Occupation of Independence

I wonder if a Go-Pro isn't the right technology for somebody interested in outdoor photographs and other applications.  It seems like a digital camera or smartphone is unavailable whenever something interesting happens.  Surprising and moving events seem more interesting than static poses. Younger dogs sure are great at jumping.  The other day  Q.t.𝞹 was charging a tree because she spotted a chipmunk up there.  I couldn't believe her vertical launches!  Was she actually trying to climb the tree? With a Go-Pro mounted on my head maybe I could understand her technique, after watching it in slow motion.  Perhaps her body still had upward momentum when she contacted the tree with her paws, and that made it look like she was taking another jump from the tree rather than from the ground.  After all, dogs have straight claws rather than the curved ones they would need for real climbing. Straight claws are only good for digging in the ground. Grizzlies have straight claws.  Black bear

  Many Baby-Boomers had parents who went through the Great Depression. They would sometimes tell anecdotes to their children that might have seemed exaggerated to the children. The children would also tend to roll their eyes when their parents displayed frugality that seemed laughably out-of-date. I am starting to wonder if there is another reason for the parents' frugal consumer behavior. Last post I talked about how inflation will cause substitution; that is, products will use cheaper and cheaper materials. They will take every shortcut imaginable. How much cheapening can happen before a consumer starts to dislike shopping? When every new purchase produces a disappointment, won't a consumer start to dread buying anything that isn't absolutely necessary? It is hard for older consumers not to make negative comparisons.  Maybe there is a point where the cheapening actually starts to offend and disgust them. Products, companies, and retailers start to seem like scumbags to th

 There was a time in the 1970s, during a decade or more of stagflation, when people must have been discouraged. How could they ever break out of the trap? And then Paul Volcker came along and administered 'shock and awe' to the interest rates. In a year and a half, the stagflation era was over. Can it happen again? I would like to think so, but I can't. The country is just too hooked on low-interest rates and helicopter money. Real life will go forward based on substituting inferior goods for better goods and then using deceptive labelling. When was the last time you bought Swiss cheese? Did you notice that it doesn't have holes in it, anymore? I suppose that is because of "adjustments" (aka, cheapenings) to the aging process. What really matters is that Swiss cheese now tastes like cheap rubber with some yellow food coloring. What is to stop new Extra Sharp Cheddar cheese from being the same as yesterday's Sharp Cheddar? It won't show up as inflation

It is always satisfying to start the return trip (on a bike ride) at a nice view. In this part of the world, the scenic spot is more likely to be a lake or meadow than a mountain. The meadow was packed with purple flowers which I am too lazy to identify. It was too soggy to walk through that meadow so I couldn't really get a photo that does it justice.   Just before taking the photo, a large mother elk crossed the meadow with a young calf following her. Believe it or not I was more delighted with a different animal. It has been years since I have seen a snail. It was fleeing soggy soil apparently, and was posed in the middle of a smooth dark gravel road. I couldn't believe how much of its body stuck out of the shell, and yet it would draw all of the body back into the shell. As Wikipedia explained, after tripping over its own tongue in a few paragraphs of jargon, a snail is basically a slug with a backpack. A few years ago I photographed this slug: I feel sorry for his optometr

It would take somebody more clever and devious than me to make sense of what the Elites of Nato-stan (USA and Europe) really expect in the long term. Consider the neo-Con block in West Nato-stan (the USA). Do they really think this is still 1946 or 1991?, and that the USA can keep ruling planet Earth as the great Uni-Power? Look at the economy of the USA! It sent its industrial base to China. Its economy is based on nothing more than money-printing, services, government employees, entertainment industry trash, real-estate speculation, and diploma manufacturing.  How much of that is real? How much does the rest of the world need? Perhaps the War uni-Party (both Democrats and Republicans) thinks that industry doesn't really matter as long as you have the 'greatest military ever.' Where did they get the idea that the US military was all that great?  It has fought countries in the Mid-East that had no air force, and then lost most of these wars anyway. Apparently American Elit