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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

The Day the World Changed

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The day started with a shipment of my latest experiments from Germany. The high performance plastics (fluoropolymers) which were on the cutting edge of the technology, if everything turned out right, had to be separated from the latex solution they were made in, washed, and dried. It was a lot of labor but in the 3M lab we had to do our own workup after the fully setup lab across the Atlantic pushed through our requests.

In the middle of squeezing water out of the flaky solids with cheesecloth Steve Amos came in. “A plane hit a building in Manhattan. It’s on fire.” We talked about the news for a while even though we knew little. Steve’s dad was a pilot so I knew he had to talk for a bit.  He left after we chatted and I went back to work. When he came back in a short while later he had a more stern look.

“A second building was hit. They say we’re under attack.”

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Labor Day

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The election of 2016 is still over a year away,  but on this Labor Day we can feel something brewing.  Democrats are being called back to their basic values of standing up for working people, especially with the tremendous crowds that Sen Bernie Sanders is drawing. Republicans also feel a need to be more populist in a turbulent fight that feels like just about anything might happen.  The people of the US are clearly in the mood for more support for working people.

If we can only get it together for once something great may happen.  I, for one, think it’s going to take a much deeper understanding of our core values and what is really happening around us before we can make it happen.

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A Critical Weekend

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Monday is Labor Day.  This is a critical day for labor in America because its success is about to define our economic future, at least for the next few months.  By the time you read this, you may know how many jobs were officially created in August.  If it was 220k or more a September increase in the Fed Funds rate is likely.  If it was under 180k there probably will not be a rate increase.

The ADP Employment Report, which is less prone to noise in the first place, came in with a middling 190k gain in jobs.

What’s great about this is that Labor’s success in the last month could kill the stock market, pitting labor directly against investment.  There’s nothing productive about that arrangement, but it highlights how strange the world has been.  This oddly critical holiday is a good time to recap some of the topics that Barataria has gone over the last few months.

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A Hell of a Show

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The NFL season starts in just over a week, and it looks like the Dolphins may have a chance this year …

Football is the most intellectual of all the major sports in the USofA.  Go ahead, laugh, but it’s true.  All those breaks between plays are more than time for wagging commentary and the occasional Bud commercial, they are a chance for the coach to send in a play that one side will attempt to execute while the other tries to foil it.  Raw athletic ability is often thwarted by a clever plan or a quick wit that sees past it.  Amid the changing fronts of trench warfare that form the game, a good General is what it takes to win.

But there’s a lot more to football than that.  What we’ve learned from the NFL in particular is how important it is to set up a system where everyone has a chance and the rules are evenly enforced.  It’s America at its best.

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The Idiot Diet

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We have been too serious lately, and too heavy on economics.  It’s time for the State Fair in Minnesota, and thoughts naturally turn to food.

People diet for a lot of reasons.  Some want to lose weight and others just want to be healthier.  Many of the big fads seem to be more of a social thing, something people do with friends when there isn’t anything good on teevee.

It’s hard to call yourself a real blogger if you don’t write about a diet at some point, so it’s high time for the Barataria approach to better living.  It’s called the “Idiot Diet”, and it’s very simple – never eat anything you don’t understand.

This can cause a lot of trouble if you know something about food already, since a little knowledge is often a dangerous thing.  But with time the harmony of mind and body will set you free with a developing sense of smugness that makes a good stand-in for health in a pinch.

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