It’s rainy and cold here in The Woods and I am writing this with about 48 hours to go before the end of the month – and about 24 percent left to go, pie chart-wise.
UPDATE: Just 18 percent to go… we’re almost there!
It’s been really quiet the last few days – and I’m hoping it’s just because of the holiday weekend and not because of some site issue I haven’t noticed on my end (remember, I am not a web site-savvy guy; I can fix your carburetor but I know as much about “code” as I do about women, which isn’t much).
Anyhow, this is a literal last-minute appeal. I know times are tough all around. Trust me. But the bottom line is EPautos is almost entirely dependent on you, the readers. The few advertiser we have help – but it is very difficult to get advertisers (real ones, who actually pay to have their ads posted) because of Goo-guhl’s “company town” domination of the Internet and thereby, of Internet advertising. Most of you know this story.
You also know – I hope – that I don’t shill and whether you agree or disgree with the views expressed here, they aren’t bought-and-paid for views a la Limbaugh and Beck and the rest. I’m not looking to make a buck off you. I will not urge you to buy gold… now. Or freeze-dried fish heads, either.
I’m here to throw light on the roaches – and stomp them, where possible. Or at the least, reveal them to be cockroaches. Someone’s gotta do it.
With your help, I can.
I’ll be on Tom Woods’ podcast tomorrow at 10 East Coast time, by the way.
Thanks again to all of you for making this work!
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The Pedestrian
To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of pavement in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D., 2053 or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.
Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden grey phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomb-like building was still open.
Mr Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.
On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, towards the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.
‘Hello, in there,’ he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. ‘What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?’
The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in mid-country. If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the centre of a plain, a wintry, windless Arizona desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the streets, for company.
‘What is it now?’ he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. ‘Eight-thirty p.m.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?’
Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of pavement. The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not one in all that time.
He came to a clover-leaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the petrol stations open, a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions. But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.
He turned back on a side street, circling around towards his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn towards it.
A metallic voice called to him:
‘Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!’ He halted.
‘Put up your hands!’ ‘But-‘ he said.
‘Your hands up! Or we’ll shoot!’
The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn’t that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.
‘Your name?’ said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn’t see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes.
‘Leonard Mead,’ he said.
‘Speak up!’
‘Leonard Mead!’
‘Business or profession?’
‘I guess you’d call me a writer.”
“No profession,’ said the police car, as If talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.
‘You might say that,’ said Mr Mead. He hadn’t written in years. Magazines and books didn’t sell any more. Everything went on in the tomb-like houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the grey or multi-coloured lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.
‘No profession,’ said the phonograph voice, hissing. ‘What are you doing out?’
‘Walking,’ said Leonard Mead.
‘Walking!’
‘Just walking,’ he said simply, but his face felt cold.
‘Walking, just walking, walking?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Walking where? For what?’
‘Walking for air. Walking to see.’
‘Your address!’
‘Eleven South Saint James Street.’
‘And there is air in your house, you have an air conditioner, Mr Mead?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.
‘Are you married, Mr Mead?’
‘No.’
‘Not married,’ said the police voice behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were grey and silent.
‘Nobody wanted me,’ said Leonard Mead with a smile.
‘Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!’
Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.
“Just walking, Mr Mead?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you haven’t explained for what purpose.’
‘I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk.’
‘Have you done this often?’
‘Every night for years.’
The police car sat in the centre of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.
‘Well, Mr Mead,’ it said.
‘Is that all?’ he asked politely.
‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘Here.’ There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide.
‘Get in.’
‘Wait a minute, I haven’t done anything!’
‘Get in.’
‘I protest!’
‘Mr Mead.’
He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no-one in the front seat, no-one in the car at all.
‘Get in.’
He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh anti¬septic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.
‘Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi,’ said the iron voice. ‘But – ‘
‘Where are you taking me?’
The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. ‘To the Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies. ‘
He got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.
They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.
‘That’s my house,’ said Leonard Mead.
No-one answered him.
The car moved down the empty river- bed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty pavements, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.
Mr. Lawson was strapped into a wooden chair and wearing only white boxer shorts, a diaper and socks, began yelling after his executioners placed a leather mask over his face.
His words were not clear through the double-paned windows of the death chamber, but he seemed to scream “I’m human! I’m human!” as the airtight door to the room was clamped shut.
The screams continued for about five minutes as cyanide gas rose about him. At 2:01 A.M., Mr. Lawson convulsed. He gasped several times, and was then still.
