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Finally, Something Important in the Media

One of the best summaries of the financial crisis that I've ever seen is this one on CNBC (of all places). In it they discuss the government-sanctioned ratings cartel of Moody's and Standard and Poor's, as well as the conflict of interests in having the firm being rated pay the ratings agency. (People have compared that to having judges paid by the plaintiff or the defendant.) Essentially that makes ratings a farce. Large institutions -- such as pension funds, insurance companies, and banks -- are required to invest in AAA bonds. So the ratings cartel gives everybody a AAA rating, and the System is happy. I don't understand the mindset of some people to have a knee-jerk reaction favoring more government regulation to financial institutions. If risk had been rated honestly and accurately, these bubbles could not occur. There are independent rating agencies that could be used. Or they could require the buyer of bonds to pay for the ratings, not the seller of the bon

Running out of Luck

For the first time in 40 years, after another 35,000 wells have been drilled, we finally got unlucky with an oil spill. Why did it take so long? Don't count on that ever being discussed. Of course as a bicyclist and pedestrian I reacted at first with some evil pleasure at the notion of anything that will make gasoline cost more in the future. My goodness, I get so sick of noisy pickup trucks and hectic traffic. It says something about our country that the Media immediately ran to the American president, as if he can just push a buzzer in the Oval Office and make the crisis du jour go away. Watch the talking heads, the politicians, and the Greens posture in front of the TV cameras: none of these could handle the tiniest technical problem themselves. They have no appreciation for the complex engineering involved in bringing petroleum to an economy completely dependent on it. Most galling are the Greens. This is a perfect chance for them to demagogue big Evil oil corporations.

Infamous Goathead

Think of them as nature's alarm clock. It makes for a bad start to a new day when I put my foot down from the bed and immediately hit a goathead that was dragged into my RV. But it certainly wakes a guy up.

Love of Life

Adventure books have grabbed me from time to time, such as my first couple weeks as a full time RVer, in northern Michigan. Spring was supposed to be happening, but it wouldn't. It was cold and damp in that little travel trailer, which I was struggling to get used to. It seemed like an igloo. I was alone and had little to occupy my time. 'RV Dream' lifestyle, indeed! I was having some doubts. I ended up reading Richard Byrd's classic outdoor tale, "Alone," about his solitary brush-with-death in the Antarctic. There's nothing like reading the right book at just the right time and place. With that idea in mind, I read "Alive" when I was hoping that my lost little poodle might be rescued. "Alive" was the story about the South American rugby team who suffered a plane crash in the Andes. They also made a movie of it. But it didn't inspire me, like you might think. Instead it made me feel ashamed of holding onto such unrealistic

Northern Flicker

These fellows are in the woodpecker family. You get no hint of their beautiful golden underwings until they fly.

The Spirit of Summer

This year, June in the Southwest is living up to its reputation of monotonous, cloudless skies and fierce Dry Heat. Normally I would be miserable during weather like this, and look forward to the monsoons later in the summer. But not this year; winter really did cure me of piteous whining about dry heat. All it takes to enjoy an afternoon like today is a small gift of shade, sacred Sombra. The breeze does the rest. 'Wind' and 'spirit' (breath) have quite a history together, which a good dictionary or Wikipedia can tell you about. I've tried to shelter the Wind from its many assailants and detractors. If my eloquence failed, then seek your own in spir ation in a chair, outdoors. The wind coats and cools every inch of your skin, like a mountain stream does to a rock in its middle.    Remember when you were a kid and trying to exact revenge on a sibling or playmate; Mother would shake her finger at you and say, "Two wrongs don't make a right." But in

Soft as Granite

The trails around Prescott, AZ, proved to be a great place to break in the new dog, who is still unnamed. The Prescott area highlights granite gargoyles and balanced rocks. Then the granite crumbles into dry washes and trails. This goes against the normal image of 'hard as granite.' Granite, in a state of nature, seldom has the triple A hardness and denseness needed for the counter-tops of Alan Greenspan's McMansions and Garage Mahals. In fact, granite is usually found in a sub-prime state.  After the recent housing boom, there must be craters in Vermont or Italy so huge that they perturb the rotational mechanics of the spinning globe. Failed politicians looking for a second career would do well to consider raising the general level of awareness of the dire threat of Global Tilting or Wobbling.  It is no small miracle to see one of my theories actually work. I chose my second dog to be as different from my first dog as possible. I didn't want the specia

pRaising Arizona

After pulling into town RVers typically park in the spacious parking lots of big boxes on the edge of town. Let's say you've done so but are still hitched up, and then you see the store you really want just across the street. What do you do: walk or drive? For your sake I hope you drive, as silly as that seems. There is little allowance made for pedestrians on most American streets, except in Oregon or some mountain towns in Colorado. I had a close call walking across the street in western Colorado, recently. Despite the close call, Colorado is quite good in that department. I dreaded returning to culturally backward states like Utah and Arizona.  Since western Colorado is in the gravitational field of Moab, I found a cycling newspaper and read about a tragic accident involving a cycling advocate. I started rolling the tape back over all the cyclists I've known who were smacked by cars. The next day I stopped to help a caterpillar cross the road near the B

Back to Normal

The rescued poodle was coming along fine. He and my (unnamed) new dog were confused by each other, but they will probably get along. How nice it was to get back on the road--back to normal--and drift over the high plateaus of the Southwest, those brilliantly-lit, elevated, display cases of geology. It has been a long time since I saw Shiprock near Farmington, NM. The last time I was here a friend and I were such newbies that we didn't know that it trespassing to travel on Indian reservations, off the main highways. We actually boondocked right at the base of Shiprock until a Navajo kicked us out. The main peak is an old volcanic throat. The surrounding rock, probably sandstone, has eroded away. On this visit I especially enjoyed the volcanic dikes that radiate away from the main peak. They were formed when igneous rocks oozed through cracks. They extend for  miles, but are only a few feet wide. In places they looked like a crumbling brick wall, with holes. When

An Honest Political Party?

The Socialist party in Japan pulled out of the ruling coalition, and brought down the prime minister, merely because he failed to live up to his promise to boot out a foreign invader. (The American military base in Okinawa.) The socialists in Japan showed some real integrity and guts by reacting to betrayal the way they did; contrast this with the indifference of the American Left, when the latter's "peace candidate" turned into a warmonger. Why the discrepancy? Does the "Left" mean something different in Japan than in the USA? Or is the American Left just especially spineless? Actually I don't think political ideology explains why the American Left continues to support a president who should be considered a political traitor. Demographics does. The USA is a country that has few indigenous Leftists. By 1900 or so most of Europe's intelligentsia had become Marxist (on the continent) or Fabian Socialist in England. Many of the professorships at America&

Center of Attention

There seems to be no way to photograph a raven other than silhouette. I still don't understand why everything pointed to the raven here, but I like it .