Writing for The American Conservative, James Pinkerton offers Crusader talk and a Shire Strategy for the West (links added below). For myself, I am not reassured by his alternative to substitute one backward religious tyranny for another. But his points are valid when drawing some parallels between Tolkien’s Middle Earth and or own modern-day Mordor in the Middle East:

This Shire is ours now, but the way things are going, it won’t be ours permanently. So we must vow to defend the Shire, always. In the last of the “Rings” films, Aragorn the Strider proclaims, in full St. Crispin’s Day mode, “A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”

We in the West will always need warriors. We must have chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche—“Knights without fear and without reproach”—to safeguard our marches and protect our homes. Men such as Leonidas, whose Immortal 300 held off the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC, long enough for other Greeks to rally and save the nascent West. Or Aetius, the last noble Roman, who defeated Attila the Hun, Scourge of God, at Chalons in AD 451. Or Don Juan of Austria, who led the Holy League to naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Or Jon Sobieski, whose Polish cavalry rescued Vienna from the Turks in 1683.

These are not just legends, not just fictional characters—they were real. And if we dutifully honor those heroes, as heroic Men of the West and of Christendom, we will be rewarded with more such heroic men.

Future epics await us. Future Knights of the West, ready to defend Christendom, are waiting to be born, waiting for the call of duty. If we bring them forth with faith and wisdom and confidence, then also will come new heroes and new legends.

Read more here: The Once & Future Christendom

Apologies to all who’ve visited over the past 4 days and seen a blank website. You can thank the incompetent idiots at GoDaddy who don’t know the first thing about MySQL databases. Of course, I don’t either, but I’m not paid to, am I?

Anyway, Yours Truly did in fact figure everything out on his own and now the site is (mostly) back. I’m still upgrading and the design is still under construction, but at least we’re Live!

Look for more posts in the next 24 hours, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

Point and counterpoint:

Since the late 1960s, much of the North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty, in part due to increases in fresh water runoff induced by global warming, scientists say.

- Michael Schirber, LiveScience, 29 June 2005

The surface waters of the North Atlantic are getting saltier, suggests a new study of records spanning over 50 years. They found that during this time, the layer of water that makes up the top 400 metres has gradually become saltier. The seawater is probably becoming saltier due to global warming, Boyer says.

- Catherine Brahic, New Scientist, 23 August 2007

Whatever the anomaly, the cause is global warming.

article courtesy nationalreviewonline

Okay, so I took the HUMANMETRICS Jung Typology Test yesterday and checked out a couple of different sites to determine who I am.I know you think that I really don’t need to do this, as I’m already clearly awesome and there’s no need for any self-analysis here, but I did find what they had to say about me strangely accurate. I gotta stop taking these kinds of test, they’re really freaking me out.

Mastermind Rational

Of the four aspects of strategic analysis and definition, it is the contingency planning or entailment organizing role that reaches the highest development in Masterminds. Entailing or contingency planning is not an informative activity, rather it is a directive one in which the planner tells others what to do and in what order to do it. As the organizing capabilities the Masterminds increase so does their inclination to take charge of whatever is going on.

It is in their abilities that Masterminds differ from the other Rationals, while in most of their attitudes they are just like the others. However there is one attitude that sets them apart from other Rationals: they tend to be much more self-confident than the rest, having, for obscure reasons, developed a very strong will.

They are rather rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population. Being very judicious, decisions come naturally to them; indeed, they can hardly rest until they have things settled, decided, and set. They are the people who are able to formulate coherent and comprehensive contingency plans, hence contingency organizers or “entailers.”

Masterminds will adopt ideas only if they are useful, which is to say if they work efficiently toward accomplishing the Mastermind’s well-defined goals. Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once in charge, however, Masterminds are the supreme pragmatists, seeing reality as a crucible for refining their strategies for goal-directed action.

In a sense, Masterminds approach reality as they would a giant chess board, always seeking strategies that have a high payoff, and always devising contingency plans in case of error or adversity. To the Mastermind, organizational structure and operational procedures are never arbitrary, never set in concrete, but are quite malleable and can be changed, improved, streamlined.

In their drive for efficient action, Masterminds are the most open-minded of all the types. No idea is too far-fetched to be entertained-if it is useful. Masterminds are natural brainstormers, always open to new concepts and, in fact, aggressively seeking them.

They are also alert to the consequences of applying new ideas or positions. Theories which cannot be made to work are quickly discarded by the Masterminds. On the other hand, Masterminds can be quite ruthless in implementing effective ideas, seldom counting personal cost in terms of time and energy.

courtesy of Keirsey.com

Well after one week on Nutrisystem I have to say I have mixed feelings. I didn’t think I was losing much weight, and really did not appreciate or enjoy having to prepare nearly all my meals and spend most of the day in the kitchen preparing all this food.

They make it sound like they will provide all your food - that you will not have to do any preparation. Actually, you’re preparing food all day long. And you also have to supplement Nutrisystem with lots of vegetables, fruit, bread and nonfat milk.

The food is really mixed - about half of it is pretty decent. Some of it is just tasteless and about half is genuinely bad. Their instant eggs and snack bars are completely inedible. I wouldn’t even give them to my dog! But a few of the entrées are actually pretty good. If I’d had prior experience with Nutrisystem, I would definitely have handpicked my food shipment.

The bottom line is that after six days of this I was fully prepared to box everything up and send it back. Frankly, I’d rather go back on Atkins again. It was a good deal more agreeable to me, was a lot less fuss and only cost about half as much.

But I made a deal to myself that if I lost a substantial amount of weight — which I didn’t think was going to happen — then I would tough it out for a least another week. Well as of this morning, I weighed myself and apparently have lost about 5 pounds. So, miserable as I am, I will continue for another week.

Now see, don’t you feel much more uplifted now? That’s what we do here at Merchantprince. Maybe I should post a Cool News article or something later today to cheer us all up.

So if finish this thing, do I get a hot grandma of my own?

Well today was the first day that I started my Nutrisystem program. I’ve been talking about doing this thing for months and finally decided I would set aside the money to do it. I’m not doing too bad. I’m a little hungry, at times, but it isn’t as as tough as the first time I went on Atkins.

I’m looking to lose at least 30 pounds, and I guess I’ll be checking in periodically to give updates as the weeks go by. Its going to be weird on this little hamster-on-a-clock diet, with all of these miniature meals at two to three hour intervals. But I’m going to try and adjust.

I also just wrapped up a couple of web design jobs and have another one on deck. In the meantime I’m also reading up on my Car Dollars automobile speculation course. It’s taking an awfully long time to get through it. But I’m hoping it will be a productive investment.

Just checking in today with some new developments. I am selling my car on Saturday and will be finally freeing up some much-needed capital. I also finished up a roofing job earlier this week with my dad. This was the first such contracting job we’ve done in many many years, since long before I became self-employed.

Anyway, so this opens the door for me to move into the next phase of my plan. I’m going to be purchasing a Car Dollars course from this gentleman who outlines how money can be made in car speculation.

In some states, this is referred to as “curbstoning”. In Pennsylvania an individual may buy and sell up to five vehicles for profit in one calendar year. I figure I’ll give this a try for the next month or two and see if I have any luck.

But sooner or later I’ll be moving back towards the boats again. Over the last two or three months that’s really all I can think about everyday. I’ll also be doing some web design work over the next couple of weeks, which should be a lot easier and more lucrative than the work I was doing on that hot roof!

To find out more about the Car Dollars course and the automobile speculation I’m referring to, follow this link.

Just saw this yesterday and it cracked me up. Remember those old “Let’s all go to the snack bar” trailers? Well, Aqua Teen Hunger Force did an updated version of those and you have to love the modern take on bad theater behavior, as represented by a thrash metal snack food band.

I know it’s been a long time since I put anything up here. This is the longest break I’ve taken on my blog between posts. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on selling the car and doing some work outside the office. I’d hoped by this time that the car would be sold and that I would be moving onto the next phase of whatever it is I’m going to be doing.

Instead I’ve been able to pay the bills and enjoy the free time in the mostly nice weather over the summer. I meant to put up some pictures weeks ago of the Celtic Fling that I went to at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. I went with James, Brett and Tom and ended up with some good pictures. I also had some music files of the various groups we saw there and would like to post them here.

However, the way that I’ve been laying around and not doing updates to the site it’s taken a lot longer than expected. Perhaps it’s just the summer months that have made me feel more languid and lazy. That coupled with fewer updates in my personal life, and some lackluster summer blockbusters, has ended up giving me very little to talk about.

Oh, well, perhaps I’ll just begin logging on here every day and leaving little updates that perhaps in and of themselves are not very important. But at least they’ll be posts and at least the blog will continue to thrive.

And that’s another thing, over the last few weeks I’ve also been looking to upgrade this version of Wordpress that I use for the blog, including some style changes to this template. They’re a number of things about the template that I would like to change including a better laid out archive menu. There are also a number of WordPress widgets that I’d like to use to improve my overall search engine rankings. A number of old friends have found me via this website and improved rankings would help continue that trend.

That’s everything for now I’ll check in again and give updates.

I’ve really been out of it the last two weeks. My posting here has really dropped off to almost nothing. It isn’t that nothing has been going on, just not a lot that’s significant. I’d like to get back to a few more personal entries so this doesn’t feel like a job, just putting up articles only about other stuff I’m into.

Anyway, I may be getting the new Dragon 9 voice-recognition software this week. That could make more posts easier (I’m not large with the typing). I have some eBay business to handle today, but I hope to get to putting up some articles about the Celtic Fling I went to over the weekend in Mount Hope. It was great, as always, and I have video, pictures and music to share.

In the meantime, how about some good music video right now? Here’s Jeremy Fisher’s “Cigarette”, released some months back. I really liked the song (reminiscent of one of my fave bands, Fountain of Wayne).