that I may be going through a divorce very soon. Coincidentally, we are taking a vacation next week. Should be fun?
Haha, thunder just crashed outside, nice timing.
http://www.chimay.com/en/chimay_blue_220.php
This is pricey, but it's worth buying every once in a while. It's a Trappist ale, which in my experience are usually near perfect beers.
Its sweet and malty with a little bit of spicy hops. Nice deep cloudy red color. Very mellow aroma, like bread. Its hard to tell that its 9% alcohol because its VERY smooth. I find that it tastes best when its cool/lukewarm. It has a certain typical 'Belgian' flavor that may be due to the yeast, but I'm not sure.
If it didn't cost so much I'd buy it all the time. Absolutely excellent.
I was going to comment this in Ursus' blog post on decriminalization, but his slate has been wiped clean. It statistically documents the predictable benefits of Portugal's decriminalization of drug use.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13784156/Drug-De...ato-White-Paper
The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency
This article reminded me of a CFR essay by Benn Steil titled The End of National Currency that I read a couple of years ago. Steil's essay is remarkably astute, not only for his understanding of national fiat currencies, but of the nature of gold as real money as determined by thousands of years of human interaction. While I would welcome the end of nationalistic currencies, I utterly detest the idea of a global 'paper' currency manipulated by a global central bank. In fact, I think it would eventually lead to another dark age. I just hope that any superseding currency is based on something with real value, and not subject to manipulation by a political class.
BTW, are you guys ready for the bust in commercial real-estate and Treasury bonds?
Volumes 1 and 2 of Murray Rothbard's History of Economic Thought:
1 Economic Thought Before Adam Smith
2 Classical Economics
This should keep me occupied for a long time.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php?semesterid=2009-B
There's a few new courses in there, weee
Oxford http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/ has podcast from Bryan Ward-Perkins on the Fall of the Roman Empire:
http://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxitems/generater...estination=poau
Stanford http://itunes.stanford.edu/rss.html has lectures on Hannibal, Virgil's Aeneid, and Historical Jesus:
http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.w...372.01374259374
http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.w...057.01292339062
http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.w...182.01291405187
Dr. Steve Brule
More Dr. Steve Brule
Dogfish Head Olde School Barleywine
Sweet lord. This is a fucking punch in the head compared to Flying Dog's Horn Dog Barleywine. Horn dog is sweet and malty, this stuff is more like a strong bock. Then again its 15% alcohol. There's definitely more hops and it has a somewhat bitter and citrusy taste underneath the noticeable alcohol, but not enough to outdo the barley. Each sip warms the full length of your gullet and in no time, you'll try to stand up and nearly crash through the coffee table.
Break out the black light, its time to trip out. 1.618
The music really starts at 2:17
Rates: When Zero Is Way Too High
I believe the article is mistaken on a lot of things but, they are correct about increasing credit expansion in order to prevent the onset of recession. In fact, the rate has to increase exponentially. However, that can't happen indefinitely. A deep recession cannot be avoided, only postponed and exacerbated.The Theoretical Explanation of the Process of Stagflation (according to Austrian school economics - Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, etc):I believe we have experienced A, are now experiencing B, and are heading into C. Meaning we are trying to indefinitely postpone the consequences of the previous boom with an even larger and ever accelerating monetary boom. In fact, the last boom was the postponement of the 'dot-com' bust. This doesn't hinge on nominal percentage rates of interest though, there are multitudes of ways to initiate credit expansion. BTW, these are the six microeconomic reversion effects (apply it to the housing market during the boom):1. The rise in the price of the original means of production.2. The subsequent rise in the price of consumer goods.3. The substantial relative increase in the accounting profits of the companies from the stages closest to final consumption.4. The "Ricardo Effect." (inflation pushing down the real value of wages, causing an incentive to use labor instead of capital goods and intermediate products)5. The increase in the loan rate of interest. Rates even exceed pre credit-expansion levels.6. The appearance of accounting losses in companies operating in the stages relatively more distant from consumption: the inevitable advent of the crisis.
I just remembered a concert I went to some years ago. It was Opeth at the Fox Theater in Boulder and I don't remember exactly what year it was. Opeth is what you might call progressive death metal from Sweden. In Opeth's case, its death metal blended with 70's prog and jazz. Anyways, right before the show starts, I turn around and right behind me is a 70-something year old man and his wife, both looking very excited to be there.
