Wednesday, July 29, 2009

[defoe arrested again] second time for talented striker

Back in 1692, Spurs' striker, Daniel Defoe, was arrested for payments of £700 (and his civets seized), though his total debts may have been £17,000.

Now, it appears he's in trouble again:

July 31, 1703: Daniel Defoe was arrested today and pilloried for writing a pamphlet entitled The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church at Tottenham, arguing for the extermination of Man U players and supporters.

Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney said Defoe wasn't going to be able to worm his way out of this one by penning his poem "Hymn to the Pillory".

However, the poem caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects and to drink to his health.

Defoe said later:

Tweren't me, guvna. I'm so angry, yannoe, I might just go to sea and find a $%#*&# island to live on the rest of m'life, yannoe.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

[pseudonyms] adopted by co-authors


1. The Scribblerian club comprised Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Robert Harley, and Thomas Parnell mainly and they purported to write the biography of whom?

2. An official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project was coined in 1968. Until its use was formally discontinued in 2000, it was the sole pseudonym used by members of the Directors Guild of America. What was it?

3. Frederic Dannay and James Yaffe used a collective pseudonym for their crime writing. In a successful series of novels that covered 42 years, this pseudonym served as both the author's name and that of the detective-hero. What was that name?

4. American mother-daughter writing team Patricia and Traci Lambrecht teamed up to write award winning novels, particularly Monkeewrench. Under which name do they write?

5. What was the pseudonym adopted by a German Research Project for a massive compiling of materials opposed to Einstein's special theory of relativity?

Answers Martin Scriblerus [yes, I know it was a giveaway]; Alan Smithee: Ellery Queen; P.J. Tracy; G. O. Mueller

[when dolphins play] humans are mesmerized



Don't know about you but I find that amazing.

[This post is part of #Silly Week.]

[government backed notes] starting now

Much shorter post this time. The long one is here.


Vox Day would like to know when the experts say the turnaround is going to be:

I am in need of a quick summary of every major economist, CNBC talking head or organization's position on the current prospects for recovery for the second half of 2009 and beyond.

Vox, there ARE NO EXPERTS. They are under the mesmerizing spell of the fictional theory of the natural business cycle. There IS a business cycle but we have to get it into our heads that it is INDUCED. We remain in the clutches of the very people who should not be controlling our money supply - the private central banks.

This is not my theory, this is the practical observation from most of the U.S. presidents through to Milton Friedman. The people of America seemed to understand the situation in Jackson's day, understand it very well:

Biddle wrote to a federal judge in February 1834: “This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned Judges, he is to have his way with the Bank.” By the fall of that year, Biddle was so reviled for his nationwide curtailment of credit that he was hunted by mobs in Philadelphia, forcing him to bar the doors of his house and post armed guards.

Why, oh why can't we wake up? I wrote a comment at Vox's:

Vox, you write as though this recovery is going to make itself. It is, as it has always been, dependent on when the Fed and the other central banks decide we've been squeezed enough to have made their current round of profits and new monopolies - just look at Goldman Sachs! As Milton Friedman put it:

The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe [monetary] contractions of 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38. No other 20-year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contractions.

... and again:

I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally, of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.

... and:

The severity of each of the major contractions is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities. Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes – excusable or not – can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system.

The two culprits in all the so-called "cycles" have been and are fractional reserve banking and the Fed's [and other CBs'] power to contract and expand money and to control credit.

The solution

1. Pay off the debt with Treasury backed notes [the old greenbacks in American parlance but the principle is the same in Britain] whilst at the same time raising reserve percentages of the small banks to halt inflation, [in line with population growth];

2. Abolish fractional reserve banking and move, within two years, to full reserve banking, with the issuance of money and control of credit in government hands;

3. Repeal the two acts of 1913 and 1864, [it's more difficult over here], with the Fed property and that of the Bank of England and other central banks now acting as repositories for the Treasury;


4. Withdraw from the IMF, BIS and World Bank.

Do this, despite all the Nicholas Biddles and foreign pressure, the attempted wars, the induced depression due to the further contraction of money [and so on], the spread of doom and gloom.

The first two years will be the worst but all we need fear is fear itself.

This is the ONLY sustainable solution. As long as those vipers sit over the power to create money out of thin air [ten times the value of the created money], then the laughably called "cycle" will continue. A physician first treats the root cause, not the symptoms.

If every person wrote his or her Congressman or local member and educated him/her, the thing would be possible. Lincoln was isolated but we need not be.

Objections

The economists will say it's not possible in what has become the most complex money system in history, The central banks will immeidately shout "inflationary".

It does not have to be so.

If the statutory requirement to match the flow of notes, earmarked to pay off bond and other debt, to gradually increased small bank reserve requirements takes place, the spectre of inflation would be held at bay.

The only danger is the havoc which the Biddle type central banks will wreak, trying to hoodwink you into thinking the scheme doesn't work.

I myself will either be roundly ignored or told I'm no economist. Do you need to be an economist to realize that debt-free notes, backed by a government as legal tender, are a solution? Blind Freddy can see that.

Finally, it would work because sufficient people WANT it to work. Ways can always be found round the flood of problems which accompany any adjustment, provided people wish to solve those problems, understand the real causes and are agreed to work together to overcome them.

Again


As long as we try to erect defences whilst we're down in this nest of vipers, the vipers still control the space we live in. They have immersed and held us in a debt economy where the issuance of interest bearing bonds and their buying of them as a simple bookkeeping entry is then multiplied many times over due to fractional reserve banking.

There are already proposals by Brown and the world financial authorities for a radical reconstruction of the financial system.

THIS IS ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY.

Simply follow the four steps listed above and the problem of the flow of money is solved within two years. Other social problems will take two generations. If you need an example of how to do it, look at the island of Guernsey.

An island is no different to the world in that the same principles of money issuance apply. KISS. Lincoln showed that it was possible but he was isolated and under attack, with the distraction of the Civil War. Many presidents have spoken of the matter.

You, the blogosphere, the readers of the MSM, the people out there, the economists locked into a way of thinking you've been induced to by your economic education and decades of practice in thinking along those lines, reinforced by organs such as the FT and the Economist - you only need go back into the realm of actual history, not into any new economic theory.

This is a very old principle we're talking about here.

All of us, all of you, can simply demand of our local member, of our Congressman, that the Treasury in each of our countries:

Begin to issue government backed, debt-free notes.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is where we start. That's our starting point.

The original video is here.

[it's not in the lips] it's more in the character


Disclaimer - this applies equally to male and female.


The Maildotcom piece on lips makes the usual mistake:

Lips can say so much without ever uttering a single word. On a face, they really are the finishing touch to an entire look.

Why a mistake? Lips DO say so much. However, the nature of the person behind the lips also comes through and I don't like this female above. There's nothing "come hither" here but "I'm going all out for what I can get" in that determination and in the fixed stare of those glinting eyes.

The danger signals are the cold eyes and hard voice.


The other day, there were some comments on the character Linnet in Death on the Nile and we discussed accents. It finally registered in the brain - it wasn't her being dolled up or her accent or her poise or whatever - it was that she came across as a hard-nosed b--ch, where she's the sun and everyone else is a planet in orbit and I don't like those.

It comes out in the hard voice, in the look in the facial muscles, in the walk, in the talk.

You can doll yourself up all you like, male or female, but character always comes through.

Character can't be practiced but life changes can be effected.

[This post is part of #Silly Week.]
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[california] taking its first steps without completely understanding

H/T His Girl Friday:

CALIFORNIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN A LEADER,
LET’S BE THE LEADER IN TAKING OUR COUNTRY BACK,
ONE STATE AT A TIME.
Imagine that the State was turning off the water in CA farmers' fields, that supply 25% of this nation's food (to "save" a little fish called the Smelt), and farmers were competing with international beverage corporations that sell bottled water, and their fields were turning into the CA dustbowl. It's happening.

Imagine that
due to our own version of Cap & Trade, AB32, passed in 2006, with new requirements every year, that our logging industry was being shut down, and we were forced to import lumber from WA and OR at 30% higher costs. It's happening.

Imagine that for both of these industries and many others (like cement companies) , AB32 is outlawing non-compliant diesel engines coming this Sept, and that they have to replace all their very expensive equipment with EXPENSIVE "COMPLIANT" EQUIPMENT (huge chippers, large combines, etc, that cost tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars), or stop working. It's happening.

Imagine the jobs that we have already lost being tripled, or more...what will that do to budget/taxpayers? Not to mention the workers who lose their jobs. And food prices increases. Think about the "domino effect."
It’s happening.

Imagine what would happen IF, farmers and loggers, and other industries' owners and workers, and whole cities that depend on these industries, got together with
CA Tea Party Patriots in our State's Capitol, on August 28th (the day that Tea Party Express leaves Sacramento to head to DC for "Taxpayer March on DC 9/12"). AND just IMAGINE what it would look like if there were 50,000 PROTESTORS, HUGE TRUCKS AND EQUIPMENT PARKED IN THE STREETS IN FRONT/AROUND THE CAPITOL BUILDING, completely SHUTTING DOWN SACRAMENTO, BEGINNING AT NOON....ALL DEMANDING THE REPEAL OF AB32 AND A "HARDSHIP CAUSE" FOR THE WATER TO BE TURNED ON.....

CAN YOU
IMAGINE?!?!?!?


Well, imagine no more
...IT'S HAPPENING!

What: SAC828 PROTEST -- STOP ECO-TYRANNY, REPEAL AB32
When: FRIDAY, AUGUST 28TH, NOON
Where: SACRAMENTO, CA, CAPITOL BUILDING

IT STARTS HERE…AMERICA IS WATCHING

Great stuff and very, very necessary BUT it is not going to result in anything sustainable ten years down the track as long as people don't also understand this.

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Monday, July 27, 2009

[quokkas] the quick and the dead



This "attack" is not really an attack, IMHO. When we went to Rottnest, everyone could only get round by bike and still there were dead quokkas all over the path. They leapt out from the undergrowth, maybe sensing food and you'd have to stop your bike quickly.

I recall one quokka looked up, as this one in the vid is doing, clambered up my leg and onto my shoulder, then leant forward and peered round at my face. After some time, dissatisfied, he jumped down again and hopped away. I'll always remember that.

The other place to go, in the West, is Monkey Mia, much further north, where the dolphins can be fed.


[This post is part of #Silly Week.]

[what to wear] to the supermarket

At last - truly sensible fashions you can wear to the supermarket or to the game. Also double as swimwear.

Top left: The Oops, I've Forgotten Something

Top right: The Boys Will Be Girls

Lower left: The Take Me Seriously, Will You?

Lower right: The Ecumenical Effect

Click on pic to zoom ...

[This post is part of #silly week.]


[#silly week kicks off] 1934 america's cup


IT'S #SILLY WEEK!!!

Brought to you by Man in a Shed [L'Homme dans un Hangar]


This week, different bloggers around the sphere will post on silly, weird or bizarre things, as some sort of relief from the dire news.

I haven't made a good start this morning, finalizing how to neutralize the Central Bankers so my Cunning Plan is as follows:

To post one sensible post each early morning and follow it up during the day with silly and unusual posts. To start with:


1934 Rainbow defeats Endeavour after rule change


The American defender, Harold Vanderbilt's Rainbow, has defeated Tommy Sopwith's Endeavour, 4 races to 2, the closest margin in a long while. The English have refused to race since 1895, when the Americans changed the rules to reverse a victory by the Earl of Dunraven's challenger and in 1934, it's now happened again, prompting an English wit to exclaim:

Britannia rules the waves but America waives the rules.

The Americans, on the other hand, hotly dispute that there has been sharp practice, maintaining that everything is above board and that the English simply failed to read the slight rule adjustments before the race. Silly oversight by Tommy Sopwith.

Either way, America remains undefeated on the ocean waves. The picture below is of Rainbow and Endeavour, the beautiful new J Boats which now race for the coveted trophy.


[child killer] needs our sympathy and understanding

Stefanie Rengel, Canadian girl stabbed to death on the orders of a schoolmate


The lead story at the Canadian Globe and Mail today had this:

From everything I've read about M.T., the now 17-year-old girl who is to be sentenced tomorrow after being convicted of first-degree murder for cajoling her boyfriend to kill Stefanie Rengel, the Toronto teenager, stabbed six times and left to bleed to death on an icy sidewalk in January, 2008, she is a monstrous kid.

Judith Timson, columnist, then called for the "monster's" execution, yes? Well actually ... no. Here is the headline which I didn't report first up:

DON'T SENTENCE M.T. AS AN ADULT

and the tagline:

If M.T. serves a mandatory life sentence in an adult prison, she will less likely become a better person, one who ultimately feels true remorse.

Our compassionate and sweet-smiling Judy


Ms Timson accepts that M.T. is a "cold-hearted monster" but wants this monster "understood" as it might affect her future life if anything bad happens to her. And Ms Timson's view of the ... er ... victim, lying in a pool of blood?

She seemed at 14 like a terrific kid.

Seemed a terrific kid. Y-e-e-es, isn't that lovely? Let's follow Judy's example and show compassion for all the perpetrators, for example, say, Ian Huntley. He might have had a difficult childhood and we wouldn't want him scarred for life now, would we? This is the compassionate, "prizes for all" society, after all and monsters need to be understood and given a six figure book deal to help them with their rehabilitation.

And ... um ... what about the boyfriend who so willingly obeyed the monster's decree of death? He doesn't get a mention; he's not as pretty as a gorgeous young girl - doesn't sell as many papers. Oh and the Globe and Mail have thoughtfully disabled comments on this news item.

Now interested, I googled the incident, to see how the other news services reported it. Here was Canada dot com:

M.T. was standing in court behind her lawyers, dressed in a blue sweater and dark pants, with her hair in a ponytail, as the verdict was read out. M.T. started to cry quietly before she was taken from the courtroom in handcuffs and returned to the Toronto area youth jail where she has been held for the past 14 months.

M.T. started to cry quietly, dressed in blue sweater and dark pants? Right, right and how did the victim's parents feel about it all perchance? What were they dressed in on the day? Did they "cry quietly" too? This doesn't seem to interest the journos as much.

Choking on the toast and marmalade here. Is there some sort of charge which can be brought against cold-hearted and exploitative journalists?
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