case in Indochina during the Vietnam War the US invasion has in fact been causal in a massive increase in opium production, the aforementioned eradication efforts being largely window dressing... a threefold increase in area under cultivation between 2002 and 2014. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan#Present_war_in_A..
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Sunday, May 15, 2016
This man left his pregnant lover...and then received a�postcard nine months later
This man left his pregnant lover...and then received a�postcard nine months later:
HUMOR
Life offers us many surprises. Of course, we may have our own plans, and we often carry them out, but most people know that the unexpected is always a part of our lives. And if it’s our love lives we’re talking about, then it almost entirely consists of such unexpectedness.
Once, a married man had an Italian lover over the course of several years, and one day she told him she was pregnant.
The man didn’t feel like tarnishing his reputation and destroying his years-long marriage, so he asked his lover if she could go back to Italy to give birth to the child in secret in exchange for a large sum of money. He also promised to provide her with funds until the child turned eighteen.
The woman agreed, and then asked him how he would know that the child had been born. To prevent any possible publicity, he asked her to send him a postcard saying ’Spaghetti’ when the time came. After some time, they bid each other goodbye, and she returned to Italy.
Then almost nine months passed...
One night, when the man came home, his wife met him with a surprised look in her eyes. ’Honey,’ she said, ’We got a very weird postcard today.’
’That’s interesting,’ he replied. ’Let me see it.’
His wife brought him the card and watched for his reaction. The man, having read a few lines, first went deathly pale, and then fainted. His spouse rushed to help him, and the postcard fell to the floor.
All it said was this: ’Spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti. Three with meat balls, two without them. Please send more sauce...’
HUMOR
Life offers us many surprises. Of course, we may have our own plans, and we often carry them out, but most people know that the unexpected is always a part of our lives. And if it’s our love lives we’re talking about, then it almost entirely consists of such unexpectedness.
Once, a married man had an Italian lover over the course of several years, and one day she told him she was pregnant.
The man didn’t feel like tarnishing his reputation and destroying his years-long marriage, so he asked his lover if she could go back to Italy to give birth to the child in secret in exchange for a large sum of money. He also promised to provide her with funds until the child turned eighteen.
The woman agreed, and then asked him how he would know that the child had been born. To prevent any possible publicity, he asked her to send him a postcard saying ’Spaghetti’ when the time came. After some time, they bid each other goodbye, and she returned to Italy.
Then almost nine months passed...
One night, when the man came home, his wife met him with a surprised look in her eyes. ’Honey,’ she said, ’We got a very weird postcard today.’
’That’s interesting,’ he replied. ’Let me see it.’
His wife brought him the card and watched for his reaction. The man, having read a few lines, first went deathly pale, and then fainted. His spouse rushed to help him, and the postcard fell to the floor.
All it said was this: ’Spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti. Three with meat balls, two without them. Please send more sauce...’
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes:
“Long before our own time, the customs of our ancestors molded admirable men, and in turn these eminent men upheld the ways and institutions of their forebears. Our age, however, inherited the Republic like some beautiful painting of bygone days, its colors already fading through great age; and not only has our time neglected to freshen the colors of the picture, but we have failed to preserve its form and outlines.
"For what remains to us, nowadays, of the ancient ways on which the commonwealth, we are told, was founded? We see them so lost in oblivion that they are not merely neglected, but quite forgot. And what am I to say of the men? For our customs have perished for want of men to stand by them, and we are now called to an account, so that we stand impeached like men accused of capital crimes, compelled to plead our own cause. Through our vices, rather than from happenstance, we retain the word “republic” long after we have lost the reality. ” – Cicero, De Re Publica
“Long before our own time, the customs of our ancestors molded admirable men, and in turn these eminent men upheld the ways and institutions of their forebears. Our age, however, inherited the Republic like some beautiful painting of bygone days, its colors already fading through great age; and not only has our time neglected to freshen the colors of the picture, but we have failed to preserve its form and outlines.
