Saturday, July 11, 2009

[saturday quiz] show your brilliance


1. Which is the only vowel on a standard keyboard that is not on the top line of letters?

2. How many people take part in the dance of a quadrille?

3. After how many years marriage do you celebrate your Emerald wedding anniversary?

4. What is a leprechaun's profession?

5. In Scrabble which letters have a value of 2?


Answers

A, eight, 55, cobbler [or tailor], D and G

[johnny english] nearly live at westminster abbey



[greed] and piggy-eyed shortsightedness


A number of correspondents for Iceland Review have been short-term American students who somehow got a column in the publication. Not a bad thing but when I visit that site, I prefer to get the Icelandic perspective.

There is one, Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir, who is the genuine article and so it was with great interest that I read her piece entitled Shameful Shortsightedness, concerning the greedy little people who saw big Euro signs in their eyes, come the summer tourist season.

In her own words:

Before the crisis hit, one euro could buy you approximately 90 krónas. Now, one euro trades for 180 krónas, which should mean that those traveling with euros are getting a “half-price discount” off everything.

However, following the crisis, prices have risen, mainly because with the depreciation of the króna it is becoming more expensive for Icelanders to import goods and Iceland relies heavily on imported goods.

Still, Iceland should prove considerably less expensive to foreign tourists than it was before the króna began spiraling downwards and, in an effort to turn this sad development into something positive, Iceland is now being advertised as a “budget destination.”

[However], many travel agencies, car rentals and hotels are now pricing their services in euros and at the same rate as before the crisis or even higher. [My Austrian friends] had rented a car for the outrageous price of EUR 3,000 (USD 4,000) for three weeks.

I couldn’t believe it. Is this how we treat the people who are kind enough to pay us a visit during these difficult times, helping our economy recover… by robbing them blind, making sure they’ll never come again and having them tell everyone that Iceland has become more expensive than ever?

I felt like sinking to the bottom of the pool with shame. I felt like I had betrayed all the people I had told come visit Iceland now because it had finally become affordable.

Shortsightedness. If the Icelandic mentality can be summoned up with one word, that would be it.

Shortsightedness is what made people think they could buy the world on loans. Shortsightedness is what spurs people involved in tourism to jerk up the prices as high as possible to make the most of this summer—a move that is sure to restrain the industry’s growth in the long run.

Shortsightedness is what caused the crisis and shortsightedness is certainly not going to lead us out of it but rather deepen the recession and ruin our reputation for good. And I really thought this time around people would learn from their mistakes…

More than shortsightedness, Eyglo, it is greed and this is not just an Icelandic phenomenon.

Examples abound, including London taxi drivers who know they could go down that lane to get to the hotel but instead let themselves get into traffic jams and go the long way, thinking you won’t know; local taxi drivers here who know there are two different hotels named the Victoria and drive you in the direction of the one in a nearby town, thinking you won’t know; and then we can look at Russia.

In Moscow, going from our hotel to a shopping centre, less than a kilometre down a straight road which we could have taken the tram along but understanding that a taxi should not be too expensive, he refused to understand my Russian when I asked up front how much and even when my Russian girlfriend spoke to him in perfect Russian, still refused to understand but had already done the short hop, then asked, in English, for $20 and kicked up a fuss when we gave him what the journey was worth.

Or the car driver in the centre of town whom I hailed to drive me home one evening who, the instant he heard my accent asked an amount three times the going rate and when I admonished him in Russian and told him I’d done this journey every day for eight years, didn’t want to lose even that amount but at the other end, pretended to misunderstand the name of the road for a much nearer to town bus stop by the same name and so on.

Or at Peterhof in St Petersburg, where Russians were allowed in for 10 roubles but foreigners paid 128 roubles and when I paid the ten roubles, she pointed to the sign and said, in pidgin English; ‘128 roubles’, to which I replied in Russian: ‘Nyet – ten roubles. What, am I not speaking Russian?’ to which my girlfriend tore strips off her in Russian too and she gave in and let me have the ticket [though the 128 roubles was neither here nor there actually].

Piggy-eyed greed and ripping off. Swindles, using the currency which will realize the most profit for them. That’s what it’s all about and as Eyglo wrote – short termism. It’s a very nordic and slavic mentality – the notion that there might not be any summer next year and no tourists so we’d best rip them off now. It’s the same mentality as the person who buys something in a Russian shop, not wanting it, for fear it’s not going to be there next week.

It’s the mentality, the slow-wittedness which can’t see beyond the immediate profit to the idea that you might like to contribute to making the destination pleasant for visitors so that they might want to return next year. The mentality can’t see as far as next week.

Eyglo mentioned one place which hadn’t done that - Hótel Djúpavík in Strandir - so people, if you're planning a sojourn in Iceland, a very beautiful country which I've visited and have been following for years, then you could do worse than add that hotel to your itinerary.
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[you bastards] manouevering us to serfdom



Yeah, right.

Obama's 'considering' bailing out small businesses. Considering. And who suddenly put this brilliant idea into his head? And why now, after the goose is well and truly cooked in America? Why not when it had a chance of making some difference?

The effort would represent a striking shift from the rescue program's original mandate, since it would direct billions of bailout dollars toward a plan that aims more at saving jobs than at righting the financial system. Some economists estimate that small businesses, defined as firms with fewer than 500 workers, employ most of the country's workforce.

Look, you moron [or very clever cynic or stool pigeon for the very clever cynics – Them], you don't run down a nation, then bail out the architects of its continued misery and then think you might inject some funds into compensating small businesses for their losses.

Or as Bob G quotes, over at his place:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." [Albert Einstein]

The way you do it is to change, in the first place, long ago, the tax codes to advantage small businesses and entrepeneurs, introduce incentives to start up and create a climate which is positive to business, in particular small and medium business, the engine room of the nation and the giver of work to millions.

Anyone with half a brain knows you create conditions conducive to business flourishing and to the flow of unencumbered money.

