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I went to see my family on Sunday. It's so far from being a family barbeque it's laughable.
We used to do this in August. Then it bumped back to September. And this time it was bumped back a whole month to October. Funny. Because just a week or so ago it was pretty okay. Our neighbours like to barbeque a lot. We hate them. Not just the barbecuing. There's other things we hate, despite the fact that we've only spoken to one of them once and that was him asking us to dig his kids' balls out ...

Well, we've enlarged our family with a new four legged member, a black Labrador Retriever pup. She's special, and just as cute as can be. I can't remember how to upload pictures here on Lit Net, so if you're interested, come by my Ashes blog to see:

http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot....day-rosie.html

And actually you can see the breeder's litter of pups at an earlier post, posted before we were able to select one.

http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot....ouncement.html ...

After writing my post on Restoring the Age of Reason I started thinking more about how the principals of the Age of Reason have been put into disrepute. The general methods used have been typical propaganda techniques. And then I started thinking about propaganda even more. I don't think enough attention is paid to propaganda these days, at least not in the U.S.A., and probably not in Western Europe either. There's a lot of propaganda going around these days, and maybe we have become too accustomed ...

When mighty issues loom before us, all
The petty great men of the day seem small,
Like pigmies standing in a blaze of light
Before some grim majestic mountain-height.
War, with its bloody and impartial hand,
Reveals the hidden weakness of a land,
Uncrowns the heroes trusting Peace has made
Of men whose honor is a thing of trade,
And turns the searchlight full on many a place
Where proud conventions long have masked disgrace.
O ...

The Panic of 1907 may have been the deepest financial crisis that the U.S. faced except for the Crash of 1929. There was no central bank at that time, no bank of last resort, and for that reason the financial system completely stopped for a few days. The existing clearing system in New York City had to deal with numerous bank runs, and while banks were still clearing transactions, some of the trust companies were having more trouble. Trust companies were not part of the bank clearing system. The ...