"For what remains to us, nowadays, of the ancient ways on which the commonwealth, we are told, was founded? We see them so lost in oblivion that they are not merely neglected, but quite forgot. And what am I to say of the men? For our customs have perished for want of men to stand by them, and we are now called to an account, so that we stand impeached like men accused of capital crimes, compelled to plead our own cause. Through our vices, rather than from happenstance, we retain the word “republic” long after we have lost the reality. ” – Cicero, De Re Publica
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes:
BARKING by Jim Harrison
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
BARKING by Jim Harrison
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
Friday, May 13, 2016
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes
AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes: Hillary Clinton personifies delusion
Hillary Clinton personifies delusion
Insecure, transparently phony, privately nasty, and unlikable, she has no political gifts other than her marriage.
Hillary Clinton personifies delusion
Insecure, transparently phony, privately nasty, and unlikable, she has no political gifts other than her marriage.
Her
performance since law school has ranged from, at best, undistinguished,
to a disastrous tenure as Secretary of State. She embraced foreign
interventionism and regime change that had clearly failed in Afghanistan
and Iraq, rebranding it as a “Responsibility to Protect.” At Clinton’s
behest, the people of Libya were “protected” out of Muammar Gaddafi’s
dictatorship and into the bloody chaos of a failed state and new Islamic
State stronghold. She blessed arms shipments from Libya to Syria to
help US-backed rebels foment a revolution similar to the one that had
failed in Libya. Her characterization of Vladimir Putin as Hitler set up
a cardboard devil that prevented her from understanding either the
point of view of the other major nuclear power’s leader or the
subtleties of one of the US’s most important international
relationships. One expects far better from America’s chief diplomat. Running the Table, by Robert Gore | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC
Sunday, May 08, 2016
Thursday, May 05, 2016
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello:
Don't end sentence with preposition
New guy at Harvard: "Excuse me, could you please tell me where the Student Union is at?"
Upperclassman: "Here at Hahvahd, we do not end our sentences with a preposition."
New Guy: "Oh, I'm sorry. Could you please tell me where the Student Union is at, Asshole?"
Don't end sentence with preposition
New guy at Harvard: "Excuse me, could you please tell me where the Student Union is at?"
Upperclassman: "Here at Hahvahd, we do not end our sentences with a preposition."
New Guy: "Oh, I'm sorry. Could you please tell me where the Student Union is at, Asshole?"
Paul Nehlen: Paul Ryan 'Sold His Vote! I Absolutely Believe That' - Breitbart
Paul Nehlen: Paul Ryan 'Sold His Vote! I Absolutely Believe That' - Breitbart: Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin primary opponent Paul Nehlen tells Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon today that he absolutely believes Paul Ryan “sold his vote” to support so called trade deals that Nehlen says are damaging to America.
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello:
Joke
Having already downed a few power drinks, she turns around, faces him, looks him straight in the eye and says,
"Listen here, good looking. I will screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, their place, my place, in the car, front door, back door, on the ground, standing up, sitting down, naked or with clothes on... It doesn't matter to me. I just love it."
His eyes now wide with interest, he responds, "No kidding... I'm in Government too. Are you federal or state?"
Joke
Having already downed a few power drinks, she turns around, faces him, looks him straight in the eye and says,
"Listen here, good looking. I will screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, their place, my place, in the car, front door, back door, on the ground, standing up, sitting down, naked or with clothes on... It doesn't matter to me. I just love it."
His eyes now wide with interest, he responds, "No kidding... I'm in Government too. Are you federal or state?"
Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Monday, May 02, 2016
Sunday, May 01, 2016
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: I use GWX Control Panel to prevent the malware of Win10 from infecting my computer.
It removes the hidden folders & files of the malware & prevents their re-installation.
It's freeware, I got it from Major Geeks. Highly recommended if you want to keep your Win7 setup (if you do nothing, you'll wake one morning and find you have Win10, whether you want it or not.)
It removes the hidden folders & files of the malware & prevents their re-installation.
It's freeware, I got it from Major Geeks. Highly recommended if you want to keep your Win7 setup (if you do nothing, you'll wake one morning and find you have Win10, whether you want it or not.)
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on PUDDY: The Gift
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on PUDDY: The Gift: Smart lad to slip betimes away,
To fields where glory will not stray,
For early though the laurel grows,
It withers quicker than the rose. ~Housman
To fields where glory will not stray,
For early though the laurel grows,
It withers quicker than the rose. ~Housman
Saturday, April 30, 2016
The Top 40: Comment on I have not endorsed Mr. Trump.
