Rod's Alter Ego

Speculating on why Americans are resistant to doing something about climate change, Mr. Attenborough opined:

Attenborough said he thought the US’s attitude towards climate change and the environment was not just because of politics, but because of the country’s history. “[It’s] because they’re a pioneer country. There has been the wild west, the western frontier… that’s still there, you see it in the arms business, the right for everyone to bear arms. It’s part of the pioneer stuff that you’ve [Americans] grown up with.”

Righteo, chap. Perhaps our history would be different if not for the fact that your ancestors got a might pissy, shall we say, around my ancestor’s assertion of their independence?

The first time someone mentions something is “nearing completion”, you can bet it isn’t. Consider the claim by some neuro-scientists, “We’re closing in on how the human brain works.” Uh huh, sure.

Wikipedia nearing completion^*

* Via Slashdot.

Years ago (less so recently) I participated in discussions on an Internet newsgroup, now defunct. There I saw certain quixotic libertarians argue, supposedly on principle, that they would never a visit a national park. So far as I can recall, their reasoning was that the government ought not to own any land, all land ought to be privately owned, and since the government has violated this “ought” by asserting eminent domain over national park land, they will therefore not visit a national park. Fearing, I suppose, the cognitive dissonance that would arise in them if they enjoyed an experience they knew involved a violation of a fundamental ought of proper human action, namely, taking something, land in this case, by force. (Never mind that history records no examples to the contrary).

I was pretty quixotic myself at the time. Many who know me would say I still am. Nevertheless, the above reasoning bothered me then, and still does. Probably because I like national parks, not because they’re “national,” along with everything that entails, but because there’s cool stuff to see there; I enjoy nature. Nothing unprincipled about that. Would I prefer to hand over my entrance fee to a private property owner rather than a park ranger, sure, I suppose, but that’s not the way things Is. The way things is, is that the government has claimed ownership to these lands, and if I want to see the land I have to pay the government. (Even if you don’t want to see the land, if you pay income tax you pay anyway, but forget about that for now).

So what’s a Red Rocks lovin’ libertarian supposed to do? Forgo the pleasure of observing natural wonders? That’s inconsistent with my moral imperative to do things that make me happy. So no, even while I happen to live in a world that arguably isn’t as it ought to be, it is what it is, and there’s nothing practically I can do about that in the margins of an individual life.

Oddly, what set me to thinking about this was a short, well-reasoned article re: What libertarians really think about big corporations.

Already, the usual fallacies have resurfaced. If you don’t want the government to run education, you must be against education. If you don’t want the government to run healthcare, you must not want people to get healthcare.

This misunderstanding is often summed up with comments like, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with an ‘every man for himself’ society.” This springs from the absurd assumption that human beings never confer benefits upon one another except when forced to do so at gunpoint.

Date night at The Pour, a charitable wine ‘n foodie event for a cause we support. This year Beans Cafe will have prepared and served tens of thousands of plates of food for the less fortunate in Anchorage. Good thing the cause was good, ’cause the food ‘n wine… not so much.

Now this was good food. Huevos Rancheros with Hatch chiles prepared by the Happy Wife this morning, hand delivered to my comfy chair at kickoff. <Supplicant glance heavenward>. The first bite released the Capsaicin, like being wrapped in a Down comforter, insulation against a frosty morning outside.

Update: Dinner. Wild Alaskan Salmon (caught this summer) over orzo with a kale pesto, En Papillote (“in parchment”), before and after wrapping. Eighteen minutes @ 375^o
Paired w/Red Zinfandel.

Bigger.

Heard on National Public Radio this morning: “The current congress has passed six times less legislation than the infamous “do-nothing-congress” of 1947 & 48.”

She said it like it was a bad thing.

Does the journalist think herself wiser than former national luminaries?

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

– Will Rogers

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

– Mark Twain

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

– James Madison

The NPR piece continued by considering the preposterous proposal of outsourcing congress, making the remark of a modern luminary curiously prescient:

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

– P. J. O’Rourke

A friend asked in e-mail: Does it ship in a box, or is it the box?

The aurora borealis has been gushing lately.

Photographs by Leroy Zimmerman, captured this past week on Cleary Summit near Fairbanks, AK. Sent courtesy of Happy Wife’s brother, a proud Fairbanksian.

Go ahead, click an image to make it bigger.

Having read that kvetching against nuisances of the nanny state is pointless^[1], I felt momentarily complacent, lost my moral moorings, and actually warmed to the automatic deposit of $878 into my savings account by the administrators of the Permanent Fund Dividend program on behalf of the great state of Alaska. That’s right, free money, from the State, once a year — every year! — just for living here. Really it was $778, because I designated $100 be deducted and donated to a local outfit that succors abandoned dogs while they await adoption. You know what they don’t say: Scratch a Scrooge, find an altruist.

[1] Hat Tip John Venlet

Speaking of John, this made me think of you. A picture I took while riding my bike along the Fryingpan River near Basalt, Colorado last month. Correct me if I’m wrong, that looked like a darn good casting arc to this amateur.

Bigger.

I call the Happy Wife baby so often it set me to wondering.

Note the high cheek bones already in evidence. Some early features of dainty youth are evanescent, others honed and shaped for nothing more than the sake of beauty.

In Alaska road signage is minimal. The reason: Leaving Anchorage there is one major highway going north, another going south. Both eventually bifurcate many miles outside of town, and I suppose one could get “lost” if they veered right instead of left at either point, but barring that let’s just say there is really no reason for a GPS up here. This too is something that makes the Happy Wife happy. She loathes a six lane interstate. Hates freeways. Fears complicated signage — stay right, merge left, exit 1/4 mile, bridge out. That kinda thing. She wants simplicity of direction, like this:

Even here the two-sided black arrow is pointless for all but the clueless. If the guardrail isn’t an obvious disincentive to those who may think going straight is an option, the sloshing water of Turnagain Arm one hundred feet beyond should be. I’m guessing it’s a cover yer ass sign erected by the D.O.T., something the police can point to when they’re pulling an RV full of tourists from a rushing tide: Didn’t you see the sign?

Going right here will take us home, to our primary residence, while left leads to what we hope (!) will soon become our second home.

Sneak preview: View From The Porch.

Bigger.

Cut back those pesky alders and the view of Resurrection Bay, I think you’d agree, could center a man. If not also impoverish him. But as the Happy Wife correctly pointed out, we shouldn’t save everything for the future. What if The Future doesn’t arrive? An important point I was unfit to refute. I admit to possessing a feature of fiscal conservatism that has limited my ventures, probably since the time I was a baby. And so it happened we traveled south this weekend to greet the house inspector who confirmed our belief that the place had “good bones”, although he did find an issue or two that will need to be addressed. Nothing I suppose is ever perfect, and that should not be the enemy of the good.

Video proof for the sake of posterity.

The unequivocally worse call by a “referee” in an NFL game — ever.

Victim: Packers.

 

You ask, why the scare quotes around referee? Because on the evidence many are incompetent to referee an NFL game. Reportedly, some have been fired as referees in the LFL, that’s right, not even competent to call a game between women dressed in bras and panties.

Sheesh.