“I am a human being, no more and no less than any other human being,” Mr. Lawson said earlier in his final statement. “It is no more right for the State of North Carolina to take my life than it was for me to kill Wayne Shinn. I’m sorry I killed Wayne Shinn. I hope North Carolina will one day be sorry that they killed me.”
Mr. Lawson had contended that televising his execution would give his life meaning. Mr. Donahue, an opponent of the death penalty, maintained that the public has the right to see executions, to decide whether capital punishment is right or wrong. State officials said televising the execution would make a circus of it.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/16/us/killer-executed-after-losing-videotape-request.html
I hope America finishes going bankrupt and some other group of less murdery people are able to come in here and broadcast 24 hours a day to the world all the hideous inhuman things you’ve been up to the last few decades. It’s really incredible when you stop to think about the violent depravity even the humblest school marm cheers for while watching her shows and reading her tales of brute death squad actions every day.
A more essential equation. It encompasses good old E=MC2, this is would be the equivalent but higher level equation that truly makes the world go round. N=KE2. Where N is the Nutzen, the amount of benefit. And K is the amount of Kosten or effort and cost expended in hopes of gaining the benefit. And E is the amount of energy created via the loss of mass of the underlying matter that makes up our beings and minds.
You forgot to include the cost of government
Govt is like an enigma machine. It encodes and confounds the inputs you give it on the one end. Then later on the other end someone else decodes and unwinds what was put into it and nothing has really happened except a lot of confusion and deception for everyone.
Now that there’s an internet, there’s really no use for the ancient game of govt espionage and subterfuge. It can all be done with a lot less bloodshed and waste of resources in CGI.
The people that still like govt, are kind of like the kind of people that still like typewriters. They kind of get attached to the heft and clickety clack of thing, and then miss it when its gone.
There’s nothing an old model govt system can do that can’t be done cheaper and more interestingly on the internet. And in fraction of the time. Though for the life of me, I don’t see the appeal of being told what to do by a couple of gears and plug wires. Just doesn’t seem like fun at all. Nor would I want govt computers keeping track of me and telling me what I need to do.
Govt enigma machine
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/EnigmaMachineLabeled.jpg
The corporatists want to be Gods and Masters of goods. The ruling class and sole source of products such as tools.
How hand tools are made
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH-jjv2obxE
If you buy into their false dichotomy, you help perpetuate their impoverishing dialectic.
That there are “good” people who own the means of production and provide goods available for sale using the only the approved method of fiat commerce.
And there are “bad” people who make knockoffs of legal goods. Sinister asians in dens of iniquity in Wenzhou, where chained orphans are made to create the tools in slave like conditions by heartless communist overlords with whips and morsels of moldy bread just barely sufficient to keep the worker mundanes alive.
The truth of the matter is neither of these. A produced good is always a good no matter the method used to provide it. If I have a pliers in my hand that functions well enough, why should I listen to some clover haranguing me about the unjust way this good was constructed and then provided to me?
If we don’t demand the right to make all goods and services are selves, or get them any way we can. We become pathetic thralls of all manner of dastardly enslavers and creators of false scarcities.
“why should I listen to some clover haranguing me about the unjust way this good was constructed and then provided to me?”
Exactly. You keep hearing about ‘free trade vs. fair trade.’ So what exactly is ‘fair trade’? Fair trade is when you have 2 parties both happy that they are better off after an exchange than they were before. Win-win. And that never happens when the gunvermin get involved.
Kosten-Nutzen-Freude is not a word. But it should be. The joy of market. Of being of use through one’s effort and skill. Giving what some other wants, so you might get what you want.
A more essential equation. It encompasses good old E=MC2, this is would be the equivalent but higher level equation that truly makes the world go round. N=KE2. Where N is the Nutzen, the amount of benefit. And K is the amount of Kosten or effort and cost expended in hopes of gaining the benefit. And E is the amount of energy created via the loss of mass of the underlying matter that makes up our beings and minds.
In a few minutes, No God No Master will be on showtime. But I can’t wait to view my “paid” corporatist version of the good. So I’m already making a headstart by watching the “anarchist” version of this hit piece on anarchism
No God No Master
http://www.auroravid.to/video/39e0e75a8b6bd
No God No Master
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_God,_No_Master
As an anarchist, I place higher value on the cost benefit exchange. Both ways are valid. Because a giant corporation provided this movie. And some schnook on the internet dubbed and then posted this very same movie.
I live for the joy of the exchange. Property itself is useless, if people don’t have reasonable ways to exchange it joyfully with each other, IMHO.
engineered bacteria produces alcohol fuel and reduces surplus atmospheric CO2
https://archive.is/wBw4n