@ 126

From 97

"But let us be clear: religion falls in WAY last place compared to "scientific socialism" as far as death and killing are concerned. Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot dwarf to a mere speck the Inquisition and Crusades and Witch Hunts."

Methinks you missed the context of my post.

@117

"Like the one that you appear to espouse, wherein people aren't allowed to believe what they choose?"

Where in my post did I say that? I condemn the violence of religion but I certainly don't say you can't have a religion.

A see a lot of ignorance, and glib assertations as to what has been done in the past in the name religion. We need to be reminded of both the good and bad.

In this case we are discussing the darkness religious thought can lead to.

To say that religion is ok because it hasn't killed as many people as the bloody autocracies of the 20th century is deeply disturbing.

When did it become a numbers game with lowest score winning?

Moreover when we start looking at all religions over the course of world history a very different picture emerges. Since history began to be recorded the bloody struggles of religion have been entered the rolls. Surely the grand total of millennia of human religoius conflict dwarfs the self inflicted suffering from all other sources.

We're talking about the Aztecs feeding the sun god with the hearts of their victims. We're talking the Muslim conquest of India and the millions that died to protect the Hindu temples from destruction. We're talking the bloody expansion of Christianity from Constantine onwards, and the fratricide from Arius onwards. And this is the merest overview of a fragment of what is out there.

Have we forgotten the Christian backed genocide of Native North Americans?

Are we forgetting the bloody Sunni - Shia conflict going on currently?

How can anyone dare assert that religion is less poisonous to humanity than any other form of fanaticism?

Devistafy.
Devistafied.
Devistafication.

All are brand new words entering the English language.

Amerinoia - The act of trampling on civil liberties in the name of groundless fear.

Consumption is partly a function of the amount of space you have. In places where there is no room and everyone is forced into smaller places, there amount that can be consumed is limited. Who will consume more goods? A four bedroom rancher 30 miles out of town, or a 1000 sqft 1 bedroom apartment?

Round about page 192 my mind hit overload.

Actually I really doubt we'll see coal/oil "coil" anytime soon. The Athabasca tarsands which are the test case for alternative oil production are running into huge problems in extraction and environmental degredation.

Turning any organic material into oil can be done, but the energy and environmental inputs render it prohibitively expensive (Alberta will run out fresh water before it runs out of oil for instance).

Throwing nukes in the middle east would only bring about China and India throwing nukes into the U.S.
The US doesn't get it's oil from the middle east, but from Canada, Venezuela, Angola, Nigeria, Brazil etc...

The issue with Zoning in the US is that the "urb" mentality is so ingrained. It's easy to zone for ecodense, transit friendly neighbourhoods. But they don't make sense in all those bedroom communities that stretch out as far as the eye can see. It was the mania for a house which created some of the most depressingly sterile, soul killing exurbian dystopias, wrecked the american financial system, and allows the hyperconsumptive lifestyle.

The ultimate solution is to create a belt of land reserves around the urban areas and let them densify inside those zones. With that all the pre-conditions for intelligent, eco friendly, transit bases housing will be met.

'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'

Sage advice. Always test your penis. Before anything.

Followings 115's template.

Ahem.

A post about nothing.

90's redux.

God it's great to be part of something really meaniningful.

I think I have it

"Zombie Strippers and Indentured Blogitude:Tales from the Google cache of the Bloggers Liberation Front"

@38 Bear Stearns was not bailed out by JP Morgan. Bear were forced to sell all their assets at fire sale prices. If I went to your house, took all your assets and gave you 20 cents per dollar would you say I was "bailing" you out? In fact Bear was seen as so toxic that the only way JP Morgan got involved was because the Fed put up Tax Payer money to the tune of 30 billion (to save 20 trillion from going sour).

@48 Social Darwinism is saying the English deserve to rule all due to their superior breeding, not the recognition of competition as an evolutionary driver.

