Curt Doolittle

Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

  • Demographic cliff too….., (HT Cowen)

    http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/11/29/u-s-birth-rate-falls-to-a-record-low-decline-is-greatest-among-immigrants/A Demographic cliff too…..,

    (HT Cowen)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-30 17:25:00 UTC

  • LINCOLN FILLED THE SLAVES It had nothing to do with moral conviction

    http://www.dickmorris.com/how-lincoln-freed-the-slaves-dick-morris-tv-history-video/HOW LINCOLN FILLED THE SLAVES

    It had nothing to do with moral conviction.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-24 11:26:00 UTC

  • SARTORIAL DOMINOS We are in a mall. Veronika wants to buy shoes. In one store th

    SARTORIAL DOMINOS

    We are in a mall. Veronika wants to buy shoes. In one store the boots women wear as a nearly universal uniform are lined neatly on the top shelf like dominos.

    Veronika pulls one down. Puts it back up. Tips the one next to it. And the boots act like dominos. The entire shelf explodes and there are boots all over the floor.

    I kept looking for Steve Martin.

    In a reasonable country someone would have thought of a solution. But here they just scowl and put the dominos back in position.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-21 07:31:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: DAILY MOTORCADE every morning they shut down Sahaidichnoh

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: DAILY MOTORCADE

    every morning they shut down Sahaidichnoho street so that the presidential motorcade does not sit vulnerably in traffic.

    Then six or seven cars pass in formation.

    The people I talk to seem to think its a privilege. But the taxi drivers who have served in the military know the reason: the cheapest and easiest way to kill a politician is in a car with an RPG.

    It’s my daily reminder that a government should fear its people. Not people fear their government.

    And that politicians should not give them reason to.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-21 03:38:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: (UPSETTING) DIETS AND HUNGER I have met an absurd number

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: (UPSETTING) DIETS AND HUNGER

    I have met an absurd number of people here, and it may be the circle of people I’m meeting, that eat only once a day, and compensate with cigarettes and coffee.

    Now, I’m pretty thrilled at the physical appearance of men and women here, even if the smoke is brutal on my lungs. But if these random observations are backed by some kind of confirming data (not the BS that we get in the states) then it’s just painfully sad.

    I mean, in the states, most of us try to avoid obesity. Our poor especially. But here, they eat less, what they eat is less processed, they walk, and they smoke. It’s no wonder they’re so fit. Seriously.

    I heard another story the other day about a couple with a child who only eats once a day so that they can afford clothes for the kid. And if you watch the lunch counter lines even here downtown, it’s suspicious how little food, and how cheap it is, that a lot of people put on their plates.

    In the states we see people bring lunch to work. That makes sense. But usually it’s so that they can save up for something like a house or car. Or because it’s just so offensive when you add up what you spend for lunches, compared to your entire food budget for the family. I can understand those things. Or maybe you just want to eat healthy, which is impossible even in the most socially conscious cities.

    These people are not so much preyed upon by corruption, as the corrupt ignore them and let them either leave the country or hunger.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 06:00:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : OFFICES WITHOUT PHONES First, cell phone plans and costs

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : OFFICES WITHOUT PHONES

    First, cell phone plans and costs are absurdly cheap here. I think in the states I tend to pay well over a hundred a month, and close to two hundred. During heavy business usage plans run six to fifteen hundred a month. (And yes, I have enough knowledge of the different phone companies to know how much of that is wasted on marketing to customers who are not loyal, and how much poorly our regulators protect us from penalty pricing. In penatlty pricing the profits are made by enticing customers with low prices and setting low limits on account usage and charging absurd penalties for going over those limits. This violates the principle of asymmetry of knowledge. And it ends up sending the lower classes to collection and further charges. So yes, I think it’s a hazard, and yes, I think it violates libertarian property rights.

    Second, when you go into an office here, at least the offices that I’ve been into, it’s just not a given that everyone will have a company provided phone, unless they absolutely need one for their work.

    Desks, as we know them. are places where you can store clerical equipment. they are workbenches for people who calculate abstractions rather than modify the physical world.

    But if you have a laptop and a cell phone (or a laptop and skype) you pretty much can work lying down on a couch, or standing at a bar, or in my favorite repose, sitting in a chair with your feet up. Now the truth is, that comfortable seating inversely proportional the the impact on your health. We need to walk. We compensate by standing at standing-desks. Some of us have discovereed the abdominal value of sitting on an exercise ball at a desk, which works your abs eight ours a day. Most of us sit in chairs at desks, which if we use reasonable posture is bad for our hearts and waistlines, but that’s all. Ohters of us recline in couches and chairs, because all we have to do is talk or write text, and a desk is unnecessary, but this is the worst possible place to put your body if you don’t get up and move around every thirty minutes or so.

    All that said, if we don’t need phones, at least some portion of us don’t need desks. But that’s probably bad for our health. So, the next work environment I”m going to put together will have desks at the perimeter, and lots of lounges for working comfortably, and ad-hoc, with the people that you need to.

    Now, I realize that technologists are a narrow segment. And that technologists don’t necessarily signal using office spaces. But for some of us, it’s just paradise to sit in a comfy chair and crank out our ideas.