Calvin Coolidge once said that the business of government is business. Why can't you and Brown get that into your heads? Why couldn't the Neocons on their multi-billion dollar forays into other people's wars get that?

Charity begins at home.

Meanwhile, in the UK, John McDonnell MP has written [hat tip Cherie]:

... In the last major economic depression in the 1930s, a Labour government fell because it decided that the cure for the latest crisis of capitalism was to cut public spending - in particular, to cut benefits to the unemployed.

A Labour prime minister and his main ministerial allies accepted wholeheartedly the economic orthodoxy of the time that public expenditure had to be reined in to stabilise the markets.

Working people, living at best on subsistence incomes but more often on the edge of destitution, were told that the country couldn't afford to pay them decent wages, house them, educate their children or treat their sick.

Labour ministers who stayed in office in the national government were applauded by their Conservative colleagues and the press for their statesmanship in telling their working-class supporters that they had to accept wage cuts and longer hours for the sake of the economy. These ministers were lauded for their patriotism in putting the interests of the country before the interests of their class.

The consequence of this acquiescence by a Labour government was a level of unemployment that impoverished millions of people in Britain and many millions more across the globe.

Over the last three months the same consensus has emerged across the three main political parties and within the mainstream media. In the interests of the country, wages must be cut, working hours increased, public expenditure must be massively reduced and there has even been a call to increase the retirement age to 70.

In effect the difference between the parties is not the direction of political travel but the depth and speed of cutting wages and public spending ...

For a start, this is not a crisis of capitalism, not in the least.

It is a crisis of an inept government, beholden to powers who wish for this situation to exist. Many pundits have shown enough evidence of the Morgans et al over there with their tactic of creating a melting pot and making a killing, a tactic so well known that when Goldman Sachs was tasked with it, they quickly trotted out their standard defence without actually questioning why the question would have been asked in the first place.

The arrogant always make small slips in the end.

Similarly, over here, can anyone seriously doubt that the EU is waiting to pounce, after October 10th, with its 'rescue packages'? The whole notion of letting a thing get so bad that people are seriously suffering up and down the nation and then cynically exploiting that, 'Them', to achieve your political ends is a one way ticket to hell once your miserable lives have been snuffed out.

You knew Brown was a total non-comp, a wood-duck who'd sell off the nation's gold and rob its pension funds and that pretty boy Blair was a 'how high?' man whenever you said, 'Jump!'

Effing cuts are what you've manoeuvred us towards, haven't you? The next step in the drama and you've let the feeders out to the press so they can take up the call. That's what this has all been about – manoeuvering as many of us as possible on to the dole, snuffing out any incentive in this country, nay, making it well-nigh impossible to create any new business and you've backed that up with stealth taxes like Land value and VAT etc.

You bastards, with your Gordon Brown grins.

Oh yes, we can see where this one's going. Who gets cut? NHS services to those who can least afford it. People excised from the dole which you put them onto in the first place with your plethora of constricted tick boxes and worthless NVQs and cards you must have to even apply for a job.

Are you going to remove the single mothers who see the dole as the way forward in this new Britain? Are you hell. Are you going to excise the chavs? Ha ha. You're going to excise the bourgeoisie who've been made redundant, aren’t you? Those who've committed the grievous sin of actually saving for their future, those who've played by the rules in the mistaken belief that their government would also do so, those who have equity in their homes and are penalized for it, those who'd hoped to have had a pension fund when they retired.

These are the ones you are targetting, under the guise of compassion. And why? Because you want to snuff out the middle class, the engine room of the capitalist society, meaning the free society. All that will remain is you at the top, doling out to the serfs down below who, by the next generation, will have known no other lifestyle but that of a welfare dependent.

You bastards. You're not going to get away with it.
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Friday, July 10, 2009

[jaguar xf] ugly, ugly ugly


Ugly, amateurish grille to which all lines lead, ugly lines, boxy, too much metal, little glass, muscle car look which was never Jaguar's thing - it's awful. Your opinion?

Now, this is a Jag:


And via William Gruff, the XK 120:




And via Bob G, another take on it:


[ikebana] the art of floral arrangement

Ikenobo Moribana [freer] arrangement

People have long appreciated beautiful flowers and arranged them in vases. However, in Japan, the way of arranging flowers and plants has been carefully systematised and this is called ‘Kado’.

In the Kamakura period (1192-1333), the Samurai (elite warrior class) wrested the power of government from the aristocrats and brought great lifestyle and fashion changes into the whole of Japanese society.

At this time it became fashionable to create a Tokonoma, a small sacred alcove, in a zashiki (Japanese room). The Tokonoma would contain a flower arrangement, incense and a candle. It is because the space is an alcove, that traditional styles of Ikebana are designed to be viewed only from the front.


Ikebana, the art of floral arrangement, is simple in the basic materials and tools it requires. All you need is a shallow wide-mouthed container and some metal frogs. A metal frog is a holder with spiked needles into which you stick stems and twigs. In a shallow vase, add a little water and put in the metal frog and the container is ready to take in any flower arrangement.

The upright is the most basic structure and this arrangement looks good in shallow pots. The slanting, which is an ideal composition for beginners looks beautiful in tall containers like bamboo or pitchers. Again, in ikebana, the lines described by the elements are considered more attractive than the form and colour.

A branch or a twig in a gentle flowing line is preferred or considered more aesthetic than a group of flowers in full blossom. The arrangement is necessarily asymmetrical and the empty spaces that the arrangements circumscribe are equally important as those the materials encompass.

Basically, there are three triangular spatial groups - the higher level is upright central, the intermediate level which is slanting, and the lower level which is inverted, around which the materials are arranged. Thus the above-mentioned three levels signify heaven, earth and mankind!

Ikenobo is a school of Ikebana. It is the oldest school of Ikebana in Japan, having been founded in the 15th century by the Buddhist monk Ikenobo Senno. The school, currently headed by its 45th generation headmaster, Ikenobo Sen'ei, is based in the Rokkakudo Temple in Kyoto.

[weekend poll] sexiest cats


2. Lion

3. Tiger

4. Cat Woman

5. Jaguar

6. Puma

7. Black Panther

8. Snow Leopard

9. Domestic Cat

10. Sabre-Toothed Tiger

As usual, you may vote for three at any one time.

[carla bruni-sarkozy] déchaîne les passions italiennes


You might not like the kooky, left-wing, tree-hugging, Africa loving, ex-soft porn model Carla Bruni, naughty queen of the faux pas who likes to see herself as an actress and singer but you have to hand it to her - she has enraged the senior vampire of the black nobility, convicted criminal, perjurer and all round sleazebag, Berlusconi and that has to be a good thing.

It's hit the press again apparently and Ms Bruni is not backward in coming forward on her views on Berlusconi's comments on Obama and other matters. The Berlusconi press has very little to reproach her on:
Jeudi, la presse italienne s'est longuement attardée sur «la Carla». Il Giornale, le journal conservateur et outrancier de Paulo Berlusconi, le frère de Silvio, a été le plus agressif. Un article intitulé «Celle qui ne se mélange pas avec les autres» dénonce la «chanteuse qui incarne à la perfection le pire du microcosme idéologico-mondain». Il stigmatise le mélange du «tiers-mondisme et de la musique rock, de lutte contre la pauvreté compensée par le personal trainer, de guerre contre la faim quand on s'offre de la nourriture végétarienne».

A woman who can say she was happy to renounce her Italian citizenship and become French whilst infuriating the French by taking Nic away on long, naughty weekends and indulging in same on duty, can't be all bad, despite her PC ideas and strange politics.

On balance, let's vote for her.

Don't know about you but your humble correspondent thinks this is the best thing about our Nic:

[lost generation] the coming boomer problem


Gordon Brown's "theft" of the pensions angered most of us but it also hid another disturbing truth:

Unless the bulk of the population starts to put money aside for retirement, the UK is heading, as the demography really kicks in a decade from now, for fiscal meltdown, to say nothing of the prospect of millions of our pensioners living in poverty.

We can try to put that down to the current economic climate and the impossibility of saving but the truth is that there were two other factors in there:

1. The huge gap between income and cost of things, e.g. housing, cars, this gap filled by kindly banks offering credit at exorbitant rates, let alone bank charges and what's more, offering it to sub-primes;

2. Rampant consumerism, fed by the media, advertising and the Joneses down the street. Where once a couple saved for a year for a holiday, now even petrol was paid for on the card.

No one said it could last but the Fed and other central banks knew full well it couldn't, as well as the government. The FOMC October 2006 report illustrated that nicely with their projections of lowered interest rates and other goodies.

One issue which has been largely forgotten in the mess but which was popular just after the turn of the millennium was the generation war between the Boomers and Generation X. In hindsight, much of what the media wrote at the time was wide of the mark but some was on the money. Here are some blasts from the past, largely in an Australian context but having relevance in The U.S., Britain and Canada as well:

Only 20 per cent of Boomers will have enough money when they retire and they’ll need to be supported by the community. Australian Treasurer Peter Costello said on December 19th, 2003, "We must start confronting what we call the ageing of our population. This is one of the greatest challenges facing our society today."

America recognized the problem too. Stephen McConnel wrote, in Open Spaces:

The essential message here is that the demographic bulge caused by the aging of the baby boomers will create much more severe conditions than our politicians are willing to admit and deal with. The authors believe that we are not being told the full extent of the liabilities which face the country in the form of future Social Security and Medicare obligations.

Ditto Britain. And with women's newfound independence, they therefore also come under the spotlight.

Bernard Salt, a professional forecaster and partner at accounting and business advisory firm KPMG, advised, in 2003, on the Australian situation:

At the moment, 2.4 million Pre-Boomers (born 1931-1946) are supported on the pension by the taxes of 4.1 million Baby Boomers. But when the boomers leave the workforce, the pensioner numbers will jump by 60 per cent, while the number of taxpayers will stay more or less the same. There will be a massive shortfall of available money. The war will really hot up between 2010 and 2015.

There would also be, theoretically, if this was to be thought through, a new labour shortage but at the moment, of course, the opposite is the case, with more and more going on to the dole.

Peter Weekes, in the Melbourne Age, January 31, 2006, said:

And while boomers expected and received an inheritance from their parents, the survey found that only 23 per cent planned to carry on the family tradition.

Boomers will be the first SKI (Spend the Kids' Inheritance) generation but they were also the first generation to support their kids beyond 28, pay off their HECS and allowed them to live at home at mum-and-dad's expense while saving for a house. Most retired baby boomers were looking forward to travelling the world on their savings "guilt free".

Ross Gittins, at the Age, on March 31st, 2004, wrote:

Borrowing is about impatience. If you want to buy something but can't wait to save for it, borrowing allows you to have it now and save later as you repay the loan. But the price of impatience is the interest you pay.

AMP recently sponsored a study by the University of Canberra that found that, on average, people aged 50 to 69 who are still in the workforce (which means they'd mainly be the early boomers) have savings through superannuation of just $170,000, plus other savings of about as much.

Historically, one of the main ways Australians have saved is by paying off their mortgages. So much so that, during the '80s and early '90s, Australian households' repayments of principal exceeded their investment in new homes and renovations by 4 per cent of their disposable income each year. But since 2000 it has swung around, with our investment in new housing now exceeding our repayments of principal by 4.5 per cent of disposable income a year.

Mortgage interest rates halved over the course of the '90s. We might have expected the baby boomers, of all people, to seize this wonderful opportunity to pay off their mortgages early and start salting money away.

Not a bit of it. Like home owners of other ages, most of them used their increased borrowing power to attempt to buy a bigger and better home. Because so many people tried to "trade up" at the same time, however, their main achievement was to bid up the price of homes to double what it was (thus pricing their children out of the housing market).

In confirmation of the baby boomers' part in this, the Canberra Uni study found that workers approaching retirement age now do so with bigger mortgages. In 1986, such people averaged 94 per cent equity in their home. By 2001, the equivalent group was down to 85 per cent. Separate evidence shows the baby boomers have been prominent among the hordes of people making negatively geared property investments.

