Command performance

El Cabrero has been an irregular blogger this week due to running around a lot. Here are a few items that have caught my eye lately.

THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE IT. This Gazette story from a couple of days ago provides great insight into the politics of coal in WV. This week the industry is having a series of taxpayer funded pep rallies in which the Obama administration and the EPA will be ritually denounced. Coal is a jealous god and everybody who is anybody has to show up and burn some incense and join in the maledictions.

MORALITY AND TAXES. Here's a look at the moral sentiments that often lie behind opposition to taxes.


WHO'D A THUNK IT? Birds and turtles are cousins.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Water wars

There have been many great naval battles in history that shaped the future of the world...

from the Greek defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BC...

to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 when European forces defeated the Ottoman Empire...

to the Battle of Midway in 1942 that was a turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II.

This aquatic encounter between Little Edith Ann and a box turtle probably won't make the cut. The engagement was indecisive.

AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL. Here's an appeal from a labor lawyer and writer not to "save" Social Security but to actually raise it.

THERE IS A GREAT GULF BETWEEN US. Here's a look at the growing economic divide in the US.

AN INCONVENIENT UNTRUTH. Here's a look at the political denial of climate change and how it has impacted public opinion.

PLAYING CHICKEN. Economist Dean Baker calls for a tough line on a clean vote to raise the federal debt ceiling.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A reluctant revolutionary

Like some of history's best revolutionaries, Charles Darwin was a reluctant one. He disliked controversy and delayed publishing his main ideas for years until he was nudged into action when the younger scientist Alfred Russel Wallace came up independently with the idea of natural selection.

Although he was ignorant of contemporary developments in the science of heredity-- such as the experiments of Gregor Mendel--and grasped for an explanation of its mechanism, his key ideas of natural selection have stood the test of time. His later work on the similarity of emotions in humans and animals was also ahead of its time and has received significant backup from studies of human and animal brains as well as behavior.

It's another discouraging sign of the times that many Americans deny evolution, which is regarded by scientists as the unifying theory of biology. These are often the same people who deny the science of climate change. I could probably think of any number of snarky Darwinian comments about that but will spare the Gentle Reader.

JUST FINES. Massey Energy led the coal industry in fines and citations in the last quarter, the Charleston Gazette reports.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Progressive billionaire George Soros' hedge fund just increased its ownership of Massey stock to 2.2 million shares.

MEDICINE CABINET BLUES. It looks like El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is the most medicated in the country.

OUR FAMILY TREE. Mitochondrial DNA research suggests a common mother for humanity around 200,000 years ago.

URGENT ANCIENT TURTLE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED