Thursday.

Anyone surprised by this should remember that Germany had a social security system fifty-odd years before we enacted it.  And anythings similar would go against our society's habit of monetizing everything and forcing those who can't pay outright to put themselves into hock forever to provide profits to the finance and (mis)education industries.

Friday.

Lazy day yesterday.  Didn't do anything on the patio and didn't feel like commenting on anything.  Let's see if my get-up-and-go has come back home.

As usual, I follow a bit of the news on ebola but I have noticed a tinge of hysteria in quite a number of sites (news and other.)  I am amazed at the level of strident concern because we have far more urgent threats that are already present in this country.  This is one of those more urgent problems.  Unfortunately, I have a feeling that some of us have recognized the problem too late to do anything about it.  We already have strains of disease causing bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics.  They aren't going anywhere.  The rest of us are either denying any need to change our business as usual procedures or have an almost religious faith that science will save us yet again.  On that religious faith--what ever science comes up with bacteria will adapt to.  Perhaps we need to think outside the science box.

I have been following, in my usual casual way, the stories about Greenberg's suit agains the government claiming that he was robbed when the government bailed out AIG, the company he was running at the time.  I think this piece on the Agonist describes the situation very nicely.

Oh, yeah--the pink drill bits are a real cute touch.  They make a lot of money on fracking with chemicals that are known carcinogens and then try to buy forgiveness by donating a small amount to finding a cure for the cancers their process helps cause.  I thought the pink drill bits were a joke but it is right there on their web site bold as brass.

Wednesday.

I just stepped outside for a moment to see what I could of the lunar eclipse.  The pictures the news/weather have shown are farm more spectacular.  At the moment the moon still has a very bright, thin crescent of light.  I can't see the red hue the pictures are showing.  Might if I had a telescope.

Tom Englehardt posted this piece of good common sense--which says nothing good about the common sense of our political leaders and their "intelligence" officers.  Yeah, those quotations marks indicate extreme skepticism and sarcasm.  It also says nothing good about our society at large which seems to go unthinkingly spastic at the least sign of a least sign of a "threat."

I hope this causes one hell of a row.  Unfortunately, as long as profits are the sole judge of what is right and wrong, this will be the norm not the exception.  And please don't tell me that the oil and natural gas companies care a damn about jobs.  They only include that in their advertising to short circuit criticism and as an unstated blackmail.  The threat has always been: if you hold us in anyway accountable for what we do, we will start to cut jobs and raise prices.  So far that has worked in conjunction with pay off our politicians to let them off.

How the hell would this asshole know what is or isn't a living wage?

Tuesday.

I didn't do much in the gardens except clear one planter of strawberries.  I am never as enthusiastic about clearing up in the fall as I am about planting in the spring.  Why clear out the strawberries since they should come back in the spring?  Well, the operational word is "should."  Only a few of the plants I put in last year survived the brutal winter we had and only three of those survived the very cool spring.  I haven't had much luck with any kind of perennial in my containers except for my oldest rosemary which is doing very nicely in its pot and which I bring in every winter.  It is now four years old.  The surviving rose will determine whether I plant any more perennials and try to overwinter them outside.  If it survives this coming winter I will think about trying others.

The BBC posted this today.  The first question we had reading it was "Why were these kids given so many courses of antibiotics before their second birthday?"  It was the same question we had about the antibiotics given to Duncan (the Texas Ebola patient) when Ebola is a viral disease.  Antibiotics work against bacterial infections.  Were the antibiotics really necessary for the children's conditions or were the palliatives for anxious parents?  The second thought we had was a story we read a while back about the effect of artificial sweeteners on gut bacteria and the correlation with obesity.  (And, yes, I do remember that  correlation does not equal causation.)  Either way recent research indicates that healthy gut bacteria (and a healthy mix of bacterias) are necessary for overall health--including healthy weight.

Another BBC post that surprised us at first and then didn't on second thought.  That so many 3-year-old children would have so many fillings and/or missing teeth startling.  But then we thought about how much added sugar is in our foods (and we are well past age 3) and how sugary drinks have become ubiquitous, especially for children, and we weren't very surprised after all.

I had wondered when I saw the news stories that Sir John Franklin's ship lost on his last arctic exploration (looking for the elusive Northwest Passage) had been found: "Which one?"  After all he had two--HMS Terror and HMS Erebus.  Yeah, I know--picky of me.  Well, the discovery was of the Erebus.  The Terror has yet to be found.

Walter Pincus asks how many Americans knew before our government got involved in the mess in Iraq that the country had just experienced a four-year drought.  I, for one, did because I choose to follow meteorological conditions around the world.  Curious about a remark about Assad which identified him as an Alawite I looked it up and was amazed to discover how many different Islamic sects there are in Syria.  And that didn't take into account the Druze, Christians and other minorities, some of which I knew of, though not necessarily knew beyond the name, and many I didn't know at all. Pincus makes some good observations of where that abysmal ignorance has led us--and it isn't a good place.

Second good decision from the Supreme Court.  I only hope it carries over to the challenges to carbon emissions.

Monday.

I took advantage of the sun yesterday to collect the last of the tomatoes and peppers, and clear out the plants.  The green tomatoes are on the kitchen counter now--hopefully ripening.  Considering how cold it was I thought that was enough.  I won't get any more stevia--the cold hit it hard.  But I will get an other cutting of lemon balm before I clean out that container.  If it is dry today I will get some more of the gardens cleared.

Pepe Escobar's post on Tomdispatch this morning provides a lot of food for thought on geopolitical/economic issues.  It brings up a lot of interesting questions concern the future of NATO, the future of the EU and the position of the U.S. on the world stage.  Not much of it bodes well for us.

This doesn't surprise me much but I am glad to see it.

