Tuesday, March 31, 2015

question everything 2


QUESTION EVERYTHING 2

It is the same with JFK.  I have no idea why a lying weasel East Coast Blue Blood womanizer was thought of as such a Camelot Hero type.  I have absolutely no love lost for just another crappy politician.  Everything you hear from his admirers was just rumor ( heard a guy who was told by a guy ) or empty vapid campaign trail drivel.  He increased the troops in Vietnam, fact.  So the claim he was killed because he was going to bring them home ( a claim from a speech ) is hard to buy.  I won’t get into all that too much, except to make the point when you love a hero like JFK so much, you see no fault emanating from him and are powerless to perceive the true reason he was overthrown ( I have no theory of my own on the assassination I feel all that confident in, although I’ve expressed some over the years [ the bankers killing him for threatening to take back currency printing control might just have been more empty political wind bagging ].  I can say I’m pretty confident his fan boy base made him into a much better President than was justified ).

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And then there is 9/11.  I’m simply bowled over by the fact so many people bought the official lie so readily, happily taking the hook and line and yelling at each Patriot Act, “thank you sir, may we have another?”.  I can understand the confusion of Oklahoma City, just from the novelty of it ( not that False Flag operations are new-see the 118 year old start of the war in Cuba ).  We had been so conditioned against thinking in terms of conspiracies we didn’t immediately buy into the internal explosives theory.  Yet, the World Trade Center couldn’t have been taken down any other way ( even if you don’t buy that, what about that THIRD tower that was NEVER HIT also imploding down hours AFTER the first two? ).  Also inconsistent was the “attack” on the Pentagon.  No debris of any kind feet in front of the wall, and a hole in it far smaller than an aircraft engine.  Just those two items alone, ignoring hundreds more, and you don’t question the official version?  The cry to Forever War against any and all enemies?  Really?

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In fact, if you look at all the prescribed hero’s and those demanded to be villains, it is pretty clear that our empires intelligentsia is hard at work lying about everything, everywhere, all the time.  It’s an Orwellian circus out there where everything is Opposite Land with an evil clown cast.  I could have bad trips on acid and come out a healthier individual compared to what your typical imperial citizen has been morphed into ( assuming I wasn’t one of those citizens to begin with, as adding a bummer physiological experience to it wouldn’t help matters much ).  And it isn’t even as simple as just believing the opposite of what they tell you.  Whole legions of professionals are out to lie to you and they won’t make such a fundamental mistake in their propaganda.  Hell, one of their first tricks was to spend so much time propagandizing Hitler’s propaganda so you would think our side wasn’t engaged in propaganda (  with occasional “true tale confessions” that we kinda sorta did do propaganda-but only by mistake and only by a few bad apples and only for a short time and honest Injun that is all over and done with- just to further confuse you ).  Stalin and his airbrushing new Enemies Of The State from old photos was kindergarten to our masters of deceit.  Hell, they think nothing of embedding agents for life everywhere for enormous amounts of money, all to keep the confusion going, and some of them even “report” about low level crime foiled by low paid confidential informants as if to suggest that is as complex as it gets in the subterfuge.  Our system doesn’t need a Statsi reporting on dissidence.  Nobody opposes our system because so few understand it ( I could research and ponder another 35 years and still unearth just as little as I have now, with it being 99% wild ass guesses.  When you question everything, even your own assumptions-hell, especially your own- all you ever know for sure is that The Truth AIN’T Out There ).  Those eliminated aren’t done so because they suddenly know something-those with opposing theories are encouraged to confuse the whole learning process even more- probably just because their death profits someone for some other reason.  You want me to believe that FIVE years after a witness sees an officially denied crime his accidental death isn’t an accident?  Perhaps his faulty brakes were just because Detroit churns out twenty grand death traps on purpose, yes?