The Top 40: Comment on I have not endorsed Mr. Trump.:
Pournelle writes:
Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful.
Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.
Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.
That's the central problem. But there's one big difference between rich capitalists, and powerful government bureaucrats: the rich eventually die off, and taxes eat up a big portion of their estates. By the 3rd generation, their grandkids are right back in the middle class – or worse. Also, in a free market anyone can get rich, or at least prosper.
On the other hand, a Socialist bureaucracy never dies. It is nameless, faceless, constantly growing, and completely unaccountable (how many EPA heads rolled when they deliberately detroyed the beautiful Animas river? None. Not even a reprimand was issued!)
One of Karl Marx' fears was of an indestructible, immortal, and all-powerful bureaucracy, accountable to only a very select few.
That's what we're seeing. That's the situation in the EU now. Look up some of Nigel Farage's videos. He calls them on it, but they don't care. He bluntly asked the EU President, "Who elected you?" They don't answer because they don't care. They have total (unelected) power.
Now, imagine that you're an EU serf/taxpayer with a grievance. Suppose you can show, chapter and verse, that the EU is breaking its own laws and causing you immense grief. Do you think you will get recourse?
Not a chance. The bureaucracy closes ranks, and the average peon is totally screwed.
And that's what's happening here. But amazingly, there are fools who still push for a world government! As George Orwell said, if that happens, those thugs will have their boot on your face... "...for ever."
His interviewer asked what could be done about that? Orwell's answer: "Don't let them do it." But how to stop them, he didn't say.
It's up to each of us in our own way, no?
Pournelle writes:
Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful.
Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.
Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.
That's the central problem. But there's one big difference between rich capitalists, and powerful government bureaucrats: the rich eventually die off, and taxes eat up a big portion of their estates. By the 3rd generation, their grandkids are right back in the middle class – or worse. Also, in a free market anyone can get rich, or at least prosper.
On the other hand, a Socialist bureaucracy never dies. It is nameless, faceless, constantly growing, and completely unaccountable (how many EPA heads rolled when they deliberately detroyed the beautiful Animas river? None. Not even a reprimand was issued!)
One of Karl Marx' fears was of an indestructible, immortal, and all-powerful bureaucracy, accountable to only a very select few.
That's what we're seeing. That's the situation in the EU now. Look up some of Nigel Farage's videos. He calls them on it, but they don't care. He bluntly asked the EU President, "Who elected you?" They don't answer because they don't care. They have total (unelected) power.
Now, imagine that you're an EU serf/taxpayer with a grievance. Suppose you can show, chapter and verse, that the EU is breaking its own laws and causing you immense grief. Do you think you will get recourse?
Not a chance. The bureaucracy closes ranks, and the average peon is totally screwed.
And that's what's happening here. But amazingly, there are fools who still push for a world government! As George Orwell said, if that happens, those thugs will have their boot on your face... "...for ever."
His interviewer asked what could be done about that? Orwell's answer: "Don't let them do it." But how to stop them, he didn't say.
It's up to each of us in our own way, no?
The Top 40: Comment on No matter how hard the Americans and Europeans have tried to show Russia as a busted flush, the joke’s on them.
The Top 40: Comment on No matter how hard the Americans and Europeans have tried to show Russia as a busted flush, the joke’s on them.:
Comment on the future amiraka. some thoughts
The DMV is the boilerplate template for all the other facets of gov't.
ALL of them.
Never forget it.
You are better than them, as long as you believe you are.
Something like 80% of all gov't employees are *minorities* and 80% of them are wimminz.
Of the remaining 20%, 80% of them are wimminz.
Is it any wonder the gov't is like it is?
~ imagine the bacterial habitat under them 3" purple fingernails ~
~ ever smelled dreadlocks as they waddled past? like sewage and used axle grease in an unvented basement ~
Comment on the future amiraka. some thoughts
The DMV is the boilerplate template for all the other facets of gov't.
ALL of them.
Never forget it.
You are better than them, as long as you believe you are.
