Calling Michael Jackson an icon doesn’t let him off the hook for anything. But to listen to the news anchors you’d think it absolves him of everything.
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I know that Michael Jackson wasn’t convicted of the despicable crimes he was accused of. And that’s why he never went to jail. Three cheers for the majesty of the American legal system. But in my own personal view, he wasn’t exonerated either. Nor was he absolved of his crimes because he could sing, moonwalk, or sell 10 million records. (Though many of us suspect the money and fame he made from those things is precisely what kept him out of jail).

And, while I merely think he was a pedophile, I know he was not someone responsible parents should applaud, healthy children emulate, nor society celebrate.

And while we’re at it, his relatively early death wasn’t “tragic.” He was one of the richest people in the world. He spent his money on perpetual childhood and he was perpetually with children not his own.

Meanwhile in the last ten days, we’ve seen or heard of remarkable people who’ve given their lives for freedom in Iran. We’ve heard of innocents killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the last decade, America has lost thousands of heroes in noble causes and thousands of innocent bystanders who were denied the simple joys of life through no fault of their own. Those deaths are tragic, and we’re hard pressed to think of more than a handful of names to put with the long line of the dead.

If anything, Michael Jackson’s life, not his death, was tragic.

Every year at the Oscars they show a montage of people who died over the previous year. Invariably, the audience only applauds for the really famous people. This has always offended me. Not necessarily because the famous people don’t deserve praise but because it’s so clear that the audience is clapping for the fame. Michael Jackson had many accomplishments. But the press is sanctifying him because he was famous, deservedly so to be sure, but not because he was good. So much of the coverage seems to miss this fundamental point, as if being famous made him good.

I feel sympathy for Jackson’s family and friends who understandably mourn him. But I can’t bring myself to mourn him any more than I mourn the random dead I read about in the paper everyday. Indeed, I confess to mourning him less.

Every channel says this is a sad day for America. I agree. But not for the same reasons.

Labels: financial ponderings, house for sale

Labels: liberty, politics, statism, women

It is the winter that refuses to go away in northern Manitoba and most of the eastern Arctic.

Prolonged cold snowy conditions in the Hudson Bay area are expected to obliterate the breeding season for migratory birds and most other species of wildlife this year.

According to Environment Canada, the spring of 2009 is record-late in the eastern Arctic with virtually 100 per cent snow cover from James Bay north as of June 11.

May temperatures in northern Manitoba were almost four degrees C below the long-term average of -0.7, and in early June, temperatures averaged three degrees below normal.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration images confirm snow and ice blanket all of northern Manitoba, part of northern Ontario and almost all of the eastern Arctic as of June 12. U.S. arieal flight surveys confirm the eastern Arctic has no sign of spring so far.

Labels: omg teh SCIENCE111, The Failed Obama Presidency

When I do radio interviews or lecture presentations, I'm often asked: "Mister Rawles, what do you see as a likely 'worst case scenario'?" People expect me to say "a full scale nuclear exchange in World War III" or, "a stock market crash", or "a flu pandemic", or "a sudden end to the current real estate bubble." But most of them are surprised when I respond: Economic collapse triggered by the popping of the derivatives bubble.
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The global derivatives universe hums along nicely in times like these--in times like we've had since 1988. There are no nasty LTCM-type headlines. In such times market changes are gradual and incremental. For example, a derivatives trader makes a tidy profit when he bets that the Dow Jones will be 2.2% higher next year instead of the generally expected 1.9% Or another bets that higher fuel costs will put the pinch on bird guano miners in the South Pacific, curtailing their annual profits. What the hedge book boys have never encountered is a market with huge swings--something like the equities markets of the 1929 to 1935 era. If that volatility were to occur today, many derivatives traders would surely be wiped out. Their losses would be monumental. Again, we are talking about somewhere between $300 trillion and $770 trillion presently on the casino table. These are boggling figures. The risks, in absolute terms, are incalculable. Don't forget that directly or indirectly, central ('state') banks and national governments themselves are now inextricably tied to the derivatives trading universe. They are not just 'dabbling in derivatives'. Rather, they are in derivatives up to their necks. If and when the global derivatives bubble ever pops, it may topple not just trading companies like Goldman Sachs, or corporations like GM, Daimler-Chrysler, or RCA, but entire nations. I'm not kidding.

Labels: financial ponderings, watching the skies

Labels: financial ponderings, preparedness, watching the skies

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Executives at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the biggest stock-market rally in 71 years to sell their shares at the fastest pace since credit markets started to seize up two years ago.

Insiders of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies were net sellers for 14 straight weeks as the gauge rose 36 percent, data compiled by InsiderScore.com show.

Labels: financial ponderings, preparedness, watching the skies

Labels: minutiae, preparedness

If Ben Bernanke stands by his word and refuses to monetize the federal debt, Congress should consider issuing the money itself, as the U.S. Constitution provides. The “full faith and credit of the United States” is an asset of the United States, and it should properly be issued and lent by the United States rather than by unaccountable private banks and shadow lenders. The true path to economic recovery – the path from an economy strangled in debt to one blooming in prosperity – is to reclaim money and credit as public resources, transforming money from private master to public servant.

Labels: financial ponderings

Labels: bizzaro, catharsis, financial ponderings, misanthropy, politics, watching the skies

When I was young I used to wait
On master and hand him his plate
Pass him the bottle when he got dry
And brush away the blue-tail fly

Chorus
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care
My master's gone away
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Labels: felicity and jocularity

Labels: cats, San Pedro homestead

Labels: blogospheric navel-gazing, minutiae

Labels: cartoon, ponderings

Labels: felicity and jocularity

Labels: San Pedro homestead

Labels: San Pedro homestead

Labels: spiritual

Labels: San Pedro homestead

Labels: The Failed Obama Presidency

Labels: cats, felicity and jocularity

Overall, however, Obama has been praised for his flexibility, not condemned for his flip-flops. One reason, pollsters say, is that he seems such a contrast to the still-unpopular Bush, who was the opposite--stubborn and set in his ways. "When presented with a tough problem where a change of course was called for, Bush just dug in. He felt that it was weakness to change his mind," says a senior Democratic strategist.

Labels: politics, The Failed Obama Presidency

Labels: catharsis, misanthropy

Labels: catharsis, misanthropy

Labels: catharsis, misanthropy, omg teh SCIENCE111

Labels: art appreciation, bizzaro, catharsis, felicity and jocularity, misanthropy

Labels: resources

Labels: San Pedro homestead

'It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,' says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. 'The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way.'

8The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire.

Labels: omg teh SCIENCE111, watching the skies

Labels: fascism on parade, The Failed Obama Presidency, watching the skies