Home » 2018 » October (Page 3)

Monthly Archives: October 2018

Columbus Day? Not So Much.

Posted on by | Leave a comment

October is a good month for holidays in North America.  At the end of the month we have the collision of the Celtic Samhain with the Aztec / Spanish Dia de los Muertos which swirled into Halloween.  But in the middle is the difficult holiday, the one where we celebrate the connection of this continent with the rest of the world.  And the three brother nations of this continent have their own ways of marking it.  This is a repeat from 2011, updated.

To our North, in Canada, the first Monday after October 12th is  Thanksgiving, this year on the 13th.  To our South, in Mexico, the 12th is  Dia de la Raza.  Our brother nations here in North America have found things to celebrate in the early days of Autumn, but here in the USofA we have nothing but the pseudo-holiday Columbus Day – something we’ve tossed over our shoulders and given up on.

This may be a measure of our ability to get anything together.

Continue reading →

Freedom From Fear

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Fear stalks women in America even when amoral men aren’t directly targeting them.  This post from last year discusses how fear is a part of our culture, and drives far too much of our politics.

Freedom. It’s the basis of not just our system, but the values that the system was created to protect. Americans value their freedom above everything else.

But do we really have what it takes to be truly a free people today?

Continue reading →

Equity & Debt

Posted on by | 5 Comments

. As Barataria has discussed before, business cycles are not only real but heavily define the world in social and technical development terms. These cycles are, in purely economic terms, changes in availability and attitudes towards debt.

It is more than a little chilling to think that progress naturally comes in waves because of something as mundane as debt. But a system defined by money supply which has features that are destabilizing and work against sustainability and resilience is a large part of what we might call “capitalism.” The equilibrium of markets is pushed and pulled by the availability of capital.

One important feature of Fourth Wave Industrialization has to be that these cycles will need to be broken and greater monetary stability has to be achieved for a truly open market. This is likely to mean that equity will have to be favored over debt. But what, really, is the difference?

Continue reading →

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Posted on by | Leave a comment

It’s October!  Time for you to watch this absolute classic of animation and lose yourself in the brilliant score.  This post is part of the annual tradition, first run in 2015.

It’s the spooky season, but it’s also the fun season. Before Winter wraps its embrace around us there is Halloween, the last chance to have some fun. It’s a challenge to the eerie creep of darkness we’re still adjusting to, still resisting at least one last time.

No movie captures the season for me quite like “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” the epic Tim Burton classic of stop-motion animation from the old school. Released in 1993, it was immediately recognized as a great classic movie for the holidays – Halloween, for the fun of it, and Christmas for the cynically twisted reaction to what it has become.

What makes this movie, however, isn’t just the great story and animation. The score by Danny Elfman is pure genius – and belongs in the repertoire of classical greats.

Continue reading →