Fifty years ago.........................

Quicksilver Messenger Service..........................................Mona

Fifty years ago..................................

Iron Butterfly..........................................................Lonely Boy

Hmmm..............................

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Big-hearted fandom...........................

…………………………………………..raw but lucid.

Fifty years ago.................................

It's A Beautiful Day......................................Girl With No Eyes

As Poor Richard says............................

They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, he proceeded as follows: "'Friends,' says he, 'the taxes are, indeed, very heavy; and, if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them;  but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us.  We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us, by allowing an abatement.  However, let us hearken to good advice and something may be done for us; 'God helps them that helps themselves,' as Poor Richard says."

Benjamin Franklin,  The Way To Wealth

Opening paragraphs..................

The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, six and a half million square feet, thirty thousand people, more than seventeen miles of corridors, but it was built with just three street doors, each one of them opening into a guarded pedestrian lobby.  I chose the southeast option, the main concourse entrance, the one nearest the Metro and the bus station, because it was the busiest and most popular with civilian workers, and I wanted plenty of civilian workers around, preferably a whole long unending stream of them, for insurance purposes, mostly against getting shot on sight.  Arrests go bad all the time, sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose, so I wanted witnesses.  I wanted independent eyeballs on me, at least in the beginning.  I remember the date, of course.  It was Tuesday, the eleventh of March, 1997, and it was the last day I walked into that place as a legal employee of the people who built it.

-Lee Child,  The Affair

Fifty years ago.............................

It's A Beautiful Day............................................Hot Summer Day

On biglification..........................

We had this problem licked more than a century ago, when the overwhelming majority never went anywhere except on foot, and those with a need to travel grand distances could take the railway — which, incidentally, had baggage cars. Taking this Province for my example, and my wanderings through it for my research, I am constantly impressed to discover evidence of how well it was served by the railroads, back when it had a fraction of its present population, and incomes were much lower. One could get from almost any little place to almost any other along them.

The obliteration of our railroads did not happen by chance. Starting with Roosevelt, on this side of the Atlantic, and Hitler, on the other side, a grand concerted effort was made to promote the automotive and paving industries, and build autobahns, specifically at the expense of rail. Cars had already become too numerous by the 1920s, but the idea of what Trump and I might call “biglification” — the totalitarian impulse — was to choke the planet with “people’s” cars, trucks, and buses. It became the one big economic pseudo vision, as the Depression wore on. What had been fairly useful vehicles — very local extensions from the train stations — became the most awkward and wasteful mass-transport system imaginable. The intention of the captains and politicians of industry was, from the beginning, to compel everyone to buy and drive these voracious machines, and become permanently indebted thereby.

-David Warren, as cut and pasted from here

Why drive when you can take the train?

At 1:55, "I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it."

Always................................

thanks David

Mesmerising............................

With the right perspective, there is very little difference between chaos and order:

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Hmmm...........................

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On the unsettling of science...............

So if the lakes’ huge fluctuations in the past weren’t caused by mankind’s burning fossil fuels, why are scientists so convinced that the far more minor changes happening today are?


The reason is simple. Climate scientists can blame anything they want on global warming. The climate models are imprecise enough that no matter what is happening they can point to it as proof that man-made climate change is happening. Too much rain, too little rain, bitterly cold winters, mild winters, more snow, less snow, rising water levels, falling water levels — they can attribute “climate change” as a cause of it all.


But if nothing can disprove a theory, and every event, no matter how contradictory, is proof that the theory is valid, is that really science? Sounds more like a religion to us


-from this Issues & Insights post


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Fifty years ago................................

The Band...........................The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Fifty years ago..........................

The Band....................................................Up On Cripple Creek

It's simple...................................

The Execupundit makes the cut at Yahooey's

Fifty years ago...........................

New Colony Six....................................Things I'd Like To Say