Randoms

– Human waste shuts down public transportation in SF.

– GBFM reviews “The Book of Man”:

And so you can see that William Bennett is a Judas, selling out Jefferson, Virgil, and Homer, all for a few fiat dollars and short-lived fame. Nay–he is worse than Judas, as at least Judas was paid in Silver, while William Bennet is paid in fiat debt for his soulless, ignorant debauchery

– Leftover women in China.

– Obviously, policymakers don’t make mistakes. If they did, we’d all be screwed.

– Mr Roach on Friedrich List.

– Fritz on liberty and society.

– Delenda est Carthago notes, “I think the diversity dogma is intrinsically appealing to children, or at least children living comfortable middle-class suburban lives.” I’ve often wondered if too much bubble is a bad way to raise kids.

– VDH on California:

In around 1960, rural California embraced modern civilization. By that I mean both in the trivial and fundamental sense. Rural dogs were usually vaccinated and licensed — and so monitored. Homes were subject to building codes and zoning laws; gone were the privies and lean-tos. Streets were not just paved, but well-paved. My own avenue was in far better shape in 1965 than it is now. Mosquito abatement districts regularly sprayed stagnant water ponds to ensure infectious disease remained a thing of our early-20th-century past. Now they merely warn us with West Nile Virus alerts. Ubiquitous “dumps” dotted the landscape, some of them private, ensuring, along with the general code of shame, that city-dwellers did not cast out their old mattresses or baby carriages along the side of the road. It seems the more environmental regulations, the scarcer the dumps and the more trash that litters roads and private property.

I walk each night around the farm. What is the weirdest find? A nearby alleyway has become a dumping place for the rotting corpses of fighting dogs. Each evening or so, a dead dog (pit bulls, Queensland terriers) with a rope and plenty of wounds is thrown up on the high bank. The coyotes make short work of the remains. Scattered about are several skeletons with ropes still around their necks. I suppose that at about 2 a.m. the organizers of dog fights drive in and cast out the evenings’ losers. I have never seen such a thing in 58 years (although finding plastic bags with dead kittens in the trash outside my vineyard was a close second). Where is PETA when you need them? Is not the epidemic of dog- and cock-fighting in central California a concern of theirs? (Is berating in Berkeley a corporation over meat-packing a bit more glamorous than running an education awareness program about animal fights in Parlier?)

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