The Silver Apples

U.S. Retail Sales Fall Again

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:45:00 +0000

When will menu prices fall, since people are eating out less, grain is down, and we're all poorer?It's a sticky conspiracy! (Link to Mankiw on sticky prices). Worry more though about the fact that apparently deflation isn't enough to get people out and about in the stores, which indicates to me that the fall in prices is still proportionate to the fall in general purchasing power. If there were a disconnect, i.e., prices fell faster than real disposable income, then we'd be in good shape. But they didn't. So we're not.

McMoPain

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:56:00 +0000

This observation from John Nadler should be enough to curdle your blood. "Goldman Sachs Group estimates that FreeportMcMoRan was among the most frequent stocks to appear in lists of top-10 holdings of major hedge funds, as of sept 30." FCX is down 74% since then. FCX is one of the three major base metals producers, and the world's larget public copper miner. The implications of this for the developing world are awful. If you think mining is bad for the environment, imagine what having no national product does to a struggling state. Think about what this does to the mindset of future investors. There will be no investment in this stuff for years.

Beware Deflation

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:37:00 +0000

The rapid strengthening of the dollar against all basic materials means that manufacturers can acquire what they need for less. But it has also taken needed infreastructure investment out of the resource sector. When it comes time to mine nickel, zinc, copper and molybdenum again, many major deposits which were on track to be on-line in this cycle now won't be. We will be hit once again by crippling inflation. My next question is: when will the cost of beer go back down? Of course it won't. It's a menu item, which are notoriously sticky. Now that we've been trained to accept $6 pints, they won't let us go back.

Civil Service

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:31:00 +0000

I believe that the election of Barack H. Obama as president may draw a spirit of civil service out of the electorate, but not only the type of service that expects, wants or may effectively demand. The economic slowdown, exacerbated by his election and likely protectionism, will have stunted the aspirations of many ambitious men and women. These pragmatic, libertarian leaning cosmopolites will ignite a new post-Buckley fire under the local and state levels of the Republican party. There will be firebrands. The know-nothing Pailinites will fight back. But a new generation of practical leadership will begin work on restoring American rights to the American people in oppostion to the mob-mental neo-left.

There will be great fractiousness, and both parties are going to have to work very hard to reign in the anarchists; but it wil be the Dems in power, and the Republican will need only denounce and work for something positive. The Dems will have to deal with the consequences.

Sickness

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Everyone in New York seems to be getting sick. I think it's psychosomatic.

Listen To This

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:33:00 +0000

Mogambo.

A Quaking Of Cemeteries

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Go here. Read Trakl.

Life In The Shadows

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:07:00 +0000

"The hunter has become the butterfly." - Franz Kafka, The Hunter Gracchus

A Welfare State For Putative Libertarians

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:40:00 +0000

Andrew Sullivan furthers my argument that Alaska is essentially a federal territory operated as a welfare state. Palin is Queen Bee. Which places her in opposition to the other half of her ticket. Or rather, McCain means nothing that he says, except apparently for the vile stuff, which he is quite good at topping off.

This Is Your Modern Conservative

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:42:00 +0000

Sometimes I get an e-mail like the one below. I like the guys who write these. Because my experience tells me that they're correct. Lately though, I get these e-mails forwarded from people who laughed at a particular man, who though notable for several faults of un-nuanced thought, was the major political proponent of a basic truth: 0-10 = (10). When you have (10) you have less than naught.

And the ostensible conservatives gave him up for this. A Fraud. Knowing this is the truth.

I know gold bugs inside and out. They're odd.

But a party which ignores principles they once espoused in favor of jingoism and perfidy is odder.

You'll excuse me, but this was my topic a year ago.

-----
Money and Markets 2008 Archive
The Ultimate Wall Street Nightmare
by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

Dear Drury,

[http://images.moneyandmarkets.com/1083/martin-weiss.jpg]

In the wake of Lehman's demise, Fed Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson will try to put out the word that it's no great trauma.

But it's a bluff and they know it. If they openly admitted that the Lehman collapse will paralyze Wall Street, torpedo the stock market and sink economy, they'd have to pony up $100 billion or more to support it. Instead, their agenda has been to push big banks to put up the money.

Either way, there's no denying that the Lehman debacle is a massive and immediate threat to U.S. and global markets. At the latest reckoning, Lehman had $691 billion in assets. That makes it bigger than Wachovia, twice as big as Washington Mutual, and over sixteen times larger than Schwab.