Competition along with sexual selection and environmental stimuli, is a prime mover in evolution.

It seems a lot of people in the US are unwilling to look themselves in the face as to their shortcomings and would rather point the finger elsewhere. However the thing is, if you didn't over extend yourself you will be fine. It's all the people who pulled out those refinancings and then blew it. If you have a prudent fiscal reserve
the crisis should be nothing more than a chance to get some good deals.

I'm always stunned at the vitrol and economic immaturity that comes out on BB.

Subprime loans to "Trailer trashers" are but the most obvious surface expression of the collapse of the US real estate market upon which the last 5 years of economic growth was based.

I was in Miami recently and spoke with several successful professionals, doctors, lawyers, brokers etc.. One had re-mortgaged his house, bought two apartments at 675 K each and is now getting offers for 50 K, or 7 cents for each dollar invested.

Not Subprime, not taken advantage of, yet deeply in trouble.

The best thing you can do is teach yourself how to garden and grow your own food.

Hard assets are completely inedible.

It's a very simple solution to the problem.

The problem is at all levels of society Americans spent too much, and got themselves into too much debt. Lowering interest rates is pointless, as there is no further capacity to absorb debt on any scale.

The solution is actually taking place right now without government intervention. Banks and individuals are saving money, dropping assets, and paying down debt while retaining cash on hand to hedge against further risk. Which is why sales have fallen(except for bargain hunting) and the bank interest rates have firmly remained where they are.

In a few years this will reduce debt to the point where people can absorb more debt and the economy will grow again.

Where the pain comes in, is that a war is being paid for on the back of collapsing economy, and too many people again, at all levels over extended themselves in search of higher returns, whether it was banks giving money to hedge funds or individuals re-mortgaging their homes so they could buy a second one.

The only law that needs be enacted is that risk /reward training becomes part of the elementary school curriculum.

Uh no.

There was no inflation. Please see

http://www.shambhala.org/business/goldocean/causdep.html#Centralbank

And take a look at the graph entitled "money supply and real gdp". As you can see money supply actuall contracted in the years following 1929, and it only increased once FDR got the New Deal working again.

Doh.. just got the "text error bug"

"The solution is to cut spending, raise interest rates, and allow all of the malinvestment to be flushed from the system."

Moralistic purging was tried in 1930. It didn't work to well.

Or Montreal.

Do the dead vote in your elections as well?

This will grow and grow.

Already "And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!?" is getting upwards of 50 000 hits on Google.

It's a shame, just when the democrats were doing a great job of re-invigorating world's perception of America, this has to come out of the woodwork and put everyone back to square 1.

And Finally

"``Glass-Steagall protected bankers against themselves,'' Eveillard said. ``Bankers are sheep. They don't mind going over the cliff if everyone else goes over the cliff.''"

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aDSFgf3DHR_A&refer=home

To put this in perspective, the entire capitalization of all the companies the NYSE is 18.9 trillion dollars. China's economy is 1.27 trillion dollars.

Essentially when these funds move into a market in a large way they cannot get out except very gradually. Unless they want to collapse the system and then everyone loses everything. Hence when they get caught, like now there is little choice for them but to sit it out and gradually move into other assets, like Gold, Oil, Wheat, Copper etc.

Well...

Like me they'll pay an analyst a small fortune for a detailed prediction of where the market is going and what asset class will outperform, and what is the correct amount of risk to take on given the rules of the fund etc.

Then they'll get a phone call saying so and so made 30% in three months investing in a hedge fund that specializes in a yen backed carry trades, or credit default swaps or any of the many other exotic financial concoctions of which sub-prime mortagages were part of.

And their common sense will go right out the window.

Of course it helps that as far as the US is concerned San Francisco, New York and Boston
are where the money is managed and there really only is a few thousand people who make the calls.

Very easy to get in herd mentality when surrounded by people saying the same things every day.

Thank you for the copy of Mises. It's very interesting to read a text from the time America was on the Gold Standard.

