Our visitors from Google are worried about the events at the end of the Mayan Calender. When the modern age has so many things to worry about, we ask “2012, why worry?”
How to Become an Adequately Cultured Person
Any article on being well-rounded that has “shit” somewhere in the first paragraph has to be somewhat different, and possibly good. As this is a Half-Assed guide, it’s full of shortcuts and easy ways to become cultured, or at least, seem more cultured than you really are.
Common Sense by Thomas Paine: Table of Contents
In the dawn of the United States, Thomas Paine published Common Sense to spark the revolutionary fire. Read the table of contents with an intro by, scourge of the Public Domain, Allister Butcher.
Economics for Fun and (Not Much) Profit Part VII: The Rise and Fall of Economic Thought I: Salamanca and Smith
In this, our final lesson (or rather mini-series) in this Econ series, we will examine the rise and collapse of economics itself as first a part of the Humanities, and then as a science. We will not go back into antiquity, which held some theories on trade, but rather we will focus on the past 500 years, with various schools of thought in chronological order.
Darfur, Darfive
Africa is boned. It always has been boned. It probably always will be boned. White-Man’s-Burden isn’t the answer (nor is its effeminate bastard-child–White-Guilt–the answer.) Money isn’t the answer. No, what the answer is, is good examples of human decency, and to encourage the same behavior among small groups of people there. Pay it forward, as it were.
Economics for Fun and (Not Much) Profit VI: The Philosophy of Money Part II: Our Monetary System and Inflationary Doomsday
By raising and lowering the rate of interest, the Fed effectively controls how much money exists in the U.S. That is because our money is not printed (some of it is, but only a fraction of the actual money supply exists in a physical form.) The rest of the money exists as numbers in computers. It exists because of the “money multiplier” effect.
Economics for Fun and (Not Much) Profit Part VI: Money (Session One: The Philosophy of Money, Price, and Value)
Money is Time, Price does not equal Value
Common Sense by Thomas Paine: Appendix
In the Appendix to the third addition of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, Thomas adds some closing words to the argument for Independence.
Economics for Fun and (Not Much) Profit IV: As the Economy Turns: The Tale of Miss Market (A Bad Soap Opera in One Act)
We in the West have spent the past two centuries benefiting from [Miss Market's] many skills – she in her innovative, brilliant, economic-freedom-loving glory has given us everything from Air Conditioning to Zouave rifles. Unfortunately, we have become a society of narcissists from the top down, and when you pair an otherwise independent woman with a narcissistic control freak, one of two things happen: she is broken, or she gets revenge.
Common Sense by Thomas Paine: IV
In “Of the Present Ability of America: with some Miscellaneous Reflections”, the final section of “Common Sense”, Thomas Paine further explores the reasons and motivations for America to stand against British rule. As Alistar Butcher continues to presents the Zine that started it all, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”
