lexicography.com

In 1995 Iraq was suffering from United Nations led sanctions and corrupt government which together led to increasing prices for the people.

The night before he was to have his right hand amputated, Nazaar Joudi wrote to his wife from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. “Hopefully, Allah will replace my hand with an even better one,” Mr. Joudi wrote.
It was 1995. Iraq’s economy had been ruined by the corruption and waste of Saddam Hussein, and the regime needed scapegoats. Mr. Joudi and other Iraqi merchants accused of doing business in foreign currency were given a thirty-minute trial. Their severed hands were delivered to Saddam Hussein on his orders.

A HELPING HAND FOR IRAQIS

People saw goods disappear from shop shelves and merchants raise prices. Obviously someone or some thing had to be responsible for life getting worse day by day. Saddam surely knew that global geopolitical acts as well as some of his own government’s acts were largely responsible. He also knew that if he allowed the blame to be placed on his policies or the actions of his government there might be a bad result for him. The Iraqis actually saw the merchants increasing the prices and taking more money for each purchase.

Following this fine tradition, our Congress is calling for the latest in a dozen or so investigations of oil company executives. With no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever, congress calls the CEO’s before committees.

At least our government is not amputating the hands of innocent businessmen.

Already in the flow of Congressional business it is indictments and threatened incarceration for political opponents. The way it goes is some ambiguous action (campaign activities, PAC, press leak) when done by an opponent is trumped up in the media as a very serious crime deserving the most serious punishment (often while proclaiming similar acts by allies justified as a technical campaign rule error or whistle blowing). How would you like to head Exxon if regular goes to $9/gal due to the disastrous policies foisted upon America by Congress?

UPDATE: to make my point better: what if gas went to $15/gal? Gold has gone from $300 to $800 in a short time and there is nothing about gas production capacity and demand that rules out such a price move for gas. Then a tank of gas might cost $300 and most people need gas to get to work and buy some things. The pressure on Washington to do something would be great. The possibility that the public might blame our elites (President, courts, Congress, MSM, Eco-interest groups) would be significant. The efforts to scapegoat someone would be intense. The public hate for oil companies and oil executives would be high. The fact that the gas station was the visible collector of the price would cause hate for the gas vendor.

Thus are we led back to Dostoevsky’s favorite idea, to the Russian’s fundamental conception of Christianity: the efficacy of atonement, of suffering, and its being the only solution of all difficulties.

Dostoyevsky

I am reminded of an evening sitting before the TV. Jimmy Carter is President and the occupents of the United States Embasy to Iran have been taken prisoner. A high official of the Russian Orthadox religion is allowed to visit the hostages and afterwards holds a press conference.

The reporters ask about the hostages,

The priest responds to this effect: life is like a school, a school for the afterlife which has a duration of eternity. The best teacher in that school is suffering. You may not like school while in it but what you go through is for your own good.

“He has insulted the audience! . . . Verhovensky!” the angry section roared. They even wanted to rush in pursuit of It was impossible to appease them, at the moment, any way, and—a final catastrophe broke like a bomb on the assembly and exploded in its midst: the third reader, the maniac who kept waving his fist behind the scenes, suddenly ran on to the platform. He looked like a perfect madman. With a broad, triumphant smile, full of boundless self-confidence, he looked round at the agitated hall and he seemed to be delighted at the disorder. He was not in the least disconcerted at having to speak in such an uproar, on the contrary, he was obviously delighted. This was so obvious that it attracted attention at once.

“What’s this now?” people were heard asking. “Who is this? Sh-h! What does he want to say?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the maniac shouted with all his might, standing at the very edge of the platform and speaking with almost as shrill, feminine a voice as Karmazinov’s, but without the aristocratic lisp. “Ladies and gentlemen! Twenty years ago, on the eve of war with half Europe, Russia was regarded as an ideal country by officials of all ranks! Literature was in the service of the censorship; military drill was all that was taught at the universities; the troops were trained like a ballet, and the peasants paid the taxes and were mute under the lash of serfdom. Patriotism meant the wringing of bribes from the quick and the dead. Those who did not take bribes were looked upon as rebels because they disturbed the general harmony. The birch copses were extirpated in support of discipline. Europe trembled. . . . But never in the thousand years of its senseless existence had Russia sunk to such ignominy. . . .”