However. Interest rates are cut/raised after the fact. What gets the balls rolling are the( estimated) 20 trillion dollars held in pension funds moving in one direction. And believe me. It like a herd of buffalo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_fund

"Something really, really scary and really big is happening out there folks."

Oh it's not scary. It's normal. When the perception is that the supply of money exceeds the demand, the value will drop.

The US government stopped telling everyone how much it was printing, so we all decided there was a bad reason why they did this.

If it wants to restore confidence in the dollar, the first step is to tell us how many of them there are in the first place. Until that time, you'd be best to have some precious metals tucked away in a corner.

"Yet for some reason investment banks such as Bear Stearns (and soon Lehman Brothers) are insulated from the consequences of their reckless lending by the central banking system with bail-out money creation from the Federal Reserve. How odd. "

Oh they are not insulated from their actions

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a.WZcjaU572w

The entire system is undergoing collapse. There were a few people who did well out of this mess, but trust me. I work in the business and the pain is being liberally spread top to bottom. From PIMCO and CALPERS to those living in the shanty towns.

" (Jimmy) Cayne (Ex Pres of Bear Stearns) still owns 5 percent of Bear's stock, the value of which fell under the JPMorgan buyout to $11.7 million from $333 million four days ago. Last month, Cayne paid $27.5 million for two adjacent 14th-floor condominiums at New York's Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park, according to city property records."

Looks like he might be joining them in tent city.

However to blame wall street or the home buyer misses the point. When the ride started wall street couldn't get off. The biggest shareholders in pubco's and hedge funds and the like are pension funds/mutual funds. The massed contributions of Teachers, policemen, Firefighters, gaffers, construction workers etc.

However these pension funds don't have enough money to meet their retirement requirements (the tech collapse dented their growth). Hence they push whomever they hold shares in for extreme market beating growth. Driven by low interest rates and fueled by consumer greed housing was too big for wall street not invest in and take risks in. And of course the inevitable happened.

Fundamentally the booms and busts of the last 30 years are driven by these funds trying to meet their obligations of a massive retiring population which is supported by a much smaller generational cohort.

When your parents see how their retirement is dented. THEN you'll see riots in the streets.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/spamindex.html

It would be a shame not mention this fine collection of Spam while we're at it.

Note: Not even remotely safe for work.

Was just pointed to this link.

http://laughingsquid.com/dungeon-majesty-a-live-action-dd-public-access-tv-show/

Of the all the children of Gary these are few of the most awesome.

Odd geography of the campaign. London yes, Newcastle no. Manchester yes, Liverpool no, Birmingham yes, Bristol no.

Maybe it's a plot by the East Anglian, Cornish and Cumbria tourist boards.

"Come to Cumbria, take all the pictures you want!"

Odd beast this lizard man, surviving on a diet of dodge bumpers and kittens.

I guess he's doing the hundred mile diet and only eating locally.

I would not be surprised to find out that this political/nationalistic hot air coming from Serbia is being staged for a Russian audience.

Serbia has held a special place in Kremlin policy since the Romanov's and I think it likely that at least some "nationalism" has Moscow's tacit backing.

As for the people who blithely suggest that this is some how exceptional within Europe have missed the great decentralization that has happened since 1990. Scotland and Wales have there own parliaments, Catalonia is autonomous except in name, Slovakia and Czech have split, Sud Tirol and Aosta are now automomous regions within Italy, and there is serious movement to break up Belgium into it's constituent pieces. Not to mention all countries which have come from the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Within this wider pan European decentralization Kosovo is one of many.

I have feeling that this is beginning of the end.

If I were a parasite I'd be down there in flash to make my fortune.

http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture042.php

I always found that contrast to be particularly poignant.

In the Canadian section, in Vancouver we have the rebellious tomato and flying wedge.

The rebellious tomato has the most original style being thin crust, made of spelt with very little cheese and lots of veggies, seafood and westcoast fusion-y style toppings. It's a very light pizza.