You might think that they'd be old hippies or perhaps adhere to some sort of darker subculture, but they looked like they came straight from church. He had on his button up shirt and a vest with slacks and loafers, she had what could have been a hand-knitted sweater over a button up shirt and slacks. The white hair surrounding his bald pate was short and combed back, her hair was short and permed. Their eyeglasses looked outdated. They gushed about how much they enjoyed Opeth's music and had driven quite a ways to make it to the show and they enthusiastically but gingerly bobbed their heads during the performance.
I wonder how many elderly couples in rural towns are sitting in their favorite chairs, knitting a sweater or perusing a Harriet Carter calatog, and rocking out to death metal.
Opeth - The Drapery Falls
Yes, that's Cousin It on the bass.
So I'm totally wasted, and I feel like writing something. I'm not drunk because it's New Year's, I'm drunk because I had to spend my New Year's Eve with in-laws and I find that I'm far more indifferent with some beer and liquor in me than I would be otherwise. That's only half of the reason though, the other half is that I've decided to be a drunk while read a giant tome of four Ernest Hemingway novels that I picked up at Barnes and Noble for a fucking pittance. The idea might be ridiculous or it might just be the best way to read a drunk's literature.
Usually, I'd put away a 6-pack of beer in a week at the most. With my affinity for microbrews and Belgian style beers, you'd think that I'd be drinking a lot of beer. Well, you'd be right, but again, that's only half the story. I've been drinking a lot of whiskey and rum, straight up and in cocktails. Early morning projectile vomiting during my younger years had instilled in me a great nauseating aversion to the mere whiff of any liquor. However, after a decade or so, I have been de-conditioned. I find that not only can I tolerate the flavour of a fine liquor, I can lucidly pay attention to it's flavor and appreciate the reasons why one merits a greater cost than another. I'm also a big fan of mead. The drier, the better.
A strange side-effect has been that I am becoming much more motivated... something that has been seriously lacking in my life since I more than doubled my income by working for our joke of a government. If you thought Catch 22 was just humorous fiction, then you really don't understand the severity of the situation. Anyways, motivation for long neglected projects in addition to entrepreneurial ideas have been welling forth recently, which sort of frightens me. It's definitely something I want and need, but I don't plan on drinking like this for more than a few weeks...
Aaaaannnd you may recognize this as the song from the Geico commercial
I've had an ancient eMachines computer sitting in the closet for who knows how long, along with a bunch of near obsolete computer parts. While doing some spring cleaning the other day, I pondered how I could put it to any use. It would be too slow to tolerably use as a personal computer with its 9 year old Celeron processor (even though I managed to scrounge up 256MB of PC133 RAM to replace its measly 32MB) and its 4GB hard drive would be nearly filled to capacity if Windows XP or 2000 were to be installed on it along with the requisite software.
I then recalled that there is a Linux distribution designed to turn old obsolete PCs into first rate firewall/routers called IpCop. As it turns out, I had two unused network cards which were to provide the 'in' and the 'out' ports required to use the PC as a firewall/router. Yay!!! I burned the install CD, loaded it on the old clunker (as per directions), configured my old basic router to function as a switch, hooked it all up, and it's working GREAT. It is far more secure and has far more options than my old $30 router. If you have an old computer, I would definitely recommend not throwing it away. Put it to good use protecting your newer computers. It may sound daunting but its actually pretty simple if you can read directions. Everything you could possibly need to know is in the instructions or just a Google search away. The best part is that its free!!
Here's my recommendation to all the chocolate lovers:
Chocolove 61% Dark Chocolate Bar
This tops any other chocolate I've had, though I admittedly don't go out of my way to find new chocolate to taste. It's like crack.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php?semesterid=27
There's some interesting courses that I haven't seen in the previous semesters:
Shakespeare
Modern Physics: From the Atom to Big Science
The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present
Introduction to Design of Human Work Systems and Organizations
Information Law and Policy
Existentialism in Literature and Film
American Politics:Campaign Strategy - Media
Developmental Psychopathology
Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument
Unfortunately, I can usually only keep up on a couple at a time.
