Paleo Retiree writes:
- Christine Franck explores Rocky Mountain classicism. Don’t miss her Flickr photoset.
- Once again, Japan leads the way.
- Roy Baumeister argues that we do indeed have free will. JayMan disagrees.
- Starchitect Santiago Calatrava makes buildings that are overexpensive pains in the ass. Steve Sailer has some fun at Calatrava’s expense.
- Africa teaches crusader-style genius economist some lessons in unintended consequences.
- Can an economy be a successful one without being based on growth?
- Vince Keenan makes a quick visit to Portland to savor some underknown film noirs and to sample the local cocktail scene.
- A drink at the end of the day: An enticing introduction (by David Russell) to some “overproof” rums.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
I’m glad to see overproof rums have evolved from what they used to be. My mom is from Trinidad & Tobago, one of the countries with an overproof rum reviewed by David Russell there, and on a trip down there, I tried both the legal ‘puncheon rum’ (a white, 151 proof rum) and ‘bush rum’ (moonshine rum, about 180 proof); both were vile, harsh, nasty; I tried to give the puncheon rum a second chance, and brought a bottle of it back to Canada (it was dirt cheap, after all), but I couldn’t stomach it, even mixed it was still awful; ended up pooring it down the toilet.
So, glad to hear there are now tastier, more palatable overproof rums, upon which one could get wrecked whilst not retching. 😉
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FYI:
There is a new company making interesting liquors called “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, based in Philly.
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The article on Jeffrey Sachs’ fuck-up foray into African development almost makes you long for the days before the Emancipation of Jews in Europe. They’d enjoyed a long history of riding roughshod over Slavic peasants, while working as agents of the elites, for centuries, and the rape of Russia during the 1990s by Sachs, Summers, et al. is only the latest episode in the sad ongoing saga.
But they weren’t designing entirely new utopian societies that would really mess things up — they were more enforcers of the status quo. Nice cushy jobs as tax farmers, financiers, and administrators. Then the Emancipation comes along, and immediately Karl Marx articulates his pristine grand vision for a brave new world, and launches a tireless campaign of self-righteous self-promotion — all for the benefit of the lower classes, of course.
Still, in those early days, the Jews had not jumped on the White Man’s Burden bandwagon, and were content to try to re-engineer European society for the time being. Setting off to transform the benighted heathens in Africa was more of a SWPL thing, one of the strongest indicators of Victorian self-righteousness (like today’s Teach for America).
But now that the White Man’s Burden has a decidedly secular rather than Christian rationale, Jews are only too eager to jump on board and excite their brains by trying to re-engineer African as well as European peasant societies. And to curse the backward goyim with their dull goyische kopf for the failure of the latter-day messiah’s prophetic vision.
Another good thing about the original blank slate civilizing missions was all the untreatable tropical disease that kept the white man from making it too far into Africa. It was a potent warning signal that you should turn around and not even bother. Now that so many of these diseases are treatable, contempo missionaries feel a lot more invincible, and karma is less able to pull the rug out from under them. It selects for a greater degree of hubris.
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The typical “holiday missionary” hangs out on the coast where there is a decent beach and where they can be quickly evacuated if necessary. I know some of these folks. They send back photographs of beautiful beaches and them standing around smiling holding black babies. Gaaak!
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Nice to see beautiful architecture surviving out in Denver. There is some really beautiful stuff going on in Wyoming these days, too.
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