Jan 222012
 

This week there is news!

Deutsch: English: Otto Von Bismarck, Chancello...

Image via Wikipedia

The crack Coots News Team uncovered three good stories this week. Go figure! Weeks go by where the news just isn’t worth any attention and then we have three stories that deserve highlighting. I can’t decide if the news mongers are clueless rabble-rousers like the Wall Street protesters or fiendishly intelligent manipulators of public sentiment like our politicians. Anyway I had to make a choice today between Congress, the LA Unified School District and Germany. Any one of the three is abundantly scorn-worthy but I finally made a choice.

The winner is Germany.

Image via Wikipedia

It wasn’t even close. If there is a country that deserves to stand in the corner and wear a dunce cap, it is undeniably Germany. No other country comes close. The twentieth century should be dedicated to Germany, the instigator of our only two World Wars. Let’s just give them full credit. Germany invented World Wars and the two we experienced would never have happened without her. If we spent the first half of the twentieth century stopping those German World Wars, we spent the last half repairing the damage. There is just something terribly wrong about Germany. So much hubris, vanity, self congratulatory snobbery all wrapped up in a nice little package along with cuckoo clocks, strudel  and cars you can’t afford.  You couldn’t invent Germany.

The European economic crisis had it’s beginning in the welfare state mentality created by Bismark which became the model for the bloated European welfare system collapsing before our very eyes. You would think that Germans would be ashamed of their history and eager to create a new identity. Maybe that is why they support the European Union. Why else would they embrace its endless bureaucracy and limited freedom and rights. It all may be a smokescreen to hide the poisonous impact of the German state on the world under cover of the bland and oppressive European Union, just what Orwell warned us about. Who can say that Germany hasn’t been running a surreptitious World War III exporting German thinking to the rest of Europe? If so, it seems to be failing but that’s not the point of today’s story. Germany may be bad news for the world. German thinking may subvert reason and self interest as it spreads its influence throughout the world but Germany isn’t content with destroying the world. Germany is out to destroy Germany as today’s story demonstrates.  Maybe we should all be cheering.

It’s all about purity

Solar energy boondoggle

Today’s story is about Germany’s quest for ideological purity in energy. If there is an energy source that comes close to the purity of the old Nazi notion of the master race, it is energy from the sun. It is so pure, so natural and lets be honest so blond and blue eyed. No nasty combustion producing pollutants. No misbehaving particles from reactors to damage the neighborhood. The sun is the mother’s milk of energy sources. What German wouldn’t love it? And therefore the uber-wise Germans have decided to get rid of nuclear energy and seriously limit producing electricity from those nasty fossil fuels. But like always with Germany, reality trumps German intellect. All powerful as the German state may be and brilliant as the German intellect has proven itself, there is still a small problem with solar energy in Germany. The sun don’t shine in Germany and no amount of intellect or money will change that face. It’s taking Germany to bankruptcy. They have found the solar subsidy sinkhole.

Re-Evaluating Germany’s Blind Faith in the Sun

I wish I could trust our own government to be more practical but that German thinking is quite contagious.

 

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A Coots Retrospective

 Posted by at 10:08  Coot Smirk
Jan 202012
 
Chemical structure of Caffeine.

Image via Wikipedia

This post today represents the 199th post on Cantankerous Old Coots.  I thought we could take a peek back at the year that was and explore a bit about this site, and the snarky comment that started it all.

It is only appropriate that Ralph will have the 200th post on the Coots.  Not only has he posted the most on this site, it was his comment over on my blog Catharsis of the Bogue that started all of this madness.  It was March 22nd of last year that I started this site.  On the 23rd I wrote the following post:

Well folks I did something very impulsive last night. I was sitting here trying to come up with some topic to write on. I am tired and only partially fueled by caffeine. My wife said I had that “look” and tonight’s post would be a doozy. She has seen the writing frenzy that exhaustion and caffeine has wrought.
The problem was this. Carlos sucked all of the ideas out of me during the PreWriting Challenge! Ok not really but it has been a day of writers block for post titles. I have a couple of story ideas though. I had a thought this morning after taking the kids to school that I hope I was not running dry of ideas. I am almost at my 3 month mark and ready to push past it.
I know there are more ideas, I just either need more sleep or more caffeine to make them flow. Or some good inspiration. I went and read some blogs, left some comments and tweeted a bit. After that I went back to look at my comments just hoping there was something there.
And there was! My internet buddy and purveyor of many life experiences Ralph(http://ralphcarlsonblog.com/) had left a comment. The discussion was about niches, and fitting in, when Ralph says,
“I am not sure that there is any market for cantankerous old coots but if there were, I’d claim it.”
I laughed and replied that I would sign up for the RSS feed of that. I didn’t think much more about it until Dave Doolin pipes up with his sage advice to go claim it. So I did. Coming in the next week or so, I will have a bunch of work with another blog at www.cantankerousoldcoots.com.
I think I am going to fill the blog with the wisdom and rants of those older than me, even though I am getting up there myself. I hope to get Ralph to fill the first guest post with something profound, and later Dave with something that would be totally inappropriate on his site.
I need to create a badge….crossed Preparation H and Ben Gay over a grouchy old guy’s face…. Our motto could be “Whatever” and our niche is “Advice for life from old coots.” We of course would have to adopt a Red Green type lodge… Hmmmm there are many possibilities. I would love to hear suggestions. We would have bylaws too…if you are under 40 you need to have an old coot persona or you can’t be published. Only rants on things that were better in the past could be posted. Any bowel problems are better off on your own site unless they have a really funny punchline and a cute nurse involved.
Wow I must be tired. This is going to be huge amounts of fun. Let me know what you think in the comments and sign up for my newsletter, I will keep updates in that as well!
Thanks for reading!
-Justin

And now here we are 200 posts, 6 authors and 134,000 words published.  It has been a good year.  If you are new to this blog, thanks for coming!  Sign up for our newsletter and get the first Coots e-book from Cantankerous Old Coots University.  If you are one of our long time readers, thanks for sticking around and boosting our numbers!  If you have never commented, now is a good time to do so!  If you feel feverish, head on over to one of the Coots other blogs: Ralph’s, Bob’s or mine.

Also, Bob is a little under the weather this weekend and will not be spending it in his yurt where he belongs.  Send him a message over there to the right or to bob@cantankerousoldcoots.com  and let him know you are thinking about him.  Hopefully he will be back at full strength soon!

Have a great weekend

-Justin

Jan 152012
 
IMG_0759
Image by mariachily via Flickr

Hello folks.  Today’s podcast is inspired by a post over on my friend Maria Muir’s site.  It is about the absurd lengths the TSA is going through to make sure citizens get violated, I mean secured.  Go check Maria’s stuff out at MariaMuir.com. She will love the traffic.  The link to the article is after the podcast!

This pic is just a portent of what will be expected in the airport in the next few years. I can picture the agent (a large woman with a german accent strangely enough) saying, “Now you will stand like this while we check you for incendiary devices in your lower intestine!”  Scary thoughts.

[powerpress]

Thanks for listening.  Here is the link to Maria’s post: http://mariamuir.com/2010/12/01/tsa-the-new-sex-predators-grooming-your-children-with-your-consent/comment-page-1/#comment-3086

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Jan 152012
 

Progress is our most important product!

Two stories today that tell you a lot about where we are going as a society. I know that I’m always saying how things are going to hell in a hand basket but there is still some of the old spirit left in the country. We haven’t all been transformed into self indulgent and selfish egomaniacs who have to experience self-gratification now and don’t care what it does to us or anybody else.

Not every movie is a non-stop explosion of unbelievable and incredibly noisy special effects that have nothing to do with the plot (oh I forgot, movies don’t have plots these days because today nobody can remember anything for more than 20 seconds).

Not every invention is designed to titillate the incredibly self-indulgent egos of the brain-dead products of modern education. At least not yet.

Where are those cities on the Moon?

We’ve come a long way from the optimistic ‘we can do anything’ mindset of the 50’s when I was a kid.  You know the one where ‘Progress was our most important product’. We all believed that there would be cities on the moon and outposts on other planets before the 20th century was history. We believed in the American spirit and American ingenuity. We believed in the shining beacon on the hill that would lead the world into a new era of freedom and liberty. And we didn’t have a clue about the train wreck of the 60’s where overindulged baby boomers would steer the country into the rocks just like that Italian cruise ship.

These days we may go bankrupts supporting the plethora of worthless, self-indulgent leeches which our country produces. We subsidize them when we ought to tax them out of existence.  No way these days we can afford the great expense of space exploration to free us from the limitations of life on this planet. We’re stuck on this rock.  What inspires people now is self-indulgent personal exultation like we can get from personal electronics like the iphone and ipad which even the welfare recipients can afford these days thanks to the ever more indulgent  welfare mentality taught in schools and supported by the greedy state bureaucrats that have supplanted government of and by the people.   But I digress.  We were talking about inventions.

Two stories today contrast the focus of modern technology today. One shows the long term thinking and focus that made America great and the other the mindless self-indulgence that is taking us down the path to chaos. You pick.

Universal Flu Vaccine Could Be Available by 2013

Do Swine love flue?

Do Swine love flu?

This one looks good. It seems that those silly yearly flu shots will soon be a thing of the past. For me, I stopped getting the flu shots years ago- about the same time I stopped getting the flu. I don’t know for sure that one is a consequence of the other but I’ve been suspicious ever since I found out that the government plays Russian roulette with the flue strains trying to guess which ones will be coming at you next yeat. How could the government know what flu would be active a year ahead of time anyway? It was more like playing the lottery than buying insurance. Far better to just stay healthy in the first place. Anyway the evidence is on my since since I have not gotten the flu since making that decision.

Still this new vaccine looks like progress even if it will destroy jobs and damage the economy. One shot that lasts for years whatever flu strain shows up. But I can’t help wondering why, if I don’t catch the flu now without the shots, I should worry about getting the new vaccine. It may be progress but do I need it. Food for thought. Still, there is no need to worry now. I have until 2013.

The other story is about an invention that allows you to read emails and text messages no matter what you might be doing

Email in your eye? Next-generation video screen glasses could lay messages or GPS over your field of vision

I’ve probably signaled my position but still the Coots want to know what you think.  Is there any American ingenuity left?  Or are we in a hopeless downward spiral?

 

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Jan 122012
 

Gonna get a bit serious today.  Instead of poking fun at government ineptness and stupidity, I want to warn you folks about the government nefarious plans to spy on you and shut your first amendment rights down…worse than they do already.

So…without further ado, sit back and enjoy…or not.  Sheep don’t want to be awakened.

[powerpress]

  •  SOPA, PIPA, and the nuclear option.
  • Homeland Security and journalistic free speech.