Author: Rev. Joe Dirt

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #2,638

yeah I know you did not ask!

Anyone who has ever lived with a dog for any period of time will come to know that they are creatures of habit, creatures of routine.  Señora feeds Princess Lily in the morning, time dependent on when Señora makes the commitment that this really is a new day and rolls out of the warm, embracing bed. But as soon as she does, The Wee Dog is following her around. Señora is very regular on the next feeding  of our proxy child at 1700 hours.

Somehow this punctual pooch protegee knows the time, and about five or so minutes before the appointed hour her hirsute self is parked by her food bowl, her eyes tracking Señora.

I am going to find the miniature Rolex watch that must be buried under the fur on her little doggie wrist, and sell it.  Maybe then I can recuperate, in part, all the money spent on food, all the money spent on treats, all money spent on toys, all the money spent on vet bills, that Señora has lavished upon our copacetic canine companion… or not.

And so it goes in our little ménage à chienne.

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My Retirement in Crypto-Currency?

“In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash.”

The above quote is from the book Sapiens – A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harai.

I started wondering if for some reason electricity generation became an issue then all those 1s and 0s, those bits and bytes in a myriad of computers around the globe would be naught.  There goes 35 or 40 years of hard work, saving , investing and retirement dreams. Of course if electric generation went away there would be logarithmically worse problems on the third rock from the sun.

60 trillion dollars worth of money in the world and 50 trillion of that is in digital form… talk about your cyrpto-currency.  Have you ever noticed the first 3 letters of this new fad in “money” is C-R-Y said the Curmudgeon channeling his inner Seinfeld.

And so it does not go… I hope.

And here is a country worried about electricity: Winter is coming: The ‘best country in the world’ is planning to ban electric cars amid the energy crisis. Is it time to revisit oil stocks? Here are 3 big plays

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Restaurant Red Flags

What triggered this post was an article about a TikTok video posted by a health inspector… somewhere too far north.  I read the article, but I passed on the video.  However, the link to both is at the bottom of this post. Enjoy.

In 1983 my ex-spouse had found a job in Arkansas and I was living in Tulsa, by gawd, Oklahoma.  Deciding I needed to be in Arkansas also meant I needed a job.  A position as a County Sanitarian (Health Inspector) Continue reading “Restaurant Red Flags”

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Corn on the cob

This morning I had a session of Spanish conversation practice with a young indigenous woman from Guatemala, Zelaida Guox.  She is currently going to school to become a teacher.   She had on a pair earrings that were small plastic corn cobs, maize – corn – being very important in the cultures of Mexico and Central America.

We talked about her earrings for a bit, then she asked me if we eat corn here. Claro que sí, señorita… But of course we do, corn on the cob being a very typical food of summer. I then went on to describe how we tend to soak our corn on the cob in butter.  She thought this a little strange. She then described how they commonly eat corn on the cob in Guatemala.  One way is that they squeeze lemon juice, followed by salt, followed by squeezing lime juice on the cob.  Or they put ketchup (salsa dulce) on their corn on the cob or sometimes mayonnaise.  I had heard the mayonnaise addition before, and I am betting it is very good.

Something different to try next time you have one of the emblematic foods of summer.

And so it goes.

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State Violence

Another quote to meditate on from The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.  For some reason the last part of this sentence keeps echoing in my mind, that part of the definition of a sovereign state is that the state has sole proprietorship of legitimate violence within its boundaries.  It is something I knew before, but I had never articulated in quite that manner.

“…is confident that an objective statistical analysis, shorn of sentiment, will show us to be living in an age of unprecedented peace and security. And this, he suggests, is the logical outcome of living in sovereign states, each with a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence within its borders…“

Well…not an earwig, but definitely a mental perseveration.

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Gendered Appropriation

“….we saw in earlier chapters, tracing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite literally, in the fabric of material culture, such as painted ceramics that mimic both textile designs and female bodies in their forms and elaborate decorative structures. To take just two examples, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early Mesopotamian cuneiform documents or in the layout of Peru’s Chavín temples sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe or sculptor, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in earlier times through concrete practices such as the solid geometry and applied calculus of weaving or beadwork. What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.“

The above quote is from The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Their book is an attempt to upend the linear, inevitable  human history as we have been taught and is currently de rigueur in popular books of overarching human history.

No earth shattering conclusions…I am just putting this out there as a nugget to meditate on.  That ‘civilization‘ may not have been the product of men breaking the mold and having a sudden intellectual epiphanies on various subjects and endeavors, but the slow accumulation of knowledge by women that men appropriated. Although I am not sure appropriation is the proper word as many of these past societies were less gender stratified than became the norm later.

Now assume the lotus position…

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The Other Side of Qatar

Luisito Comunica is a Mexican YouTuber  who is SUPER popular in in Latin America with almost 40,000,000 followers.  He travels around the world making YouTube videos of the various countries he visits. Occasionally you will also see his girlfriend (may be ex now) in the videos.  She is a very hot Venezuelan model.  Talk about a couple of opposites. Go figure!

I watch his videos to have another channel of Spanish input into my old brain, plus he is VERY entertaining.  Most of the time his videos are on the lighter side or pointing out cultural oddities. Occasionally he gets serious as he has done in this video.

In early 2017, Qatar’s total population was 2.6 million, with 313,000 of them Qatari citizens.  Basically you have millions of imported workers supporting the Qatari few. I wonder what Mohamed would think about that situation in light of the squalid living conditions?

Since his audience is Latin America, English subtitles are not available, but I think a few minutes watching this video and you will get the idea… even if you do not understand him.

This is his third video in Qatar.  The first two were of the side of Qatar the powers to be there would like you to see.  I sincerely hope that he has left Qatar before posting this one.

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Our Father, Which Art at Red Lobster… 

This posting is more this old curmudgeon thinking out loud than anything else… so take it in that spirit.

I am not a fan of religion.  In my calculus the amount of harm that religion has done far outweighs any good that can be attributed to it.  Given that the basis of any religion is essentially unprovable (hence we talk about faith), the amount of prosecution, violence, even killing and wars, suppression of other beliefs and non-believers, etc. done in the name religion, in the name of God, is incredible. The history I am most familiar is of the history of the Catholic Church, not because I am Catholic, but it because it longest and best documented. This history continually makes me cringe the more I learn about it.  Protestants, Muslims, Hindus and probably many others religions do not get a pass on this horrible chronicle either.

In spite of having said the above, I totally understand the impulse to be religious. Hell, at times Continue reading “Our Father, Which Art at Red Lobster… “

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Tlaxcala Boot Camp

I am still in the process of listening to the audio book of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This book is a reexamination of the current narrative of how our civilization, culture, social institutions, etc evolved in the light of new evidence and new interpretations.   I came across another passage that really spoke to me.

“Those who aspired to a role on the council of Tlaxcala, far from being expected to demonstrate personal charisma or the ability to outdo rivals, did so in a spirit of self-deprecation – even shame. They were required to subordinate themselves to the people of the city. To ensure that this subordination was no mere show, each was subject to trials, starting with mandatory exposure to public abuse, regarded as the proper reward of ambition, and then – with one’s ego in tatters – a long period of seclusion, in which the aspiring politician suffered ordeals of fasting, sleep deprivation, bloodletting and a strict regime of moral instruction. The initiation ended with a ‘coming out’ of the newly constituted public servant, amid feasting and celebration. Clearly, taking up office in this indigenous democracy required personality traits very different to those we take for granted in modern electoral politics.”

On the off-chance that you are not up on your 16th century mesoamerican Continue reading “Tlaxcala Boot Camp”