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Other systems ruled by controlling information.  Our empire rules by information diarrhea ( just look at all the effort that goes into refuting we even have an empire ) as well as corporate media not controlling information but simply wielding a highlighter pen.  How could you not question everything when everything is disinformation?  How much of the population, with little in the way of production and human labor jobs, is engaged in processing information?  Each and every one of them has financial incentive to sell their version of truth.  Regardless of consequences.  No one has to be in charge of this Rabbit Hole, the thing runs itself.  Welcome to the nightscape.

END

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Monday, March 30, 2015

question everything


QUESTION EVERYTHING 1

I couldn’t tell you what experience turned the old adage from ( I believe ) the 1960’s, “question everything”, into a concrete life guiding mega-rule.  It could have been the night and day difference between private and public education.  Teachers refusing to admit being caught in blatant falsehoods.  The Army with its One Size Fits All philosophy enforced by its universal answer to everything along the lines of a parent telling their four year old “do it because I’m in charge and I said do it”.  It could have been just having read enough conflicting viewpoints on everything.  But from whatever single or cumulative experience, I took the advice of questioning everything very seriously from a very early age.  Now, on the one hand this is a big pain in the ass because there are no hard and fast rules about anything that you can build a comforting architecture of support to guide all the question life throws you.  On the other hand, learning something new everyday is pretty easy this way.  And I don’t mean to descend into some kind of philosophical quagmire here, of a sort seeking the meaning of life.  What I mean is, everyone has an agenda, including philosophers.  So question everything other people tell you.  Chances are good they are out to screw you, directly or indirectly, and caution is in order.

*

Okay, let’s take fun but convoluted examples.  Most readers are more than likely exasperated and confused at my extreme hatred about FDR ( that has nothing to do with political parties or economic dogmas ).  I don’t care if he expanded the welfare state.  It would have been easier to stop immigration, but whatever.  I could care less if he was a socialist ( I don’t care in Obammy is one, either, per se, it is just another amusing put-down on the Chicago Creature ).  No system is perfect, and that includes Fair Market.  Some socialism is a good idea.  Mostly what I care about were the people he killed.  By dancing to the tune of his controllers the Central Bankers, he postponed the Depression ( which was caused by the bankers to begin with ) which killed a lot of poor Americans by malnourishment and disease and devaluing the money.  He was the one individual most responsible for killing our family structure and unity ( not killing anyone there, but decreasing quality of life drastically ).  He deliberately involved us in the Second World War, killing not just hundreds of thousands of Americans, wounding for life far more, but also allowing Jews to be killed for political consideration, as well as Germans and Russian dissidents.  To name just the obvious.  The blood of millions is on his hands.  So every teacher and intellectual and fawning politician who tells me what a wonderful man he was is not to be trusted with any other tidbit of information.  FDR was everyone’s hero, which means everyone is going to be looking to hump me just like FDR humped so many. 

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More important than a casualty list, however, is the intellectual bind loving this vile hump puts you in.  If you love FDR, because you were told to love him by those oh so impartial and good God never manipulative authoritarian figures in your life such as teachers and parents, you don’t exactly understand our hidden power elite, now do you?  You think all our troubles started after him, so you read too much into Truman and his use of the bomb ( mistaking it for something else besides naked power gesturing to the world in warning- the Nazi’s were lucky in a way to have been overwhelmed before the Japs ).  You try to pound a square piece into a round hole with the military industrial complex controlling everything only after the Second World War.  By loving FDR, you can’t blame him for anything, so you ignore the bankers.  Because if you look at FDR, he was nothing so much as a meat puppet for them.  You don’t think his policies were meant to PROLONG the Depression?  Of course they were, because those weren’t his ideas, but his instructions.  He was a slimy manipulative bitter crippled in soul and body scumbag that was only smart in power politics, not in policy or logical thought.  All those people who mindlessly chanted his praises because he provided so many jobs don’t stop and ask why so many jobs didn’t end the Depression?  Why didn’t the build-up in military equipment PRIOR to Pearl Harbor, part Lend-Lease ( welfare to favored foreign countries ) and part make-jobs programs, in addition to the imposition of the draft-again, BEFORE Pearl Harbor which to me clearly underlies the preconceived nature of military involvement-, why didn’t all that end the Depression? 

