Wednesday--

We expect mid 60s today.  Cloudy this morning but that should burn off.  Thinking about what I should clear out next in the gardens.  I have peppers I should take, clean and freeze.  And I have peppermint to harvest and dry.  Of course, the usual clean up chores continue.

Gaius Publius has a post on Naked Capitalism which says exactly what other critics of our so-called capitalism.  It is very far removed from any meaningful definition of the term.  I like his comparison of our current social arrangements to the predation pyramid.  It fits like a glove.  Pay special attention to the discussion of "markets" and how much of the supposedly "free" market is heavily subsidized by our tax dollars.  A couple of critics have brought up the topic of corporate "welfare queens" but the mainstream media never notices.  They prefer the Repthuglican talking points about the poor (decomposers on the above mentioned pyramid.)  They would rather take pennies from the poor that the millions and billions of dollars given to corporations who pay little in taxes and move jobs out of the country.

Another take on the dilemma of Big Oil from Mark Shapiro at Grist.  There has been a seismic shift in our society and our economy over the last thirty years or so and a lot of the major players are finding that their positions have been eroded while their attention has been elsewhere.  Or they may have seen the first tentative signs of that shift and dismissed them with a shrug and the notion that "this too shall pass" and the good times will roll again.  Maybe; but probably not.

Last week or the week before I linked to a story about a major U.S. company that decided not to require college degrees of its job applicants.  They said the degrees didn't adequately predict how successful (or not) the applicant would be and had nothing to do with the demands of the job.  Now a small private liberal arts school, Hampshire College, will no longer accept SAT/ACT scores from their applicants.  Other schools had made the scores optional but Hampshire has gone a step further and simply won't accept the scores.  They make a damned good case for their policy.

I follow the controversies over Muslim women's veils with interest.  Much of the controversy is driven by xenophobic idiocy and a patronizing notion that westerners know what impels Muslim women to accept what ever form of veil they choose.  But in the course of following that story thread I come across stories of women donning veils which cause hardly a ripple in the media or in the political world.  Why?  Because the women veiling aren't Muslim.  They are Christian and even a few Pagan women who see it as part of their devotion to which ever deity they feel called by.  Some wear their veils at prayer or ritual; others, all the time.