Something like 80% of all gov't employees are *minorities* and 80% of them are wimminz.
Of the remaining 20%, 80% of them are wimminz.
Is it any wonder the gov't is like it is?
~ imagine the bacterial habitat under them 3" purple fingernails ~
~ ever smelled dreadlocks as they waddled past? like sewage and used axle grease in an unvented basement ~
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Friday, April 22, 2016
Seven Earth Day predictions that failed spectacularly | Watts Up With That?
Seven Earth Day predictions that failed spectacularly | Watts Up With That?:
Seven Earth Day predictions that failed spectacularly
Seven Earth Day predictions that failed spectacularly
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Talking Dog For Sale
mission
impawsable
mission
impawsable
A
guy is driving around the back woods of Montana and he sees a sign in
front of a broken down shanty-style house: 'Talking Dog For Sale 'He rings the
bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.
The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador
retriever sitting there.
the dog.
'Ten dollars,' the guy says.
'Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so
cheap?'
'Because he's a Bullshitter. He's never been out of the yard'
guy is driving around the back woods of Montana and he sees a sign in
front of a broken down shanty-style house: 'Talking Dog For Sale 'He rings the
bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.
The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador
retriever sitting there.
'You
talk?' he asks.
'Yep,' the Lab replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says
'So, what's your story?'
The Lab looks up and says, 'Well, I discovered that I could
talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so... I
told the CIA.
In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting
in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog
would be eavesdropping.'
'I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years
running...
But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting
any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the
airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious
characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and
was awarded a batch of medals.'
'I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired.'
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants fortalk?' he asks.
'Yep,' the Lab replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says
'So, what's your story?'
The Lab looks up and says, 'Well, I discovered that I could
talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so... I
told the CIA.
In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting
in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog
would be eavesdropping.'
'I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years
running...
But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting
any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the
airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious
characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and
was awarded a batch of medals.'
'I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired.'
the dog.
'Ten dollars,' the guy says.
'Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so
cheap?'
'Because he's a Bullshitter. He's never been out of the yard'
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
Sunday, April 17, 2016
We Don’t Have to Live Like This – PA
We Don’t Have to Live Like This – PA: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
The Top 40: April 2016 Archives
The Top 40: April 2016 Archives: It bears repeating....
My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.
My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on There Is No Other Stream
AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on There Is No Other Stream:
Further Up and Further In, which is a literature based study using The Chronicles of Narnia
Further Up and Further In, which is a literature based study using The Chronicles of Narnia
James LePore Fiction Ivictus
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
William
Ernest Henley lost his left leg to arthritic tuberculosis when he was
nineteen. Four years later he was told that his right foot had to come
off. Although he was told he would die if he did not have this second
amputation, he refused, and instead put himself in the hands of a
physician who had developed new but untried methods, including a
radically new surgery, to arrest, if not cure, the disease. He spent
three years in hospital taking this treatment, during which he wote Invictus. He did not lose his right foot, and lived another thirty active years.
Ernest Henley lost his left leg to arthritic tuberculosis when he was
nineteen. Four years later he was told that his right foot had to come
off. Although he was told he would die if he did not have this second
amputation, he refused, and instead put himself in the hands of a
physician who had developed new but untried methods, including a
radically new surgery, to arrest, if not cure, the disease. He spent
three years in hospital taking this treatment, during which he wote Invictus. He did not lose his right foot, and lived another thirty active years.
I believe
that when Henley made his decision to either die or save his right
foot, he stepped into a dimension of time and space that very few of us
ever have to contemplate entering, an arena where fear and courage do
battle, and in which there is no loser. Entering this dimension defines
you forever and sets you free.
that when Henley made his decision to either die or save his right
foot, he stepped into a dimension of time and space that very few of us
ever have to contemplate entering, an arena where fear and courage do
battle, and in which there is no loser. Entering this dimension defines
you forever and sets you free.
