Month: August 2017

Miscellaneous Rambling

Here’s a story about a Russian con artist who ripped off investors for well over a billion dollars. The thing I found fascinating: Many of his victims were from Nigeria. Nigeria is the land of fraudsters. I remember hearing once that it’s remarkably rich in natural resources, and there’s no reason the country shouldn’t be a first world country, but the people are so busy ripping one another off, they can’t accomplish anything productive. For this Russian to come in and out-Nigerian the Nigerians? Impressive.

CNN tries to tug at the injustice heart strings with this story: Father and son fight for a country which doesn’t allow them to vote. It’s about people in Guam who serve in our armed forces but aren’t allowed to vote in presidential elections. I’ll give two rips once I see an article entitled, “Twenty-year-olds fight for a country that doesn’t allow them to drink a beer.”

Cool story: A Boom in Confederate Monuments, on Private Land. Of course, it’s the New York Times, a rag that could find racism in bathroom hygiene methods, so the entire article is marinated in racism, but it’s funny to see Confederal monuments going up all over the place. To every action there’s a reaction. … Read the rest

Miscellaneous Rambling

I took Jack and Michael (3rd and 4th kids) out for dinner last night. Of course, they had plans for the evening, so we had to eat early, at 5:00. Which I don’t mind, but the double gin and tonics took an early toll on me.

You’ll forgive typos. surely.

MAXimum Greens is coming along nicely. We have our first beet crop coming in this weekend. I grew the beets for their greens (they do well in the heat of summer), but we had such a mild summer, I didn’t need them to round out the salad mixes, so now I’m getting ready to harvest the beets themselves. A first for me and MAXimum Greens.

“Still flailing desperately like a half-crushed bug about its electoral defeat last November, the modern left is tossing the term “white supremacist” at any suspected counterrevolutionaries with the same zealous abandon that Antifa chucks urine-filled bottles at old white ladies who wave American flags.” Jim Goad.

Amazon Deals of the Day… Read the rest

Bullets

*I guess we’ll find out if slander is afforded immunity status: Christian Group Sues SPLC and Amazon Over ‘Hate Group’ Designation.

**If there’s an ounce of justice left in the system, the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center will pay here. I suspect they’ll defend, at least partly, on ground that they’re merely expressing an opinion, and opinions can’t be slanderous, but that’d be bogus. They clothe their hate lists with a patina of sociology (as seen with their refracted glasses), so to say theirs is merely an opinion, would be deny what they claim to represent: objective truth about who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.

***Of course, they might just “go all in” and claim the Christian group is a hate group because they’re against gay marraige (or against universal health care, or against Hillary, or whatever you dispute). I’m curious to see what the court does with that one. … Read the rest

Miscellaneous Rambling

Wow, Hurrican Harvey turned out to be historic: It’s the first time since the advent of The Weather Channel that a tropical storm has been under-hyped.

Worth three minute of your life: Keynesian Economics and the Great Depression (video).

And so we inch closer to book burning: Orpheum theater won’t show ‘Gone With the Wind,’ calling film ‘insensitive’.

Actually, I take that back. We aren’t inching toward book burning. We are leaping toward it. We are, literally, watching freedom of speech, religion, and association get obliterated. I always figured there would be another persecution against Catholics and serious Christians. I just didn’t see it coming at the hands of guys dressed as girls. That’s like some freaky nightmare where a clown is trying to kill you with a spiked rubber fish.

It won’t be long before they proscribe The Cosby Show for demeaning black culture by showing a black family living like white people. … Read the rest

Revelation on Tap: Vatican I and the “Amoris Laetitia” Controversy https://t.co/b712h9zstJ

— The Daily Eudemon (@TheDailyEudemon) August 26, 2017

“As Brian Tierney has argued in Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350, the doctrine was originally conceived as a bridle—preventing popes from contradicting their predecessors—rather than a permission to alter established doctrines and practices. Put another way, it was a way of re-affirming—against the backdrop of an increasingly powerful medieval papacy—Catholic belief in the definitive and final nature of Christian revelation, by which the papacy, too, is bound.”… Read the rest

Brews You Can Use

Not much today. I went to Cedar Point yesterday . . . with all seven kids! It was the first all-kid outing in, I think, two years.

Max and I are already kicking around ideas for next year at MAXimum Greens. We’ve decided that we are going to launch a good website and hopefully take orders through it. Max is taking the lead on that project. We think we’re going to offer memberships: $100 membership paid up front gets you $125 (or $150 . . . we’re working on details) worth of produce during 2018. And I’m toying with the idea of trying to capitalize on the cocktail fad by marketing crops used in cocktails. This latter is just a whim at this point, but I’m going to dive back into The Drunken Botanist to see if the idea might have legs. If nothing else, it’ll give me a reason to read that fun book.

My first Theology on Tap session is September 20th. Email me for details. The first lecture: “A History of the Catholic Church in 30 Minutes.” I’ve greatly enjoyed diving back headlong into my history studies. It’s been years. I had forgotten how thrilling I’ve always found history. Two history professors at Michigan took me aside and suggested I should pursue a doctorate in history, noting that I seemed to have a special knack for it. In retrospect, I wish I had taken their advice. I think it is my natural academic calling, but at this point, I’ll have to be content with making it my amateurish pursuit. … Read the rest