Bernard Salt, in The Big Shift, also mentioned:

Mark Davis' 1997 book 'Gangland' specifically targets boomers in the media for locking out bright young Xer talent. The festering mood of Xers is summed up nicely on the book's cover by a quote about boomers by Xer comedian Tony Martin: "Let go of the wheel you old farts and let someone else have a drive."

An AAP article from December 15, 2003, stated:

University of Queensland researcher Dr Malcolm Johnson has found the cognitive age of many baby-boomers was 10 years below their actual age.

"It is quite common for a 50-year-old to think, act and feel like a 40-year-old," Dr Johnson said. "This denial of ageing may subconsciously postpone the recognition of a need to plan for retirement, resulting in insufficient income at a time when they really want to explore new lifestyle options. "The bottom line is that 70 per cent of baby-boomers believe they will need an income exceeding $30,000 per year in retirement, but only 20 per cent expected to receive this amount."

It's not just an Australian problem, it seems. The article goes on:

His research confirms a Canadian study in which people ranked talking about money matters with family as difficult as talking about death, with more than one-third avoiding all family money discussions.

The Economic Voice urges people to examine their pension situation but how many will?

And what of Gen X, still young enough to do something about it?

A report from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling and AMP shows that 25 to 39-year-olds control just 19 per cent of Australia's cash, financial, and property assets, down from 27 per cent for the same age group in 1986.

The centre's director, Ann Harding, said the drop was one of the most worrying problems facing generation X, arguing that soaring house prices and Higher Education Contribution Scheme debts had undermined their ability to build up wealth.

In June this year [2004] the average member of generation X had assets worth an average $101,000, compared with $231,000 for those aged between 40 to 54 and $281,000 for those in the 55 to 64 age group.

As we've seen though, the oldies are blowing much of that money and are dangerously short of retirement funds, along with the demographic problem of fewer in the workforce being able to support their retirement, on top of the millions going on to the dole, the inevitable higher taxation on the workforce and its jettisoning of more workers into the ranks of the unemployed.

The implication for the Boomers is inescapable and has been mooted since the early noughties - they're going to have to keep working and working, maintaining the pressure on the following generations, causing a backlash which will see fewer and fewer employed and with little savings, the country, all western countries, have a very big problem on their hands.

The government knows this and will have to come up with new schemes for the new Lost Generation whose increased medical needs alone are going to burden the taxpayer. Solution? Use the current economic depression to make drastic cuts to benefits, the NHS etc. and effectively cut the boomers adrift, trusting that aged people can't kick up too much of a stink.

As the many thousands in this position can't very well lie around on the streets, dying of starvation, a new hostel culture will be born, with Boomers competing with the ageing chavs and ASBOs for places. It will be bitter until the Boomers eventually die off by around 2018.

And what of the current generation? Marty Beckerman wrote a book called Generation SLUT [sexually liberated urban teens] in 2004 and mentions, about his own generation today that:

We’re a generation devoid of purpose, heroes, morals, standards, or ideals, and this has led to shallow kids having shallow, loveless sex in a haze of alcohol and social pressures and hating themselves for it to the point of neurosis, psychosis, and suicide.

If there are elements of truth to the ASBOs and Chavs, is it going to get better or worse for them? How are their job prospects in a country not producing anything any more and with a shrinking base of working age people?

Major solutions need to be found soon. I wonder if the EU has taken this into consideration in their takeover of Britain, post-Irish Lisbon 2?
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Thursday, July 09, 2009

[thinking thursday] captions please

Too many posts today but just couldn't resist this one:

Just love the looks on the faces [click pic to enlarge].
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[five things] which make you happy


This was much tougher to compile than I expected. The idea is to limit yourself to five points and list those things which make you the happiest at any given time.

My list:

1. When a plan comes together, meeting a target, finding a blank space in the diary and reading a good book;

2. Sailing, skiing or walking in the forest, feeling on top of the world, making someone happy;

3. Lovely meal and wine with convivial company, especially with a lady who doesn’t mind my BS, having a good laugh;

4. Snow, rain or any unusual conditions, especially wild storms;

5. Seeing bad things overcome such as destructive people or debilitating illness, seeing muscle beginning to replace fat, getting stronger through diet and exercise, whatever.

Could you list yours under five headings?
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[bolognese sauce] everyone has an opinion on this


Everybody has his or her recipe for Bolognese sauce and here is mine:

# 500g/17.5oz minced beef, not too lean

# 50g/2 ounces minced pancetta if you can get it, otherwise increase the beef

# 1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

# 1 medium chopped onion

# 1 medium, finely chopped carrot

# 1 finely chopped stick of celery

# 1/2 cup dry red wine

# a mix of tinned Roma tomatoes and the real thing, chopped

# 2 teaspoons of tomato purée

# 8 washed and torn basil leaves from your pot on the balcony

# A pinch of sea salt but no more – don't pour the stuff in - if in doubt, always undersalt

Unusually, I'm not going to suggest to you how to prepare it and in what order, as you have your own views on this. What I can say is that:

# I like to use the old electric fryingpan of the solid variety, with valved pyrex lid because it slow cooks well.

# you need to allow about five hours after the initial sauteeing, so your proportions need to be spot on – this only comes from experience of your pan and of the heat levels.

# I love this the next day or from frozen.

Suggestions

# Gnocchi as your pasta - I adore it
# Tossed salad, limited by your creativity
# As genuine parmigiano as possible, grated or parmesan
# A variant is to throw in some porcini, if in season.
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[murder in the science room] christie's new novel


Beeb, a short while ago:

A science teacher has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a boy of 14 and two other pupils were hurt at a Nottinghamshire school.

Mind boggles. The rest of the article doesn't confirm the arrest and yet ... let's imagine the man was arrested. Murder? Not manslaughter?

Can't you just imagine the scenarios, lol. Did he plan to take out the whole class or just some particularly pesky spotty herbert? How? Via malfunctioning bunsen burners? Via HCN instead of H2SO4, by mistake?

[housekeeping] slow today

Will try to get round to you all by midnight. RL impinges at this moment.

[literature quiz] opening lines


Authors and titles, please, for ten points altogether:

1. It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice.

2. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.


3. Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had co cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.


4. Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.


5. Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end after he plundered ...

Answers

Joseph Heller, Catch-22; George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four; Mario Puzo, The Godfather; Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code; Homer, The Iliad

[decline and fall] death throes of a society

Mark Wadsworth, like other bloggers, has a down on certain things, in his case, on false charities and rewriting history. I too have a down on certain things and one of those is false, modern, western social constructs - beatups in other words. And the Ayer's Rock post also shows that I'm down on the rewriting of history to suit a modern construct.

That's what this post is all about and there's a lot of me personally in the second half.

Via HGF:

Five basic reasons why great civilizations wither and die" [Edward Gibbon, 1788]

"The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis for human society;

Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace;

The mad craze for pleasure — sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral;

The building of great armaments when the real enemy is within — the decay of individual responsibility;

The decay of religion — with faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide people."

Here is another:

"The decline or degeneration of social and cultural values in society has not happened in a vacuum. This decline has come about part and parcel with the rise of the Almighty Leviathan State. Through the State's meddling in society, the institution of the family has systematically eroded. It perverts the natural inclinations of men and women, their bond together, and familial relations in general."

and another:

Tolerance v. Acceptance

"The first deception characteristic of the sloganeers of the new Tolerance is that of consistently eliding the difference between tolerance and acceptance. Traditionally, tolerance meant making allowances for other's errors and mistakes; for the new sloganeers of Tolerance, it means accepting every choice as morally equivalent.

Tolerance once meant an attitude of patience and forbearance toward those who failed to live up to social ideals; the new Tolerance means denying the existence of such ideals.

For those who now fly its banner, the new Tolerance no longer means simply granting public space for others' moral and religious convictions; the new Tolerance now means actually endorsing all beliefs as equally (un)true. In place of the tolerance that required discretion and humility in affirming moral absolutes, the new tolerance demands that Americans jettison the very notion of moral absolutes in favor of an undiscriminating acceptance of every option on the moral smorgasbord.......

But then moral justifications do not have to deliver much consistency or rigor to satisfy the champions of the new Tolerance. For moral traditionalists — whose understanding of tolerance meant accommodation to inevitable human fallibility — truly tolerating a wide range of beliefs and behaviors did not mean embracing the logic used to defend those various beliefs or behaviors.

Hence, traditional moralists could be tolerant without being philosophically inconsistent. But because the new Tolerance actually means acceptance of everyone's beliefs and behaviors, it invariably requires its adherents to jettison the principle of non-contradiction, foundational to logical thought since Parmenides.

For when the new Tolerance requires those who profess it to accept every family form and all types of sexual behavior, it also requires acceptance of radically incommensurable moral premises."

Ubermouth, the dear, called me unChristian for not tolerating the gay mafia and its takeover of the social agenda. I referred her to the Byrds' song Turn, Turn, Turn, verse three, last two lines.

Marx encapsulated the idea by writing that he believed the family should be abolished and that all children should be raised by a central authority. He expresses his attitude toward God by saying: "We must war against all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed."

Destroying anything sound and good is a motif which reappears in different forms.

In 1932 - "Plan for Peace" was published by American Birth Control League founder Margaret Sanger. She called for coercive sterilization, mandatory segregation, and rehabilitative concentration camps for all "dysgenic stocks," including Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Catholics.

The American Birth Control League eventually became Planned Parenthood - the nation's foremost promoter and provider of abortion services. Many today are not aware of the origins of Planned Parenthood. Ostensibly reasonable and caring people, look at their origins to see what they're really about.

In 1969, a document entitled "Marriage and the Family" was published by the British Humanist Association stating that "some opponents of humanism have accused us of wishing to overthrow the traditional Christian family. They are right. That is exactly what we intend to do." The humanists control education through the curriculum they brought in once they'd stacked the key positions within the education fraternity.

In April 1972, in his keynote address to the Association for Childhood Education International, Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, said:

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being. It's up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future."

Dale O'Leary, in The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality, p. 24, defines the real danger of breaking up the family:

The "family" in all ages and in all corners of the globe can be defined as a man and a woman bonded together through a socially approved covenant of marriage to regulate sexuality, to bear, raise, and protect children, to provide mutual care and protection, to create a small home economy, and to maintain continuity between the generations, those going before and those coming after.

It is out of the reciprocal, naturally recreated relations of the family that the broader communities—such as tribes, villages, peoples, and nations—grow.

F.L. Morton & Rainer Knopff, in The Charter Revolution & The Court Party (p.75), state:

Contemporary (or second wave) feminism has aptly been described as "Marxism without economics", since feminists replace class with gender as the key social construct. Of course, what society constructs can be deconstructed. This is the feminist project: to abolish gender difference by transforming its institutional source — the patriarchal family.
Certain streams of the Gay Rights movement have taken this analysis one step further. The problem is not just sexism but heterosexism, and the solution is to dismantle not just the patriarchal family but the heterosexual family as such.

Alison Jagger, in Political Philosophies of Women's Liberation: Feminism and Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co. 1977) showed the mindset of the type:

"The end of the biological family will also eliminate the need for sexual repression. Male homosexuality, lesbianism, and extramarital sexual intercourse will no longer be viewed in the liberal way as alternative options... the very 'institution of sexual intercourse' where male and female each play a well-defined role will disappear. Humanity could finally revert to its natural polymorphously perverse sexuality".

In other words, from the words of a rabid feminist herself, the notion that normal relations must be replaced by, in her own words, "its natural polymorphously perverse sexuality".