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If the Depression was supposed to be caused by oversupply and demand destruction, why didn’t all that job creation and military equipment increase work?  If, as we are supposed to believe, gold was hurting the economy, or at least gold in private hands, why didn’t its immediate confiscation after this People’s Hero’s first election change anything?  There are far too many inconsistencies or questions to buy the official line.  If, however, you just look at this as the central banks coup d’ etat, just sweep up the loose ends after the satisfactory profits from getting the country involved in the first world war, and FDR as their boy, a heck of a lot more makes sense. 

*

Continued Next Post

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Friday, March 27, 2015

consuming to invest 11


CONSUMING TO INVEST 11

Passive Solar

I went to some lengths in describing passive solar projects in the book “Frugal Living”, so I’ll try to focus mostly on the economic aspects here ( although I’m sure the material grossly overlaps ).  You have a clothes line, right?  What else could be a better poster child of solar?  We only dried on the line in Florida, and that lacked direct sun ( trees out the wazoo there, great for negating the need for AC ), didn’t have any wind and it rained every day.  Yet still we always got the clothes dried just fine.  When it was “outlawed” by the landlord, I put up a line below the level of the fence.  When we got our own mobile home the carport ( again, not owning a car comes in handy ) was the laundry line area.  I got lazy here in the desert, seeing little reason to arrive home after dark and hang clothes up in fifteen degrees.  But now that I get home early afternoon, I’ve taken to drying by line again ( they go from wet to damp in the worse weather, I drape them up inside and continue the next day-which is why Friday is a good laundry day ).  I didn’t as much mind the $1 a week for the dryer as the extra hour of intense boredom it cost.  I only spent half what a new dryer would cost from the years drying at the Laundromat so I don’t feel too bad about my lapse.  Worse case, an indoor laundry line in the garage will suffice. 

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I noticed an electronic food dryer on sale while surfing online.  Almost $200.  Good gravy!  Really?  If you dry in the oven in the winter, your heater bill goes down and cancels out any operating costs, and in the summer just dry by solar.  You can make a slanting trough with black metal bottom covered with glass to collect the heat, which rises to an attached square tower full of trays with a vent at the top ( and an intake vent at the bottom of the trough ).  Or, if you are lazy, just make square lumber frames with a bottom screen ( check the drying books- I think you want nylon rather than metal ) and the tops covered with cheese clothe.  In both cases, bring the trays in at night and repeat the next day.  Using electric to dry is embarrassing and retarded when other cost free ways are available.

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Most people think a water heater is an expensive add on to pre-heat water for the gas fired heater.  Or, even if the solar alone does the trick, it is still a mess of pumps and pipes and wires and nicely perforates your roof for near future add on maintenance costs.  I don’t know how they do it in China, because the unit there cost under $100 and over half of all homes have them, but I’m sure it is a much simpler design than what we came up with over here.  Perhaps if Americans didn’t use hundreds of gallons of water to bathe they wouldn’t need to spend thousands of dollars for sun fired water.  Just sink an insulated box into the ground at a south facing angle, cover with glass, and have some canning jars inside the flat black painted structure.  A few hours later, a gallon of hot water-which is a wastefully large amount for a whores bath. 

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A solar food cooker is the same as above but you need reflectors on the outside to double the interior temperatures.  Just look online at any picture of a commercial solar cooker to get the idea of the shape.  Solar cookers and water heaters are to be had for the cost of scrap wood and a marked down piece of recycled glass ( you might want to consider a completely above ground unit that can be stored inside safe from theft-just add extra insulation ) with a few bucks in rigid board insulation ( cover that from solar rays-in a few years they become brittle and almost melt and shrink and I’m sure lose effectiveness ) and some shiny metal sheeting.  Even if it cost you $100 in material, that is one third the cost of commercial units and you start saving money right away in saved fuel costs.  There are plenty of other solar projects, and once you get a taste for one of two you will embrace others enthusiastically.  Because you are producing luxuries at zero operating costs.  And, yet MORE money saved on both utilities and from appliances you need not buy.

