It turns out that J.K. Revell, the same blogger behind Synapsida, which I wrote about here, also writes a blog about D&D monsters called Not A Dead Communist. I'm enjoying reading that, too. As for the name, well, there was an economist named J.R.S. Revell who he might be referring to. I'll have to keep reading to find out.
New favorite blog
Nov. 27th, 2020 01:18 pmI discovered Synapsida, "A random wander through the world of mammals" earlier this month. J.K. Revell, who keeps the blog, posts a new entry every Monday that deals with the ecology and evolution of a particular mammal or group of mammals. In addition, he (I assume it's a he, but then J.K. Rowling is a woman, so I could be wrong) is working his way backward through the fossil history of mammals from the Pleistocene, posting that series once a month. So far, he's made it to the Miocene. The exception is the post closest to April 1st, when he blogs about birds. That's his idea of an April Fools joke. I've been finding his posts to be informative and entertaining. I've also been leaving comments there, which I will post here along with all the rest of the saved comments on the first of the month. Stay tuned.
Blogrolls are interesting things. When I looked at the list of blogs an online acquaintance of mine follows, I saw a reference to A Political History of the Future by Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. I decided to check out the series, as it is the kind of project that fits well with what I do at Crazy Eddie's Motie News. It was better than I expected. I found out Nussbaum is a Hugo Award winner for Best Fan Writer. Even without seeing her competition, I think she deserves the honor. I'm now reading through her blog and recommend my readers do, too.
Saved comments from April 2015
Jan. 16th, 2018 07:01 amAfter reading the comments below, I'm struck by how much less of a pessimist I am, even if I still consider myself a doomer, albeit an optimistic one, hence the Crazy Eddie moniker. I guess no longer commenting regularly on Greer's and Kunstler's blogs and writing more for the Coffee Party has had that kind of effect on me, along with a better economic environment and situation for me.
( Comments on Greer's blogs, Kunstler's blog, We Hunted the Mammoth, and elsewhere behind the cut. )
I plan on posting the last Examiner.com article from May 2015 tomorrow, followed by two more sets of saved comments. After that, I'll return to something more current and personal.
( Comments on Greer's blogs, Kunstler's blog, We Hunted the Mammoth, and elsewhere behind the cut. )
I plan on posting the last Examiner.com article from May 2015 tomorrow, followed by two more sets of saved comments. After that, I'll return to something more current and personal.
The first comment is the last one I left on Elaine Meinel Supkis' blog. She managed to get on my last nerve and that was before she jumped on the Trump bandwagon. The final comment might look familiar, as I recycled it in Trump threatens to 'Lock Her Up!'
( Comments I left at the blogs of Elaine Meinel Supkis, James H. Kunstler, John M. Greer, and P. M. Carpenter behind the cut. )
( Comments I left at the blogs of Elaine Meinel Supkis, James H. Kunstler, John M. Greer, and P. M. Carpenter behind the cut. )
Saved comments from May 2017
Jun. 27th, 2017 09:54 amOne of today's "On This Day" notifications on Facebook was the first status I wrote on this computer two years ago. That made me a bit anxious, as my desktops have lasted about two years on average before they either become obsolete or something bad befalls them. That compounded another anxiety of mine, that I would lose the comments I've saved on my desktop computer that I sometimes recycle for blog posts. A recent event made that anxiety more acute; the closing of The Archdruid Report and The Well of Galabes, complete with the loss of all my comments there. I have all of them from January 2015 to the present saved, but all of them from 2013 and 2014, including some that I thought needed re-examination, are all lost. I don't want that to happen to the rest because of computer failure, so I'm saving them here in reverse chronological order, beginning with the ones from May 2017. Most are from Kunstler's blog, but there are also comments from Booman Tribune and The Well of Galabes.
( Saved comments from Kunstler's blog, Well of Galabes, and Booman Tribune behind this text. )
( Saved comments from Kunstler's blog, Well of Galabes, and Booman Tribune behind this text. )

