More Communist than China

Mr. Jim Rogers gives CNBC Europe the lowdown on the American economy... and wouldn't you know it, he's right. For once, a financial article with some toothiness (& truthiness).

But while Jimbo is right to give up hope on Obama or McCain's financial solutions, I was surprised not to see a nod to Sen. Paul whose influence could lead to a sensible policy debate on the right. I'll assume that Rogers didn't want his valued name associated with a man often denigrated as a kook.

Do read the original article, as you're not likely to see much news of this caliber.

Helen Keller would shit in her pants

You read the headline correctly. This public health would have made the original American idol furious enough to protest by releasing her next most convenient BM into a pair of her own pants, just so she could have something more pleasant to occupy her mind.

Here's the story (1 in 5 parents refuse daughters' cervical cancer jab):

British folk who declined their daughter's HPV vaccine were worried about A) lack of long-term data, B) promiscuity - being immune to a virus that infects 80% of all people means you will have sex with those 80% of mankind, and C) "religious reasons."

The author, Sarah Boseley, looks then at a different angle: "Uptake ... lower in schools with a high proportion of girls from ethnic minority groups and those entitled to free school meals."

So society has officially succeeded in getting the poor and the non-white to dig their own graves with respect to their own health and - less obviously - personal finances. Here we have a free government-sponsored program and only the rich and white are taking it up in numbers. Will cervical cancer become stigmatized as the lower class woman's disease?

It's a well documented, though less well known fact that Helen Keller embraced several unpopular political causes. One was radical socialism, and it was because of classist health problems like her own blindness that she had the courage to look squarely at the issue.

Contempt for the middle class

Required reading:
The princess's cake gets an added crunch - Wolfgang Münchau (Financial Times)
Response: Contempt for the poor - Free Exchange (the Economist)

Position:
It's amazing how much life certain economic models get from their political expedience. The popular fiction of the Phillips curve often serves to remind us that attempts to question systemic inflation will not be tolerated. As is only human nature, public reasoning rarely precedes private decision making.

The median annual income in the United States is less than 40,000 USD. The median family has next to zero equity. Yet Wolfgang Münchau has hit on something in his statement on inflation ("Higher inflation is the transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle classes.") - the winners in the middle and upper classes are in the minority, far above median levels of income and wealth. Of inflation's effect on the relative poor the Fed may not be ignorant, but in choosing to benefit a small but well-connected minority they most certainly are insensitive.

Bloomberg:

Fox reporter fishes for sound bites... not biting

Blog=Trash?

It seems these days that every mainstream media outlet (including the good guys) is blogging away. While you might expect this to bring respect to the - dare I type it - blogosphere, you'd be wrong. Seems like traditional journalists are pumping out blog posts because the informality of it can save editor time (i.e. good excuse to hire fewer editors). These inane posts are still shackled by corporate censorship and that is not why the world got interested in blogs to begin with.

In light of the global focus on food this year, I'm posting my response to a vapid entry on the Guardian's food blog:

I'm continually shocked by our need to excuse the habits of conscientious eaters. Yes wartime rationing did affect eating habits, I'll admit. But avoiding waste without being forced to is a virtue.

The 'appeal' of drinking water used to cook veggies is that you are not throwing away delicious micronutrients. With your improved diet, you might even be able to cut back on fortified starches and meat. Sipping broth is a moral decision, a health decision, a personal finance decision, and perhaps a sign of sophisticated taste buds.

Readers who dare introspect momentarily on their eating habits should give the Guardian's George Monbiot's recent column a read.

My 'quirk', developed over many years in low income countries, is filling my bowl with traditional dishes and finishing every last bite. I'm also a gravy mopper - give me bread and a dirty dish and I'll show you a healthy snack.
Don't call me quirky. Call me smart.

So how badly have individual blogs been hurt by the mainstream? Sound off in the comment, why not.

The global food crunch: murder by exclusion

George Mondbiot writes on the Guardian:

The World Bank points out that "the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol ... could feed one person for a year".

...

I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. This is a freshwater fish that can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency - about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat - of any farmed animal.

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X Sama is moving!

I've finally had it with all of this template editing. X Sama is moving to blogspot so Blogger can take care of the web coding stuff, and I can focus on bringing you the nut-busting truth. Update your bookmarks to http://xsama.blogspot.com