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Rants July 25, 2010

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1. Does anything ever change? Here’s an email that says: You will get more energy, better sleep, increase in strength, greater flexibility, enhanced balance and healthier blood. That’s the same claims made 150 years ago by snake oil salesmen and their product was sometimes 80 percent alcohol.

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2. What you are about to hear is my translation of an interesting item I read in a Dutch newspaper. It was also on television in Holland the same week. For what it is worth I’m passing it along to you because you might have always thought that the latest fashions were dictated by a few weirdos in New York City and Paris. Listen to this: Young boys in Europe walk around with their pants low on their buttocks, a fashion that began with American prisoners who walked around with their pants low on their buttocks because they had to give up their belts. --- Pubers in Europa lopen met de spijkerbroek laag op de billen, ooit begonnen als kledingstijl van Amerikaanse gevangenen (die met hun broek op de billen lopen omdat ze hun riem moeten inleveren).

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3. Here’s a quote from Oliver Goldsmith. Many years ago I heard Julian Rubenstein say the same thing and because I don’t have any reason to believe that Julian ever read Oliver Goldsmith, we will have to assume that Julian and Goldsmith both have the gift of being able to tap into the universal well of wisdom. Goldsmith said, “when any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house, I ever took care to lend him a riding coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes an horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.”

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4. Florida. Oh, speaking of Florida, Captain Wally was in to visit me the other day. Capt. Wally says he heard The humble Farmer radio show out of WDNA Miami way down in the Keys on Marathon because he was on a sailboat with 70 foot or so mast with an antenna on top of that. So, if you want to hear The humble Farmer show but are sometimes too far from the tower that puts it out, buy yourself a yacht with a 70 foot mast with a radio antenna on the top of that. Or listen to one of the dozens of shows that are posted on my web page.

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5. Can you think of an organization that doesn’t have a board that dictates policy? Museums. Libraries. Public radio stations. The list is endless. Have you ever thought about the kind of people you see on almost every one of those boards? Well --- in our gropings for political correctness we have been impressed with our need for diversity. That’s why you are now likely to see all races, ethnicities, genders and ages on all these boards and committees. What a triumph for our great Democracy. So now, my fellow American, the good news is --- that as long as you can get a few nights off from that second job you have to work evenings just to make ends meet, you will probably be invited to serve on several boards. --- And just like everyone else on those boards, be issued a private parking place for your new Mercedes.

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6. Radio friend Gerry called my attention to an article by Garrett Hardin. Although I haven’t read the entire thing, I think Hardin concludes that there is no foreseeable technical solution to the continual increase of human populations and their standard of living on a finite planet. How smart to you have to be to figure that one out? Let us peruse the attendant ramifications. Think about it. How many people can you get into a phone booth or a Volkswagen? There might always be room for one more body, but eventually the amount of living space necessary to maintain one’s sanity is gone. --- And isn’t that space worth something? Ok, You saw the woman on television who lives with 260 cats? So, yes, ok. You’re right. It can be done, some people can do it, but they key words here are continual increase. How about 500 cats? Or 1,000 cats? There must be a point when even the world’s most fanatical cat lover says, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to put that kitten in a weighted bag and throw it overboard.” We’re talking about crowding here and it doesn’t matter if it’s cats or people. Only so many will fit into a finite space. Have you ever read Isaac Assimov’s essays on how long it is going to take to fill this planet with standing room only for human beings? Even endless war and starvation, which have given us the breathing space we have today, aren’t slowing things down. My goodness. It looks like that without even thinking about it we have here an essay on the necessity of birth control.

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7. Thank you for your emails. Someone sent me an article in which we read that suicide bombers don’t have to be crazy or irrational. You can think of many people who have been considered heroes for choosing to kill themselves so they could kill others. Our Japanese airplane pilot friends come quickly to mind. Sampson is a classic example of a person who killed himself in order to kill his enemies. You even saw Clint Eastwood going that route in one of his more recent movies. Although I hope that you and I never find ourselves in a situation where we’d kill ourselves to kill others, I don’t suppose it hurts to understand the social factors that motivate people who do.