The five novels in my Invictus Cycle are
connected by the simple but endlessly reverberating decision that the
central characters in each book must make: to live free or die.
connected by the simple but endlessly reverberating decision that the
central characters in each book must make: to live free or die.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Merle Haggard - I Still Can't Say Goodbye. wmv - YouTube
Merle Haggard - I Still Can't Say Goodbye. wmv - YouTube: I Still Can't Say Goodbye
Song about fathers
Song about fathers
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello:
Joke
I used to know a really good joke about Jonestown,
but the punchline was too long.
Joke
I used to know a really good joke about Jonestown,
but the punchline was too long.
The Top 40: Comment on Ye Not So Old Pencil
The Top 40: Comment on Ye Not So Old Pencil: Ye Not So Old Pencil
I, Pencil My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read↩
I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.∗
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with,
my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree
or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for
granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without
background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the
commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind
cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton
observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of
wonders.”
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a
claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no,
that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the
miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind
is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can
teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a
mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how
to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is
realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind
produced in the U.S.A. each year.
Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the
eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a
bit of metal, and an eraser.
Innumerable Antecedents↩
Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it
impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would
like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and
complexity of my background.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight
grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all
the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in
harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of
all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their
fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement
into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all
the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds
and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why,
untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the
loggers drink!
The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you
imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad
engines and who construct and install the communication systems
incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.
Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into
small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness.
These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put
rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid
white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went
into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the
light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill
requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are
the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas &
Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!
Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.
Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all
capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is
given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine
lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat
atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically
carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.
My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is
mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many
tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped
and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put
them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse
keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium
hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added
such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric
acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally
appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size,
dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To
increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a
hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax,
and hydrogenated natural fats.
My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the
ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans
and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even
the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve
the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!
Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon
black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is
carbon black?
My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who
mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet
brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are
black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete
story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would
take pages to explain.
Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as
“the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An
ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a
rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East
Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is
only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and
accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which
gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.
No One Knows↩
Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?
Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no
one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may
say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far
off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an
extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person
in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company,
who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From
the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of
graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how.
Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than
can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin
being a by-product of petroleum.
Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor
the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes
the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that
does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company
performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less,
perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some
among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how
to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something
like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his
tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may
not be among these items.
No Master Mind↩
There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind,
of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which
bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we
find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier
referred.
It has been said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree
with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make
one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in
superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular
configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among
men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in
molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is
utterly unthinkable!
I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper,
graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in
Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the
configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows
configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity
and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only
God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no
more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he
can put molecules together to create a tree.
The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware of the
miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind
is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that these know-hows will
naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and
productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is,
in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then
one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith
in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.
Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for
instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe
that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely.
And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't
know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also
recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are
correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's
mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to
make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the
unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and
miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual
cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be
delivered only by governmental “master-minding.”
Testimony Galore↩
If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what
men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little
faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's
all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when
compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating
machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands
of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left
free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than
one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's
home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to
Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's
range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without
subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to
our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the
government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!
The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies
uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson.
Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can.
Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men
and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be
confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of
my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical
as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.
Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) founded FEE in 1946 and served as its
president until his death. “I, Pencil,” his most famous essay, was first
published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. Although a few of
the manufacturing details and place names have changed over the past
forty years, the principles are unchanged.
Afterword, by Donald J. Boudreaux↩
There are two kinds of thinking: simplistic and subtle. Simplistic
thinkers cannot understand how complex and useful social orders arise
from any source other than conscious planning by a purposeful mind.
Subtle thinkers, in contrast, understand that individual actions often
occur within settings that encourage individuals to coordinate their
actions with one another independent of any overarching plan. F. A.
Hayek called such unplanned but harmonious coordination “spontaneous
order.”
The mark of the subtle mind is not only its ability to grasp the idea of
spontaneous orders but also to understand that conscious attempts to
improve or to mimic these orders are doomed to fail. “Why so?” asks the
simplistic thinker. “How can happenstance generate complex order
superior to what a conscious mind can conceive and implement?” In
responding to this question, a subtle thinker points out that
spontaneous orders do not arise from happenstance: the continual
adjustments by each individual within spontaneous orders follow a very
strict logic—the logic of mutual accommodation. Because no central
planner can possibly know all of the details of each individual's unique
situation, no central planner can know how best to arrange each and
every action of each and every individual with that of the multitudes of
other individuals.
In the eighteenth century, a handful of scholars—most notably David
Hume and Adam Smith—developed a subtle understanding of how private
property rights encourage self-regarding producers and consumers to act
in mutually beneficial ways. Spontaneous ordering forces were thus
discovered, and with this discovery modern economics began to take
shape.
Over the next two centuries economics achieved enormous success in
furthering our understanding not only of industry and commerce, but of
society itself. Modern economics—that is to say, economics that explores
the emergence of spontaneous orders—is a sure-fire inoculant against
the simplistic notion that conscious direction by the state can improve
upon the pattern of mutual adjustments that people make within a system
of secure private property rights.
But learning modern economics requires some effort—in the same way
that breaking free of any simplistic mindset requires effort. It isn't
surprising, then, that those economists who've contributed most to a
widespread understanding of the subject have been clear and vivid
writers, skillful in using analogies and everyday observations to
lubricate the mind's transition away from superficial thinking and
toward a grasp of subtle insights. The best economic writers cause
oncesimplistic thinkers to say “Aha! Now I get it!” Skillfully tutored, a
simplistic mind becomes a subtle mind.
For its sheer power to display in just a few pages the astounding fact
that free markets successfully coordinate the actions of literally
millions of people from around the world into a productive whole,
nothing else written in economics compares to Leonard Read's celebrated
essay, “I, Pencil.” This essay's power derives from Read's drawing from
such a prosaic item an undeniable, profound, and spectacular conclusion:
it takes the knowledge of countless people to produce a single pencil.
No newcomer to economics who reads “I, Pencil” can fail to have a
simplistic belief in the superiority of central planning or regulation
deeply shaken. If I could choose one essay or book that everyone in the
world would read, I would unhesitatingly choose “I, Pencil.” Among these
readers, simplistic notions about the economy would be permanently
transformed into a new and vastly more subtle—and correct—understanding.
⚓
✪
∗
My official name is “Mongol 482.” My many ingredients are assembled, fabricated, and finished by Eberhard Faber Pencil Company.
I, Pencil My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read↩
I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.∗
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with,
my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree
or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for
granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without
background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the
commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind
cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton
observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of
wonders.”
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a
claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no,
that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the
miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind
is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can
teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a
mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how
to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is
realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind
produced in the U.S.A. each year.
Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the
eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a
bit of metal, and an eraser.
Innumerable Antecedents↩
Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it
impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would
like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and
complexity of my background.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight
grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all
the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in
harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of
all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their
fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement
into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all
the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds
and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why,
untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the
loggers drink!
The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you
imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad
engines and who construct and install the communication systems
incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.
Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into
small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness.
These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put
rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid
white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went
into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the
light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill
requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are
the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas &
Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!
Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.
Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all
capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is
given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine
lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat
atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically
carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.
My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is
mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many
tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped
and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put
them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse
keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium
hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added
such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric
acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally
appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size,
dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To
increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a
hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax,
and hydrogenated natural fats.
My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the
ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans
and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even
the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve
the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!
Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon
black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is
carbon black?
My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who
mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet
brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are
black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete
story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would
take pages to explain.
Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as
“the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An
ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a
rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East
Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is
only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and
accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which
gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.
No One Knows↩
Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?
Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no
one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may
say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far
off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an
extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person
in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company,
who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From
the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of
graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how.
Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than
can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin
being a by-product of petroleum.
Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor
the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes
the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that
does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company
performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less,
perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some
among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how
to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something
like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his
tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may
not be among these items.
No Master Mind↩
There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind,
of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which
bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we
find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier
referred.
It has been said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree
with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make
one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in
superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular
configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among
men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in
molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is
utterly unthinkable!
I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper,
graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in
Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the
configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows
configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity
and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only
God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no
more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he
can put molecules together to create a tree.
The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware of the
miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind
is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that these know-hows will
naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and
productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is,
in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then
one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith
in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.
Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for
instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe
that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely.
And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't
know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also
recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are
correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's
mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to
make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the
unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and
miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual
cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be
delivered only by governmental “master-minding.”