Drs. Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse [Dr. Stanton L. Jones and Dr. Mark A Yarhouse, Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000) p. 57; referring to Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael and Stuart Michaels, the Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, (ChicagoL University of Chicago Press, 1994), table 9.14, p. 344.], analyzed data from a comprehenisve survey of sexual behavior in America. They wrote:

Experience of sexual abuse as a child, in other words, more than tripled the likelihood of later reporting homosexual orientation. Other studies have reported the same trend.

In 1995, Dr. Thomas Schmidt, author of Straight and Narrow, [Dr. Thomas Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1995) p. 148, see also 114-115; the reference to “4%” comes from a study by J. M. Siegal, et al., “the Prevalence of Childhood Sexual Assault,” American Journal of Epidemiology 126 (December, 1986): 1141-1153. The numbers on homosexual abuse come from L.S. Doll, et all, “Self-Reported Childhood and Adolescent Sexual Abuse Among Adult Homosexual and Bisexual Men,’ Child Abuse and Neglect 16, (1992), p. 855-64; and the numbers on age of first sexual experience from D.P. McWhirter and A. M. Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prengice-Hall, 1984), pp, 269 and 271.], cited two different studies about high rates of sexual abuse in homosexual and bisexual men. He writes:

Nevertheless, it is disturbing to find that although under 4 percent of boys are molested by men, a recent major study found that the rate of childhood molestation by men among homosexual or bisexual men was nearly ten times that (35 percent). It is also notable that 75 percent of homosexual men report their first homosexual experience prior to the age of sixteen, as compared to 22 percent of heterosexual men reporting their first heterosexual experience.

In an effort to lay the groundwork for identifying and indoctrinating so-called “gay” children – the researchers in Unequal Opportunity [David W. Purcell, Jocelyn D. Patterson and Pilgrim S. Spikes, Jr., “Childhood Sexual Abuse Experienced by Gay and Bisexual Men: Understanding the Disparities and Interventions to Help Eliminate Them,” in Richard J. Wolitski, Ron Stall, and Ronald O Valdiserri, eds., Unequal Opportunity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 72-96.] suggest:

If a boy’s sexual orientation could be identified when he is a youth, then extra efforts might be taken to protect boys who would grow up to be gay so as to help eliminate the CSA disparity. To the extent that child abusers use gender nonconformity in boys as a means of identifying victims who might be easier to target, parents can help protect all of their children by talking about sexuality, self-protection, and boundaries.”

In other words, parents accepting their responsibilities, as heads of the family, to guide their children, by their own example as parents who have created a loving home, into healthy, natural paths, something parents once accepted as one of their roles within the family.

Dr. Dean Byrd [Ph.D. in psychology, and postdoctorate degrees in Child and Family Psychology and Behavioural Medicine] referenced, in an interview, Diane Shrier and Robert L. Johnson, “Sexual Victimization of Boys: An Ongoing Study of an Adolescent Medicine Clinic Population,” Journal of the National Medical Association 80, (1988); he also references Richard C. Friedman and Jennifer I Downey, “Homosexuality,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. #331 (1994): 923-930, (27 April 2009) which stated:

Sexual abuse contributes to the derailing of biological priming which is the process definition for homosexuality. Boys who are targeted for sexual abuse are NOT targeted because they are gay. They are targeted because they are vulnerable. Gender non-conformity – which is the only characteristic that is predictive for later homosexuality – is often characteristic of these vulnerable boys.

Judith Reisman, president of the Institute for Media Education, said that Department of Justice statistics showed that 67 percent of all reported sex abuse victims were children and 64 percent of forcible sodomy victims were boys under 12.

The gay mafia tries assiduously to maintain that there is no link between homosexuality and paedophilia, in the sense that only a small percentage of homosexuals are paedophiles but they do not equally establish that only a small percentage of paedophiles have either histories of homosexuality or that many of those children later becomes homosexual as a result of his experiences, as touched on above.

The personal angle

I was molested, as a boy, four times and I'm going to surprise the gays reading this that only two of those four could have been described as homosexual or would have admitted that. Naturally, all of them who touched me were homosexual or bisexual by definition.

One of the non-homosexuals was a genius, a boffin who'd lost his wife and the other was a family man, to all intents and purposes "normal". It seems I was attractive to men as a child but why oh why couldn't a woman molest me instead and set me on a different path? I didn't get my Mesdames Robinson until much later in life and then couldn't escape for quite a while.

So, to put the above in context, I don't think one can say that paedophilia is a specifically homosexual thing by any means and the stats don't support that it is although 64% of sodomy victims were boys under 12. I was sodomized at 11 at a scout camp by another boy and I returned the compliment that night in the tent. I never had a problem with scout leaders per se although we were all on our guard against them, particularly the ones in shorts.

In a boarding school I was at, I "caught" a number of boys of 14/15 playing at being homosexual and didn't interfere [that's another question] but by age 16 they seemed to have grown out of it, presumably with the readier availability of girls and they didn't seem to go back from there. I'm sure a lot of experimentation goes on in the early years before the macho thing takes over but some, especially the sensitive or those of a certain makeup or else those who have certain experiences or through the culture of certain boys' schools, never come out of it and go on to be gay.

As for me, it drove me to heterosexuality until my Mesdames Robinsons, which sent me more asexual than anything and I still get very nervous if a man comes anywhere near, strong handshakes excepted, of course. My only male friends tend to be a bit macho. If a woman or girl comes on too hard I also run.

Gay marriage and families

So, we finally come to the call from the gay mafia, for homosexuals to be allowed to adopt.

Quite apart from the issue of the proper upbringing for a child, the link to abuse is not disproven by any means; only the chicken or egg, which leads to which, is still the question at issue.

Homosexuality is deviance from the norm and not at all a social construct of "orientation" which we're being forced to accept by the highest levels of government, not least being this Chris Bryant. Homosexuality is the failure to make the jump which a boy can usually be expected to make in his transition to manhood but once that's happened, then not a lot can be done and the issue then becomes to let them get on with their life as best they can, without prejudice or rancour.