He raised his fist, waved it ecstatically and menacingly over his head and suddenly brought it down furiously, as though pounding an adversary to powder. A frantic yell rose from the whole hall, there was a deafening roar of applause; almost half the audience was applauding: their enthusiasm was excusable. Russia was being put to shame publicly, before every one. Who could fail to roar with delight?

“This is the real thing! Come, this is something like! Hurrah! Yes, this is none of your aesthetics!”

The maniac went on ecstatically:

“Twenty years have passed since then. Universities have been opened and multiplied. Military drill has passed into a legend; officers are too few by thousands, the railways have eaten up all the capital and have covered Russia as with a spider’s web, so that in another fifteen years one will perhaps get somewhere. Bridges are rarely on fire, and fires in towns occur only at regular intervals, in turn, at the proper season. In the law courts judgments are as wise as Solomon’s, and the jury only take bribes through the struggle for existence, to escape starvation. The serfs are free, and flog one another instead of being flogged by the land-owners. Seas and oceans of vodka are consumed to support the budget, and in Novgorod, opposite the ancient and useless St. Sophia, there has been solemnly put up a colossal bronze globe to celebrate a thousand years of disorder and confusion; Europe scowls and begins to be uneasy again. . . . Fifteen years of reforms! And yet never even in the most grotesque periods of its madness has Russia sunk . . .”

The last words could not be heard in the roar of the crowd. One could see him again raise his arm and bring it down triumphantly again. Enthusiasm was beyond all bounds: people yelled, clapped their hands, even some of the ladies shouted: “Enough, you can’t beat that!” Some might have been drunk. The orator scanned them all and seemed revelling in his own triumph. I caught a glimpse of Lembke in indescribable excitement, pointing something out to somebody. Yulia Mihailovna, with a pale face, said something in haste to the prince, who had run up to her. But at that moment a group of six men, officials more or less, burst on to the platform, seized the orator and dragged him behind the scenes. I can’t understand how he managed to tear himself away from them, but he did escape, darted up to the edge of the platform again and succeeded in shouting again, at the top of his voice, waving his fist: “But never has Russia sunk . . .”

But he was dragged away again. I saw some fifteen men dash behind the scenes to rescue him, not crossing the platform but breaking down the light screen at the side of it. . . . I saw afterwards, though I could hardly believe my eyes, the girl student (Virginsky’s sister) leap on to the platform with the same roll under her arm, dressed as before, as plump and rosy as ever, surrounded by two or three women and two or three men, and accompanied by her mortal enemy, the schoolboy. I even caught the phrase:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve come to call attention to the I sufferings of poor students and to rouse them to a general protest …”

But I ran away. Hiding my badge in my pocket I made my way from the house into the street by back passages which I knew of. First of all, of course, I went to Stepan Trofimovitch’s.

The Devils

If you took a course about Dostoyevsky in 1985 you read “The Posessed (the Devils)”. Leftists laughed at it. Dostoyevsky’s take on the coming storm, not from a scientific or utilitarian point of view, what I now recognize as a great novel. Do people read this stuff anymore.

The Devils is a great novel. I once called a classmate Verhovensky to appreciative chuckles. Just as one should be able to yell out “Svidrigaïlov” on a crowed street and be perfectly understood. Here’s my prescription to make sense out of the bewildering world: Study philosophy and study great literature, by which I mean not folk tales or gender studies, a novel that has sold for 100 years is a good start. Maybe Dostoyevsky sold his work for a copeck a word to magazines, but when people are reading you a hundred years latter you know that you are on to something. The dragging up of some old ms. by present scholars to prove it is as good does not cut it. The ms. has to be read each year from its existance to now to qualify.

It’s too late to buy any so you probably should not even think about it.

I just did some estate planning. The first level of estate planning was to set up a trust and use the tax free part of generational transfer as well as possible. A few years later the estate grew and a new landscape emerged.

Let me tell you that the Estate tax is for small fry, people who avoid thinking about their death and people who fail to follow through after being given clear instructions.

Wait, the New York Times will tell you only the top ten percent of estates even enter into the tax zone. Well of those, the top one percent, the really big estates, will do as I have and hire a lawyer to get around most of the bite. The other nine percent may or my not trip up - no skin off the nose of the top and if the lowly fail to hop through all the hoops, lots of revenue for our betters to spand as they will.

Estate planning made me think of this. Of an expected eight percent return on equity investments maybe five percent is simply adjustment for inflation. Of the eight percent at some time a tax slice will be taken out so your net gain will probably be between five percent (inflation level) and six percent (a one percent return on your capital)..

Now suppose I bought a roll of gold coins. Something physically equal to a $25 roll of quarters would be worth about fifteen thousand dollars. If I bought one today it would “earn” whatever the inflation rate is. One hundred dollars in an account shrinks as the dollar inflates and the three hundred thousand dollar home costs four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but gold coins go up in dollar value if dollars become debased (worth less). Twenty five years from now, my roll of gold coins would “earn” the inflation rate (5%?) while a paper investment would have to earn 5% plus whatever tax is applied just to stand still in value. I could pass my roll of gold coins onto my children in private with no estate tax. Here, let me stuff $30,000 in your shirt pocket, I don’t think I have that much longer. .

Neither income tax on the inflation portion of my return nor estate tax would apply to my roll of gold coins.

I’m from New Jersey and I’m proud about it.

So went the bicentennial song of my home town.

Beyond the normal structural destruction in a mixed economy, New Jersey suffers from an heritage of corruption, organized crime, union thuggery, machine politics, &etc.

There are lots of high paying jobs in Manhattan and if you want more than a two bedroom apartment to raise your family in you settle for NJ. You could try suburban NY but the taxes are great so most of NY State is uninhabitable.

Places like Chappaquiddick are for Executive VP and up people only. Suffern is dismal. You could try for Connecticut but the close in parts are much more expensive than NJ and the outer parts are crime infested urban crap. Want to live in Danbury or New Haven and commute to the big Apple?

A mid level executive, say under $1 mil per year, in a NJ drug company or NYC financial company is able to live in NJ with fair comfort, understanding that property tax alone would equal total home carry in other places and income tax and sales tax are high. Lots of salary to make up for the outflow.

The newspaper will tell you where the government money goes. Day care center grants spent on trips to Casinos or to buy tow trucks (huh?). Medical school millions skimmed off for private gain.

Whitman had a chance to clean things up when she was elected, but it appears that she did nothing. The next administration was so corrupt the Gov resigned and pretended It was because of his sex orientation. The press did;t challenge that.

I guess Corzone is hoping to hold together the leaking ship for a few years, do some big visible things without long term considerations, jump into a presidential campaign with the help of the media and leave all the problems behind.

I have got to leave New Jersey when more of our income is free of geography. The other red states will become more blue (absent a limited government, voting for more benefits will become the norm everywhere) so the reserve place is not in the US. Maybe Belize. Plenty of time to research that.

Monday, April 24, 2006
Stupid Blogger Tricks

I admonished Michelle Malkin when she published the contact numbers of those antiwar protesters. Malkin’s actions were bush league. Now idiots are using this as an excuse to not only publish her personal data, but that of other righties, including the non-blogging Thomas Sowell.

Why pick on a 75-year-old man? He has nothing to do with any of this.

Here is the crap.

Acidman at Gut Rumbles calls it fascism and rumbles:

“It reminds me of a two year-old pitching a hissy-fit. But what else do you expect from the folks at Indymedia? Once you drink the purple kool-ade, you lose your mind (along with any sense of decency you might have possessed).

