trigger warnings: feminists, germans, and the politically correct may be offended. don't care. christians too.

let's just start.

the brits are silly.  no doubt.  but if the scots leave, they are sillier still.  Paul Krugman is correct (even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.)

honda is racing to catch up with general motors, not in a good way.  final score: two dead, 30 injured, and millions of vehicles recalled over faulty airbags that honda knew about for years, opting to just pay off the liability claims rather than tell anyone and recall them.  don't know what the loss payment was for the driver who bled to death in front of her three children (a result of the exploding airbag) - i hope the final cost was priceless.

Ian Paisley, who spent most of his life as an asshole, has died.  he moderated his stupidity in his later years to help settle the understated-ly named "Troubles" of northern ireland.  not everyone who contributed to the stupidity is dead.

Malala Yousafzai is proving to be more enduring than even her critics feared.  after being shot in the head by men who feared she might grow up to be a bright young woman, she appears to be a bright young woman.  clearly, their concern was justified.

in another ongoing  race, global health and the WHO appear to be losing badly to ebola. 

uruguay is still the coolest country in south America.  Ecuador is losing points quickly as its president seeks to keep power until death does him part.

pop quiz 1 – do women know how the whole cashier thing works in our western countries?  you bring your items to the register and you pay for them.  why do they have that “huh” look on their faces as they start to 1-open their purse; 2-take out their wallet; 3-find the money in the wallet, 3a-find the exact change; 4-pay the clerk, 5-re-locate the change purse; and 6-reverse the previous steps and go on their way. 

this always seems to come as a surprise to them.

in a stunning upset that could not possibly have been anticipated, arab countries are not really supporting whatever it is that we are doing about ISIS.  wow, nobody saw that coming.

and mr. president, this just in: ISIS is Islamic.  the reason they don’t call themselves a fundamentalist terror organization is because that would be redundant.  geez – you’re the president, read a paper or something.

pop quiz 2 – why do germans often act rudely?  they are not by and large, a courteous people.  not just because they have no sense of order in queues, but they seldom smile back, rarely respond to “excuse me” (as the politely, properly spoken, “Entschuldigung”), and generally will run you over with a shopping cart or car without hesitation.  and let’s not talk about red light and speed cameras.  really, let’s not.  lighten up people.

if you don’t know what ag-gag laws are, you should.

Peter Thiel is an even bigger idiot that I thought.  not simply because the dis-connected-from-reality pay-pal founder is friends with Ann Coulter’s (cause enough), or because his mission is "to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems" (translation – far from the homeless, unemployed, slothful human populace), but because in his latest literary contribution (see the wsjournal) he states, “competition bad; monopoly good”  seriously?  he is so the Ewan Mcgregor character from, The Island – and not the good half.

finding your first job is now like getting your first loan—“we’ll be happy to offer you a job as soon as we see that you’ve had one.”  this is because no one wants to teach their employees any of the skills they mostly failed to learn in high school.

let’s be clear, this is a failure of the schools and the workplace.  first the schools have failed dramatically to provide any useful knowledge or skillbase to our graduates.  (this is not limited to high schools, this is why many college grads are just as unemployed/unemployable).  second, companies have failed just as dramatically to invest in their future – why bother when we can outsource/hire cheap immigrant labor our way to prosperity.  only we can’t.  their successes are short-term and will be short-lived.

finally, cheerful news.  the end of cheap energy is much closer that nearly everyone thinks (rather, they don’t think, that’s the problem).  to that end, i will offer helpful suggestions.

1-   buy a copy of the Foxfire books, (Eliot Wigginton) – lots of useful information for a low tech world.

2-   just for fun, watch Robert Redford in the film, Jeremiah Johnson.

3-   then watch American Blackout 2013 by Nat’l Geo, at no charge on youtube.

4-   buy a bike

5-   have a nice day