The attempt to create a construct in which everything is rosy and two gays can have children is an attempt by two people biologically unable to have a family to have a family. It's Loretta. It's an attempt to fulfil the wishes of the adults in the matter, not to fulfil the needs of the child although they make out it is to give love to the child. The thing is sad for those adults but it is downright dangerous for the child. The child they procure has effectively lost any chance to grow up normally.

This is not a good time to be a child for so many reasons, of which this is one and it's not a good time to be a parent. It's not a good time to try to preserve the family under the onslaught of the assaults we are now experiencing on an unprecedented scale.

Someone has to protect the children. Clearly it's not going to be a government which speaks of "sexual orientation" and pretends all is rosy - nothing can be expected from them. A section of society has lost its sense of proportion too in tolerating things which simply should not be tolerated. Instead of stepping back and thinking it through, they rush to call anyone who dares raise the question homophobic or gaybasher - you saw that in one or two of the commenters.

As I said, something has to be done to protect the children.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

[ayer's rock] a question of repeated conquest


Tomorrow morning, a post is going up which will upset some people because it refuses to accept the social construct which has been foisted on our society.

Similarly, there is a social construct forced on Australia regarding Ayer's Rock. Again, I'm at pains to point out that I have nothing against the Pitjantjatjara and once picked up a hiker from this tribe on the way to Ayer's Rock, which is more than a local would do.

I don't even think it should have been named after the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. Going even further, the name Uluru even sounds better.

I'll never call it Uluru though because of the politicking, the revisionist history of Australia trotted out since the 1970s and the way many tribes have cashed in on the perceived strangeness of the whites in relation to them, even once having a national Sorry Day.

Well I'm sorry too. Sorry it came to that. The history of those tribes, from the Negritos to the Carpentarians and Murrayans [western terms for the tribes] is one of warfare, bloodshed and very little sorry from any of those tribes towards one another. All right, a white tribe came in, in 1788 and this tribe, apart from Arthur Phillip, showed precious little understanding of the natives they encountered.

More than this, when the arrogant Burke and unassertive Wills expedition came a cropper in 1861, it was the Yandruwandha natives who gave food to the survivors. There are many other examples where, outside of a confrontational situation, the natives acted in a humane manner.

The introduction of alcohol to the native population was another scandalous act by the whites and the indignities by many missionaries of my own religion makes one pale. Maralinga was a disgrace and the treatment of the natives as sub-human was savaged in the referendum granting them the right to vote. I don't know of one Australian who condones what happened to the natives.

Having said all that, this is the nature of societies through the ages. The incumbents were displaced, they were vanquished, just as those tribes did to other tribes throughout the ages. To make out, in the revised history, that they are gentle souls, not unlike children, does not accord with the facts and nor are they one indigenous people - they are of different tribes with different origins over the millennia.

The whites were just the last in a long line. To lump all the tribes together under the one heading Koori and all the whites under the heading Honky is as racist, if not more than anything the so called Honkies have done because it differentiates on the basis of skin colour. The racists are the people pushing this fiction.

Similarly, do the Assyrians, Babylonians or Iraqis lay claim to upper Mesopotamia? Or even the Persians? Who owns the upper Tigris? It's not clearcut, is it, unless you say the current occupants own it.

Ayer's Rock is a national treasure, internationally recognized and visited. To stop visitors climbing the rock due to the danger and high winds is one thing - it is dangerous, I can vouch for that. To stop them on the say so of a tribe which does not "own" the rock at all but feels a spiritual attachment to it is not on. Ayer's Rock belongs to all Australians, not just to them.

Would you stop me standing on Hadrian's Wall because I'm not a Roman?

In the evening, the rock reverts to that tribe and they have their spiritual connection, with no interference. But during the day, it belongs to the world, just as all the earth does. If you want to get nationalistic about it - it belongs to the ascendant people of the age - the white Australians - and it is the good fortune for the Pitjantjatjara that the average white Australian's mindset encompasses allowing the native claim to be heard.

How many conquering peoples have allowed that over the course of history? Revisionist histories can be dangerous things in themselves.

[quick quiz] are you mensa material


1. Of what wood is a cricket bat traditionally made?

2. Who was the femme fatale in the Wicker Man known as?

3. What is the name of the Scandinavian flute also know as the Sallow?

4. What is the name of the ceramic and porcelain pattern in the picture above?

5. Alexander Pope is said to have begged a twig from a parcel tied with twigs sent from Spain to Lady Suffolk, planted it and all of these in England are supposedly descended from this. What is the genus generally know as?


If no one has the answers by late evening, I'll tell you then.

[selfless] that's call me dave

Tory leader David Cameron has defended expenses claims for his second home and said he would do the job for "half the money, twice the money or no money".

Uh huh. Put it to the test, Dave.

Why do they say these things? Do they really think anyone believes them?

[wordless wednesday] captions please

[incest] the relationship of choice in finance

There's too much going on out there in the financial world but here are few snippets which give a glimpse of the climate we, the consumers, are subject to.

Let's start with the Goldman Sachs theft. A Goldman Sachs former employee somehow was able to walk away with trading software which would enable him to manipulate financial markets. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti said:

The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.

Now that's rather interesting, firstly because a former employee was able to walk away with this capacity [and who knows whom that has been sold on to] but also because of the position of Goldman Sachs in the markets. So, if whoever has this tool can manipulate the markets, what then was Goldman Sachs doing with it? Keeping it safe in the interests of the innocent consumer?

In a nasty exchange in July 2009, as Wiki reported, popular news website huffingtonpost listed an item from Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, where Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" — investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Matt Taibbi writes 'The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.'

The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good."

Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it."

Let's move on. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was criticized during the beginnings of the crisis for not exerting its powers to stem the tide of disaster. Now it's gone full circle:

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will announce today plans to introduce curbs on speculation of commodities including energy, the Washington Post reported today, citing a statement from the U.S. agency.

The CFTC will limit the size of a single firm’s investments on a particular commodity, the newspaper reported on its Web site. The agency would hold hearings on its proposals, according to the newspaper.

The new curbs would require approval from CFTC’s commissioners, the newspaper said.