END

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Thursday, March 26, 2015

consuming to invest 10


CONSUMING TO INVEST 10

Canning Goods

Canning foods may or may not be ideal for you.  If you envision a relatively benign decline, canning allows bulk shopping and a self-reliance off the grid.  If you envision a complete Malthusian Dark Ages as the oil supply craps out, canning is too dependent on modern manufacturing.  Even if you get the re-useable lids and the gasket-less canner, the glass jars will NEVER be duplicated on a cottage industry level and without a precisely joined jar and lid you can’t properly seal air out.  There absolutely needs to be a replacement of the refrigerator to protect meat in the future.  Drying would be ideal but meat is the one thing that method does poorly ( preserving for weeks, usually, or months at the most,  rather than years as canning does ).  If canning is not in your future, research the old timey-as in pre-Industrial- meat preservation methods.  If canning is something you think is viable, there is no time like the present to commence preserving your meats ( I’d advise drying everything else, both to save on costs and to reduce storage space ).  The whole “we have a bomb in the kitchen” danger myth is largely a result of old wives tales, too many lawyers roaming the countryside hungry, and probably a little hysteria from the Boston Marathon false flag event thrown in for good measure ( a pressure cooker or canner was supposedly used as a bomb.  I’d advise buying with cash and NOT using a customer rewards card for both the canner and the jars and other supplies if possible.  Not that you can stay off a Honky Mo-Fo Terrorist List, as breathing the rarified air of our betters on Capital Hill is itself a crime along with everything else, but you should try anyway ).

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For all intents and purposes, if you just follow the paragraph or two in the Ball Jar instruction book ( or similar ) on safety, canning should be much safer than driving on any macadam  roadway.  You make sure the safety valve is clear, and time the process to assure completion, then check the seal.  And not much more.  Now, once again, saving money here is a bit difficult and a bit of a stretch.  But it is still more than a mere Bean And Bullet Buy that traditional prepping preaches.  In the long run, not having a freezer will save a little more money than what the canning uses.  If you take into account that grid kilowatt hours have easily doubled in cost in the last ten years, it isn’t a stretch to see in the near future where even the most energy efficient electrical appliances are going to be beyond the average ( declining purchasing power ) persons ability to run.  Then canning really pays off as it allows you to still buy bulk meat, or shoot it, and preserve it cheaper ( a caveat- make sure you either have plenty of stored propane or make sure you can use wood to pressure can, in the event of natural gas disruptions ). 

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If you are lucky enough that you haven’t bought a freezer yet, just that cost alone saved will pay for your canner and plenty of jars/lids.  And the savings from not running the freezer buys you another case of them every month.  Yes, chump change.  But you are learning to de-couple and even if it doesn’t save a lot, it is still something.  The fastest way into severe debt and bondage is to take the attitude, “well, we are broke this month so a little luxury won’t hurt”.  And the fastest way to get independent is by worrying about every single penny saved ( watch the pennies and the dollars take care of themselves ).  I know, I’ve lived both lifestyles.  And penny pinching wins hands down.  Even now, no debt and no bills except the grocers and the bike shop, being able to save over half my income, I still sweat over those pennies.  I NEVER want to go back to the alternative.  A buck here, a buck there, it does indeed add up ( of course, pinching pennies and staying in debt is the worst possible combination-don’t do that ).

END
 
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
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Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
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Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
 my bio & biblio
*
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.
 
