From a businessman friend who lives in one of those mega-governed states. He sent the following this morning with permission to blog it: One of my clients is developing alternative energy technology. They actually have a pretty good idea, one that might work and be profitable. They built a proof of concept, small-sized version of their product. Now it is time to build a larger one. I suggested they look at a nearby industrial park. It has the power, the space, and a landlord with lots of free space to rent. Everything looked good until they asked about putting up…
Category: Money
Posts about being frugal, getting out of debt, staying out of debt, spending practically and splurging joyfully. This category may also contain posts about hard money and what the government is doing to all that “soft money” it creates.
My deadlines are going better than I thought. Still blogging. (But don’t be surprised if I miss a few days. The hardest part hasn’t hit yet. I’m working up my nerve to be Brilliant. You can only imagine what an effort that requires.) Hm. We knew “our representatives” were corrupt, hypocritical, and a lot of other things. But crazy? I mean, crazier than you’d have to be to want to run other people’s lives in the first place. LOL! Here’s the tale of a man who foreclosed on Wells Fargo. Seriously. The sheriff was going to auction off the local…
… That’s the title of a New York Times article about a proposal by Columbia law professor Eben Moglen to “rebuild the Internet” (without government this time) for greater privacy and individual control. Moglen has created the Freedom Box Foundation to help develop this ideas. I’d love to hear comment from you tech-oriented readers on how (or whether) you think this would work and how it might change the Netiverse. —– I’ve got three article deadlines this week, followed by a very special project. So blogging might be “lite” for the next few weeks. To keep the silence from getting…
“Confessions of a Spendaholic.” How to curb compulsive spending. (And that’s not just for people who have closets full of shoes they never wear. Even thrift-store impulses can bite you. Ask me how I know.) Turns out that drug-dog and bomb-dog handlers are unconsciously signaling the animals to produce false positives. That’s aside from the ones who do it deliberately. ADDED: Radley Balko has more on this study and others that show how cop-canine interaction is used to hurt the innocent. “Dogs must be banned from all public places!” (Never fear: spoken with tongue firmly in cheek.) Still, the Brits…
Speaking of writers who can be wonderful to read even when you don’t agree with their every utterance Matt Taibi has a new piece in Rolling Stone, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?” While I think a better question is “Why is the federal government in bed with Wall Street and why are they performing abnormal acts on millions of unconsenting adults?” it’s still a good read. Taibi is right up there with Glenn Greenwald, Robert Scheer, Sam Smith, and Nat Hentoff among writers I admire for their integrity, reasoning power, humanity, or writing skill, even though conventional wisdom says…
The Swiss vote to keep their guns. Sounds as if their nannifying hoplophobes are just as bad as ours, though. NAFTA North. For “security” this time. Complete with more plans for biometric ID and tracking. Sigh. But don’t worry. The fedgov’s rushing to the rescue to protect our online privacy. I especially like the part about all those levels of government that are above the proposed law. Kevin Wilmeth, Rifleman Savant, gets it exactly right on Egypt. The future’s still dangerous (isn’t it always?). But the NOW has been magnificent. And zownds! — the Empire was irrelevant to it all.…
I’ve been working on a followup to last November’s blog “Defending Boundaries” (or, as I originally typoed it, “Definding Boundaries”). Will try to have that later in the week. But today I’ve accepted an invitation from a friend to go to the Big City. Not just the local Big City with the Wal-Mart (population 10,000 or so), but a real big city. Where I get to do something I’ve never done before — visit an Ikea store. Since I’ve always loved Scandinavian furniture, this could be dangerous — even aside from what friends assure me are the many other addictive…
Why you should always pay your website designer. George W. Bush cancels speaking engagement in Switzerland. If he’d gone he might have been arrested for war crimes. Speaking of which, I was poking around Wikipedia the other day and learned that the top U.S. representative at the Bretton Woods Conference (and with John Maynard Keynes one of the two most influential figures in the monetary agreement forged there) was a Soviet agent. Sheesh. I really do try not to fall into conspiracy theories. But that’s just strange. A lot of what this man did is just strange. Very smart, Mubarak.…
Seen — or rather not seen — conducting routine traffic stops in Houston. What Cyclone Yasi would look like if it were over the U.S.. What odd timing that a storm that big actually is over the U.S. right now. But even folks in Chicago or Tulsa’s ice and snow should be grateful they’re not getting Yasi. Per Jackie Juntti in a recent comments section: The MSM finally starts covering Project Gunwalker — feebly, of course — and Mike Vanderboegh sticks it to ’em again and again. Some good dog news. A Labrador retriever can apparently be just about as…
Bitcoin. An anonymous somebody dropped this link into a recent comments sections. Would any of you techies or econ experts out there care to comment on it? I’ve become so inherently distrustful of new online money systems after watching so many fall (and one fall with my money in it) that I admit I no longer even try to evaluate them. I figure they’ll eventually evaluate themselves via their success or failure in the real world. This one’s … different. And of course, one day one or more of them will succeed. And change the world. Probably not this one.…