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8. We read that a gubernatorial candidate here in Maine said. "... people are tired of ... seeing regulations get tougher and tougher and tougher.” Let’s get behind the rhetoric and figure out what this means. "... people are tired of ... seeing regulations get tougher and tougher and tougher.” Hasn’t it always been your understanding that regulations are necessary for the safe and sane functioning of society? Business brings these regulations upon itself. Do you like the regulations that ensure the beef you buy in the store hasn’t dropped in a pile of manure? Do you like the regulations that force your neighbor to have brakes on his car so he won’t run over your kid? Do you like the regulations that keep harmful chemicals from seeping into your water supply? Under the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, leave business alone and it will take care of itself was the order of the day. Roosevelt inherited the financial mess Coolidge and Hoover left behind and prudently regulated the banks so we would not have another recession. Bush removed Roosevelt’s regulations, the banks robbed the country blind, and now history is repeating itself. Hard times --- for poor people. No jobs --- for poor people. No money. Too many voters don’t know this and corporate America has chosen to ignore it or cover it up and you can be sure it will happen again.

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9. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is addicted to Netflicks. Her best friend gave her a year’s subscription to Netflicks and Marsha sometimes watches two commercial-free movies every night. Marsha’s father, my buddy Bill, watched golf, so just from living in a home with him, I inadvertently learned all about the prowess of V. J. Singh, Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Now, from the next room I also get to hear scraps of screams, groans and gunshots from Netflicks. Last night as I stood and ate my evening dish of cereal I even watched Jody Foster all alone with two bad boys on a subway train. One of the bad boys walked up to Jody Foster, rubbed a knife all over her face, and with words and deeds implied that he was going to do something bad to her. She pulled out a gun and blew them both away. In another film Crocodile Dundee was also approached by a bad boy who said, “I’ve got a knife.” You will recall that one of the most unforgettable moments in modern film follows when the hero laughs and says, “That ain’t a knife. This is a knife,” and pulls out a sheet of metal that would have intimidated Spartacus. Then there was Clint Eastwood who is minding his own business, as usual, in a barber shop when not one, not two but three bullies proceed to take him on, ignorant of the gun in his hand beneath the barber’s cloth. Like the vindictive Jody Foster, Clint quickly protects himself. My question is, of course, should these three people have gone through official channels and reported the bad guys to the proper authorities, or were they justified by what some might describe as an unnecessary use of force?

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10. You know all about Adam Smith, Gregor Mendel, Thomas Malthus and John Nash. They pretty well figured out how the system worked --- for their day. But each new generation has its own problems that can only be evaluated and solved by a contemporary. Take, for example, the illegal immigration “problem” that our venerable political candidates feel obligated to pay lip service to nowadays. You can be sure that as long as the powers that be know that their candidate will only whine and snivel about illegal immigration and won’t actually do something to stop it, the candidate can probably count on getting elected. A would-be economist in St. George recently told me that illegal immigration would very likely be unheard of if minimum wage were $15 an hour everywhere in the country. He is convinced that as long as they didn’t buy health insurance, go to college, get sick, or drive an American car, a single person could live pretty well on $15 an hour or $30,000 a year. At $15 an hour uneducated American citizens, who were born into welfare and stayed on welfare because it paid more than minimum wage, would suddenly discover an advantage in going to work. And with a minimum wage of $15 an hour, employers would no longer welcome illegal immigrants willing to work for less. Meat packers, owners of sprawling vacation homes and fruit farmers could no longer profit by welcoming busloads of people who snuck across the border. With all of the most unpleasant menial tasks being performed by American citizens, there would be no place in the workforce for illegal aliens. Well, it might not earn my St. George friend a Nobel Prize, but outside of reproducing Qin Shi Huang’s Great Wall and decorating it with machine guns, I haven’t heard of a practical alternate plan, have you?

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11. A friend recently directed me to a video on illegal immigration. Although illegal immigration has an unpleasant ring to some ears, our only real problem is controlling the world's population growth. If couples limited themselves to no more than one child, within 100 years we’d have a world population like our grandparents enjoyed in 1900 and an amazing number of the world’s present problems would melt away. Everyone knows that American employers need illegal immigrants who will work for low wages and no health benefits. So --- as long as the business community in America can't function without illegal immigrants, they will be permitted to slip in. To be fair, let’s remember that slavery was the enabling cornerstone in all great ancient civilizations. And do we not all benefit by lower prices every time we buy something that is produced by an underpaid illegal immigrant? How can I complain about illegal immigrants when I’m supporting the system with almost every dollar I spend in the store? Remember that besides enjoying the Every Day Low Prices you get with illegal immigration, you can also throw back your shoulders and say, "I buy Made in America."

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