“I’m just sorry that MY name and address isn’t on that list. If I owned any guns, I might have a wonderful opportunity for some target practice.”

This is the Great Blogosphere that is going to save civilization? While I am at it, piss on Gawker Stalker — by the gallon.

posted by DonSurber | 4/24/2006 08:29:00 PM Comments (3) | Trackback links to

As he says: Proud member of the MSM. Fits right in.
Perhaps it was taken down because he was taken in by a troll:

There have been trolls since before there was an Internet. Trolling had a long and dishonorable history on USENET before the word “internet” was even invented (or at least, given its modern meaning). Of course, some trolls were more artistic than others; there wasn’t any class in starting a flame war between comp.sys.amiga and comp.sys.macintosh because it was just too damned easy. Real trolls wanted to be more artistic, more clever than that.

Slashdot has long been a favorite target of trolls. There used to be a site called “the Omnibus Slashdot Troll” which is long gone which hilariously described the hows and whys of artistic trolling of Slashdot. This wikipedia article doesn’t do it justice, but at least covers some of the same ground. But most of what’s listed there isn’t the work of mathematically ideal trolls. Things like “page widening” is more like malicious hacking. The goal of that kind of thing is to be a pain in the tail to the moderators. No class in that, frankly. No subtlety.

No, the true troll’s goal is to induce flame wars of various kinds by innocuously, and seemingly innocently, pushing hot buttons. And the mathematically ideal troll is non-aligned; his goal is to incite everyone equally.

Today saw the posting of what I’m beginning to think is a minor masterpiece of trolling on Indymedia. Right wingers, especially those named, went right for the hook. But it turns out that all the addresses listed were either abandoned buildings or car parts stores. (In some cases they were ludicrously wrong. Steve Green was listed as being in a suburb of LA, even though he actually lives near Colorado Springs.)

It was posted by “StopRightie”. It turns out to be the only article ever posted with that name as the author. So the obvious question is who was behind this? And more important, who was the target? Was the goal to inspire leftie marchers to descend on those addresses, only to discover they’d been hoaxed? Or to inspire unthinking backlash from the right?

Or maybe both! Hail Eris!fnord

Cite : The master. As to Surber: No recognition of the person who set him straight, no apology for the poorly supported post, even after a hoax became a possibility, merely down the memory hole - I never wrote and published that. I have a new post - look here. Maybe he will write me demanding that I take down the words he put on the Internet for the entire world to read. Stay tuned. I’ll post the developments here.

UPDATE: The way to fix a bad Internet post is not to take the post down but to post a correction. If I read on Instapundit that 80% of the law faculty at his university supports “Y” and he latter learns that it was not true, I expect to see a new post correcting the error, not removal of the original post from the archives.

We can’t make neural connections with each other, but we can have collective experiences. Who on the Internet has not seen the Christmas Lights mpg, or the Ukulele version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”?

Who has not seen something they contributed taken up by the hive-mind, to some little degree or other, to immense personal satisfaction?

Who has not been addicted to and comforted by the hive-mind?

The funny thing is, while I am an individual and believe in individual autonomy, sometimes the hive refines ideas better than an individual. I have served on juries and I admit that our processing of the evidence as a jury was better than mine as an individual.

Before we spend one more Federal Taxpayer Dollar on getting more women into college level math and science courses, we need to spend whatever is required to equalize the number of men in college level gender studies courses, women studies courses, art appreciation courses, music appreciation courses, and intramural softball leagues.

I think that we are in another golden age of automotive production. Lots of American cars are very good and the PT Cruiser, the Solstice, the Mustang, many of the Caddies, are just plain great. The 3 and 5 series BMW top all prior versions. Want an exotic? You’ve got Corvette (this years model easily the best ever), Porsche, McLaran. M3, M5, AMG.