Lehman's debts? at $668.6 billion? are also enormous. Even if you added together all the debts of TD Ameritrade, E-Trade and Schwab, you'd still have only $108.5 billion, or less than one-sixth the total debts which Lehman reports.

Defaults on Derivatives

We've lost count of how many times the authorities have virtually sworn on a stack of Bibles that "our financial system is fundamentally sound."

But no one could possibly lose count of their recent desperate efforts to prevent the system's collapse -- actions which directly belie their words:

One? the coordinated efforts by central banks to flood the global economy with liquidity in the summer of 2007.

Two? the hasty bailout of Bear Stearns in March of this year.

Three? the giant Fannie and Freddie rescue announced just eight days ago.

Each time they intervene, they say "we must not reward CEOs who deceive the public and walk off with multibillion dollar bonus checks." And each time they say it's the "last time we'll make an exception to that rule."

But then they go ahead and do it anyhow, not only breaking their own word ... but also trashing the long tradition of restraint established by their predecessors since the Great Depression. . .

Derivatives are essentially bets on interest rates, foreign currencies, stocks or specific events like the bankruptcy of a particular company. The interest rate-related bets are by far the biggest. But the bets on bankruptcies ? called credit default swaps ? are the fastest growing and the most volatile. . .

Here's the great dilemma: The tangled web of bets and debts linking each of these giant players to the other is so complex and so difficult to unravel, it may be impossible for the Fed to protect the financial system from paralysis if just one major player defaults. And if Lehman is not that player, the next one will be.

To understand why, put yourself in the shoes of a senior derivatives trader at a big firm like Morgan Stanley (which has $7.1 trillion in derivatives on its books and about $10 billion in capital). By itself, that would be a huge risk. But you're not worried because you have a similar bet with Bank B that interest rates will go up. It's like playing roulette, betting on both black and red at the same time. One bet cancels the other, and you figure you can't lose.

Here's what happens next ...

* Interest rates go up, reflecting a 2% decline in bond prices.

* You lose your bet with Bank A.

* But, simultaneously, you win your bet with Bank B.

* So, in normal circumstances, you'd just take the winnings from one to pay off the losses with the other? a non-event.

But here's where the whole scheme blows up and the drama begins: Bank B suffers large mortgage-related losses. It runs out of capital. It can't raise additional capital from investors. So it can't pay off its bet. Suddenly and unexpectedly ...

You're on the hook for your losing bet. But you can't collect on your winning bet.

You grab a calculator to estimate the damage. But you don't need one? 2% of $500 billion is $10 billion. Simple . . .

Chickens Just Back From The Shore

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:07:00 +0000

Give her a medal. Feist has made life better on Earth in one fell swoop. "Ba ba b-Ba, ba ba b-Ba . . ."

That's Right, I Said "McShouldn't."

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:37:00 +0000

I've called him unprincipled, but he and his friends certainly have many of the wrong principles. Perhaps "incoherent" is more accurate.

The modern Republican party is so illiberal, so childishly unfixed and populist and pathetically unhinged that they have chosen to be led by a demented opportunist and a pleasant, ruthless lady who should never have been promoted past the executive of a frontier territory.

What's the answer? And I mean the real answer, not the fun-house mirror image on the other side of the aisle.

"A Quick Look In The Mirror Will Show"

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:06:00 +0000

Is the Governor of Alaska the Billy Collins of the political world? You may ask what that means, to which I can reply, "You are the dew on the morning grass," or any other such banality. He's not bad. He can toss a good line out there every now and then. And he has a perspective . . . on things . . . that exist . . .

Mrs. Smith Gone To Washington?

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:03:00 +0000

Palin: No, I don't believe she will be "Mrs. Smith," the earnest martyr. She's the cynic's pick, an eager pol. But in America Everyman is a politician to some degree. She'll be tactically competent, gapingly ignorant in some spots, and destiny charged.

She's complicated, bright, shrewd and common. Dangerous.

A Girl In Short Shorts likes her.

A primary problem is this: She may be exceptionally common, but is she exceptional among the commoners?

A more important question: Why are we being forced to ask that question in the first place? Politics has become a game of Hearts; the object is to divest yourself of all your cards to win.

I wonder about this this though: isn't Alaska less a state than a Federal welfare corporation for ostensible libertarian-type individualists? And if they're so libertarian, why don't they send those oil check back to the state and go to work for the oil companies.

ADDENDUM (From CATO): She's pragmatic. In a sorta erratic way.

Call The Roller Of Big Cigars: The Ecomomy In Raw Materials

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:47:00 +0000

I've heard that it's a "Jewish curse," but don't see why it should be particularly Jewish: "May you live in interesting times." As a curse though, it cuts deeper than any obscenity I know. On the phone, in the office, on the street, when beaten into baffled incoherence, I hear it leaping up from smoldering piles of incinerated assumptions. How "interesting" things are.

This is a superficially dry subject for my first post after the hiatus, but if you are an old reader, you know I was bearish on the market too early, and paid for it in heartburn. Also that I ran with the gold price up, only to watch my investments in mining companies buckle under the very inflation which was driving up the price of the metals. Extremely "interesting."

Mining companies finance their exploration through issuing stock, and fund their mine development through debt. They can't borrow now because of the credit crisis and they can't issue stock because their share prices have been beaten down by as much as 80% (see below). In order to raise the requisite cash, these operations have to issue so much stock that their current shareholders would be diluted into oblivion. Imagine you once had 10% of a $100 M market cap company. Suddenly you have less of a bigger pie. You don't necessarily get more shares to compensate. Most investors capitulate and move on.

But these are stocks with tight capital structures and which are thinly traded. Liquidating a position gets everyone's attention. They join the rush. But potential buyers have fled and the sell orders are falling into a vacuum. And you get a chart like this:

A "vicious, sick beast," that one, which used to be a really beautiful silver company in Wallace, Idaho. They couldn't make money however when silver was $20/oz, a historic high. Silver is now around $13/oz.

This is a phenomenon that has deep implications for the economy. If is impossible for companies to profitably produce metals, then the price of the metal will have to rise again. But raw materials drive up the price of everything from heavy equipment to labor.

I suspect that we are in for some very ugly shortages which will not be adequately met by the securities markets. Alternatively, the market could be presupposing a tremendous slowdown in the BRIC countries.

In which case we can get on the phone to The Roller of Big Cigars.

A Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:24:00 +0000

I was gone for a good two months, and am now at school for a heavy semester, so while I don't anticipate blogging as frequently as I used to, perhaps you'll check back in on maybe a weekly basis.

N.C. has withdrawn. Thanks to her, this page was more diverse and strange than I could have hoped. I'd like to thank her for measurably enriching the page while she was here.

Cheers,

Brian

Dripping in the Brit-Pop

noreply@blogger.com (N. C. Taylor) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:21:00 +0000

I am undecided if this is too Brit pop for me, but it is fun and catchy and nice for summertime:

Oh jeez, that is the dude from the Arctic Monkeys, isn't it. Not sure I'll be able to get over that.

*Echo*

Uh, hmm. I can't see comments to approve them, so if you've tried to post your comments here in the past two weeks or so that B. has been away, then I am sorry. Come Saturday I will be going off to the moon, for awhile, so it might get even lonelier.

The Real Adbusters

noreply@blogger.com (N. C. Taylor) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:32:00 +0000

I am not sure why, but I think that this idea is very interesting. Living within close proximity to a gigantic intersection of two major Toronto streets, I never even thought that the big vinyl signs pasted on the Holiday Inn or above the 7 Eleven advertising H+M or The Dark Knight were illegal. What an interesting way to combat the magazination (I just made that word up) of our cities, and preserve our head space for more important things.

But you know what I mean. Taking advantage of the rampant negligence of cities in tracking down and fighting billboard fraud is really cool. And it will undoubtedly restore the urban aesthetic. It's so subtle, but so scary, when you ignore all of these signs and ads to the point of becoming Tom Cruise at the beginning of Minority Report (which in my opinion was a terrible movie). Now here is a movement that might actually be worth believing in.

Here is an example of what an illegal sign might look like, now go outside and see the frightening number of these things decorating your eyes at every step. NYC lovers: this movement is coming from Toronto to save you all too, thank goodness.

Technology = Slavery

noreply@blogger.com (N. C. Taylor) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:51:00 +0000

About 3 weeks ago, my dear little 19" Toshiba tube TV of 12 years died in spectacular fashion: snapped, crackled, emitted a strange smell, and died--I ran to the power strip and switched it off and unplugged everything lest my townhouse apartment burn down. That is what I get for watching Larry King Live like a geriatric person, or whatever. I think little M. V. Taylor's fingers pushing on and off the power button 8,000,000 times with a hope of yielding the Treehouse channel might have had something to do with the fantastic cathode ray tube explosion that ceased its functional life.

I pulled out the 13" Toshiba tube TV from hubby's studio apartment Ph.D. candidate days as a stop-gap to feed my cable news habit, but this was not going to tide me over for very long, as our living room is pretty large and I have developed microscope-induced myopia in my old age. B., can we make the font bigger again, BTW, this blog is hurting my eyes to write, KTHXBAI.

Mr. Through-good-times-and-in-bad is one of those anti-TV elitists. You know the type (or might even be one yourself). People who claim to be too intelligent/ productive/ busy/ social/ cool/ interesting/educated/ physically fit/ [fill in the pretentious adjective here] to watch TV. In a way, I sort of despise this sentiment, as it isn't realistic. I personally watch about 1 hour of TV per day. I enjoy it. I eat my milk and cookies (I'm not kidding), and passively sit/ lie there like a lazy slob every night, oh-so mildly entertained, instead of staring out into space or going to yoga class or whatever anti-TV elitists do to have their daily disengagement from reality which is so important for maintaining a healthy psyche in the modern world. I like watching cable news networks, documentaries on PBS or TVO, or stuff on TLC (note: only What not to Wear and Jon & Kate + 8). And Lost. And The Office. And sometimes Gordon Ramsay's various kitchen shows, because I love and envy his highly effective managerial style. BUT ONLY 1 HOUR PER NIGHT, ANTI-TV ELITIST HATERS.

So after doing approximately 0 minutes of research on currently available new TV options, I impulsively took off down the Gardiner Expressway to find the Futureshop on the Queensway (where I'd be able to park for free). I'm not really sure when was the last time I walked inside a big-box electronics store, but it wasn't recently. After adjusting to the awesomely loud reggae music blaring from the personal stereo department, I walked quickly to the "home theatre" section. I had no interest in a "home theatre," but I knew that this is where the new TVs were located. My good friend, who is somewhat obsessed with technology (friends like this are invaluable, btw) cautioned me that big box electronics stores no longer carry tube TVs, and because this is all that is left of the tube TV world anyways...*disgusted dramatic sigh*...

I realized at that moment that I had been more or less robbed of the freedom and convenience of walking into an electronics store and buying a tube TV that was a brand I recognized. So I had no other options, really, than to lay down 600 dollars (plus like 100 dollars of provincial and federal taxes which pays for my healthcare) for a modest LCD HDTV. Because HDTVs are all that The Man sells now. And yeah, I got the sales guy to take $50 dollars off the price by suggesting that I wanted to comparison shop at Best Buy before committing. Yay, Canada, land of being able to bargain at Canadian chains desperate to compete with American ones.

So I took home my HDTV. I quickly learned that a coaxial cable was not an option for HDTVs, even for non-videophiles. A coaxial cable delivers an analog signal appropriate for a standard definition tube TV, but if you plug it into an HDTV, it looks like total crap because an HDTV has way too high of a resolution (in my TV's case, it is 720p, which means 720 lines of vertical resolution with progressive scanning, whatever the F that means) and will unfortunately show you, in detail, EVERYTHING that is wrong with this type of signal, because it is an HDTV. It needs and wants a digital high-definition signal.

Happily, with my new TV's purchase I got an upgrade to get my free HD box from Rogers Cable (basically the only cable company in Canada). The HD box can take what is coming out of your coaxial cable and magically make it into a digital (sort of, but this is way too complicated to go into) high-definition signal that your new TV needs to look remotely normal. So they courier my new cable box to me, and I open it up. OK, now I'm done, you say. No. Not done.

So, anti-TV elitists reading this now will be like, "Nah-nah, you're dumb, we told you so, we are so smart and cool that we will rub it in your face, lets all have deep conversations now containing large vocabulary words and references to things that you won't understand, and work at our high-paying hard-working jobs, drive around in our Smart cars and then come home to smoke opium or read McSweeney's Quarterly Concern or listen to Portuguese jazz music, instead of watching TV, an activity for the ignorant and uneducated majority," etc., but these individuals are correct that HDTV as it is today is a total F-ing rip-off scam conspiracy orchestrated by TV manufacturers and cable conglomerates alike. Unless you want to plop a satellite dish on top of your house (granted you have the ability to face it south west and drill a hole through your wall), cable companies only carry about 10 or so free "HDTV" channels. For about $10 more monthly, you could get the National Geographic HD channel or the Discovery HD channel or the TSN HD channel. But I don't watch enough TV to spend more money than I already have on this tragic ill-fated enterprise.

