Orwell, to put it kindly, does not win the Nostradamus award for prescience. Nor does he win an award for enlightened public policy. At one point, he pressed for capping individual incomes in Britain such that no person would earn more than ten times the salary of the lowest-paid worker. An unworkable plan, obviously, and that Orwell would suggest it betrays an ignorance of politics, policy, and human nature. It also betrays an ignorance of Frédéric Bastiat's wisdom about the relationship between liberty and equality -- viz, that mandating the latter will always destroy the former. Orwell advocated nationalizing not a few things, too: all major industry, all agricultural land, and all privately run schools. It is striking that the author of 1984 would write, approvingly, that at "the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is themselves."

I was a little taken back and then countered that actually there's quite a bit of hetero bonding in the series as well, if anything there's much more hetero stuff, but cos that's our default we don't notice it. But the gay stuff isn't default, so we notice it. I then ventured that he's just positioning gay relationships into the same everyday context as hetero ones.

All the while thinking that he can't say everybody accepts gay is accepted if he reacts so badly to seeing two guys kiss affectionately.

keep to the Fen Causeway

I still have my doubts that anybody's going to be investigated seriously, let alone prosecuted, for the crimes of the Bush administration, but if Holder does appoint a special prosecutor, I never want to hear the words "Marc Rich" from the Little Kossacks again.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Brazil said on Thursday it would give Cuba up to $300 million in credits to start rebuilding the island's port of Mariel, ... Brazilian Industry and Trade Minister Miguel Jorge said $110 million had been approved by his government and the rest would likely be, as Brazil strengthens its ties with communist-led Cuba. (...)Brazilian officials said Cuba expects the entire port project, which will be built in several phases, to cost up to $2 billion. (...) Cuba wants Mariel to serve as logistics center for its still-nascent offshore oil industry and to be equipped to handle shipments from around the world, including the United States, just 90 miles (145 km) to the north of Cuba. (...) Jorge, who was on the second day of a two-day visit to Cuba, said Brazil's state-owned oil giant Petrobras PBR.SA, which last October was awarded a bloc for oil exploration in Cuban waters, would open an office in Havana on Tuesday.

Apropos the last post, it now transpires that the mere dividends that the two Björgólfurs received from their ownership of Landsbanki were actually HIGHER than the loan they would now like to have written off. The loan they took to be able to buy the bank.

In other words, they milked out of the bank more money than they still owed in it.

How f*cking insane is that??

Why didn't they pay off their goddamn loan before they went off on their greedy spending spree buying private jets and telecommunications companies in Bulgaria and West f*cking Ham in the UK, plus their sundry of other toys and businesses???

On top of all that, it has come to light that the head of the loans department of Búnaðarbanki [now called Kaupthing], which loaned them the money to buy Landsbanki, was one Sigurjón Þ. Árnason, who was promptly made CEO of Landsbanki under its new owners. Argh!!

Reverend Billy used to be one of the top actor/writers in San Frandisco. I helped him and some other great talents nurture Life On the Water theater by the Bay.  he's now running for mayor of NYC, bringing progressive issues to the forefront against Bloomberg.

to my knowledge, it's the only gospel Church against gas fracking. he recently took the UK by storm, as well as gathering acolytes by the hundreds in Vienna.

Less than half an hour before the next mayor of nuyorican city pontificates, 8pm EU central, 7pm backwards UK.

my friends are weird. but very talented. (he's actually named Bill Talen.)

Skennah Kowa

The counter is one piece solid birch (sandwich) 4 cms thick, with the sink and ceramic hob cut into it. The area around the sink is lacquered, with water overspill prevented by thin teak laths rebated into the top around the sink. It was an innovation, but has worked quite well, and the waxed birch has now darkened to match the clear lacquer area.

The counter has 35 cm overhang on the opposite side so I can force dinner guests to sit and entertain me as I cook. I got the idea from a sushi bar.

Am now planning to play some of my favourite music very loud on my studio speakers, as all neighbours within 50 metres are off to their cottages.

You can't be me, I'm taken

    Me dreamed the people gathered to annoint a leader, some choice or something, and the people wanted one leader, but the loser's brother hijacked ballot boxes, and prevented "colored folk" from having their votes counted, and the brother's girlfriend, or perhaps she was a whore, judging from the plaster mask she wore, proclaimed the outcome before there was an outcome, prompting vast hordes of rats to leave a harbor that looked like Miami, and secret assemblages of Viagra-addicted men and unorgasmic women met to take these colored documents they dug up from the rotting caskets of the Founding Fathers, and tear them up into little pieces, scattering them into the cauldron around which they danced, copulating with goats and drinking the rarest champagne from patent leather goblins, belching smoke and ashes and cackling with abandon, and the cauldron bubbled black tar, rising out over the lips of iron, flooding the land with a hot sickly ooze, causing everyone to stick to each other like bugs in a web, while the leader, all skull and bones, quaking in fear as the richly-suited one who owned his soul walked down the gangway of that huge yacht, fell to his knees, opened the gold-zippered fly of, i can't really remember this part so visually, of some, well, he looked weathered from the desert, and turned into a giant camel, a camel in a neon suit, the loser fell to his knees, grasping the camel's huge hairy cock, and began to suck this rich black ooze from the camel's cock, swallowing, and shaking in ecstasy, camel cum dripping off his chin while his flailing hands rubbed every precious drop into his white, naked skin, turning him so black he disappeared, as walls of flashing pastel laser-guided explosions formed an undulating wall of black light fire reaching to the very heights of heaven, surrounding the camel's home.
    Man, me must have breathed too much fumes at work yesterday.
    Or not enough.


Skennah Kowa

Yes, it's been that kind of a day.

You are looking at pictures of a house I built for our family in Wales. It was built by myself and my father in law with help from passers by and visiting friends. 4 months after starting we were moved in and cosy. I estimate 1000-1500 man hours and £3000 put in to this point. Not really so much in house buying terms (roughly £60/sq m excluding labour).

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith