Reinke Faces Life

http://tinyhouseblog.com/stick-built/ellens-tiny-house/

Ellen’s Tiny House
by Christina Nellemann on October 10th, 2011

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Ellen Dawson-Witt was recently featured in her local newspaper because of her tiny house and her downshifted life. Ellen’s 192 square foot house is located on her property in Yellow Springs, Ohio where she grows some of her own food and carries water from a well for washing, uses solar panels for a lamp, CD player and laptop and uses a composting toilet. She does her cooking on a gas range from 1934.

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Hmmm, the 2011 version of a McMansion?

Clearly the malinvestment of the past decades is in the “overinvestment” in housing. The “Real Estate Market” collapse is a symptom.

Small houses are one alternative. (Homelessness due to high cost.) It would be possible to reasonable afford a “bachelor pad”. There probably needs to be practical “family” housing. Not small for small’s sake, but right-size. (Reminds me of the insource, outsource, rightsource debate in information technology in the late 80’s.)

Multi-generational households are another. (This also solves some of the elder care problem; or at least delays it.)

Plus, there’s a need for housing that adapts over time — the needs of the young morphs into the needs of the old. Housing; not “housing supply” since there are tremendous transaction costs.

One thing’s for sure, the Gooferment isn’t going to deliver that or do anything but delay or prevent it.

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http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/republican-party-benefits-from-obama-errors/

REPUBLICAN PARTY BENEFITS FROM OBAMA ERRORS
By Dick Morris

“The weakness of capitalism is greed. The weakness of socialism is corruption.”

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Not sure I agree with Dick on this.

I agree with the Gecko character “Greed is good”. It’s the lubricant that induces crotchety humans to cooperate. By following what they see as their own best interests, they are motivated to work harder. Until we figure out how ants coordinate, we need everyone working intelligently. Once each one gets all they are willing to pay for, there’s a complex calculus that shares the “satisfaction” and “dissatisfaction” roughly equally.

The weakness of capitalism is that the calculus is not obvious. There are no guarantees. Not there are any in life under any system. Or anywhere on the planet.

The weakness of socialism is that it makes promises it can’t keep. That “each according to his needs” nonsense ignores the teachings of the dismal science.

Look at the attempts to “legislate” equality. If you look at truly free markets, it’s like a series of elections in real time. That what “prices” in the marketplace communicate more than we realize. How much is an actor willing to pay while balancing supply with demand. That’s a key fact. It’s both the strength and the weakness.

You can be fooled by promises of “free lunch” and fail to see the market as mechanism to induce cooperation.

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http://www.impactlab.net/2011/10/01/why-industries-collapse/

October 1st, 2011 at 10:25 am
Why Industries Collapse
Futurist Thomas Frey
in: Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Historical Perspectives, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

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Complex societies collapse because they are too inflexible to respond. From our vantage point, this can seem rather mystifying. Why didn’t they just re-tool and make things simpler? The answer Tainter gives is a simple one: When societies fail to respond with orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.

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Minimal size organizations are the answer.

It’s that “small, fast, and agile” meme again.

So maybe it’s the path to “salvation”.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044014/Celebrity-reincarnations-The-Hollywood-stars-amazing-Civil-War-doubles.html

After Nicolas Cage and John Travolta… here are the OTHER amazing Civil War celebrity doppelgangers
By MIKE O’BRIEN
Last updated at 4:59 AM on 1st October 2011

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http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Ex-death-row-Irish-worker-calls-for-death-penalty-to-be-abolished-130413918.html

Former Irish death row worker calls for death penalty to be abolished

Having worked for a summer along death row inmates he sees no benefit to the death penalty

ByMOLLY MULDOON,Irish Voice Reporter

Published Friday, September 23, 2011, 8:27 AMUpdated Friday, September 23, 2011, 11:42 AM

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A young Irishman who spent the summer working alongside death row inmates in Austin, Texas tells IrishCentral.com why he thinks the death penalty should be abolished.

When most Irish students contemplate a summer internship in the US, they don’t expect to find themselves face to face with convicted serial killers and rapists. But that is exactly where Dannie Hanna, a young man from Ennis Co. Clare ended up this past August while doing pro bono work for death row inmates in Austin, Texas.

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“Finally, from a justice perspective, the system in which the death verdict is given is nothing short of disgraceful – from the provision of ineffective legal counsel on behalf of state appointed lawyers, to the pedantic nature of some members of the Texas judiciary,” Dannie said.

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“All we are doing is creating another victim from this atrocity. I thus would believe that life without parole is an appropriate sentence,” the Clare man said.

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I don’t know that there is ALWAYS “reasonable doubt”.

But I do think that the Gooferment killing citizens, guests, or even “illegal aliens” is immoral, ineffective, and inefficient.

We KNOW that there have been many mistakes in death penalty cases (i.e., Project Innocence). So since we can’t raise the dead, I think we should NOT have a “death penalty”.

That being said, “death penalty” inmates are potentially very dangerous — it’d be like keeping a cobra as a pet — so maybe we need a confinement method that would be safe for the guards.

Maybe the “death penalty” is reserved for those convicts who are just too dangerous to keep in confinement. Perhaps the only way to know that is if they cause a second death after being convicted of a first one.

