Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church, Sheridan Wyoming

Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church, Sheridan Wyoming: .
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This attractive church is the First United Methodist Church in Sheridan Wyoming. The church was built between 1921 and 1923. The church is located across the street from St. Peter's Episcopal Church quite near the downtown section of Sheridan.

Dealing with the Red Horse

A momentous and tragic event is unfolding in Europe.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are attempting to make their way from the Middle East and Africa into Europe, with Germany for some, and Italy for others, being the intended endpoint.  The massive disaster is costing the loss of a lot of refugee lives.

It also threatens to grow worse, and as it does so, it will also have a demographic impact greater than any mass migration in recent history.  Because the migrants are heavily represented by Muslim Middle East populations (but not exclusively so), the event is even more demographically significant in some ways than the massive displaced person crisis that followed World War Two, which was huge, but which featured all Europeans within their own continent.  This crisis comes at a time of heavy, legal, immigration from the same region, into a region of the world that's in a population decline otherwise, but where the new populations have remained unassimilated and the trend is towards non assimilation.  European leaders, like those of Hungary, who worry that the influx is a Muslim invasion that will threaten the Christian identity of Europe are correct to worry, even while those nations like Germany that seek to accommodate the desperate populations are acting more Christian in their response.  Nobody knows what to do.

Notable in the crisis are a couple of salient facts.  One is that to date Islamic states have not opened their doors, although Turkey is suffering from being a highway to Europe.  Perhaps they really can't.  But some Islamic states are extremely wealthy, such as Saudi Arabia.  It would seem that they would or should step up to the plate, and that this crisis should not become exclusively a European one, with the migrant populations becoming permanently European in their situs.  That's a hard unpopular thing to say, but Middle Eastern nations have not borne their share of the global weight in recent decades, and here they can.

They clearly can't do it alone, however.  Many of these refugees are going to have to be housed in Europe until a way can be found to rapidly return them home.  If they can't be returned home soon, and they certainly cannot be now, they're going to have to be dispersed around the globe, there's no other way to be able to handle it.  South Africa, Japan, Russia, the United States, Argentina, Mexico, everyone will have to share a burden of this size.

And that's because this is the single biggest event occurring on the globe right now.  It's huge.  And it needs immediate attention.  If that attention is not received, it will grow worse.

And it will grow worse as the events causing this are growing worse.  Strife in Eritrea.  Ongoing civil war in Syria.  War in Iraq, and even ongoing war in Afghanistan.  These populations are fleeing war, a rational thing to do.

And given that they are fleeing wars, and those wars have been spilling over Europe's borders and even our own, we need to realize that pretending that these wars "are not our wars" is completely wrong.  They are.  They've become Europe's wars, as Europe is now the Displaced Persons Camp for the Middle East and Central Asia.  They're our wars as the violent radical forces that inspire these wars are gaining recruits in Europe and North America.  We can't ignore them, and we need to start paying attention to them right now.

That won't be easy.  But it's going to have to happen.

The world is engaged in Iraq right now, but in an anemic fashion.  That should end.  A concentrated Western effort could easily crush ISIL very rapidly, and that should be done. And if that were done, we're going to have to face that Iraq is gong to have to be occupied by competent administrators, i.e., western nations, for a fairly long time, together with states like Turkey, that are non western, but which are competent.  And the crisis in Syria needs to end, which can only come about through tremendous pressure that puts an end to the Baathist regime but which doesn't result in a new tyranny.

Time's run out.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...

We've commented several times on the University of Wyoming's sale of the Y Cross Ranch, as for in instance here:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...: This past week the respective Wyoming and Colorado university benefactors (or actually the Colorado one, in what I read) of this substantial...

The news has now broke that the purchaser of the ranch is a company owned by Pine Bluffs Wyoming businessman Toby Kimzey.

I don't know Kimzey at all, but this appears to be good news.  In spite of the huge purchase price, Kimzey appears to be set to actually ranch the land, as he is doing with several other locations he owns.

So, this story has a sort of accidentally happy ending, sort of. A ranch owned by an out of stater was bought by an in stater who will ranch it. The purchase price is sad evidence that in this day and age it's nearly impossible for anyone of average means to buy a working ranch, and indeed its impossible to make the land pay off for a rancher, which isn't good news for agriculture or our society. But this story could have had a much worse ending.  Kimzey even indicates that if the schools want to take students there, they can.

Still, this entire story makes both CSU and UW look pretty bad.  Indeed, at least from the UW angle, the state's only four year university, which is an arm of the state, the story is really pathetic.  UW ought to be ashamed and frankly donors to the university should consider this story when being asked to give.

Grazing mimics what bison did long ago to keep prairies like Funk WPA healthy for waterfowl - Kearney Hub: Agriculture

Grazing mimics what bison did long ago to keep prairies like Funk WPA healthy for waterfowl - Kearney Hub: Agriculture

I've thought this perfectly obvious for years and I've wondered why it's never been noted.

Buffalo are large ungulates.

Cattle are large ungulates.

There were, reportedly, millions of buffalo.

Well. . . . 

Nonsensical Decadal Characterization

 A calendar for 1897. Featuring a calico cat and an artist, the way we typically think of the late 1890s. . .right?

You know you've heard or seen them.

"A look back at the turbulent 60s!"

"A tour through the Rockin' 50s"

"The Roaring 20s"

Or even just "The 80s".

Whatever.

All of these decadal references are darned near worthless, as whatever supposedly characterizes a decade, tends not to.

That doesn't mean that there aren't eras, even short ones of ten years or so, that are unique.  But they just don't start on the first year of a decade, and end on the last.  Indeed, that's highly deceptive.

Consider, for example, "the 60s", a decade we hear so much about because it supposedly "defines a generation".  Well, if it does, it defines it oddly.

The 1960s of course, started in 1960 and ended in 1969. But are 1960 and 1969 really in the same era?  They don't seem to be.

Indeed, the era up to 1964 is really part of what we consider to be the 1950s, really. Styles, haircuts, music, etc., all really fit into that "1950s" class of things. This is so much the case, in fact, that the movie that started off the whole 1950s nostalgia craze of the 1970s, American Graffiti, is set in the early 1960s not the 1950s.

It isn't really until 1965 that the "60s" started, and probably with our intervention in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, which started all the way back in 1958 in the form in which we entered it (or in 1945 in its French Indochina form), seems to be central to the "turbulent" 1960s, due to the war itself, I suppose, and the following opposition to it.  Conventional American ground forces went into Vietnam in 1965.

But they left in 1973.  And really, the 1970s at least as late as 1973 are really part of the "1960s". All the same protests, wars and controversy is party of it.  Shoot, Jimi Hendrix died in the early 1970s, not the 1960s, and so did Janis Joplin.

And regarding the 1960s, are the Cold War standoffs of the early 1960s really part of the same era that gave us Woodstock?  They don't seem to be.  Was the nation that was ready to go to war over Soviet missiles in Cuba the same one that was disenchanted with our involvement in Vietnam?

All that sort of means the 1970s, that "Me Decade", which should probably regarded as The Baby Boomers Second Decade, as they defined the "1960s" as well, really probably started in 1974, and probably ended perhaps in 1981 when Ronald Reagan became President.  Oddly, as a result of that, the "80s" fit about as neatly into a decadal calendar slotting as any decade, as a new era started when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, followed by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.

What about the aforementioned 1950s?  Well, they didn't really start until 1955.  Surely our image of the Korean War doesn't fit the 1950s. That's some other era, one that ran from 1946 to 1955.  It seemingly has no name, other than occasionally "the early Cold War", or "the post war".  It's not "the 40s", however, as that's World War Two, which as an era really runs from about 1938 until 1945.  And the post war era, in which people were eager to return to school, start families, buy consumer goods, take advantage of the GI Bill, etc., doesn't quite match the war years, but in some ways it does.  It sort of looks like them, in a home front sort of way, but it doesn't quite feel the same, and it didn't sound the same either, as the big bands, so notable for the sounds of the late 1930s and the war years, began to pass away pretty quickly after the war.

The "war years", that we associate with the "1940s" creeps into the 1930s, of course, but the 1930s is really thought of as The Great Depression, which started in 1929, truncating the Jazz Age, which started in 1919, with the end of World War One.  World War One, like World War Two, is really its own age, and while the war theoretically ran from 1914 to 1918, we probably ought to go back to at least 1912 for the era.

That would close out, sort of, The Progressive Era, which came up, sort of, with McKinley's second administration, or 1900.

So what area are we in now?  No way to tell.  You have to be past them, by some distance, to know.

Not that it particularly matters. Any one age is what it is. Except the easy mischaractrization of any one age does create some pretty false and superficial memories.  "The 1950s" as the age of teenage rock and roll doesn't really do much for a decade that featured wars in Korea, Indochina and the Middle East, and a titanic face off between the East and West, for example.  The years 1945 to 1955 are darned near forgotten except to historians.  The early 1960s are lumped into the 60s in a way that doesn't accurately reflect them at all.

Book query

Has anyone here read McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne"?

If so, what's  your opinion of it?

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Studebaker & the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Studebaker & the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: Reporting the true depth of any business or industry can be difficult.  The very nature of large corporations and their focus on commercial...

Mid Week At Work: How to become a Norwegian conscript

Denali

Am I the only one who thought that Mt. McKinley had been renamed Denali about four decades ago? 

Truly, I thought the name had been officially changed way back then.

Glasses

I started wearing glasses when I was in junior high.

Well, actually I didn't.

I got glasses when I was in junior high.  I can't recall what grade, but probably 8th or 9th.  I didn't consistently wear them however, as I my eyes weren't bad enough to require it, and I didn't like wearing them.  Actually, I had a fairly difficult time adjusting to them, so I didn't.

I didn't even wear them when I first started driving, although that restriction was on my license.  But during high school I reached a point where I had to, more or less, although even then I would sometimes omit it, and could get away with that.

I largely did that during basic training at Ft. Sill, as I broke my field Army issue glasses, and was left with only my dress pair, which came off too early. So, unless I absolutely needed them, such as when shooting, I didn't wear them, and that worked fine.

 

 Me, wearing my GI glasses, at Ft. Sill.  We were apparently shooting on the day this photo was taken, as I'm wearing my glasses, and we're cleaning M16s.

Soon after that, I started wearing glasses full time.  It was irritating, however, in that the only glasses I could find at the time had really big lenses.  They were constantly touching your face in one way or another.

 

I'm the third in, from the right, here.  It's hard to tell in this photos, but I'm wearing some really large frame glasses.  I didn't like them.

Some of the glasses I had at that time also had "photogrey" lenses. That is, they'd darken in the sun.  I didn't like the idea, but at first the glare of glasses really bothered me.

Right about this time, and that'd be about 1983 or so, I experimented with contact lenses for the second time.  I'd tried it a couple of years earlier as well.  In neither instance did they work out for me.   They bothered my eyes tremendously, so in spite of not liking the glasses, I stuck to them.

Then, just before I went to law school in the Fall of 1987, I found a pair of my father's old frames that he hadn't worn in probably 25 or more years, and decided to give them a try. They were Bausch and Lomb ball grip frames.

 

Bausch & Lomb ball grip frames.  They're great. This pair of frames is presently at least 60 years old.

For the first time, I had a pair of glasses I really liked. The lenses are small, the frames are light. They temple frames won't come off. They're fantastic.  I've worn them ever since, and used a couple of additional old frames of my father's for an extra set of glasses and a pair of sunglasses.

I kept using these frames when I went to bifocals, as they can grind the now plastic lenses for that.

Well, a couple of years ago my vision deteriorated to where focusing on my computer became a problem.  My vision can be handled by my regular glasses at any other distance, and really isn't changing, except at that odd distance.  So hey had a pair of reading glasses made for me.  I didn't like switching back and forth, however, so I largely didn't wear them.

Up until recently that is.

Recently, I've had no choice, and after an eye examination, I had to have a second pair made, one for work, and one for home.

My reading glasses.

I hate them.

The ones I have at home are on a pair of rimless frames, much like my Bausch & Lombs. The frame is a bit heavier, but they're still not bad.  I thought it would look silly, however, to have a set of reading glasses with temple frames duplicating my regular glasses.

Of course, the new frames have a huge lens, reminding me of why I hated that kind of frame to start with.

I'm not blaming anyone. This is just part of life.  But it's the pits.

It's interesting, however, how many people hardly wear glasses ever.  Contact lenses and surgery have impacted that heavily.  Some people, however, wear them for an affectation.  I've thought about switching to contact lenses myself, but based on my past experiences with them, and the fact that I wear bifocals, I'm disinclined to do that.  Whenever I mention it as a possibility, the family is against it as well as they're used to seeing me with my rimless glasses.

But if I could omit glasses entirely, I would.

When the big science revelation falls flat on the facts

 

Something that's been noted a lot recently, and which genuinely should cause people concern, is that Americans have come to have an increasing contempt for science.

That's bad.

An educated, modern people, should be informing itself by science in making important decisions. And the evidence is pretty clear that at least into the 1980s, they did.  But not so much now.

And part of the reason of that is that Americans also tend to get a pretty big dose of bad science, which doesn't help to build trust in science and scientist at all.

Part of that falls into the category of the big announcement that just flatly fails to comport with actual real work observations. And we've gotten a fair amount of that in the past several decades.  And I say that as a person with a science background.

We got a big dose of that the past couple of weeks. At least if you are a hunter or fisherman you did, as probably every urban dweller you know sent you the news about the study that was published in Science that humans are a Super Predator and the current methods of fish and game conservation are all wrong.