 
 

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

known unknowns


KNOWN UNKNOWNS

Sorry for the title, I got done with The Black Swan last week ( surprisingly, a very entertaining read-although I’d have to read it another two times minimum to truly grasp all of it ) and it is stuck in my head.  I’ll be reminding you today about the serious issue of the demise of the PetroDollar, and what we know about those consequences is a known unknown.  We know it is going to be bad, but have idea how bad, for how long or even when that starts, if it hasn’t already.  Okay, I just came across yet another dry random statistic that should just be one of a few thousand but which keeps nagging at me constantly ( if I’m getting a nagging feeling, you’re guaranteed to get an article ).  And here it is: in 2000, the amount of foreign reserves in dollars was 55%.  In 2013, that amount was down to 33%.  Okay, boring, right?  Move on to how more of our corn crop is now ethanol or how this is the sixth ( or whatever ) year of Californian drought, or something.  Well, not so fast.  Foreign reserves are other countries holding our currency.  So, you’re thinking that, big deal, trade is down ( no reason to hold as much currency if they will buy less from us ).  As usual.  But foreigners were not holding our dollars, and they are not holding those non-dollars for trade with us, per se. 

*

Kissinger saved our asses in the 70’s by convincing the Saudi’s to price their oil in US Dollars exclusively.  They were sitting on the worlds greatest oil reserves that had barely just been tapped, and their voice was the only one that mattered.  The global oil for dollars trade became “law” almost instantly.  But, we didn’t send paper currency overseas.  We sent Treasury bonds there.  Those are our “overseas currency” everyone holds in reserve.  Foreigners buy our debt, because they use those as currency for oil.  That was how we imported inflation all these decades.  That was how we controlled the oil trade ( forget the influence private oil companies used to have ).  That was how our economy continued to function.  The Saudi’s pumped a barrel of oil, we covered that with creating a Treasury bond, other countries had to give us some kind of commodity to get the bond to give to Saudi Arabia to get that oil ( in simplistic terms ).  We didn’t send paper money, so there wasn’t inflation.  Just more debt.  Foreign countries didn’t buy Bonds to earn interest ( they don’t hold them long enough ), they bought bonds to buy oil.  Well, then that wonderful bargain turned sour.  We’ve gone from foreign countries “savings” of half the global total to now only a third ( close enough to losing half ).  And honestly, do you really believe we have another thirteen years until that 33% falls to 15%?  I sure don’t.  There are so many things working against us.

*

China and Russia are already over the dollar as far as trading goes.  As China is the worlds second largest user of oil, and Russia the #1 or #2 producer ( sorry, brain fart.  I’m not recalling the Saudi and Russian production numbers right now ), you can kind of see how this neatly shoves aside their need for the US and its dollar.  The national debt is so out of control, having doubled on Obummer’s first term, that we can pay the military and the interest payment and that is about it.  Every other payment is new debt ( we are borrowing around half of the yearly budget ).  Which, no, China is not buying.  We buy it ourselves.  An IOU.  And that $18 trillion?  That is just the admitted debt.  We lent another equal amount to bail out most banks globally in 2008/2009.  So, we keep doubling down on the derivatives market to keep that “creation” from devouring its creator.  Then there is Peak Oil itself, which we can blame for this mess, mostly.  Lack of growth in oil supply ( a plateau is nice, keeps things from imploding, but it isn’t growth which we need to feed the interest payments ) seems to be as deadly as supply contraction ( you need a healthy financial sector to loan to the fracking industry to pump, for instance ).  So here is the thing.  The PetroDollar is already dead.  It is a zombie, dead but still animated.  Just like our economic system.  Really, what is keeping all the other powers on the system?  Just rabid fear of what our rabid dog country with nuclear weapons will do if they move to fast away from it.  That is it.  The system doesn’t even benefit the Saudi’s anymore, as their former protector is now incapable of keeping her neighbors under control.  The Chinese would both give her a better deal and clamp down effectively post haste ( the biggest budget no longer gives us much military effectiveness-just compare our control of Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or even puny Libya with Chinese control of Tibet or other western provinces ). 