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Stephen E. Phelps Jr. That link is broken; think this is the one you meant: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Irish-are-right-to-slam-US-on-death-penalty-130845643.html?page=3 Good article.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Irish-are-right-to-slam-US-on-death-penalty-130845643.html?page=3

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http://www.awaionline.com/2011/09/how-many-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb/

How Many … To Screw in a Light Bulb?
By Dan Kennedy

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At Disney, the oldest joke about the Imagineers – goes like this:

Q: How many Imagineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

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I call this the Open Architecture Concept. Very, very, very, very few people, in percentage terms, in ratio to population, conduct their businesses or live their lives based on Open Architecture. To the contrary, they approach whatever business they are in by getting a small rule book from somebody or by observing peers, then treat that as a box with cement walls.

Some cultures are still all about closed architecture: caste systems that confine people to the same status in society as their parents, arranged marriages, discriminatory laws that make women chattel and prohibit them from so much as leaving their homes unaccompanied by a husband, father, or brother. Before the interstate highway system, we were a relatively immobile society, so over 70% of the people lived and died and never left whatever town they were born in.

In my business life, narrowly and broadly, I’ve never accepted closed architecture. A narrow example: I never let the client define the assignment. The client says: How much to have you write a sales letter? I say: Why does it have to be a sales letter?

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Ahhh, yes, getting outside the box. Maybe that’s why I find “Dharma & Greg” or Lucille Ball funny. Always in the extreme.

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http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/09/27/the-cheat-sheet-september-27-please-sir-may-i-pay-some-more/

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Of course: Barry Diller’s IAC, a global internet and media conglomerate, announced that Chelsea Clinton will join the company’s board of directors. The position pays an annual stipend of $50,000 and comes with stock options (!). A company spokesman explained the rationale:

‘Ms. Clinton is a keenly intelligent, insightful and inspirational young woman with experience in consulting and public policy, whose skills and background complement the existing areas of expertise of other board members.

She’s 31.

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http://paidcontent.org/article/419-sec-watch-chelsea-clinton-joins-iac-board/

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Does anyone understand what she brings to the table? Maybe Mom and Dad!

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2040248/Why-165-people-gone-missing-cruise-ships-recent-years.html

The vanishing passengers: It’s a mystery as bizarre as it is disturbing – why have 165 people gone missing from cruise ships in recent years?

By NATALIE CLARKE

Last updated at 11:06 PM on 21st September 2011

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His case is far from unique. Over the past few years, there have been an alarming number of unexplained and unsolved disappearances on board cruise liners.

According to the U.S.-based International Cruise Victims Association, 165 people have gone missing at sea since 1995, with at least 13 this year alone — many of them from vessels popular with British holidaymakers.

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Good way to: (1) get rid of a significant other with paying them off; OR (2) good way to disappear if things are not going so good — slip into a second identity — with a shill to “check in”; OR (3) easy to suicide.

No?

#2 is most interesting to me. One would assume that, if you were not as infamous as a “Bernie Made-off” or as famous as Angie Harmon, as well as well off to the tune of millions, then you could use this to skip.

We know that to “leave” the USA is very expensive as the IRS keeps tightening controls on wealth crossing borders. Perhaps this phenomena could be the ultimate exit strategy.

Assuming that the cruise ships have “pretty good” physical security — after all they want to get paid for all the passengers, stowaways are not permitted — one way to do #2 is to book two passengers — Identity #1 and Identity #2. The trick would be for one person to get them both “checked in”. Then during the cruise, morph from ONE to TWO. In the post 9/11 world, one would have to know the process in detail or have some inside help.

Wonder how the crew “checks off” the ship. Could a passenger become a crew member?

This is the stuff of a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

But me, and my tin foil hat, doesn’t rule out that it IS possible. Like a Pink Elephant, I can imagine it; so it must be possible.

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http://www.casinocitytimes.com/news/article/doj-says-full-tilt-was-a-global-ponzi-scheme-198602?contentID=198602

DOJ says Full Tilt was a global Ponzi scheme
20 September 2011
By Dan Igo

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“Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme,” Bharara said in a statement. “Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited.”

Lederer, Ferguson, former CEO Ray Bitar and Rafael “Rafe” Furst, all owners of Full Tilt Poker, are accused of distributing approximately $443 million to themselves and other owners of the company. The amended complaint alleges that Full Tilt mixed player funds with operating funds, despite public claims to the contrary by the site.

The DOJ said that by the end of March, Full Tilt Poker owed approximately $390 million to players worldwide, including $150 million to American players, but had less than $60 million in its bank accounts.

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I was always suspicious of online poker.

I admit it was more about the risk of the computer programming. I could envision all sorts of compromises. Network, collusion, and malware leap to mind.

I didn’t think about our old friend Ponzi; I will from now on.

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http://lewrockwell.com/rep2/water-crisis-coming.html

25 Signs That a Horrific Global Water Crisis Is Coming
Economic Collapse Blog

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#3 Since 1998, the level of water in Lake Mead has plunged by more than 50 percent. Lake Mead supplies about 85 percent of the water used in Las Vegas, and at this point the lake has 5.6 trillion gallons less water than it used to have. Lake Mead is falling so fast that some believe that the Hoover dam could actually stop producing electricity in a few years. Needless to say, that would be a total disaster for that entire region of the country. In addition, if things continue at the current pace, it is being estimated that Lake Mead will run completely dry some time around the year 2021.

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I can attest to the drop in Lake Meade.

When I first visited in the 70’s, it was “full to the brim”. Each visit in subsequent years, you could see more and more of the “bathtub ring”.

Tragedy of the Commons?

If it was privately owned, prices would have been raised to preserve the resource.

Because it’s “publicly owned”, it’ll be drained dry.

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