There's only one problem with that study.

It completely fails to comport with actual observed information gathered over the past couple of centuries.  Or at least if the reports about what it says are correct, it does.

The study raises fears that we're going to hunt and fish all wildlife into extinction as, basically, we're a Super Predator that uses technology (i.e., tools, because it includes our distant ancestors) and we take the best of our prey, and prey on other predators, and are wiping everything out.

Except, its pretty clearly we're not.

Indeed, the evidence is highly to the contrary.

All big game species hunted in North America and Europe have increased dramatically, in numbers, and in health, over the past century.  All of them.  The predators we're supposedly about to wipe out have, in the same areas, increased, not decreased, in the last century as well.  Large ungulates are reclaiming ground that they had retreated from a century ago, in prodigious numbers.  Ungulate species that were on the brink of extinction, such as the Pronghorn antelope, now exist in huge numbers.  Deer exist in insanely huge numbers.  Elk have increased.  About the only exceptions to these rules are wear predators (remember, which we are supposedly wiping out) have been reintroduced and there are no human controls.

And all this was due to modern game management, funded almost exclusively by hunters.

In other hunted species this si also largely true. Waterfowl populations, which were headed for a collapse, recovered with the exception of a very few species, but some waterfowl species have always gone up and down in numbers. Quite a few species of birds now exist in areas that they are not native to, and thrive, as they were introduced.  Again, things are going well.

And we hardly need mention small game species, the numbers of which are exploding.

So where's the data to support the Science article in North America and Europe, as to land animals?  It doesn't exist.

Indeed, what the article would largely support is the introduction of North American style game management where it doesn't exist.  And where some of those influences have crept in, that has worked. 

I'll not go much into South America, where once again, things are largely going fine.  They are in the large landmass of Russia as well.  Africa and Asia definitely have their problems, however, but that's because the hunting culture there is completely different than the one mentioned above.  Having said that, in Africa, where a peculiar sort of Trophy Hunting has come in, actually sees game animal numbers increasing, not decreasing. Even animals like lions, so recently in the news, are actually increasing substantially in areas where they are controlled via legal hunting.  Where trouble exists in Africa, it's due to poaching, not legal hunting.

I'll abstain commentary on fish, as I don't know enough about sport fishing to comment.  Maybe the article is more accurate there. But this leads to me to what I'd next note.

I'm not a "sport" fisherman, nor am I a "Trophy" hunter.  I fish and hunt but I'm more in the subsistence category.  I suspect most hunters fit into  my category in varying degrees, although articles of this type seem to miss that.  I can't blame them too much, as writing in the big game arena tends to focus on Trophy Hunting rather than Subsistence Hunting.  The difference is fairly significant, but to summarize it, I'm just as likely to take a doe deer or antelope than a buck, as I'm hunting for the table.  Around here, indeed, that was the norm up until perhaps the 1970s, when people who moved in, that trophy concepts came in.  But the game isn't really managed that way, and there are still plenty of Subsistence Hunters around here.  We aren't in a special defined category under the law, like in Alaska or the Yukon, but we exist, and that's what most hunters actually are. 

Which should be encouraged.  It's hunting of that type that's preserved wildlands nature around the world.  It's preserving the wild, and preserving the mental sanity of our increasingly loopy species, by keeping us in touch with what we actually are, and are meant to be by nature.  Truth be known, the soccer mom driving the SUV all around during the day, and who lives in a McMansion, and doesn't raise or take any of her own food is a much bigger threat to wildlife than any hunter is.

None of which is to say that there aren't problems.  The commercialization of everything in American life is introducing problems by inserting a certain manor lord mentality amongst those with means that didn't previously exist, and that does cause the reduction, ultimately, of availability of everything.  Urbanization is a big problem. And technology is indeed a problem, as people are defeating the limits of the natural world, but also making themselves irrelevant at the same time in everything. 

But another problem is the release, in this fashion, of science that's simply contrary to the observed data.

We've seen a lot of bad science in recent decades.  Immunization causes Downes Syndrome.  Aluminum cookware causes Alzheimer's.  All sort of bad dietary information.  Other examples could be given.  And when this is the case, it causes contempt for science. And that's a terrible thing.  That plays to the ignoring of real problems, which is a huge problem. Scientist ought to therefore be careful about releasing studies that the observed data just doesn't support, or which is speculative in the extreme.  I'm not blaming scientist for the increasing degree of contempt of science, but stuff like this doesn't help.

Monday at the Bar: The Op Ed in the Wyoming Lawyer on the UBE

Since that time we've endured the UBE as the bar exam for Wyoming and started to live with the sour fruits of that adoption.  In this month's issue of the Wyoming Lawyer, the magazine that members of the Wyoming State Bar all receive, an excellent op ed appears regarding how Wyoming lawyers are carrying the freight for the massive increase in out of state lawyers admitted to practice here.

Monday at the bar: New York Times: Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs

Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs.

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: Whittier Harbor, Alaska

Holscher's Hub: Whittier Harbor, Alaska

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Town of Jackson, Wyoming Municipal Bulding

Courthouses of the West: Town of Jackson, Wyoming Municipal Building:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band p...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band p...: Today the price of oil actually declined below $40/bbl.  This is probably temporary, but how amazing.

And indeed it did prove to be temporary, but perhaps signalling how down in the dumps and perhaps permanent these price depressions may be (as in economic permanent, that is long term), a jump in the price to $45-$47/bbl was due to Saudi Arabia sending troops into northern Yemen in order to keep rebels there from consolidating their forces.  So it's regional instability in the Middle East, with a major oil producer, i.e., the one keeping the price low, that's caused the price to jump.

On the other hand, it turns out that Ecuador has been producing  oil below its cost.  It's oil has been selling for $30/bbl, and they only break even at $39/bbl.  Its crazy for them to sell it at that cost, but there must be some internal economic reason for them to keep selling it at a lost.  In most real free markets, they'd shut their wells in.  Perhaps they will, and indeed, they'll have to, resulting in taking that oil off the market for a time.

Random Snippets: G.K. Chesterton: "The new rebel is a skeptic"

“BUT the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. ...

G. K. Chesterton

Friday Farming: Holscher's Hub: Grants Ranch

Holscher's Hub: Grants Ranch

 

G.K. Chesterton: "He believes in himself"

G.K. Chesterton: "He believes in himself": "THOROUGHLY worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I rem...

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Giant Western Freight Wagon Built By M.P. Henderso...

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Giant Western Freight Wagon Built By M.P. Henderso...: Some things are hard to forget.  To that point, almost twenty years ago, I purchased a book by Don Berkebile entitled, Horse-Drawn Commerci...

 That is one freakin' huge wagon.

Fickle fame

Some recent news items have interestingly portrayed the fickle nature of American fame, and how shallow and vapid it is.  Interesting to watch in progress.

One aspect of American fame is that the same things and personages that raise somebody to fame stand eager to rip them to shreds when they get there.  It'd be easy to say, and potentially correct as well, that having participated in the creation of their image, they are set up for a fall if they don't meet that expectation, but it's a little more than that in my view.

A recent example of that would involve the entire Josh Duggar saga. Now, readers of this blog, and there are darned few, know that I'm not a fan of the Duggars and never have been.  I always thought them a bit odd, or perhaps more than a bit odd, and I've chaffed at the occasional comments that they represent "conservative Christianity".  No they don't, if "conservative" Christianity is meant to include the millions of conservative Christians in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (the majority, fwiw, of Christians on earth), or those conservative Christians in numerous other denominations. No, the Duggars were interesting because they clearly belonged to something akin to a tiny sect, given their dress and lifestyle, and that provided part, but only part, of the fascination.  The remainder of the fascination was based on their just having a big family, something that wasn't unusual in the world until very recently.

Now, the Duggars traded on that fascination and turned it into a television career.  I have a problem with that, although I guess I can't fully blame them. But then, they were perfectly set up to be ripped apart when things went bad, and they did, in a bizarre fashion, mostly due to the icky behavior of Josh Duggar, who turns out to have lived a fairly hypocritical life.

The point isn't to defend him. Registering on a cheaters website is downright icky, in my view (and says a lot about how bizarrely dependant on technology we've become. . . do we need to register to cheat on spouses. . . seriously?).  No, it's just that the same media that made such a big deal out of them, is now ripping them down, and for conduct that it pretty much celebrates in other people (the cheating that is, not the other stuff).

Indeed, it's weird how fickle fame is.  If a public figure of the Duggars type, or a politician, cheats on his spouse, he's pretty much doomed.  Hollywood stars, on the other hand, get a pass and it'll just be passed off as some sort of tragedy for everyone, including the cheater.  Very fickle.

In contrast to this, we  have people who seemingly trade on their good public images for ongoing fame, as they convert their prior lives into one of trouble.  Fame is not only fickle, it's apparently addictive.

We've been given a potential example of that in the story of Bruce Jenner.  Jenner was originally famous for being an Olympic athlete.  Even at that time, fwiw, it seems to me that people speculated on him having same gender attractions, but that's another story.  Later, long after most athletes would be a thing of distant memory, he became famous again for being the second spouse of a family that's become seemingly fasmous for its female members being famous.  Or perhaps appearing on the cover of magazines with very little clothing on.  Now, he has announced as have a gender issue and he's becoming a woman, if a person can changed genders, which our DNA says we may not.

That's been celebrated and he's been announced as some species of hero.  In the meantime, he was involved with a fatal car wreck and will be charged with manslaughter, apparently.  That gets less press.  Odd.

It's particularly odd if we recall that Tiger Woods had a car accident that resulted in endless press attention, in part because he was . . . cheating on his spouse.  

Now, both are athletes, so why does Woods get the negative attention and Jenner does not.  I guess there's the cheating angle again, but Woods never set himself up as a public paragon of virtue (nor did he do the opposite).  Indeed, Woods is a Buddhist and therefore he certainly isn't a Duggaresque figure, although I'll confess I have no idea what the Buddhist position on monogamy is.

For another example, we have the weird story of the constant "look at me" displays by a certain female singer that rose up in the Disney child star factory.  I have problems with that entity in and of itself, but the displays, rather than the bold acts of individualism they're proclaimed to be, are more in the nature of childish spoiled brat displays.  Yet they are both fascinated and gawked at.  A similar meltdown, much less spectacular, has been given to at least one other female actress who ended up in constant trouble with the law, and while on a break from court displayed what she had in the Ossified Freak's journal.  Not so celebrated.  Yet another is just regarded as a pathetic meltdown.  Why is one celebrated and the other pitied?  Who knows.  Perhaps the difference is the degree to which the meltdown is genuine.

Speaking of the Ossified Freak, a young woman who rose to some level of fame as being one of the "girlfriends" of that fellow, which presumably entails certain conduct and to which other titles would have attached in a prior era, went on to marry some sort of athlete and convert that marriage into a television show. Why anyone would care about this sufficiently to watch it is hard to explain.  Following that, that fellow fell into some sort of scandal and now the same female figure is a character on a "boot camp" for troubled marriages.  I'd think that a television camera following you around in these circumstances would be troublesome in and of itself, but there you have it.  But here too, why do we care about this, and why does this sort of weirdness lend itself to a televised following? 

Indeed, that sort of public voyeurism may have been at least partially pioneered when it turned out that a really boring married couple, but one that included a former actress known for her portrayal of a girl in a California upper class high school, took that turn when it turned out that the husband was cheating on her.  He didn't get the Duggar treatment, as after all, he's an actor.  But from there on out there were endless episodes of the wife blubbering.  Heck, they both were cheating on other spouses when they started their relationship, so, D'oh!  But apparently not.  Anyhow, why would a person attempt to trade on that misery for fame?

Perhaps the most famous celebrity meltdown of recent years was the sad tale of Michael Jackson, who rose to fame on his music (which I never liked) but who spent his later years sort of freakishly altering himself.  Very odd and sad, but while the press noted his sad decline, the fame had clearly precipitated it.  So, he essentially was on display as a circus star the entire time. Very odd indeed.

Mid Week at Work: Making Army Cooks

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: Turnagain Inlet, Alaska

Holscher's Hub: Turnagain Inlet, Alaska

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Teton County Courthouse, Jackson Wyoming

Courthouses of the West:  County Courthouse, Jackson Wyoming:

The lonliness of the Pentax user. . . not even a "dummies" book.

The cold time

Fall has started here.

At night, temperatures are dropping way down.  It's in the 40s in the morning, which means its probably creeping into the 30s up here at night.

I used to love Fall and Spring temperatures, although I have some bad fall allergies.  But now I dread them.  It's not because I dread cold weather, I like it. Rather, it's because my wife is always hot.

I hate air conditioning and I never turn on the swamp cooler in our own house.  But this time of year, I absolutely freeze.  My wife believes it's hot, and throws open all the windows in the house at night.  I can hardly stand the arctic temperatures that result, but there's no explaining to a hot person that your cold. They just won't believe it.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Sheridan Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Sheridan Wyoming:

This is St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Sheridan Wyoming.

I don't know anything about the history of this Church, although I would note that it has a very English appearance. At one time, there was a substantial English expatriate population in Sheridan, which may have influenced the design of this attractive church somewhat.

Recalling the WC-56/57

Dodge Weapons Carrier at the Wyoming Machinegun Shoot.

The World War Two vintage Dodge WC 56/57 series of vehicles are among my all time favorites.

I've certainly never owned one, and I haven't even seen one for sale. And outside of World War Two, they weren't around long.  They're just neat.  Based on the WC truck frame, they were bigger than the Jeep, but not too big. Almost the ideal size.