*

All of this scares me, because how long can this game continue in our favor?  One opening on this chessboard and others race in to dispose our control.  We can’t predict the timing, and we know when it happens our country crashes and crashes hard ( although, HOW hard is a critical question ).  It should come out of the blue, and even knowing it is coming allows us little direct preparation.  We’ll have some fun with that, I’m sure.

END

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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

consuming to invest 8


CONSUMING TO INVEST 8

Wool Clothing

Most folks hate wool.  I can’t imagine why.  I mean, man-made materials are so much better at keeping you warm even if they are bulkier, rip easily and as a bonus burst into flame turning you into a screaming running matchhead if you get too close to any fire.  Okay, perhaps that last point is a bit exaggerated.  Perhaps today’s fabrics, blended, are less of a fire danger.  Less is still some, though, isn’t it?  I prefer to stick primarily with wool with an outer cotton shell as a windbreak.  Cotton doesn’t keep you warm, however.  That was the whole point in wearing it, why England took off financially.  In warm, warmer and warmist climates, cotton is king.  But away from the jungle, in cold climes-you know, mostly away from the rest of all those oxygen wasting asshats-you need wool.  It always cracks me up when you see all those helpless urban Yankees in a severe winter ( who could have seen it coming? Oh, and for the benefit of foreign readers, Yankees are NOT Americans, they are the inhabitants of the northeastern part of the country-kindly don’t insult the rest of us ), shivering in twelve layers of cotton clothing.  Try some wool, dumbass.  If wool makes you itch, or if you don’t want to clean it as often, you wear a layer of cotton, THEN wool.  Just like you wear a T-shirt under a dress shirt.  Not rocket science people.  Wool is warmer than you can imagine, it is still effective even with a hole or three in it ( which are easily mended ), or when damp, and it is renewable.  Sheep give you a new batch every year, and sheep don’t eat off of the same land as humans ( okay, they CAN, given a centralized mechanical operation, but they are designed to eat grass which humans can’t digest ), unlike cotton which competes with farmland. 

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If you can’t find wool in your local thrift store ( I have plenty, of the ugly Christmas variety-I don’t mind, after a certain point, looking silly if I’m warm.  I work outside most of my shift, and I’ll happily waddle around in a bulky stupid patterned sweater with a huge rabbit fur Commie Cap on my head, invigorated at ten degrees below zero [ that’s Fahrenheit, you metric using socialists ], unlike all the Yuppie Swine skittering about in clothing far less warm ), try Sportsman’s Guide.  You can usually get wool sweaters for about $15-$20, the same for thicker wool pants ( search under “military wool pants” as those are surplus items ) and their pea coats and great coats in wool, if those are your choice, vary in price but I’ve seem them as low as $30-$40.  So, wool not only saves you money because it lasts longer ( the keeping warmer part is non-financial, but priceless ), but if we all finally heed Carter’s advice-granted, thirty five years late- and wear a frigging sweater inside so we can turn down the thermostat, there is a nice savings for you also.

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CONSUMING TO INVEST 9

Wool Blankets

Some of my fonder memories when I lived in the mountains as a child, besides all the exploring in the wilderness, was sleeping.  We all had down comforters and there was no heat at night, with a window usually cracked.  When you are warm, sucking in cold air is invigorating.  It is also healthier.  Okay, not extremely frigid air, but merely cold.  Luckily, today, there is China ( they do come in handy for half our stuff, even if the other half makes us vulnerable ) and they churn out very decently priced synthetic down filled comforters.  Now, being a kid back then, I was a little snot nosed oven, generating much of my own needed heat.  Now that I’m a heck of a lot older, I tend to get a bit colder on my own.  So I have two or three wool blankets underneath the comforter ( as it warms up at Spring, I slowly shed each blanket until I just need the comforter-then in Summer I only need a sheet, and then we slowly build back up come Fall ).  Wool blankets are NOT cheap.  And don’t buy the cheap ones as they are too thin or they cover less space, or are not 100% wool.  You are going to have to invest heavily in them.  I’d suggest at least $100 worth which will get you four or five of them ( what?  You don’t believe in stockpiling extra?  By the way, I’ve heard wood ash makes a great moth repellant ).  That is twice as much as a comforter, but in the great scheme of things very affordable.  From Day One, you are saving money on your heating bill.  I’m not sure how you go about turning off the water so pipes don’t burst without heat overnight in your house( I had it a bit easier with RV living ), but even if all you do is go from 75 down to 55 ( have a timer on the bathroom space heater if you must shower in the morning ) overnight, your heating bill reflects that quite well.  You’ll have saved that investment the first winter, if not the first month, and it is money in your pocket thereafter.  Then, in a grid down situation, you are already set for no heat ( which is why you also have extras, not just because you need to buy now and beat inflation ) as a bonus.