I've been a regular commenter over at Kunstler's blog for years, but I haven't been much of a participant over at The Archdruid Report until the past few weeks. There were three reasons for this. First, John Greer he Archdruid wasn't giving me what I couldn't already get at Kunstler's blog or The Oil Drum. Second, his comments are heavily moderated, while Kunstler's are only weakly so. Third, while he posts Wednesday P.M., he's just not a predictable as Kunstler. The latter two meant that I couldn't lure readers from his blog the way I could Kunstler's. So, I read when I had the opportunity, but didn't comment.
This year, that all changed. First, Kunstler moved from Peak Oil to finance. Then, The Oil Drum closed down. Finally, The Archdruid moved to a topic that he is uniquely suited to address, the role of belief systems in societies and how resource depletion would affect both societies and their beliefs. It was enough that, after two years, I finally found something of Greer's that I could feature on my blog, the description of civil antireligions in The Fate of Civil Religion that I excerpted and commented on to compose The Archdruid on Objectivism as civil antireligion. Then, he wrote an essay that I actually had something to say in response to, An Old Kind of Science, which I turned into A conversation with The Archdruid for the Solstice. The next week, he engaged in A Christmas Speculation, in which he called the GOP a bunch of closet Satanists who were hiding their true beliefs behind their devotion to Ayn Rand. I commented on that and converted the result into A conversation with The Archdruid about Objectivism, Satanism, and the GOP. I despise Objectivism, and couldn't resist a comparison between it and an unpopular religion. After all, two years ago, I posted Objectivism and Scientology: a sublime to the ridiculous comparison.
So, Greer isn't directly good for driving traffic. He is good for inspiring my writing, which is proving to be good for bringing readers in. I posted a link to the most recent entry about the Archdruid to Kunstler's blog this morning. So far, I've pulled in 400+ page views to that post, moving it up to the
Since I'm in a Star Wars mood lately
Dec. 29th, 2011 03:21 pmI've been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic this week and posting about it to my LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, I've been looking for an excuse to post a Star Wars entry that is still on-topic for this blog.* Yesterday evening, I stumbled across not one, but two items that fit the bill.
First, from The Bad, the Ugly, and the Irrelevant: The 2012 GOP pretenders on Facebook comes this macro.

Next, Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of The Atlantic's star political bloggers, is playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yes, really.
If I hadn't already been a fan of Coates, I would be now. Also, read the comments. They're actually very informative.
Return of the Jedi
So how are we feeling about Star Wars: The Old Republic? I just finished installing and patching this morning. I played around with some character creation, but haven't a chance to do much else. But even in doing that little bit, I realized how dated WoW's graphics really are. I suppose that's a good thing in some ways--WoW can run on almost game PC, at this point.
Either way, I'd love to have a new game on my list. I'm a little pissed about WoW actually adding the panderan. It just feels like more comic relief.
* Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News. The second part was also posted to fandom_lounge on JournalFen.
My blog has arrived!
Sep. 21st, 2011 11:00 amYesterday, I saw Inexpedient blog as one of my traffic sources for Crazy Eddie's Motie News and decided to see for myself who was directing traffic my way. Imagine my delight when I viewed the following.
Yes, that's a screenshot of the Delightfully Disreputable blogroll on the Inexpedient blog displaying Crazy Eddie's Motie News' place of honor between James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation and Elaine Meinel Supkis's Culture of Life News. This is exactly the company I want my blog to keep.
Originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News as This made for a fun early birthday present.
This past week was probably the second busiest week for this blog so far. It surpassed last week in all categories, as I posted 16 entries, a record, readers left ten comments, and the blog received 1006 page views, only the second time that has happened. In contrast, the previous week saw 12 entries, five comments, and 783 page views. This week is off to a good start already, as two people have already left comments. You all keep reading and commenting, and I'll keep posting.
( The week that was behind the cut )
Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
After a record-breaking week, things were bound to slow down and they did. I posted 12 entries, readers made five comments, and the blog received 783 page views, down from 14 posts, 13 comments, and 1577 page views last week. Even so, I count it as a good week, as it was on par with the week before with eleven posts, five comments, and 832 page views of the week before. If nothing else, page views remained well above the average of 560 per week for all of May and June. Besides, Saturday saw the 10,000th page view in this history of this blog and on July 20th the number of monthly page views exceeded 3,000 for the first time ever. People are reading me, so I'm happy.

Most of my posts counted as Swim posts this week, although they weren't quite the ones I had in mind this time last week. To begin with, I counted Weekly Roundup for July 10th through 16th, 2011 as a Swim post, as a good chunk of the opening described my swimming against the stream of spam that flows into any blog with traffic. Bloody Vikings! I continued pursuing the Swim angle in my followup to Silly Sustainability Saturday: Carmageddon, Tea Partiers against manatees, and Butterbeer, Cyclists, subway rider, and rollerblader all beat jet during Carmageddon involved the advocates of sustainable transportation as well as a blogger about California Highways swimming against the stream of conventional wisdom about traffic. I also included the peaceful yet entertaining cosplaying protesters of In Chile, superheroes dance against austerity as people swimming against the tide of austerity sweeping the planet.
In a way, the local stories I covered could also be considered swimming against the tide, sometimes unsuccessfully. The demise of Borders Books, which I wrote about in Borders Books 1971-2011 and The funeral for Borders Books begins chronicled the end of my favorite booksellers to remain in business after two decades of swimming against the tide of their competitors and their own poor business decisions. The same could be said about my coverage of the heat wave in both Hot enough for you? and Still hot enough for you?, which described how people, animals, and the power grid were trying to beat the heat and sometimes failing. Some attempts actually involved swimming pools, turning Swim from metaphor to reality.
Finally, even my compilations of sustainability news items could be considered Swim posts. I explicitly labeled Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 16, 2011 and Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 16, 2011 as such because I was too tired to comment on each item and it was an effort even to post them. I didn't make that claim for Sustainability in unexpected places: archeology 2, but I didn't comment on the individual items there, either. The heat was getting to me, too.
On the other hand, I was able to make comments on both Science and society for the week ending July 16, 2011 and Silly Sustainability Saturday: Boobs and Haboobs. In the first, I voiced my frustration with people making pro-austerity and anti-sustainability decisions; I was the one swimming against the stream there. In the second, I pointed out how the people who are frustrating me are themselves swimming against reality. I have confidence that reality will win, eventually.
That's it for last week. As for this week, I already have at least one post a day planned. There are three nearly completed linkspams already saved to another file, as well as the notes for the same four Swim posts that I had on tap last week, along with an article about Detroit a reader posted on my Facebook wall that I've already promised to cover. That doesn't even cover anything else I might write about, such as Julie Bass's court date on Tuesday. As I keep writing, I don't have to worry about finding something to write about the rest of the month. Blogging about sustainability in metro Detroit means never running out of material!
Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

Today, you get a two for one special: The Bard of Murdock on Julie Bass--two bloggers swimming against the stream.
With the permission of the author.
RE: The Oak Park Outlaw PoemThank you, and done.
If you'd like to post my verse
At Crazy Eddie's News,
I say, "Why Not? Go Ahead."
For how could I refuse?
I ask for attribution
And with the poem a link:
thebardofmurdock.com
A fair exchange, I think.
The Oak Park OutlawOriginally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
The scofflaw, Julie Bass,
Rejected trees and grass,
And took to life of crime
With parsley, sage and thyme.
Her crime is avant garde:
The beds in her front yard
Contain illegal greens,
Like peppers, peas and beans.
Thank God the planner saw
Within the public law,
A means to prosecute
Before she planted fruit.
The plaintiff, Kevin R.,
The Oak Park planning czar,
Will see the line is toed
By pointing to the code.
But folks can misconstrue
What’s ‘suitable’ to do,
So Kevin has deferred
To ‘common’ as his word.
And what is more unique
Than cucumber or leek,
When planted in a bed
Where grass should grow instead.
Uncommon as they are
Outside a mason jar,
She’ll need to clear her yard
Of broccoli and chard.
Then justice will prevail,
And Oak Park can exhale,
Devoid of squash and kale,
With Julie safe in jail.

In James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on marriage equality, I pointed out three areas, marriage equality, hard currency, and immigration, where Kunstlers ideas didn't square with his self-professed liberal identity. I emphasized his issues with immigration policy in Happy 4th of July from James Howard Kunstler's Tea Party!, in which I commented on the following passage from My Tea Party.
My tea party would reduce legal immigration to a tiny trickle and get serious about enforcing sanctions against people who are here without permission...The truth is that neither party really wants to do anything about the extraordinary influx of Mexican nationals because they want to pander to a growing segment of Hispanic voters (or secondarily want to maintain the pool of cheap labor for US businesses). My party does not believe in unbounded multi-culturalism. My party also views the lawlessness of the current situation to be corrosive of the rule-of-law generally. My party views the global population overshoot problem as a condition that requires a more rigorous defense of US territory, sovereign resources, and even whatever remains of American common culture.One particular paragraph of my response bore directly on this paragraph.
There is already an answer to the Tea Party based on critical thinking. It's called the Coffee Party...They quite agree with Jim about the major parties being hostages to political money, and would also agree about many of his goals. The only thing they would not agree with Jim about would be severe restrictions on legal immigration, as Annabel Park, the Coffee Party's nominal leader, is Korean-American and would not get on board with any policy she sees as immigrant bashing.Given that background, it should come as no surprise that Kunstler himself would bring up his zero tolerance stance on immigration, however indirectly, and that I would jump on him for it.
Old Allen Ginsburg got it right fifty years ago: "America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," he said. Even back then, in the age of purple people eaters and the weird neutered figure of Ozzie Nelson lurking in kitchen with nothing to do but drink endless cups of coffee, all was not so well. Freedom to cruise for burgers turned out to be a pretty trashy thing, considering all the blood and sacrifice that preceded those days of fun in the California sunshine. Look at California now: Nathanial West Meets Aztlan (coming soon on home video). Who put that locust in my burrito?( My response caught a lot of fish, including one that I kept and am putting on display as a trophy. )
Above originally posted at Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
It was another busy week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, as I posted eleven entries to this blog during a seven-day period again. In fact, it was so busy that I didn't get around to posting the weekly roundup until now, Sunday evening. Going on a field trip with my Geology classes all day Saturday and then going to a colleague's pool party Saturday night didn't help. As I've written before, I can't be all doom all the time. Good thing I was able to program my Saturday posts in advance.
As usual, I started off the week with part one of a four-part sustainability news linkspam, Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. That series continued with part two, Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. As with last week's part three, I posted this week's part three, Sustainability news from national commercial sources for the week ending July 2, 2011, last. In fact, I didn't get around to doing it until Friday. Don't worry, that won't happen this week, for no other reason that I won't have that kind of part three this week. Like last week, there was a themed part four posted before part three, An update on The CoDominion planning for sustainability. I don't think they're will be one of those, either. If there is, it will be news from local sources, as I was having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog to actually post about them.

Speaking of "having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog," I got into the "swim" of this month's NaBloPoMo theme by posting about sustainability bloggers swimming against the flow. That series started last week with Woman in Oak Park swims against the stream, plus Nablopomo for July, but I didn't return to Julie Bass until the end of the week. Instead, I decided to have some fun with James Howard Kunstler first.
( Recap of the Swim entries I crossposted to Dreamwidth and LiveJournal behind the cut. )
That concludes last week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Stay tuned for more "swim" posts as well as the sustainability news linkspams.
As usual, I started off the week with part one of a four-part sustainability news linkspam, Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. That series continued with part two, Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. As with last week's part three, I posted this week's part three, Sustainability news from national commercial sources for the week ending July 2, 2011, last. In fact, I didn't get around to doing it until Friday. Don't worry, that won't happen this week, for no other reason that I won't have that kind of part three this week. Like last week, there was a themed part four posted before part three, An update on The CoDominion planning for sustainability. I don't think they're will be one of those, either. If there is, it will be news from local sources, as I was having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog to actually post about them.

Speaking of "having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog," I got into the "swim" of this month's NaBloPoMo theme by posting about sustainability bloggers swimming against the flow. That series started last week with Woman in Oak Park swims against the stream, plus Nablopomo for July, but I didn't return to Julie Bass until the end of the week. Instead, I decided to have some fun with James Howard Kunstler first.
( Recap of the Swim entries I crossposted to Dreamwidth and LiveJournal behind the cut. )
That concludes last week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Stay tuned for more "swim" posts as well as the sustainability news linkspams.
I posted the following to unfunnybusiness on JournalFen, where it is awaiting moderation. It was adapted from Oak Park's "War on Veggies" goes viral on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. I'll be posting a different version on ontd_political on both Dreamwidth and LiveJournal shortly.
Here's a story I've been following on my blog since July 30th, when I posted Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects. In it, I summarized the situation.
A couple of days ago, Matt Drudge placed a link to The Agitator's post on his front page with the headline "Woman faces 93 days in jail for planting garden in front yard..." Since then, the story has spread like wildfire. ( Here is a list of the media sources I've found covering this story with links to their articles. )
As for how Drudge was indirectly responsible, he drove traffic to The Agitator, which drove traffic Julie Bass's blog OakParkHateVeggies, where she has a link to my post. Even from three steps away, Drudge increased my readership. Behold the power of Drudge.
In case you're wondering what you can do about it, there is a petition. 4,400 people signed it by Friday, less than a week after it was put up.
Here's a story I've been following on my blog since July 30th, when I posted Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects. In it, I summarized the situation.
the Bass family of Oak Park lost their lawn when the sewer line running under their front yard was replaced. Instead of replacing it with a lawn, they replaced it with a vegetable garden. Their neighbors complained to the city and the city has cited them with a criminal violation of city ordinances. The Basses and the city have a court date on July 26th.Beginning Friday, July 8th, the number of hits on that post began climbing dramatically. When I investigated how that happened, I found out that Drudge happened.
...
Mrs. Bass posted a more complete summary after I wrote (and she read) the above. Please read it.
( As someone familiar with the area, I'm not surprised this is happening in Oak Park. )
A couple of days ago, Matt Drudge placed a link to The Agitator's post on his front page with the headline "Woman faces 93 days in jail for planting garden in front yard..." Since then, the story has spread like wildfire. ( Here is a list of the media sources I've found covering this story with links to their articles. )
As for how Drudge was indirectly responsible, he drove traffic to The Agitator, which drove traffic Julie Bass's blog OakParkHateVeggies, where she has a link to my post. Even from three steps away, Drudge increased my readership. Behold the power of Drudge.
In case you're wondering what you can do about it, there is a petition. 4,400 people signed it by Friday, less than a week after it was put up.
It's been a full week since I last updated on Oak Park's "War on Veggies", so it's time to recap this week's developments.
First, I stopped by Julie Bass's house on Thursday just to see for myself what all the fuss was about.* I didn't have a camera, but Julie herself posted a photo of her front yard earlier that day, saving me the trouble. The images aren't embedding properly, so surf over to her blog to see for yourself.
Here's what the beds look like from the sidewalk (posted last Saturday).

Thanks, Julie, for posting those photos. I hope you don't mind my
Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with her front yard. In fact, I think it looks better than her neighbor's lawns, which the July sun has turned dry and yellow. While I think I know what the city of Oak Park's problem is, if I didn't have any preconceived notions, I wouldn't understand why they are objecting.
In other news, Sue Ann Reed from Care2 commented on my first post on the issue with the following.
Hello,I promised to post that link the next time I updated on the issue, so, to quote the Emperor of Austria-Hungary from "Amadeus," there it is. Of course I signed, and I urge all of you reading to do so, too.
I saw your blog post about Julie Bass and the ridiculous idea that she is facing criminal charges and potential jail time for growing a garden in her own yard.
The folks from the Urban Homesteading Facebook page have set up a petition on Care2 and we would love your help spreading the word.
Here's the link to the petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/oak-park-hates-veggies/
Other people besides Julie and I have started blogging about this issue. Julie herself published a guest post from Sundari Kraft of Eat Where U Live. Sundari had earlier published an entry to her own blog, Front Yard Gardens vs. a Lack of Common Sense the same day I first posted about Oak Park's "War on Veggies". Sundari agrees with me about the esthetics of the garden.
The vegetable are not unruly or untended — in fact, it’s one of the tidiest raised-bed gardens I’ve seen in a long time.It's a great post, and you should read it.
Finally, the same day Julie published Sundari's guest post, Urban Homestead Diaries posted In Oak Park Michigan it is Illegal to Grow Veggies in your Front Yard, Seriously. As you read, they were the ones who set up the petition mentioned above. As of the day of the post, 500 people had signed the petition.
As for the rest of the story, read Julie Bass's blog. She has more to say on the matter than I could possibly summarize in a "brief update!"
*My commute takes me through Oak Park, so I didn't have to go far out of my way to do this.
Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

In James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too, I mentioned another blogger in passing.
By the way, was one of the people who objected to your protrayal of women your neighbor up on the hill, Elaine Meinel Supkis?* I know she thinks you got it wrong about dogs in the "World Made by Hand" and I agree with her.( The review of Elaine's use of anime at her old blog, with elaborations on the post from my archives, behind the cut. )
...
* Elaine Meinel Supkis blogs on Culture of Life News. I reviewed her old blog on my LiveJournal. She is another great example of a blogger swimming against the tide who deserves her own post, and I'll have to review her new blog later this month. Yes, my plate continues to fill up.
As for her telling Kunstler that he was wrong about dogs in his post-peak-oil future, she did so in her review of "A World Made by Hand." It's a long post, and she has even more to say about dogs on both her old site and her new one, so look for my commentary on those posts later.
Above originally posted at Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
Fan: Nebris
Jun. 19th, 2011 02:02 pmOne of my favorite posters on LiveJournal is
![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=2)
If you want to be extremely adventurous, I recommend
![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=2)
Old Nebs is by turns serious, silly, outrageous, and sometimes downright offensive, and he's not everyone's cup of tea (He had a page on the now defunct Encyclopedia Dramatica and still has a scathing entry on the Fandom Wank Wiki), but I find him consistently compelling and never boring.