One year ago today: July 4, 2015, Arcadia, the first house.
Five years ago today: July 4, 2011, only $386/month—forever.
Nine years ago today: July 4, 2007, I long for a workshop.
Random years ago today: July 4, 2009, my first home network.
MORNING
Last evening I went to see “Diary of a Chambermaid”. A predictable but novel presentation of the life of a household servant in France, probably in the late 1800s. You might find it amusing, I found no surprises. If you were not rich, you emptied bed pots for the rich, there was still a lot of that attitude in the world when I was young. Not the actions, but the attitude. Charlie Daniels said it, the rich man goes to college and the poor man goes to work. The movie is historically correct in that a good-looking chambermaid who can have anything she wants has terrible taste in men. She takes up with the carriage driver.
As not uncommon in foreign film, the movie ends when the producer runs out of money. So there is no real ending although they do sort of ride off into the sunset. My rating? It’s worth the $8 if you have a coupon. Foreign film or not, there is no nudity, guys. They do it with their clothes on. Most interesting character—the crazy neighbor who not only grows flowers, he eats them.
It shouldn’t take all morning to get some cardboard boxes, but it does in this area. Shown nearby is a photo showing some folks waiting for a rainstorm to let up. This is an unplanned part of nearly every summer day in south Florida. It looks bright enough outside, but the rain is intense enough that you can’t even see the buildings a half block away in the center of the shot. I can’t tell you the heat index because I’ve packed up my thermometers, but my guess is around 112°F.
I may be moving just in time, box-wise. When I went to the usual places, they are now recycling the boxes and my supply just dried up. Fortunately, I have a whole side room full to complete this move. Isn’t that something? The only new business I’ve seen in years uses what others used to throw away for trash. Mr. Trump, please a little less globalism and a little more nationalism. Let the third world and their reprehensible cultures do the recycling.
What do I mean by that? Take a look at what’s happening in Africa. They are signing forty-year trade deals with China. You think they’d look at the West for experience on what happens when you do that. There is no net increase in local wealth from this mining and fishing operations. It is financial colonialism. You cannot seriously think Beijing is building billion-dollar ports on the east coast for the benefit of Africa.
At the same time, at least the Chinese are not doing what the American establishment is, which amounts to supporting corrupt dictators as long as they say they are fighting terrorists. To an African dictator, every rebel in the bush becomes automatically a terrorist. And in flows the American armaments. It is beneath contempt and I hope Trump puts a stop to that real fast.
Sawtooth Valley, Idaho.
NOON
“Finishing last does not retroactively make you a nice guy.” ~ Me. I said that.
JZ called for instructions for the next run to the cabin, which means he doesn’t want to miss the part where I lower the center beam. I have to chuckle at that, since he did not believe that was the problem at first and said it would not work. Plus, he does tend to see many of the projects I undertake as work rather than learning experiences. He’s not wrong about that in the sense that if I did them for other people, sure I’d want to get paid.
Take this fitting. I was at the supply store to find what is needed to join PVC to iron, and the answer seems to be these rubber couplings, complete with hose clamps. Not knowing what I’m doing, I allowed for each joint to have two fittings, a perfectly reasonable precaution. The budget called for 40 fittings at an average of $5 each. This is the shape to tap into the drainpipe of the single sink to make it share two sinks, and it is the only part that cost over $5 so far. It was $7.58 and the number of fittings has dropped to 22.
The iron pipe in the crawl space is unbelievably solid. It would survive WWIII and I see the material is still sold in many areas. It seems to be cut to length, then threaded at the jobsite. If possible, I shall get you some photos. More than likely it is bulletproof. It sure looks it.
Sadly, my little birdie friends are going to see me go. I never did train them to eat out of my hand. There is a small flock, around nine birds, that do wait around for me. They scatter when I stop the scooter. I’m still not sure about whether to leave the scooter here as local transpo, or take it to the new place. Since it probably has close to the astonished 25,000 miles on it, I’m contemplating buying a used 250, which you can read about last week.
Geoffrey Miller: Economics, 2008. (Hey, back off—lots of people with bland surnames spell their kid’s first names funny, too.) “Geoff” was leader of an all-male team that determined strippers make more tips when they are at “peak fertility”.
He’s also the one who twitted basically that if fat women don’t have the willpower to lose weight, they don’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. Presumably they don’t have the “willpower” to make good money as strippers, either.
NIGHT
Here’s a picture that wowed me. Called the “Door To Hell”, it is in Turkmenistan, a former part of the Soviet Union. See the scale from the man standing on the far left. The story goes that there was some gas leakage from nearby oil drilling so the technicians decided to light it on fire to burn itself out. That was in 1971. The pit is still growing.
On the topic of growing pits, how are the Europeans doing without all that free British money pouring in every week? What? Okay wait, they haven’t cut off the money yet. You know, there is a theory that that “European Union” is just a bank-controlled experiment on how to first “regionalize” and then create one world government. From the outside, a non-elected gang of Eurocrats overriding the laws of individual countries certainly looks like just such a trial run. Look at what they are up to now, trying to bring Turkey into Europe. There are massive historical precedents not to do that and to keep the Balkans as a buffer zone to keep out the Asiatics.
Why did the bankers choose Europe to bring under one government? There’s a theory on that, too. It goes that Europe, and hence the white race, became the best civilization in the world because having a number of states, rather than an empire is a system of checks and balances. The rest of the world, and Europe under Rome, got nowhere and practiced slavery because they were empires. Only when there are many states which can temporarily band together to overthrow a particularly bad customer and then go back home, can there be any enduring freedom.
The theory points out having sovereign states is what prevents a dictator from controlling much more than his own territory and a few unfortunate neighbors. But if there was one world government and a dictator took control of that, there could never be any opposition. Anyone who dared to speak out would be branded a traitor or some other crime that carries the death penalty. The serious student of government knows that government is all about power. And contrary to a government protecting the people from the abuse of power, all governments are actually the instrument of enforcement.
And how do we know that behind the government are the bankers controlling the whole farce? That’s easy, because wars never bankrupt the rich.
ADDENDUM
Last I checked, silver was chugging along at a little over $20 per ounce. I’d anxious to see what happens when the American market reopens tomorrow. Will the banks start trading silver between themselves at a much lower price, and why is it cheating? Well, they are free to trade, but the fact that these are private deals that wind up reported on public media is the scam. You or I can’t go buy that silver at the low prices they operate on. But the stock exchanges display those prices as if they are real, which as far as I am concerned is a form of collusion.
The connection in my mind is the Brits voting out of the European Union, and for the right reasons, as I just said. For whatever I say about the English, they are not the people to have others deciding how they should conduct their private affairs. And to an Englishman, paying taxes gives him a say in what’s going on, a lesson the appointed (as in non-elected) cohorts of eggheads in Brussels could learn. As Nigel said, none of them have ever had a proper job in their lives. They told him could not say that. But he's got more personality than the entire lot of them.
Last Laugh
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