Wouldn't you think that an agency assigned the task of eradicating and suppressing marijuana cultivation would be able to distinguish between it and legal plants?  Reminds me of a story I read a couple of years ago of a woman who stepped out of her door to find all her potted plants cut down, taken away and a note reading "Ha!  Ha! I got your weed."  She pinned up a reply: "Enjoy smoking my tomato leaves, you little cretin."  I agree with the author of the linked story: what a waste of manpower and money.

Sunday.

Very cool this morning.  News weather report says 41F here.  Should get into the 50s later.  At leas we should not get any more rain so I will see what the low temps and wind has done outside today.

If I had an account with JP Morgan/Chase, I would close it.  It isn't that the bank was hacked.  Every bank is vulnerable.  Every government agency at every level is vulnerable.  That I accept as a reality of modern life.  I can't accept the caviler attitude toward customers.  And this story should give you some food for serious thought.  Consider also how many stories over the last decade have noted possible government connections behind other hacks.

Our local news had a brief story about a rare albino hummingbird caught on video by a home owner in Louisiana.  It was gorgeous.  I found these pictures of a similar bird sighting in Maine.  Enjoy!

Some of these Republicans must be drinking from the same source.  This isn't the first story about a Republican "businessman" and political candidate defrauding the government on Medicare, Medicaid and/or food stamps.  Do a quick Google search on "Republicans accused of Medicaid fraud" and peruse the entries.  I also did a similar search substituting Democrats for Republicans and got a very different result.  Makes you think a bit.

Friday.

Wet this morning.  We had some very heavy rain last night and the weather people say the rain will continue through the morning and, after a pause for the afternoon, will pick up again in the evening.  Nothing much going in the gardens.  I still have a few tomatoes and peppers ripening but nothing that should be harvested quite yet.  The plants I brought in are doing very nicely.  I put a lavender, 3 creeping thyme, and 3 plugs of gold leaf lemon thyme in the tower that has a nice place by the patio door.  Evidently they are getting enough light because they are thriving.  The jury is still out on the two scented geraniums.  They are still putting out some new growth and trying to bloom.  Some time soon I need to trim them back but not just yet.  I have another two lavender in individual pots under my grow light.  Both seem to be adjusting and I need to trim them back a bit.  The two rosemary are thriving.  I was surprised to find a couple of new side shoots coming up on my eucalyptus.  It may decide to survive after all.

Saturday.

If we had any doubts that fall has arrived (and we didn't) those doubts would be erased by this morning's temperatures--39F.  The daytime temperatures won't get out of the 60s over the next week. The weather report shows some snow a bit northwest of Chicago.  It is too warm for anything to stick but that, according to the weather person, is the earliest ever.  Update:  I have a four letter "s" word which is not snow on the tip of my tongue because we are getting light and wet snow at the moment.  Damn!!  I had planned to harvest all of the stevia but I don't think it will do all that well with the cold and snow.

David Kaiser posted an excellent dissection of President Obama's U.N. speech which most of our news media failed to cover beyond a mere mention.

Did you know that we ended slavery "voluntarily?"  I guess it all depends on how you define "voluntary."  If you include a vicious Civil War as part of the concept perhaps you can say we voluntarily ended the slavery.

Wednesday.

Welcome to October.  And it does feel like it.  Our temperature topped out about 60 yesterday.  Supposed to be a bit warmer today which will be nice for checking out what is left in the gardens and clearing a bit more.

Tom Englehardt is always interesting.  I love the term "subprime intelligence."  Way, way back in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution erupted in Iran and our government was caught flat footed, I was stunned when I heard a report that our Iranian embassy had fewer than a dozen employees who spoke Farsi, the national language.  I wondered then how we expected to really know anything about the country when so few of our people were linguistically or culturally knowledgeable.  Collecting all that "metadata" sounds like a good idea until you ask how the analysts will filter that amorphous mass and make sense of it.  Especially, when a significant part is in languages we don't know and from cultures we don't understand.  Data is nice but it needs a mind that can make sense of it and those minds need a base of information from which to view that data.  And a modicum of common sense which seems to be in equally short supply.

Thursday.

We have been watching the fall colors develop for the last two weeks and a bit.  The change is quickening and I expect that it will go faster over the next week.  Our weather people predict overnight lows in the 30s and 40s. Supposed to be a bit wet today so I won't be doing much in what is left of the gardens.

Watching and listening to the news stories about the Secret Service snafu with respect to the White House intruder I have a bit of a sense of deja vu.  It isn't so much that this particular situation has occurred before but that, once again, the government agency comes off like Keystone Cops who can't do much right.  I have had that feeling more frequently since the disgraceful failings of FEMA (under "Brownie" whom Bush the Younger praised to high heaven for pitiful performance) during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Over the last half-dozen years I can honestly say that the only government that has performed well has been our local city government.  What a waste of money and manpower.

Actually my mood concerning politics this mid-term election season can be summed up by what I said to a canvasser who came by last night.  I have no intention of voting for any Republican above the city level.  Our Republican mayor has done a very good job and I don't give a damn that he is Republican.  But that doesn't mean I like the Democrats much.  Though I dislike much about Democratic Party policies, I thorough LOATH the Republicans, especially in this state where they have a supermajority and pass policies (whatever the merit or lack of merit) simply because the PARTY wants them running roughshod over everyone else.  For what I think of national politics, see the above paragraph.

I am so glad to see this.  I never believed, from what little I read of the case, that the idiot "felt" threatened.  He was frustrated because the kid didn't obey when he demanded the music be turned down.

This Grist article has a lot of good sense.  I agree with the author on the point that labeling of GMO isn't the be-all, end-all of concerns over our food and labeling won't fix the other concerns.  We want to know what is in our food and where it comes from.  Labeling is the only way we get that information.