Author: Christopher-Dorset

A Bloody Kangaroo

My December Story Entry — Yes, it is wretched.

It was a deathly quiet night when Emery set out in his new Audi A3. Though the weather forecasters had predicted that the blizzard would not move in for another six hours, their reputation for being pathological liars was not unwarranted and before he was even half way do his destination he faced white-out conditions. Realising that it was impractical to return, and realising that it was foolhardy to continue on his path until the storm either abated or he magically found a way to dematerialise and transport himself through fibre-optic cables to his destination he had to content himself with stopping in the next town, a pleasant, though over-priced town somewhere between here and nowhere. Continue reading “My December Story Entry — Yes, it is wretched.”

Musings on the USA after 2000.

This blog will be short. It is not because I am too lazy to write more, well, at least not only because of that; but because it is late and I have to work on a paper for a course.

There has been much discussion recently about the relative decline of the USA’s position in the world. In the past 20 years the USA went from the unrivalled hyper-power left standing after the end of the Cold War to a deeply indebted state unable to find competent leadership with unfriendly countries quickly losing patience with its profligate ways. There should be nothing especially surprising in this. It cannot be expected that a country can rely on sheer luck alone, as the USA has in effect often done in its history, to carry it through forever. It is equally impractical to ignore the sage wisdom of the fragrant Chinese Legalist scholar Han Fei Tzu when he wrote “no state is forever strong, no state is forever weak” before falling victim to one of the schemes he so enjoyed advocating. Continue reading “Musings on the USA after 2000.”

Finally the other 82,000,000 catch up.

When I was young my mum always had French cheeses. When I was young I didn’t think life could get
any better than an ash-coated French goat cheese on a freshly baked baguette with a cup of coffee.
That all changed, however, when I had my first bite of Huntsman… I never looked back. British cheeses became my standard and very rarely do I now have some at home. Now it looks as if my fellow citizens are starting to catch up with me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8018358/Germany-goes-mad-for-British-cheese.html

This could well be the beginning of a new British Renaissance.

Murder in the Heartland.

Today in Kentucky a man was displeased with his breakfast and went on a shooting rampage which was responsible for the death of 5 people. His eggs, according to the story, were not to his satisfaction.
Here is the link to the full story.

This, as extreme as it is, is not unheard of in the USA. Some parts of the country, especially along the border with Mexico are essentially the fiefdoms of Latin American drug cartels. Across the San Francisco Bay from me lies Oakland — one of the centres of gang activity. The heartland for that, however, is Los Angeles where several times a month people die because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Actually, that happened here in San Francisco last month — a German teacher on holiday was shot and killed when she was caught in the crossfire. But life in the USA is great, just peachy. It is wonderful since American society is so much stronger than that in the old world, obviously. That is why violent crime rates are several times higher in the USA than there.