Which is what make this Jeep concept car so neat.

It's obviously a shout out to the WC 56.

I know that they're not going to make it. But I wish they would.

Sigh.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band played on. . .well ...

Today the price of oil actually declined below $40/bbl.  This is probably temporary, but how amazing.

Vehicle comparison and contrast

Model A, downtown Casper, which somebody has recently been using as a daily driver.

 SUV belonging to Jackson Hole, which notes that it runs on vegetable (I hate the diminutive "veggie") oil.  This vehicle must be a diesel. Why, exactly, burning vegetable oil is more "green" than diesel fuel, as both are oils, somewhat escapes me.  It must be because you don't drill for vegetable oil, or that its recycled vegetable oil.  Well, unless it was carrying a bunch of vegetable oil with it, or it gets really good mileage, it must be able to burn diesel too.

Some days when you read the news. . .

and things seem so uniformly grim, all bad news, and everything you are and like to do being pointed at in some negative way. . . it serves to remember that, at anyone time, the news is always bad.  But only prospectively.  Some bad news gets worse, but most doesn't, and most grim things never happen.

Random Snippets: Chesterton on nature

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Friday Farming: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...

The marketing brochure for the Y Cross Range:  Y Cross.

Pretty, ain't it?

And at $25,000,000, that's a pretty penny.  I'll bet that went to somebody serious about raising cattle for a living, eh?

We recently ran this item on the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University, football rivals but land sale allies:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...: This past week the respective Wyoming and Colorado university benefactors (or actually the Colorado one, in what I read) of this substantial...

Following up on this, we now read the following on the on line Oil City News that the sale has been made. the News reports:

(Cheyenne, Wyo.) – The University of Wyoming Foundation and Colorado State University Research Foundation have completed the sale of the Y Cross Ranch, setting the stage for significant long-term funding of scholarships and internships for agriculture students.

This sale is explained in the following fashion:

“This is a very exciting development for students and faculty in agriculture and the related natural resources at UW,” says Frank Galey, dean of UW’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. “The proceeds will provide them with tremendous opportunities and experiences in an industry of utmost importance to Wyoming and its people.”

UW will apparently make $10,000,000 on the sale, which will yield, it is claimed, $400,000 in annual returns.  CSU probably comes out about the same, of course.  Some real estate agent has a fair payday too, of course.

It should also be a warning to anyone who donates a specific item without a specific instruction on how it is to be used restricting the use of, or burdening if you will, the gift.  This problem is a fairly common one for donations, and it's common for the donor to assume that the recipient will keep and maintain the gift, when often the recipient has no obligation to.  In this case, the example is both spectacular, and very sad.  While the universities were found to have a legal right to do this, shame on them.  And for anyone thinking of giving either of them funds for anything, in any department, this ought to be recalled.

Of interest is this quote from former Wyoming Jim Geringer:

If the two universities could have been more effective with the money than the ranch, the donor would have sold the ranch herself, at a much better price, and given the cash directly to the universities. She saw higher value in what the ranch and its operations could pass along to students for many generations. Instead, the boards of trustees envisioned a bank account without a soul. Neither university should be run as a profit center. Rather, they should endow the passing of the heritage and values of what makes our two states unique. For us I say. Wyoming is what America was – and what America ought to be. So – trustees: you violated your very title. Trust is never taken. Only you can give it away. And you did. In biblical terms, you sold it for a mess of pottage.

Also of interest is this recent, pre sale, quote by one of trustees of one of the two universities' foundations:

We have always taken our commitment to stewardship very seriously, and we will continue to do so by marketing the ranch for sale in a deliberative and transparent process open to all potential buyers for an outcome that will be a tremendous benefit to students at both institutions"

I can't say that the sale hasn't been transparent, but according to the news reports the universities were not disclosing the identify of the purchaser. According to an informal organization opposing the sale, the purchaser is a Press L III, LLC.  A net search doesn't reveal a "Press L III, LLC" as having a net presence, and it isn't a registered Wyoming entity with the Wyoming Secretary of State. It'll be interesting to see what this outfit intends to do with this large block of Wyoming ranch land and if that squares with their role as a "steward".  I have grave concerns about this, but we will see.

Donors, beware.  UW, shame on you.

Slaves and Objects

I've run a series of items recently that have been probably somewhat calculated to offend. Well, as some say, if you aren't offending somebody with your commentary, you are probably doing no good.

The first of these would be the one that dealt with the decline in the standard of dress.  The second one had to do with how women are increasingly treated like objects.  Whether these topics offend or not, they apparently do interest people, as the the dress story, for example, had way more hits in a day than most of my entries here every have, ever.  It isn't in the top ten list yet, but if the trend continues, it might make it.

The reason that some might find these offensive is that people don't like to be told what to wear, they don't like being told how to behave, they don't like being told that something they're doing may be having a negative impact on others, and people generally don't like bad news if they're somehow participating in it.  I haven't received any negative comments so far, but most people don't comment anyhow.

Okay, so that's how I probably offered offense.

Now, I'll increase the offense, going back specifically to my comments on viewing women as objects, and how marketing and magazines have caused us to do that.  I'm going to relate that behavior as being in the same category as what ISIL is doing to women in Iraq and Syria.

And what is that?

Well, mass assault and the most primitive horrific slavery imaginable.  Field hands in the Old South were subjected to horrors no less unimaginable to what is happening to non Muslim women in those suffering lands.

Now, no doubt, up in arms, people are saying "are you saying that's the same thing as my buying Old Ossified Freak's Rag?

No, I'm not, but I'm saying that those rags swim in the same pool.  Maybe in the shallow end, but in the same pool nonetheless.

Hugh Ossified Freak's genius in taking what was clearly trash and marketing it as something that should be a male dominated norm managed basically to enormously expand the over the tracks part of the mental city, so that all girls ended up living there to some extent.  Prior to the publication, there were women in the occupation of vending their services, but over time, Hugh put them all there, except even the market place aspect of that exchange disappeared, and it became an expectation, wanted or not.  When that occurs, the value indeed is gone, and we've seen the results.  Women not only have been personally objectified in this fashion, but now their image is everywhere, offering the same, in support of the sale of everything.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his adherents share that view, except that their view of their right of expectation is modified to include only non Muslim women.  They're acting physically on their view, over thousands of non Muslim women in the region, and as we now know al-Baghdadi himself did so with American Kayla Mueller. The Mueller story is tragic in the extreme, but it's shared by numerous nameless women and girls who have been reduced to slavery by their ISIL masters.

The common thread here is how these women are viewed.  In spite of its claims to later be in the forefront of "liberation" of women, Hugh's rag held them out, and still holds them out, as toys for men.  Any man who bought the magazines was entitled to view the women featured in them in the same physical fashion that ISIL's combatants view non Muslim women.  Indeed, the secular Hugh was offering a paper variant of what the religious ISIL combatants feel that they will gain in the next world, and endless supply of exactly what's portrayed in the magazines.  Indeed, a critical element of those magazines is that their portrayal, at least at first, did not portray the subjects as fallen, as prior magazines had, but rather the opposite. Special, in more ways than one, just for you.  

The sole real distinction, therefore, is that the creepy ossified purveyor of the print version of this view in the United States, and now around the globe, takes a violently secular view of things.  He's hedonistic and in it for right now, and his justification for the objectification is accordingly not only thin, but darned near non existent.  It's the most primitive justification imaginable, "I'm a man and I get what I want."  Al-Baghdadi and his adherents, however, justify their violence in this area upon the Koran, which, no matter what its apologist may claim, specifically allows the campaigning Islamic fighter to do just what they're doing, take slaves and do what you will with them.

Now, I'm not claiming, anywhere, that the majority of people who have shoved cash at Hugh all these years have done something intentionally to enslave women. But I am saying that the impact of it is wrong and it serves to reduce them to objects.  I'm also not saying that the majority of Muslims now, or at any time, have held this view about assault. Indeed, I'm confident that even in the periodic episodes of violent Islamic expansion, most don't.  But I am saying that this stuff is going on right now, and that its symptomatic of a view of women that's simply intolerable in this or any other age.  And, by extension, if this sort of conduct bothers a person, they ought to act up on that, whatever that means for them personally.

Lex Anteinternet: And the band played on. . .well maybe not so much

Earlier this week we ran this:

Lex Anteinternet: And the band played on: In Saturday's Tribune an article appeared noting, again, the loss of over 3,000 oil industry jobs in Wyoming, and a 50% reduction i...

Yesterday, however, Governor Mead sang a different tune, and one that wasn't nearly so rosy.  We have to given him credit for that.

Mead, in a press conference flaty stated that Wyoming is entering a "difficult period" and that the State may need to consider tapping into its "rainy day" funds. For those who might not be aware of what those are, they're funds that the state specifically puts aside for stressed times.

Governors do not, to my recollection, ever suggest this. That's truly a dramatic statement for a sitting Governor, indicating just how dire the state's condition may be.  That Mead would suggest considering it speaks very much in his favor, as this has tended to be something that simply isn't discussed.  Reactions to the Governor's speech have been generally favorable, although there's no present support for actually tapping into the funds.  Mead, of course, wasn't requesting to do so right now, only indicating that it might become necessary.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18. You can take the chicken out of the town. . .

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18:

1813         Battle of the Medina River at which Royalist forces defeat Mexican-American Republican Guetierrez-Magee Expedition south of Sa...

Updated:

2015  Casper's city counsel votes to allow chickens to be kept in the city, by a vote of seven to one.

Random Snippets: Red sky in the morning

Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Seafarer's adage.

Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

Shakespeare,  Venus and Adonis

The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to put him to the test they asked if he would show them a sign from heaven.  He replied, 'In the evening you say, "It will be fine; there's a red sky," and in the morning, "Stormy weather today; the sky is red and overcast." You know how to read the face of the sky, but you cannot read the signs of the times.

Matthew, Chapter 16, Versus 2 through 3.

The Big Careers. Monetary Nomads

I went to a deposition the other day at which, upon its conclusion, the other lawyer, whom I really don't know, told me about what all of his adult children were doing career wise.  He was obviously very proud, and had reason to be. They all had advanced degrees or were working on them, and they were all in high paying careers. Even the one who was working on an advanced degree still was presently in a high paying career, and no doubt set for an even higher paying one.

Now, this deposition took place in a law office in a Wyoming city, the largest of which is still only a mid sized, at best, Mid Western city.  I note this as its an interesting feature of Wyoming life, and perhaps of American life in general, that people are from somewhere, but of nowhere. And in the West and Midwest, it seems a common progression is from lower middle class, to professional class, to "you have got to get out of here and make a big career" class.  That strikes me as odd.

Perhaps it strikes me as odd as I'm one of that collection of Wyoming natives, not uncommon  here, who has that attitude expressed in the film variant of Doctor Zhivago, in response to the comment by Komarovsky to Laura when Zhivago is late leaving for the train out that "He'll never leave Russia".  Zhivago, we're made to understand, is so Russian, and loves Russia so deeply, indeed is so much apart of Russia, that he can't leave it.  A section of Wyomingites are like that, and I'd put myself in that category.  When I was young and contemplating careers, although I did ponder a career in the Army, I never really considered anything that would have separated me from Wyoming permanently or at least, given economic realities (which I was more realistic about back then, than I am now), which would have separated me from the greater Rocky Mountain Region.  I would not have even considered moving to Denver, which is a big city in the Rocky Mountain Region.  I guess that's just a pronounced part of my character.

As I've grown older, and of course as I've worked for what is now a very long time as a lawyer, I've traveled a lot.  That's something I was frankly very much unaware that lawyers did. This year alone I've been to Toronto, Tampa, Santa Fe, Anchorage, Denver and other distant localities.  There's more travel to come.  But in spite of that, my view hasn't really changed.  Indeed, I feel a lot like the guy who runs the Old Picture of the Day blog, where he notes:

I grew up in West Texas, and could not wait to get away. I got away, and went to the University of Texas, and then on to Stanford. I saw the world, and decided what I really wanted was to be in West Texas. So here I am, right back where I started. I had it all, and found it was not that great.

I'm not quite that jaded.  But I never wanted to get away either, and I can't say that I've ever "had it all".  I can say that I haven't gone far from where I started.  My observation here is, however, that I'm not sure why so many do and why that's a measure of success, unless a person measures success only in money, which is a very shallow measuring glass.

Now, I can understand why some do, as some people's passion, vocation, avocation, or at least their interest, mandate that. If a person loves, for example, high finance, they're gong to a location where you can do that sort of thing.  I've known people who loved military life, and indeed as noted I contemplated such a career at one time, and of course that means going where you are sent, and always has.  A person can given any number of such examples.

But the one I really don't quite grasp is the one in which people have followed a dollar sign career, and let them take them wherever.  Indeed, I don't quite understand why some people seemingly undertake no further analysis than that.  It's quite common.  I've met lots of people who move from one large city to another, due to their career, and its quite clear that only the dollar aspect of matters to them.  They form weak attachments to everyone and everything, except their pay.  And I've met more than one person, and this is common with Wyoming ex-pats, who leave to pursue an education, get a job, and then work in big cities, only to return when their career is over and they are old, claiming they missed the state the entire time.  Well, then, why did you leave? And if that thing was so important to you, should you have come back?

The worst examples I find are when people move some place which is nearly incomprehensible to grasp the attraction to.  In some instances, I find some people stating that "I hate this city, but . . . ".  But what?  I love money, and I could live anywhere for that?  I guess.  I fairly recently had a conversation with a very successful, by monetary standards, lawyer who told me about his youth in the Mid West, how he went to our state frequently, but as his career was based in a Gigantic City Elsewhere, which he did not like, he must stay there. Thirty to Forty years of commitment based, apparently, on cash.  He sounded depressed about it.

Some of this must absolutely be me.  And I worry about it. I'm probably a bad example to my kids, as I just don't think some of these worldly achievements mean very much.  In that fashion, I guess, I'm more in tune with the Gen Xers than the Boomers.  But then that's how my father was too.

This isn't, I should note, an argument for poverty.  When I take the depositions of men who came up from Chihuahua to work in the oilfields, I know why they came and understand it.  Rather, however, it's the seeming belief, so common in American life, that upwards mobility means that some generation must live in a series of huge cities and base their value on a paycheck that I don't grasp.  It seems hollow to me.

Hilaire Belloc: Land-Tenure in the Christian Era

Hilaire Belloc: Land-Tenure in the Christian Era: THE way in which land has been held or owned during the nineteen hundred years which have seen in Europe the rise and establishment of the C...

Mid Week At Work: British soldiers gathering oats, 1917

Returning Women to the 1st Century BC

 

 Chinese slave girl, early 20th Century, in San Francisco.  Slavery was long abolished at this point, but cultural slavery is a harder thing to crack.

And no, I don't mean the recent news of the horrors being perpetrated by ISIL, although I should comment on those somewhere in this blog.

Rather, I recently posted an item on standards of dress, and when I did that, I briefly touched on this topic. While I'm sure that there are those who will vehemently disagree with me, after having observed it for some time, I'm fairly convinced of the following. The result of what started off as an effort to "liberate" standards to the benefit of women has, in the Western World, returned them to the status they were in during the 1st Century BC, chattel for men.

Sound radical, I suppose it is, but that's what's happened, to some degree. 

I think in part the reason for that is that it's become, in modern times, and by that I generally mean anything after 1900 or so, a standard accepted theses that the bounds of "liberty" are ever expanding to everyone's benefit. Well, they quit doing that for women during the last 40 years, and that's a bad thing. To add to it, however, the thesis of ever expanding beneficial liberty was flawed to start with.

That thesis essentially is grounded in a relativistic thesis that all standards are bad and are simply negative social constructs.  In the case of women, the the assault on them came from the supposed concept, or at least the stated one, that they were shackled to roles determined by males, and that by liberating them from them, they'd achieve fulfillment.

That thesis was pretty flawed in the first instance.  Men and women are more than a little "shackled" by what is now an equally unpopular idea, biology, and the history of the last 70 years has shown that.  Men and women remain, at the end of the day, men and women, and much about what we want in life is determined by that.  We were evolved in a certain fashion, and while we're rational scientist intelligent animals, we're still a product of our early nature.  We can act contrary to it, but the drive to do what we were evolved to do will always be there, and just as a tiger wants to be in the jungle, not in a cage, those drives will make us unhappy if we try to excessively suppress them.

Any social change that ignores basic evolution and biology is doomed to produce a bad result, at least in part, and likewise any such change that is ignorant of real conditions and their history is going to be dangerously based on false premises. That's what's happened here, so that's what we'll start with.

It's popular to present the theory that, in the 1970s, a Women's Liberation movement got women out of the home and (back) into work.  That's partially correct, as we'll see. But added to that is the idea that women were being kept down  by Victorian social standards that were basically designed to repress them, and everything about those standards, from a woman's role in marriage, to their role in work, to their personal conduct, was sort of a result of a conspiracy by men, probably upper class men, but men in general. That's where the theory went off the rails, and in some ways that's created the very real problems that women face today, including their return to objectification.

We've written on this history before, and as that post was quite extensive, we'll just refer to it here. Suffice it to say, we feel that the entry of women and the increasing equality of women in the workplace is an economic and technological story, and that the supposed societal element to it was merely following that, not leading it at all.  Like we said at the time, it was Maytag, not World War Two, that took women out of the home and into the workplace.

 

Rosie the Riveter, in popular myth she blazoned the trail out of the home and into the office.  But that trial had already been taken by her mother during World War One.

 

 The Women's Land Army.  Organizations like this put women in the role of the farmer in the US, UK, Canada and France during World War One.  They were also in the factories during the war, and even on the front in the form of nurses.  Among the Western Allies the roles open to them in labor were about as broad as they were during World War Two, although this was less the case with military roles, save for Imperial Russia which saw the symbolic deployment of the Women's Battalion of Death just before the imperial regime collapsed.

So lets just skip to the 1950s and on.

We know that by the 1950s, it was no longer economically necessary to have the division of labor that had existed prior to that time.  Indeed, technologically, that division wouldn't have been necessary in the 1930s, but the Great Depression retarded the inevitable and kept a lot of technologies of all kind from entering into use. So when the changes came on, they came on pretty fast, as it was basically the case that 20 years of very real technological change, accelerated by the advance of technology and its deployment during World War Two, came on all at one.  That would have been bound to be disruptive to some extent.

But the 1950s were not, in any event, the really conservative Happy Days type of society that television has popularized. Societally, after the foment of the 1920s and the extensive political and societal liberalization caused by the Great Depression and World War Two, the country was actually much more politically and societally liberal than it is now typically remembered.  A whole host of conditions therefore combined to put women into work, and into college.  This isn't to say that everything changed overnight, which is never true.  But, we can say that society has acclimated to having women in the workplace, and since about 1920 or so, advances in domestic machinery essentially necessitated a redeployment of the female demographic into a different role in labor.

So far, so good, right? Well, basically yes.  In economic terms, the domestic machinery revolution that occurred in the first half of the 20th Century meant that women didn't have to occupy a domestic role if they didn't want to, and coincidentally made it easier for men and women to live singly, something that had heretofore been pretty difficult.

So, given that, we can imagine a progression from 1950 forward with women entering the workplace relatively seamlessly.  And, that's been part of the story.  Indeed, a bigger part of that story would tend to be that the liberal movements of the late 60s and 1970s may very well have had little to do with what was an economically driven process in any event  And it would appear clear that, for the most part, most women never fully accepted the thesis that the Women's Liberation movement advanced on a truly genderless society (a thesis which was interestingly very close to Marxist social thought from the teens forward, in theory but not practice).  So, what's my point.

Well, as this occurred, and wrapped up in it to an extent, an anti female social movement based upon economic gain and a pharmaceutical revolution came at the same time, decaying what had been a social and economic evolution, and confusing people on all of it.

Here too, we'll jump back and go forward through these things.

I"m going to be a bit vague on some of these details, intentionally, from here on out, as I don't want to popularize what I'm condemning.   If that makes it a bit confusing, and I don't think it will, well oh well.

The first element of this was the introduction of a publication that was slickly marketed.

Magazines featuring photographs of women are about as old as magazines. But starting in the very early 1950s, a clever fellow working for one of the older magazines conceived of a new marketing strategy for them.

Prior to this period, there had been such rags, but they were sort of gutter marketed. That is, they knew what they were, and the market to which they were pitching. Vice was part of their appeal. During World War Two, however, that altered a bit as one of the magazines that existed at that period improved its production values, and another came out marketed directly to soldiers.  Those elevated the standards of the magazines a bit. At the same time, the removal of millions of young men from their homes and the influence of their communities operated to lower moral standards anyhow, and that found its expression, among other things, in the exaggerated illustrations of women on one thing or another, principally aircraft (you don't go around painting bright images on combat vehicles, as a rule, as you don't want to draw attention to them if at all possible).  Coincident with that, that illustration style became popular in the above mentioned media, making the next step that was taken perhaps not as revolutionary as some have suggested.

Indeed, it definitely wasn't as revolutionary, as the common claim is that this fellow invented the medium, which simply isn't true at all.  Rather, the medium existed and had changed, but he perceived that and put out a new publican which was very slickly marketed.

The really slick part of the marketing aspect of it, more than anything else, is that it presented an image which suggested that a man didn't need to hide the magazine, and that this represented the life of the affluent male.  Very clearly part of that, the affluent male could have as many (top heavy) women as he wanted, without committing to them at all, and without fearing that they'd get pregnant or have demands.

This is, we'd note, completely contrary to the later myth about the publication, because the gist of it was massively anti woman.  In later years, following the 1960s really, the publication would claim that it was in the forefront of the liberation of women because, it claimed, it had liberated them to act up their desires.  Complete bull.  The entire publication was (and remains) entirely male-centric and male self centered. Women don't count in the calculation at all, are only toys.  The women in the earlier rags weren't really toys, but rather were fallen, something else entirely.

The publication became a huge hit, but it didn't really create a real revolution in and of itself, and it never would, contrary to what has otherwise been claimed by it. Rather, it's one piece in the overall puzzle.  It was corrosive, but not sufficiently corrosive to corrode things completely on its own.

What assisted that was the introduction of pharmaceuticals that operated to allow the conduct urged by the publication in the manner in which the publication portrayed it, without potential immediate biological consequence.  That came on and really did change the calculations, and it brought women over, to an increasing degree, to the conduct that men like the now ossified freaky publisher urged.

Now, I know that this sounds like a moral text, and it doesn't really intend to be.  A person could take this from there, but that's now what we'll do, rather, we play this story's history out in another direction.

As the conduct became more and more common, what also became more and more common is the portrayal of women in this fashion. Now its epidemic.  We've seen piles of advances for women in society, but we now also see young women who advertise themselves as nothing other than object. They've effectively reduced themselves, in some instances, to a class which hasn't existed in our society ever, the object.

This is an indescribably bad development.  No human being should be an object.  Most of us have to sell our labor, but nobody should have to sell themselves.  But some young women effectively act as if they believe they have to, and the massive societal message is that they do.  And as long as some are, they all will be to some extent.  Nobody should be an object, and nobody should want to be one.

And the band played on

In Saturday's Tribune an article appeared noting, again, the loss of over 3,000 oil industry jobs in Wyoming, and a 50% reduction in certain mineral revenues.

50%.

It also noted that the price of oil had declined now to about $40/bbl.  It's now so low, that the Administration is going to authorize trading heavy crude for light crude, with Mexico, which should allow both nations to refine the product more easily.  The thought there, apparently, is that it would reduce unrefined product and get stuff moving, thereby helping to reduce a huge surplus of the product that now exists.

Anyhow, the state economist interviewed noted that, while we are now definitely feeling the impact beyond the oil industry itself (the partial focus of the story), things were not going to get worse.

Oh really?

It's interesting how this type of thinking is so common whenever we experience these downturns, which are sufficiently distant from each other that we truly forget the last time.  Why wouldn't things get worse?  We're just beginning to feel the impact beyond the oil industry itself, coal appears to have declining fortunes and it was pretty ill to start with, revenues to the state from coal, the major source of state funding, is going way down.  Oh, it can get worse.

Indeed, while I basically agree that the price is unlikely to decline further, it sure could.  It had appeared to stabilize at about $50/bbl a couple of months ago, but it's back down.  The deal with Mexico would not really appear to be well calculated to me to address this problem, as all it should really do is aid in the ease of refining of oil.  Opening up oil to export from the United States, which the industry has been pushing for, might, but it might not as well.  And of course the impact of Iranian oil getting an increased share of the market, and the likely Saudi reaction, is hugely problematic.

It's not that I'm rejoicing about this, not at all.  But locally, we tend to really repeat history in this area, which I think those in industry are well aware of, but seemingly others are not.  If the price stabilizes where it is, it'll be a long term trend we'll have to adjust around.  If it doesn't, and continues to go down, things will get worse.  And even if it stabilizes at the present price, or goes back up to around $50/bbl, the impact on other sectors of the economy will still be coming on for several months.

Finally, we have to recall that a story like this doesn't play out the same where everywhere that it does here.  Low oil prices mean low prices at the pump, and indeed driving into town yesterday afternoon I noticed that diesel fuel had dropped below gasoline in price for the first time here in at least a decade.  Not too many people anywhere complain about dropping prices, and dropping fuel prices keep the lid on inflation.  In an era when people's wages haven't been rising, on a national basis, for about 20 years, that's not going to be unwelcome new.  Here, when we complain about this situation we're really complaining to ourselves, as there's very little national sympathy for a drop in oil prices.  It may worry some economic professionals and, ironically given local views, environmentalist, but that's about it.

Today In Wyoming's History: The New (upcoming) $10.00 Bill and Esther Hobart M...

Today In Wyoming's History: The New (upcoming) $10.00 Bill and Esther Hobart M...: The new $10.00 bill, design yet to be announced, will feature the image of a woman on it for the first time since 1896.  If you've seen...

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: The view from above Homer, Alaska

Holscher's Hub: The view from above Homer, Alaska

Field of Snarks. The juvenile commentary on the ABA site.

Lawyers are supposed to be analytical and intelligent.

Perhaps we are, but anyone who ever read the commentary that the weekly ABA update receives on its website would have to conclude that the average literacy rate of lawyers approaches that of stone aged humans and the maturity level would make most junior high school classes look like Ivy League graduate school classes in comparison.

It's snarky.

And mean.

And sort of dumb.

I suppose that's inevitable, but it certainly says something about the nature of anonymous communication in age of the internet, and about how one of the learned professions isn't coming across as all that learned.  Juvenile would be a better characterization.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church, Denver ...

Churches of the West: St. Ignatius Loyala Roman Catholic Church, Denver ...

This church located in a busy section of Denver, quite near City Park, is St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church. A school by that name, which it supports, is next door.

The church was completed in 1924 and is a Jesuit church.