So, the CFTC, a supposedly independent government watchdog, now not only has the power to regulate markets but is being ordered to do so. And who is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman? Gary Gensler, ex Goldman Sachs.

Moving on to the non-President himself:

The current chief economic adviser to President Obama, Lawrence Summers, was noted for receiving $5.2 million from hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 2008 and speaking fees (ranging from $45 thousand to $135 thousand per event) from banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch at a time when he was expected to become the most influential financial official in the U.S.

Interesting about Morgan there because they have an alleged history of producing crises in order to profit from them and having made their killing, then heartily support draconian regulation with new players favoured by them.

And how sound are the non-President's policies in job creation and its effect on the future economy? Just take the Cap and Trade plan:

Adversely affected employees in oil, coal and other fossil-fuel sector jobs would qualify for a weekly check worth 70 percent of their current salary for up to three years. In addition, they would get $1,500 for job-search assistance and $1,500 for moving expenses from the bill's "climate change worker adjustment assistance" program, which is expected to cost $4.2 billion from 2011 to 2019.

So, acting on advice, the non-Pres is investing trillions in new technologies which don't yet exist and at the same time, is using billions of the taxpayers' money to actually compensate, in a very real, money out of the coffers way, employees now consigned to the scrapheap for the non-Pres's "vision".

So, there seems to be a quite cozy, incestuous thing going on between government and the finance, especially where certain banks are automatically bailed out but others are left to go to the wall, where certain firms are favoured and others not helped at all, a la Morgan and Peabody op.cit.

The Bank for International Settlement's annual report, p124, states:




Translated, that means that certain zombie banks will be allowed to fail while the "good banks", e.g. Morgan and Goldman Sachs, are allowed to practise their sound financial policies [as in the 2008 crisis] and Paul Tucker of the Bank of England went further in saying that banks must now have inbuilt the mechanisms for orderly wind-ups so it doesn't impinge on the economy [read the financial operations of the successful banks].

Interesting that Paul Tucker is also a director of the Bank for International Settlements. A mini- profile of the man:

Paul Tucker (born 24 March 1958) is the Bank of England's executive director for Markets and has served on the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee from June 2002.

Although a central bank insider, Mr Tucker has been at odds with the governor at times. It is widely known that he, among others there, favoured relaxing the money-market rules in August and December last year – long before Mr King reluctantly agreed.

Another director of the BIS is a man called Ben Bernanke. A little profile:

Ben Shalom Bernanke is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve.

In a letter to Congress from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo dated April 23, 2009, Bernanke was mentioned along with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in allegations of fraud concerning the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. The letter alleged that the extent of the losses at Merrill Lynch were not disclosed to Bank of America by Bernanke and Paulson.

Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Goldman Sachs – the names keep popping up, don't they?

In 1966, Carroll Quigley [do your own research on his connection with Bill Clinton] wrote a book: Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, in which he made a statement about what the world financial giants are trying to achieve:

This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.

The simplest way for the layman to get an idea of the Bank for International Settlements is via Wiki:

It is not accountable to any national government. The BIS carries out its work through subcommittees, the secretariats it hosts, and through its annual General Meeting of all members. It also provides banking services, but only to central banks, or to international organizations like itself. Based in Basel, Switzerland, the BIS was established by the Hague agreements of 1930.

Urofsky, Melvin; Paul Finkelman (2002). A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States Volume II From 1877 to the Present, 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press. pp. 674, quoted President Franklin Roosevelt's comment to Edward M. House on November 21st,1933:

The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States - only on a far bigger and broader basis.

Who was Colonel House? In 1921, Colonel House reorganized the American branch of the Institute of International Affairs into the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Since that time, the only President to have not been directly affiliated with the CFR was John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy Special Adviser John Kenneth Galbraith said:

Those of us who had worked for the Kennedy election were tolerated in the government for that reason and had a say, but foreign policy was still with the Council on Foreign Relations people.

You can draw your own conclusions about all of this.

[longboat] closed and set to take the north sea

It needs some imagination to follow my ravings here. Some of you might have read this post on designs and there were some interesting and gratifying comments, including:

A stable outrigger would be great, no doubt. Stable against what, though? The North Atlantic in winter would defeat ANY outrigger, in my opinion.

It would defeat most "Western" designs too, but it was the effort to survive in such conditions that forced the evolution of (e.g.) the Bristol Channel pilot cutters: heavy, seaworthy hulls, of immense strength, designed to stay at sea in almost any conditions, and capable of it too.

I wouldn't like to hang around the Western Approaches in October, sailing a Pacific Island outrigger canoe. Nowhere to put the coal fire, to start with.

That's fair enough and I replied:

My design, which I should scan and put up here, uses the dugout for a start - two inch thick and monocoque. It has an equally solid top, creating a cocoon and only two entry points in the one long hull. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera ...

All right, today, I think I finally drew it all together. It sounds like a hotch potch and most of the work was drawing, rubbing out, redrawing, not trying to emulate any particular style but drawing from them. It has aspects of the Viking longboat - 51 feet long and 7'9" wide at the beam but 3'6" at the waterline, high prow and high stern to break coming and following seas. Freeboard is 3'6" at the lowest point but the four beams to the ama are at 4'6", chocked at the gunwhale.

It's a curved cabin roof using the same lines as the shell, no need for any deck area, quite heavily built with stringers and arched ribs. There's only just standing room inside at certain points, to keep it low and lean. As usual - shoal keel and underslung rudder, with two masts and a cross between the junk and the Scottish lug rig, stylistically more suited to the longboat.

Blending the outrigger into the design was difficult but the ama is a more slender version of the main hull, with added rocker, high prow and stern. The construction would be traditional clinker/lapstrake. It does look cool, though I says it who shouldn't and the motion through the water would be sublime. Gosh I'd love to build this and put to sea in it with a crew of three.

In the meantime, I'd love to scan my sketch and show you but I need to buy a scanner first.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

[puzzle] can you add up

Do this entirely in your head!

Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. Now add 10. What is the total?

If you thought 5000, it's not.

Answer

4100