I guess my comment about trailer parks was too oblique.

The class of people in Canada who pride themselves on not being the US and get delightfully offended about such things as Black people being described as "Canadians" are in my experience the most myopic about their own country.

Why is it appropriate to complain about "Hong Kong" drivers? Call beer cans "Indian artifacts"?

Given the terrible record of our treatment of first nations people (It's ok at least we didn't shoot them as much as they did down south), and the systemic discrimination of other minorities which only really broke down in the 1980's even in the major cities, to look down upon the southern US as contemptible backwater is surely hypocritical.

As for the whole tipping business, when our dollar was 60c US it was a stretch to make the trip, let alone tip. Now that the shoe is on the other foot I notice far fewer Americans around.

I laughed at @23's story so much I spit coffee on my laptop.

As Western Canadian who has spent much time in rural northern Louisiana, I have been treated kindly by whomever I met down there.

It's a shame that certain Canadians have a blind spot towards their own country. Squamish, Bathurst Goose Bay, and the Abitibi are all "Ignorant and proud of it" IME. Ever wonder why trailer park boys is set in Nova Scotia?

Irony being, Ford doesn't even own their own logo anymore

"and Ford pledged collateral for everything from its plants to the trademark Blue Oval logo to raise $23.4 billion to pay for new models"

"Incredible that they would take the site live using a self-signed certificate. It shows major incompetence (elementary oversight should have caught this) and at Desyne, Inc. Someone is either too stupid or too cheap to purchase a real SSL certificate before putting up a site that asks for personal data. This is Web Development 101. Anyone who has ever worked on an ecommerce site should [be] aware of the issues."

A real Gem from the pdf. on the bottom of the website.

It's worth remembering that war is highly unlikely in any case even after the assassination of a leader.

The deaths of Lincoln, Kennedy, Mackenzie and even Indira Ghandi are evidence of this.

Moreover, even in WW 1 the assassination did not lead directly to war. There was a month of very bad diplomacy, by people who believed that it had been too long since a good war had happened and were eager to try out all their toys.

There is no strong geopolitical incentive for anyone to get involved in Pakistan right now. Only neighboring countries to arm their borders to keep the violence from spreading.

"It is for kings to eat the bread of sorrow" - Maya proverb.

For all those people remarking about how people are complaining about them, a couple points.
VanOc's (the organizing committee) mandate was to engage the local population and "bring back the spirit of the olympics" in contrast to Torino (which was a huge marketing exercise).

These mascots show up the hypocrisy of their goals. Like our asinine and unrepresentative logo, they are designed to sell in their millions to children. They are totally misrepresentative of who we are and what we stand for as place. The entire adult population has been given a big EF U to our taste and intelligence.

I initially supported the Olympics, but as evermore becomes a gross and crass cash grab I find myself marginalized and hostile to the whole mess.

As a long time traveller, I can sympathize deeply with going slightly bonkers about being stuck in an airport for 10 hours after a long flight, where you don't speak the language.

His actions, though extreme were a desperate call for attention as obviously no-one was taking any notice of him.

I invite the reader to imagine being trapped in a room where you don't speak the language, have no knowledge of what's going on, you are tired, jetlagged, and know that your relatives are waiting for you. And it goes on and on and on and on... and you don't know if it will ever end.

Fundamentally I blame the rhetoric of the war on terror more than I blame the cops.

We're in fear these days. Law enforcement considers itself the thin blue line between a devastating attack and safety. Hence brutal snap decisions are made, because no-one wants to be the one who let the terrorist get through.

It's shocking that this happened in Canada, yet fortunate as well. In most other countries this would have been hushed up and it would have been business as usual.

This is one of the saddest stories I've read all year.

reminds me of a quote by Narmier

"Bureaucracy’s are composed of juggernauts, revolting to human feeling in their blindness and supremely humorous in their stupidity"