Testimony Galore↩
If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what
men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little
faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's
all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when
compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating
machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands
of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left
free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than
one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's
home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to
Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's
range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without
subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to
our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the
government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!
The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies
uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson.
Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can.
Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men
and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be
confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of
my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical
as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.
Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) founded FEE in 1946 and served as its
president until his death. “I, Pencil,” his most famous essay, was first
published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. Although a few of
the manufacturing details and place names have changed over the past
forty years, the principles are unchanged.
Afterword, by Donald J. Boudreaux↩
There are two kinds of thinking: simplistic and subtle. Simplistic
thinkers cannot understand how complex and useful social orders arise
from any source other than conscious planning by a purposeful mind.
Subtle thinkers, in contrast, understand that individual actions often
occur within settings that encourage individuals to coordinate their
actions with one another independent of any overarching plan. F. A.
Hayek called such unplanned but harmonious coordination “spontaneous
order.”
The mark of the subtle mind is not only its ability to grasp the idea of
spontaneous orders but also to understand that conscious attempts to
improve or to mimic these orders are doomed to fail. “Why so?” asks the
simplistic thinker. “How can happenstance generate complex order
superior to what a conscious mind can conceive and implement?” In
responding to this question, a subtle thinker points out that
spontaneous orders do not arise from happenstance: the continual
adjustments by each individual within spontaneous orders follow a very
strict logic—the logic of mutual accommodation. Because no central
planner can possibly know all of the details of each individual's unique
situation, no central planner can know how best to arrange each and
every action of each and every individual with that of the multitudes of
other individuals.
In the eighteenth century, a handful of scholars—most notably David
Hume and Adam Smith—developed a subtle understanding of how private
property rights encourage self-regarding producers and consumers to act
in mutually beneficial ways. Spontaneous ordering forces were thus
discovered, and with this discovery modern economics began to take
shape.
Over the next two centuries economics achieved enormous success in
furthering our understanding not only of industry and commerce, but of
society itself. Modern economics—that is to say, economics that explores
the emergence of spontaneous orders—is a sure-fire inoculant against
the simplistic notion that conscious direction by the state can improve
upon the pattern of mutual adjustments that people make within a system
of secure private property rights.
But learning modern economics requires some effort—in the same way
that breaking free of any simplistic mindset requires effort. It isn't
surprising, then, that those economists who've contributed most to a
widespread understanding of the subject have been clear and vivid
writers, skillful in using analogies and everyday observations to
lubricate the mind's transition away from superficial thinking and
toward a grasp of subtle insights. The best economic writers cause
oncesimplistic thinkers to say “Aha! Now I get it!” Skillfully tutored, a
simplistic mind becomes a subtle mind.
For its sheer power to display in just a few pages the astounding fact
that free markets successfully coordinate the actions of literally
millions of people from around the world into a productive whole,
nothing else written in economics compares to Leonard Read's celebrated
essay, “I, Pencil.” This essay's power derives from Read's drawing from
such a prosaic item an undeniable, profound, and spectacular conclusion:
it takes the knowledge of countless people to produce a single pencil.
No newcomer to economics who reads “I, Pencil” can fail to have a
simplistic belief in the superiority of central planning or regulation
deeply shaken. If I could choose one essay or book that everyone in the
world would read, I would unhesitatingly choose “I, Pencil.” Among these
readers, simplistic notions about the economy would be permanently
transformed into a new and vastly more subtle—and correct—understanding.
⚓
✪
∗
My official name is “Mongol 482.” My many ingredients are assembled, fabricated, and finished by Eberhard Faber Pencil Company.
Posted by ghostsniper at April 13, 2016 1:09 PM
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Saturday, April 09, 2016
Atrocious State of Cancer Treatment in the U.S.
Atrocious State of Cancer Treatment in the U.S.: So I took up Kegel exercises, 15 months ago. Within 3 days there was an increase in urine flow rate, so that had to be vascular rather then muscular. I wish I had taken baseline measurements at that time. Recently I have been undertaking a trial, involving 20 Kegel "grips" each morning, for 20 seconds each, and measuring my urine flow with a jug and stopwatch.
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