The golden age of the 60’s (or was it the 70’s, I was pretty young), crashed and burned on expensive gas and unjustified insurance premiums for muscle cars. I wonder what will bring this age to an end. I think it is a thing of the spirit more than the price of gas. Right now, there is an abundance of spirit which is resulting in creativity and excellence in Automobiles.

Today I test drove a 911, just to file away if it was worth the money, worth future consideration. It is not very creative, except perhaps in the application of racing engineering to a production car, but it is executed with exactitude. [ I bought a famous brand German knife set at a good price, but my friend looked at it and said that the steel was made in Spain, “That is why it was so inexpensive.” I said: “Come on, under license they can make as good steel, a commodity, in Spain as in Germany.” Actually, now I can see a difference in the knives. It must take a culture to make great steel.]

I do not think I would buy a Porsche. Its configuration is an accident. The original car was made from Volkswagen parts so the engine last was a byproduct, not a designed feature. Later, when Porsche once made a front engined sports car it was a failure. It did not look like a Porsche to the public. When the 911 went from air cooled to water cooled they spent many engineering dollars to make the water cooled engine to sound like the air cooled engine. Modern computer driven driving assist can make the car drivable, and drivable hard, by ordinary unskilled drivers, but the whole story seems to have taken too many wrong turns for me. I think it has a high price to value ratio, the company in the past abused it reputation, the configuration is retained for marketing not performance reasons, &etc.

Tomorrow, the all American Corvette.

You really should consider these possibilities, no matter how much they discomfort you.

1.) The CEO is paid exactly what he is worth. Everyone knows that there must be some interlocking board or conflict of interest or crime behind CEO compensation. Maybe it is just plain what they are worth. Professional sports players can command millions and few suspect a market failure. Actors or players who can bring a smile command millions and few suspect foul play. Someone who is responsible for an enterprise and can be judged on his performance (the progress of the enterprise cannot be hidden absent fraud) might be worth what he is paid.

2.) Blog traffic reflects the quality of your blog. When I wrote good stuff my traffic was higher, but it was not nearly good enough for me. What, one hundred people stopping in, I could do ten thousand by putting on a chicken suit and standing on a busy intersection with my message on a sign. Now that I slacked off, my traffic declined and I see the relation of quality posts and traffic.

3.) For women looks matter most. A good looking woman gets to drive a Porsche SUV or a Land Rover and have free time. A driven women lawyer gets to spend 2,500 hours of the year in conference rooms with other smelly people who also need a bath. Feminist women kids will be raised by domestic help. Feminist women’s gay friends will have better marriages because one will know he is the wife and the other will know he is the husband.

4.) Government is incompetent. There is nothing that government has to do. whatever it does is an abject failure.

In my kid’s video games, the good heroes often have “dark” counterparts. So the villain in a Mario game might be dark Mario, or the villain in a Sonic game might be dark Sonic.

Instead of imagining the world thus:

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

Imagine (dark) the world thus:

You contact one hundred people with an idea. The idea is that you will own together (under a legal document that provides in advance your respective rights) an enterprise to accomplish some good. The enterprise will be founded by those members of the group who freely agree to fund it under the terms of the legal document. No one has to join, you pitch your friends.

The enterprise will have no police powers or legitimate use of force. It will purchase on the market what it requires (and what you our I could purchase in competition with it), real property, rights, labor, tools. If the enterprise engaged in force, bribery, fraud &etc. it would be subject to the same penalties as you or I.

The enterprise would follow the various regulations and laws applicable to it.

The enterprise would meet a human desire or need and be able to sell its products well. It would set whatever price it determined for its products and the customers would buy or not as they determined the worth of the products.

The enterprise made you and the friends who joined a fortune. It made that fortune without taking anything from anyone by force but existing only by offering to buy what it required, and not selling anything by other than offering to sell at a price that the purchaser was free to accept or decline.

The members who initially decided to join into this enterprise, mindful that success was not ensured, determine in accordance with the founding documents to pay the person they choose to lead it $300 million.