Note I put "HDTV" in quotes in my last paragraph. This is because even if a channel is called high-definition, it will not be high-definition unless the broadcaster is broadcasting a show in a high-definition resolution, and your cable box is outputting a purely digital high-definition signal appropriate for your TVs resolution, and you can afford the expensive cables to tap into this purely non-converted hopefully uncompressed high-definition digital signal. Guess what: 1) Most cable companies don't even rent out or use HD cable boxes with the correct HDMI output needed achieve a digital unconverted high-definition signal (unless you want to pay 100 more dollars a month to get an HD personal digital recorder, which I neither want or need). 2) Cable companies don't have the infrastructure to carry the bandwidth necessary to provide all of the high-definition channels that are now available in the world (there are a lot of them, but you can't watch them), without compressing the crap out of them, and rendering them not really high-definition at all. And they sell these channels and their service as "high-definition," charge you more for it, and it is not even technically high-definition. I guess this doesn't matter to me, but it will matter to the rich (dumb?) videophile who just spent $1600 on a 42" 1080p so-called full HDTV (1080p is the highest of high-definitions currently known to mankind). It is effectively false advertising.

Conclusion(s): If you only watch 1 hour of TV per day, and you like watching CNN, and your toddler breaks your old cathode ray tube TV, and you don't appreciate the feeling of spending 600 dollars just so that standard definition cable channels look worse than they did on your cathode ray tube TV, and you don't want to get a PVR, or a satellite dish, or a new upconverting or HD DVD player, then now you only get crappy Canadian networks to look decent on your new flat-screen HDTV (and HDCNN, thank God, because you love looking at Anderson Cooper's zits, and being able to see just how bad Lou Dobbs' and Larry King's dye jobs really are). And when the commercials come on, or if it is a show that isn't being broadcast in high-definition, expect various-sized black borders to appear around the actual picture. So now you get to wait 15 or so years until the cable companies upgrade their infrastructure to actually give you the signal quality your HDTV needs to look normal. And you spent all of this extra money, not to mention countless hours reading about cables, HD cable boxes, cable companies, DVD players, and how the cables (wires) that run high-definition digital signals are a conspiracy designed to rip-off the consumer anyway.

So OK, we're done, right? Nope. Because after you spend all of this time and effort hooking up your HDTV with the best cables and cable box situation physically and financially possible, Now you need to adjust the picture settings on the TV itself. Think this is just contrast and tint and sharpness and brightness, right? Wrong, it is 800 times more complicated than that. If you don't bother with these so-called "Advanced Picture Settings," Larry King's suspenders will look like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and your TV won't live for very long. Oh and getting flesh tones to look remotely human? Good luck with that too.

Here is a cute little quote from that last Popular Mechanics link: "If you haven't bought an HD set yet, here's a reason to wait: Future sets will be better at upconverting [standard definition] images to HD." Great, but what if your tube TV breaks before then because you have a two year-old? You really have no choice except between the last of the tube TVs from Walmart made by some generic Chinese company you've never ever heard of, and a flat screen HDTV. Which has rendered you, the consumer, powerless.

"Ha-ha, stupid TV-watcher-commoners," say the anti-TV elitists. Perhaps they are right after all.

Notes about the author written in the third person singular: N. C. does not own a blackberry (and therefore doesn't sleep with a blackberry under her pillow or bring it on family vacations), an iPhone, an iPod, or an electric hybrid car. She actually doesn't even own a cell phone, she can be reached by land-line only. On the unfrequent day trips into Laguardia, she brings her husband's cell phone, which is usually left uncharged and silent under a pile of journal articles in his office, so don't even think of trying to call him, ever, because he will not answer it. In short: she is not a technology-slave, she just likes cable news, a lot, apparently enough to drop hundreds of dollars on being able to watch it.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:33:00 +0000

A skeptical epicure's answer to everything.

"The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep,
They told their comrades, and to Sleep return'd."

In Case You Had Doubts About Mugabe

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:46:00 +0000

From capricious mismanagement to incredible outrages. The only trouble with Africa is that everywhere you turn, there's something else to make you weep.

Mission Accomplished?

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:12:00 +0000

Modern world diplomacy has accomplished a great goal if North Korea becomes truly transparent regarding its nuclear capabilities, and agrees to dismantle its refining infrastructure. However, the U.S.'s relationship with them remains extremely complicated. North Korea is an arms exporter, and regardless of some mitigation of that state's open hostility to us and to the rest of the world, it's a dodgy situation when a totalitarian regime makes export bucks off of arms dealing and we turn the other cheek. I don't like the contradiction.

