posted by jim | August 27, 2009

Ayn Rand’s books, I hear, were voted second in influence only to to the Bible in a 1991 American poll. I’m not at all surprised. If you’ve never heard of Ayn Rand and come across someone who has you are bound to be baffled, amused, fascinated, or just as likely, pissed off. Those captivated by Rand’s work find they look at the world in a completely new way and she has inspired so many Utopian Capitalist visions that I find it necessary to cover her here. (more…)

Category: Knowledge, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, psychology of efficaciousness, psychology of self esteem

posted by jim | August 26, 2009

From the blog Scratch Pad, Scott Jagow picks up on a story in the Charlotte Observer noting an increase in tobacco users growing their own. There has been high demand for seeds such as:

Virginia Gold, Goose Creek Red, Yellow Twist Bud and dozens of other tobacco varieties

I don’t only see this as a kind of a measure of how bad the economy is but another example of people getting in touch with unusual skills, nature, and a general flowering of human beings out of industrial culture. For help with this skill see New Hope Seed Company.
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posted by jim | August 24, 2009

Photo by rottenlittlerobin; some rights reserved.
I’ve been coveting a rain barrel for a while now, but my money has been going to other priorities. When my wheel barrel filled with water from an early summer downpour, I was reluctant to dump it. I knew mosquito larvae would soon show up if I let it stand, but I also wanted to save the water for my soon to be thirsty plants. That’s when I recollected a friend of mine who grew up in Sri Lanka who had told me that Beta fish occur naturally in puddles all over his former country. It occurred to me that Beta fish may like to eat mosquito larvae. So my poor man’s rain barrel was born. My kids love to watch our Beta gobble mosquito larvae (up to 50 in 15 minutes) and I do too.
Keep the water in the shade. Betas will tolerate mucky (and even green) water. If your neighbor with the pool has been foreclosed upon, don’t try to poison the larvae just toss a Beta in the pool. My Beta has survived for 3 months now on mosquito larvae alone. The beauty of using beta fish is that unlike Bacillus sphaericus and Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis mosquitos won’t evolve a tolerance to them. Betas cost about $2 per fish.

Category: Body Health DIY, DIY Food, Food, Health | No Comments »
Tags: beta fish, mosquito, rain barrel, water conservation

posted by jim | August 14, 2009

photo by Mike Licht, some rights reserved.
With Sarah Palin working on the issue, can universal health coverage be far behind? Perhaps Sarah Palin’s Death Panel will look something like this. Please see Mike Licht’s creative montage at his flickr site. So this is why Paula Abdul quit Idol!
Here are the facts:
1. The U.S. does not have the finest health care coverage in the world. It’s not even in the top 10. It is not even in the top 20. Don’t trust me. Look it up.
2. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than all first world countries and has worse results.
3. Countries with national coverage spend less per person than our current system AND they have better results.

Universal insurance is as much an Enlightenment idea as any notion of socialism. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and their friend the Marquis de Condorcet-perhaps the most utopian of them all-wrote about the use of social insurance. Here is Thomas Malthus criticizing Condorcet:

“By the application of calculations to the probablilities of life and the interest of money, he proposes that a fund should be established which should assure to the old an assistance, produced, in part, by their own former savings, and, in part, by the savings of individuals who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the benefit of it. The same, or a similar fund, should give assistance to women and children who lose their husbands, or fathers…”

Sounds a lot like our modern Social Security to me. Viva la Classical Liberalism!

Category: Body Health DIY, Community & Mutual Aid, DIY Community & Mutual Aid, Do It Ourselves Health, Health, Mental Health DIY, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: death panel, Death Panels, Healthcare, Paula Abdul, Sarah Palin