Now imagine the enterprise you joined to create was Exxon. I said that we were in the dark side.

I surmised it should be well worth the trouble of familiarising you with it, inasmuch as it contains such a precariously towering heap of our very best non-thinking that it is quite dizzying! It has the genuine potential to mislead, confuse, and vex millions! Indeed the mystical sleight-of-hand involved in shoehorning so many cubic yards of gasbag clichees, shopworn half-truths and straightfaced howlers into a single volume simply beggars belief; . . .

Screwtape On The DaVinci Code, by Eric Metaxas

What it is like to start a business? For me, at least, it was like this.

The idea seems plausible. My idea was, after getting on the Internet in NYC when most people found Internet connections through the P-dial list, of offering Internet access in suburban NJ. A rank stealing of the ideas of Panix (public access unix-like environment, who gave me my first connection).

I worked it out. A modem and a phone line would support 20 dial-up customers. One server would support a thousand or more. The going rate for a dial up shell account (14,4K) was around $19. I projected over 50% profit margin.

This was before the first web browser, the Internet was character based, and if you could not learn some Unix you would be helpless.

A fool could make money offering Internet access when I started. Customers searched for me. At Panix, where I kept an account, people feared being banned. In most businesses customers go to the seller and threaten to stop buying unless . . . , at Panix the management would turn off a customer who maybe modified the Usenet post of another customer. The customers would beg and squirm. The seller was clearly in the catbird seat.

A thousand ISP’s flourished in the suburbs. One fellow charged $9.95 and made it up on volume. When the tel co put in my fiber they described that fellow’s apartment. He had so much copper (for incoming telephone line connoted to modems) going into his apartment that it caused a great hole in his wall. I believed that he had the wrong approach.

As a matter of fact, every decision about your own business is difficult - very difficult. What price, the $19 or the $9? The $9 grew like a mushroom. It seemed too low to me.

In actuality my initial projections ignored customer support. While I could do all customer support, money flowed in. When you are owner and you donate your time for customer support, you make money as projected. In actuality, you are probably the most valuable person on your team and setting a zero value to your time whenever you are doing customer support is foolish.

My $9 competitor sold out his huge customer base and got a Vice President position in the purchaser. That lasted about six months. I hope he got lots of cash for his customers because the position was worthless.

Competition became very strong. Cable and DSL wrecked the access business.

Now here is the value in the story. You may go into business to trim the toenails of the family pet, but you may soon find yourself selling dog bad breath treatments. And it may work out. My opinion is, just jump in there and do your best. Just as a lawyer becomes an expert in whatever walks in the door and it may turn out pretty good, a business becomes what the customers require - if it knows what is good for itself.

Armed and Dangerous

Why, in a supposedly secular and modernist society that is heir to the anti-religious Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th century, do we not see more outright attacks on particular religions, or religion as an institution in general?

May I answer with another question? Please name one secular society that is not on its way to oblivion?

Those on the way include France, Germany, various Nordic countries, Russia, the United States.

Classical Values :: Ich bin ein moderate Muslim!

I think that in the pre-blogosphere days, silence is what a lot of bloggers were doing. One of my theories is that blogging tends to attract shy people who are highly opinionated, but who were for various reasons intimidated into silence. I suspect that many of them will say stuff in writing that they might hesitate to say to someone’s face.
[ . . .]
What I think is the most important aspect of the blogosphere is that it destroys this mechanism. There is no requirement that any blogger be openly confrontative or engage in confrontation, and most importantly, there is no practical way to tyrannize bloggers.
[. . .]
It’s a major loophole, and I see no way those who specialize in intimidation can close it

Religion accompanies civilization almost everywhere. It is as ubiquitous as drama, music, song or poetry. Yet almost no one studies religion, outside of its practitioners.