Doubtless there's an argument for allowing the Ethiopians to acquire arms somewhere. In the ongoing Somalian civil war, Ehtiopia has played an accepted role. Besides, those arms don't stay with the established military. They're like litter. They blow the streets and end up in the wrong hands.

However, continuing to allow or even encourage the military participation of one-party ruled Asian nations in East African conflicts seems dangerous to me. Chinese firms are in the DRC for its natural resources, including cobalt, and have attempted to ship arms to Zimbabwe, which speaks very poorly for the Chinese.

So I'm pleased that the North Korean regime has been somewhat emasculated, although we know they'll get boku bucks in return. Money does not help the captive residents of that country, but a quieter N. Korea makes our lives easier. Now, let's get the Asian arms out of there.

The Politics of Skepticism: Big Ideas And Guns

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0000

I'll posit this in the name of debate: Green, not-green . . . whatever side you take in the climate change debate, it is ultimately not about climate change or science, but about the state and its power to enforce a massive cultural revolution, and there is one thing to remember: things are seldom as simple as they appear.

The green movement is a great putsch that has been emerging from the archaic left, and has now found common ground with many in the statist right as corporations seek to align themselves with a new monochrome dynamic, not conservation but megalithic cultural redefining, business blackmailing , child indoctrinating, rant inciting. But we will push on! Because the cause is just! And the consequences . . . are almost certainly poorly defined, on purpose, because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the desired reaction, the true goal, if vocalized, would cripple the cause.

Maybe you've noted the link between militaristic statism and the green "revolution." I'm going to play this argument out over a couple of days. Start preparing your objections.

Who Are You And What Am I

noreply@blogger.com (B. A. Blake) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:06:00 +0000

Existential doubts from my partner aside, here's some thoughts, based in large part on what we are not. If you are one of our 200 regular readers, I hope you will have been pleased on occasion to come across eclectic opinions and asides that are well founded and clearly and entertainingly expressed. In a world of endless variety, I, speaking for myself, hope to contribute by crafting the occasional polemic on behalf of personal liberty and a moderate but unrestricted social order. But I like a wide a net, so having N.C. along for the past several months has been great.

That said, this is an opinion site, and an ongoing, distracted discussion with oursleves and hopefully with you. Please comment when you have something to contradict or challenge. News is a crutch, a passing reference, or a goad, but not our product.

We work during the day and travel, so frequently we have to write in emphatic spurts. We can't all be Andrew Sullivan or the "giddy children" at Wonkette. But as a personal exercise, I think the act of keeping our thoughts short and clear is healthy, and a little bit of vainglory can be off-set with a nod to the goal of trying to be better thinkers.

That's why I'm here. So enough of this. Let's go dunk our heads in a cold lake and get this self-referencing out of the way.

Symptoms of Blog Death

noreply@blogger.com (N. C. Taylor) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:20:00 +0000

Andrew Sullivan's blog actually pointed out this link explaining the two signs of impending blog death. Apparently the first obvious sign is when posting becomes less frequent, and the second is when a blog starts to just blog itself--i.e., referring to/commenting on/building on its own posts too much.

Most of my friends that have blogged with abandon over periods of years and years have highly personal blogs, which they use to vent, or for poetry or prose, sort of like a diary you'd keep as an adolescent. This personal content is then mixed with some comment on current goings-on where they live and around the world. Some of my friends (myself included, sort of) will even have two blogs: one for highly personal stuff that is locked in such a way that only one or two close friends can access it, and one for social commentary.

I am not at the helm of The Silver Apples so I have absolutely no idea who, if anyone, actually reads what we write here. I know we only have one or two people leaving regular comments here, besides ourselves. I suppose its been a little longer than six months now in lifespan. Are we a "valuable public mouthpiece?" I personally don't claim to be. I know I write for myself, because for me, writing is an educational process, forcing me to go out and quickly (sometimes too quickly) become an expert on something I'd otherwise know nothing about. So writing makes my simple life richer, as I don't have the means to bicycle across the desert, go skydiving, climb Mount Everest, etc. I can't even remember the last time I went on a vacation that didn't involve family somehow. I digress. The bottom line: No, I have no life, besides trying to be a good mommy and meet my deadlines so that the company I used to work for in Boston continues to assign me full-time contracting projects.

I'll continue posting here, because I don't really care if anyone is listening. I am not really self-confident enough to assume that people will want to regularly read what I write.