    Offices need not be structured around phones.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 03:37:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : MOTHERS, USELESS MALES AND MISSING CHIVALRY A country wh

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS : MOTHERS, USELESS MALES AND MISSING CHIVALRY

    A country where the men stand around, watch what’s going on, direct the women as if they are somehow adding value to the obvious, and the women humor the men, mollify them sufficiently as if they’re afraid of being beaten, and then do all the work as if the men weren’t there anyway.

    I am not a feminist. I also do not believe that men should willingly abandon their wealth of violence in order to become subjects of a mythical common good. But the fact is, that more than 1/3 of men are unnecessary unless we rely on manual labor, and they are entirely useless to society.

    However, they are born to and raised by mothers whose genes and choice of mates is insufficient for producing individual males capable of production in post-labor societies.

    “Choice” means that a woman has full control of breeding, and that the compromise “peace” that was achieved by the nuclear family under agrarianism, where the farm was a family business, and the family was the smallest tribe that it is possible to form, and where both male and female breeding strategies could be satisfied with limited compromise.

    Men are what mothers breed, and make them. While they have innate tendencies that are very different from those of women, most of what we call civilization is creating rules and incentives that direct men’s energies to the pursuit of status and behavior that is beneficial for all.

    So who is to blame for the behavior of men here?

    They have not abandoned their wealth of violence. That’s obvious. Neither domestically, politically, economically or socially. And for that I admire them. HOwever, without chivalry, they have no means of directing their energies to service of others.

    And without mothers who understand chivalry, they have no one to teach them.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-11 03:44:00 UTC

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS:SEXUALITY An advertisement that’s everywhere downtown for

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS:SEXUALITY

    An advertisement that’s everywhere downtown for a strip club that caters to women.

    There are all sorts of strip clubs. Not having moved fully to the Internet, prostitution is pervasive in nightclubs, and according to the local English language newspaper, includes average girls just trying to pay for college.

    I am not a feminist by any means. And as a libertarian I don’t have a problem with prostitution. But the fact they the government has abandoned the common people to a degree that it’s this pervasive is simply an institutional failure of absurd proportions given the literacy and education of the populace.

    Like most countries the political class treats education as a ticket to prosperity and a cheap enticement to earn the loyalty of citizens.

    But the distribution of intelligence, manners and morals guarantees that education is available for use by 20% of the populace and the remainder are saddled with disappointment and debt – neither of which can be satisfied.

    Meanwhile the state uses the disaffection that it created with false promises to justify attacks on the private sector.

    It’s madness.

    Curt

    ( Did you see how I used sex to talk about education and statism? ). Lol

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-10 16:21:00 UTC

  • SPORT CLOTHES FOR FAT PEOPLE The fashion scene here in Kiev is much more interes

    SPORT CLOTHES FOR FAT PEOPLE

    The fashion scene here in Kiev is much more interesting than in the states. While NY may have the runway shows, the stores in the urban centers in Europe have greater variety. Better quality. More ability to demonstrate your identity and taste. And class ‘uniforms’ are not as varied here as they are in the states.

    Everyone used to complain about the prevalence of the “Gap” look – clothes that will tolerate being washed in the permanent press cycle repeatedly.

    But what I’ve notice lately is that there is no ‘fitness’ status symbol. There doesn’t have to be. Almost nobody is ‘fat’ thanks to sushi as a junk food, poverty that keeps 80% of the people from overeating for entertainment like we do in the states, pervasive cigarette smoking, and a lot of plain old walking. People are pretty fit and thin.

    Because there isn’t any fitness symbolism, there really isn’t the same tendency to use sport clothes or casual clothes with sport affectations here.

    Which, of course, simply draws one’s attention to the fact that north americans are a bunch of fat people in faux-fitness clothing. And fitness clothing, being loose and comfortable, is pretty useful clothing for fat people.

    sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-06 03:22:00 UTC

  • WHY UKRAINIANS DISLIKE RUSSIANS You know, over the past month, I’ve seen about a

    WHY UKRAINIANS DISLIKE RUSSIANS

    You know, over the past month, I’ve seen about a dozen incidents so far of some drunk Russian male douchebag looking for a fight. Last night was typical. The guy tried to leave the restaurant without paying his bill. He had to send a friend to get money for him from an ATM. When he counted out the money on the table, he distracted the waitress and then deftly pocketed some of it again. Then he accused the waitress of stealing from him, when she counted the money and came up short. He claimed injustice and called on his friends. I think three or four of them came as supporters.

    Things are odd here: in the states if anything like this happened, the staff would quickly call the police or bouncers and move the scene out of view. THe police would document the facts that they could collect, force the idiots to leave the premises and let the courts resolve the conflict. But here, I don’t know why, the argument went on for more than an hour in the restaurant, while patient customers ignored it. The security guards were as patient as saints. The managers were overly deliberative. The Bartender would have happily gotten into a brawl. The waitresses formed a female mob around them (women do everything here.)

    So, aside from being invaded by these people, conquered by them, forced to learn their language – they still have to put up with fight-seeking drunken scumbags on a daily basis. And it’s sad. The people here are so sweet, patient and gentle.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-27 06:23:00 UTC