Of course you have Marx (opiate) and secular humanism (wishful thinking), but in actuality, even given the gift of eternal life, could you really view the tenants of any religion as narcotic or wishful thinking? I could wish a much more relaxed Islam or a “do your own thing” Catholicism. As a child I always thought that they would let me in heaven not because I lived up to the standards set for me but because, like the public schools, they would pass me because I was close.

It would be interesting for someone to study the religious beliefs of cultures on the rise, safely in control of the known world, and degenerating. Maybe there is some correlation between belief and reality? Maybe not.

Anyway, my teacher, Professor George Walsh, actually wrote a book on religion, an excerpt on Islam is available here. He likened religion to alchemy or magic, an attempt to control the physical world, as science has allowed us to actually control the physical world. As much as I loved and respected Professor Walsh, he is wrong - he does not see one half of the significance.

I Love Ann Coulter but she ain’t no Nietzsche.

Now that I think of it, when I studied Nietzsche, I thought “sure he was right that modern thought made it difficult for an educated person to be religious, but this nihilism stuff that is supposed to follow - well count me out - I can be moral without a Got to spank my bottom.”

Seems he was right about the nihilism, witness National Socialism and Stalin ism and there is even a surprise in the box. Of course nihilism is ripe for the picking for anyone who believes in something.

Once when I worked for a large Wall Street Law Firm, I was called in by my “Partner” and told that a client’s “house keeper” was coming into JFK by the “Fast Plane”, and I should do whatever necessary to see she essentially walked off the Concord and into a limo without any pesky trouble in between.

The client was a “Stateless Person”, a man who was born in the UK and made a fortune but existed now by never residing in any country more than some arbitrary number of days so he never came under the taxing authority of any country. He had an apartment on the East Side that he used a few dozen days of the year, a home in Great Briton, a Hong Kong pad, &etc.

You, dear reader, probably know better by now what was going on than I did. I scuttled into my senior associates office and asked, whot the hell? Housekeeper on the Concord at an 8,000 dollar premium to save four hours? Man was I naive.

If I hear one more word about alternative energy . . .

If it is to punish the people we buy oil from, the middle east, Russia, South America, well we buy nothing from Cuba and it makes no difference. The oil we buy from distasteful nations neither makes us responsible for their government actions nor supports their regimes. It is like saying people who listen to American pop music should stop.

We donate money for nothing in return to distasteful regimes all the time in the hope that some good will come out of it.

Moreover it was not a trade embargo that defeated the USSR and it will not be by refusing to trade with Communist China that will lead to reforms in Communist China. We had an isolation policy for twenty years that lead to no change at all.

Grow up.

One of the things Schopenhauer attacked without restraint in “The World as Will and Idea” was the Code of Honor.

You have to understand that in the eighteenth century, things were different. Schoolchildren would be shocked, but I read that George Washington had to discourage the “Code of Honor” least he lose too many officers.

The “Code of Honor” was basically this: if a person insulted a gentleman (the slap in the face with a glove - no need for the real thing - any insult would do) the gentleman was obliged to fight the person. After the invention of firearms the fight could and would be a firearm duel. Detaile varied but the one exception was if the insulted party totally thrashed the insulting party. Sort of, you are below my recognition. It was a muddled and unsatisfactory institution.

I read a short story by Nabokov about a “coward” who runs away from a duel. His life as a person of any respect is finished. Yet I myself, faced with the prospect of walking ten yards and facing a pistol discharge from twenty yards directed towards me, identified with the character. All gone, everything, every respectable iota of existence washed away by running from the duel.

The Code of Honor had it’s weak point. If someone insulted you, as a gentleman, you had to challenge him to a duel and risk you bodily integrity. The only out was to thrash the other person, as if to say, you do not deserve to go toe to toe with me but are an inferior person suitable for thrashing only.

Schopenhauer had lots of fun with the contradictions built into the institution.

Yet I wonder, could he have been as wrong as in his views of women? The Code of Honor allowed people to have honor. Now we gots nothing. Everyone was a lot more civil when the wrong word must lead to a duel.