Musings

I started down the long and difficult road to reality at an early age, and at first opportunity, commenced to call ‘BULLSHIT!” on just about everything around me. It was a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the incredible tide of foul verbal excrement that swept around my body in the course of daily living.

Surrounded by liars and monsters, I fought off panic attacks and sweaty paranoia around every corner. Little by little, a little later, I learned to be less fearful as I fine-tuned the bullshit goggles I was developing. It seems to be a life-long enterprise, those goggles.

Well, I’m pleased to report that The New England Skeptics’ Society has laid it all out for you, dear reader. No more need for Gurus’ and other intermediaries between you and the cosmic unknown. No more need to read Herman Hess or Ravo’s rants about critical thinking. Find it all at:
Logical Fallicies

Now, I’m telling you that if you apply these principles of inquiry in your daily lives as though they had been handed to you from a burning bush on some mountainside, you will live long and prosper.

And, while we’re on the subject of avoiding slick patches in the road, here is a graphic that I thought might be of interest to those folks who have moved their savings to the ‘safety’ of municipal and state bonds. It was prepared by Paul Kedrosky as a part of an article he had written for ‘Seeking Alpha’. It is a ‘heat map’ of U.S. states compared by current deficits as a percentage of FY 2009 general revenue. California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida are in the top five (as is Rhode Island, surprisingly), but 41 states now face rapidly growing shortfalls.


Fortunately, my home state of Utah has a constitution that does not allow deficit spending by state and local governments. Therefore, we will avoid the long line of governors with tin cups in hand, snaking down the steps of Congress. Nonetheless, your so-called safe investments may need a careful review at this point in time.