END

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The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
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Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu






 my bio & biblio
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My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

 

 

Monday, March 23, 2015

consuming to invest 7


CONSUMING TO INVEST 7

Reference Books

You don’t have to be in love with books, or read voraciously like I do, to need reference books.  Everyone needs them because we need to get back to a time where we start doing things for ourselves rather than let Chinese peasants do it for us.  Oh, they do it much cheaper.  But they can easily be our enemy next week, just as they are our friend now.  And, no, not because they are communists.  Bewaring communists is so old school Cold War.  It was an easy control button our leaders both created ( if we really hated and wanted the commies gone we merely had to withhold Lend-Lease from the Soviets and the odds would have been good the Nazi’s could have defeated them.  Later, if we just used the Russians to defeat Germany, we could have nuked them before we “accidentally” let them get hold of Bomb.  No, we needed the commies to control our own citizens.  Now we use terrorists, which work better than drug dealers ) and exploited to the fullest.  The Chinese communists make better capitalists than we do.  This isn’t ideology, this is Imperial warfare and resource control.  You need to secure the knowledge of how to move backwards towards self-sufficiency rather than wallowing in the present of microchip and petroleum dependency.  The oil can easily be cut off from overseas as we allow our navy to degrade ( and, much easier than that, by usurping the PetroDollar, our contenders can make that oil unaffordable ) and most of our computing power is made overseas. 

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Do not rely on the power grid ( which uses imported fuel, imported parts and imported chips ) or imported computer components which make up electric book readers.  Buy paper books.  Now, e-books are fine for ease of reference or for getting them cheap enough so you can judge whether the book is even worth getting a paper version ( I still save money even when I buy both electronic and paper versions because nine times out of ten I don’t go paper-believe it or not, a lot of authors and publishers only want to make money, and they care less about 100% accuracy or even readability.  A lot of “free” books out there are not worth their price.  You can buy the e-versions, discard all the crap, then buy the few choice paper versions on many occasions.  Other times, if both are expensive, you’ll just have to make a judgment call if you want to gamble the money.  If that is the case, always default to paper first ).  I won’t specify too many titles.  You are looking for old time skills, those that are cottage industry rather than heavy, petroleum industries only achieved on an imperial/colonial scale.  The Foxfire books #1-6 are pretty darn invaluable, but do keep in mind a lot of things in there might be regional specific.  The books by Seymour.  If you go shopping on Amazon, just go to the Foxfire books and then follow the recommendations they generate.  After that, figure out one or two specific skills you want ( part two of this book ) to focus on and get a lot of reference books on those.  Those books are relatively expensive, $20 to $50 each, but they are invaluable.  Think of the years apprentices had to trade labor for skills, and compare that to a book that costs you three hours of minimum wage salary.  Now, obviously, a book on a shelf does not make you a craftsman.  But those specialized books that are the only place long forgotten skills can be taught will show you how to practice to achieve mastery.  Selling books is such a competitive business that you can find some very refined skills being taught on anything and everything.  Take advantage of that now.

END
 
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*
The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                        
Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu
 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.