So much for the pyramids

Thoreau was unimpressed.

I'm not sure if I'd enjoy hanging out with Henry David Thoreau, given the chance. He seems to have been a bit of a crank. But I love reading him. It is an under appreciated fact that many of the classics of American literature are not only good reading but are laugh out loud funny.

Lately, I've been re-reading Walden, a work I revisit every few years. It really is a rich and funny book and some of his barbs strike home.

Here's one that speaks to my condition on the farm these days:

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men; the former are so much the freer.

That sounds like a man who knows a thing or two about goats.

The book is also full or random zingers, like this one on the wonders of ancient Egypt:

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

(For the record, El Cabrero thinks pyramids are kind of cool.)

Don't be too surprised if old Henry shows up here again soon. There are plenty of nuggets where those came from.

WALL STREET "WISDOM." Here's economist Dean Baker's latest rant about Wall Street and the deficit hawks. I think it's a pretty good one.

THE POLITICS OF DISGUST are discussed here.

Q & A. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree. Those who have been following his static with the Episcopal diocese of WV may want to check it out.

SENIOR BLUES. Three in 10 older West Virginians have trouble making ends meet.

MY HOLY LAND. Regular readers of this blog will find this familiar, but here's an article I wrote for the Gazette about my Okinawa trip. Some of it got cut but you'll have that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOT PYRAMIDS?

Pyramid of the Moon.

When El Cabrero was a little kid, I used to have a recurring dream (or one that I dreamed was recurring, anyway) about sitting among old stone ruins. Every time I get around some, even little ones, I kind of bliss out.

Visiting Teotihuacan was right up my alley.



This civilization thrived from a century or two before the common era and peaked around 350-650. At one time, its population was higher than the city of Rome.


Pyramid of the Sun.

It began to quickly decline in the 7th and 8th centuries for reasons that are still debated, including internal unrest (it takes a ruthless class system to make people build pyramids), invasion, climate change, famine, disease, etc.


Lesser pyramids.

Good though!

GOT FOOD? Here's another take on the world food crisis by Frances Moore Lappe.

MEASURING POVERTY. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute suggests the official federal poverty measure is obsolete and underestimates the real poverty level.

MILITARY FORCE is a blunt instrument for solving the world's problems or protecting national security, according to this item from the Center for American Progress.

CHICKEN OR EGG? A recent study suggests human thought may not follow the same flow as many human languages. Many languages follow the subject/verb/object sequence but when subjects who spoke different languages were given the task of conveying a message with hand signs, most followed the subject/object/verb pattern. Wasn't that the way Yoda talked? Interesting that is...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED