Sovereignty

1. (of a nation) The state of making laws and controlling resources without the coercion of other nations.
2. (of God) Supreme authority over all things. (Ref. ‘King of kings, and Lord of lords’)
3. (of self) The liberty to decide one’s thoughts and actions.
-Wiktionary

Who is in control? That’s a big question with a very long and complex answer. What is almost certain is that it isn’t you.

I have begun a new blog, the successor to this one, at Dread Sovereignty. Here I plan to ask and answer questions about sovereignty, personal and national, and try to find some ways to reclaim it.

As you already know from what little I have done here, I will be providing perspective, information, and a good deal of history on the subject. You will see some or all of the posts here revived in a new form appropriate to the task at hand.

I hope you enjoy my new blog. Please stop by and see me.

Thanks,

-Chris

Dread Sovereignty

Depression is undervalued and over-diagnosed.  Humans are capable of a wide range of emotions, and each one is intended to provide a benefit, whether it be reinforcing habits, ore shocking them out of bad situations.

In modern society there seems to be a troubling tendency to believe that sadness is something best avoided altogether. Clinical depression, is now something diagnosed in people of all ages, startlingly often.

There are no studies suggesting that depression is any more common now than ever before, but depression diagnoses have been on a sharp rise. Along with the recent boom in attention deficit disorder and seasonal affective disorder diagnoses, depression is having a spotlight turned on it as a new enemy of mankind. The treatments can be worse than the problem, and usually more long-term.

The War on Feeling

The war on natural human experience has been going on for some time. It’s possible that it started just before feminism became a movement. Life was extreme, and people were expected to handle their own problems without outside help. With increasing affluence in society, and a sudden shift of population from the city to the suburbs, the problems that so dominated the the world of mafia-run unions and abusive factory-owners began to dissolve.

Depression strikes the abjectly poor and the comfortably affluent both. Its causes are myriad, and often perfectly healthy. What varies between “normal” depression and “clinical” depression is a hard thing to point out. Medical definition simply pins down a degree of severity and duration.  Perhaps if we were to look at the uses of depression, we may have to ask ourselves just what does constitute a disease.

Fifty Ways to Leave a Lover

One major cause of depression is the classic case of “being in a miserable situation.” Whether a loveless marriage, a thankless job, or a dominating relationship, depression follows naturally in the footsteps of things to be depressed about. What purpose could God or nature have in making humans capable of such abject misery? Well, pain exists to warn us about physical harm, whether you can do anything about it is a different story. Grief, doubt, regret, and sadness, all condition us to act in certain ways, either punishing us for our mistakes or prodding us in another direction.

Depression can lead a person to leave an abusive relationship, or turn over a new leaf in a life of crime. It represents our only natural weapon against the allure of the familiar, because when something just isn’t working for you anymore, ultimately you have to stop.

Depression is about motivation, and it is one of our defense mechanisms that drives us to live full lives. Denying the value of depression is denying the value of all those who made something of themselves as a result.

How to Sing the Blues

Depression has other, less measurable effects on humanity as a whole. A lot of our great literature springs from depression and coping with it. Edgar Allan Poe’s more famous works are examinations of depression and despair. T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” dreams of a special place in Hell for those whose lives were filled with depressed emptiness. The opium-addled prose and poetry of Coleridge, Poe, and others, shaped much of our cultural heritage. Depression’s effect on the visual arts is harder to measure. Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” comes to mind, though. The image of the pain-fueled starving artist has become a staple in world culture and a symbol of direct experience.

Depression’s effects on music are huge. The Portuguese Fado movement explores that unique type of despair that contains just enough hope to be impossible to leave behind. American Blues is openly founded on the expression of sorrow, and all too many country songs fail to end without someone losing their wife, truck, and dog.

The Film Noir movement of the 40s and 50s takes place in a world of vice and despair where the world crushes the individualist spirit and those trapped in lives of crime are punished for their attempts to escape.

Extreme emotions are the forge of creativity, and denying any of them is treason against humanity and culture.

Out, Brief Candle

Obviously, depression is not fun and games. It isn’t hip, it isn’t cool, it’s not the new rock and roll. The risk of suicide is a major arguing point in the crusade against depression, and there is certainly merit to it. Almost all suicides are accompanied by visible depression, and no one is suggesting that the two are not related. The cultural traditions of suicide are strong, and the suicide rate, according to some biased sources, is higher than the murder rate in the US. Regardless of bias, it is certainly very high.

Fear of suicidal tendencies is a good reason to suggest the importance of medication, but the medical definition of depression does not require any indication of suicidal thoughts or actions.

Mother’s Little Helper

Through the 60s, Amphetamines were prescribed to give the little boost necessary to depression sufferers. Needless to say, that method of solving things fell out of fashion when it was deemed to be, well, dangerous. Today, most antidepressants are SSRIS (Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors) and recent studies suggest that they just aren’t all that effective. According to this recent study in the Public Library of Science (cited in The Economist), the already-modest effects of SSRIS to treat depression are even crummier when you stop to look at all of the unpublished studies. The drugs effectiveness is just slightly higher than that of placebos in all but the most severe cases of depression.

In a sense, the prescription of antidepressants is itself an epidemic considering its questionable benefits over placebo treatments.

Among those in imminent danger of suicide, SSRIS do have a marked and considerable effect in reducing death rates. Those with the most severe depression respond to SSRIS with the same moderate improvement, but at this degree of seriousness, placebos have almost no effect at all.

Being Real

Why do we think that strong emotions are a diseases to be treated? There is a meaningful difference between someone who is miserable, and someone who is suicidal. Misery has a place in our lives. It has been hedged out by sensationalist religion and pop psychology, and it is no coincidence that suicide rates are higher amongst the affluent and dominant classes and races, with white males carrying the highest rate.

What our society is missing is the black garments of mourning, grief periods, and emotional outbursts. By giving a little dignity to sorrow, its more terrible effects are avoided. Depression and grief have something to teach us about ourselves, and they are a powerful asset for change that should not be executed in a drowning pool of pills.

Information by The Economist, Wikipedia, film, literature, music, culture, and the Public Library of Science.

Photo By WTL photos

A recession is not about gas prices or the cost of corn. Recessions do not pop up overnight, and their greatest effect is not a dip in the gross national product or the per capita income.

Consumer spending droops, causing corporate spending to drop as the think tanks go into survival mode. Governments cut interest rates to encourage spending but ultimately this puts more money into circulation and causes inflation, simultaneously devaluing the currency and slowing the rate at which savings accrue interest. Days get shorter, working parents get more tired, and politicians lose approval ratings.

Technical Foul

In highly industrialized nations, consumer spending is the source of economic activity, and there is the illusion that, if people would just get back to spending, everything would be better. This impression is a lie. Capitalist societies have gone so far as to exist in a state where individuals can actively spend more than they have. Ultimately, the collective bank accounts of the population serve as the hedge fund of an economy, and as the economy sinks, savings shrivel, turn into credit card debt, and eventually there is simply nothing left to spend.

Reducing interest rates encourages corporate spending, which can temporarily boost the job market and keep things afloat. If the economy at large does not pick up, then soon the creditors will eat away at the new, free margins and the downward spiral will continue. The truth is that a recession cannot be magicked away. Such voodoo economic measures as the intentional devaluation of currency, price fixing, or interest rate freezes, help in the short term, if at all, and cause severe backlashes afterwards.

Credit runs short and it becomes harder for people to spend money that they don’t have.

A Moral Defeat

Why do governments deny the inevitability of recession? Recessions are not economic phenomena, they are public relations nightmares. Normally, the government’s PR is handled independently by each and every politician, but when the economy starts slowing down, the very state of the economy rests on the emotional states of the population. Politicians can artificially raise morale with empty promises. The effect is temporary at best, and, if things don’t turn around in a matter of weeks, political statements lose their power.

Moods shift. Radicals become more radical. Hate groups ramp up operations. Liberals start touting about the all-encompassing good of socialism. Conservatives start screaming about the importance of opposing liberals. Recent college grads suffer in silence, and the hard working, iconic, “common man” begins bringing his lunch to work to save a few dollars.

The real trouble is that recessions are caused by people making smart choices. Disturbingly, it is the very act of living within one’s means and saving for a rainy day that extends recessions.

Brave New World

Recessions and depressions are not economic maladies. A recession makes the world grittier, and more real. More people must work for a living, and access to luxuries is restricted. It is the economic hardships of the past that shaped the lives of our grandparents and built the responsible and intensely worldly generations whose culture we are leaving behind. A new era of hardship heralds in a new era of real people, where fewer live lives without trial, and it becomes hard and harder to look condescendingly on those who work for a living.

They are great times because they are hard times. A recession means that nobody can be sheltered for the reality of the struggle for survival, and even the most devout materialists are forced to develop some character.

At the same time, it means that fewer and fewer people can follow their dreams and afford an apartment at the same time. There will be fewer poets, and fewer visionaries, and the gap between the rich and the poor will become more pronounced.

If anyone out there knows how to make a living from writing during a recession, I’d be glad to hear about it.

Photo by ddfreyne

HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is possibly the most politically charged microscopic object known to man.

Political camouflage, denial, lust, religious conflict, economic hardship, and even a few things that have to do with biology, make up HIV’s formidable bag of tricks. It joins the ranks of the rare few diseases, such as leprosy, that are capable of making their hosts not only ill, but socially outcast as well.

Unlike leprosy, this social quarantine does nothing to contain the spread of HIV, because HIV has few outward symptoms, and no symptoms that would tip off the uninformed observer. These peculiarities have allowed HIV to spread to the pandemic problem that it is now. Its unique biology will keep it going strong in the face of open war by the international community.

Anatomy of the Beast

HIV is a retrovirus, and that makes it considerably different from other viral diseases.

There are many types of viruses, and they work in many different ways, but to demonstrate, let us have a comparison between HIV and the rhinovirus (common cold).

The Rhinovirus invades cells in the respiratory tract and causes those cells to begin producing copies of the virus. The infected cells produce a chemical distress signal that causes swelling and calls the body’s immune system to attack the infected cells.

A cold is like a revolution. The enemy arrives, recruits among our poor and disenfranchised, overthrows cities, but is ultimately crushed by the careful use of a standing army and political maneuvering. Sometimes it wins, usually it loses.

HIV is different. HIV infects Helper T Cells primarily. It has a cell membrane borrowed from the host cell that spawned it, and infected cells do not give off any regular distress signs, making their destruction unlikely. Making it more unlikely is that the Helper T Cells are the ones that would normally be responsible for keeping viral infection under control.

HIV is like political corruption. One rogue agent gets inside and starts making bribes. Soon the whole police force is in on it and there is nothing the common folk can do. If it goes on too long, pretty soon you’re living in a police state. The real problem is that there is no reliable way to sort the good out from the bad, and removing them all is out of the question.

The Political Animal

The real horror of HIV is not in its remarkably effective reproduction, nor its truly genius means of evading the immune system, nor its ruthless habit of taking out the bodies defenses mafia-style.

The real horror of HIV is its effects on those who do not have it. HIV first entered the United States as a small epidemic within the homosexual community. Homosexuals had fewer rights and less respect at the time than they do now. Since they still have only limited respect or rights, we can safely say that they were nearly universally reviled by the general population.

The mysterious pattern of severe illness and death among the gay community did not meet the degree of public outcry that it would have if the disease had infected primarily cute children with bright futures. Those infected were blamed for their own misfortune, and the disease was regarded as little more than God’s punishment on the perverse.

In more contemporary times, African Bishops in the Catholic Church, concerned with enforcing the doctrines against artificial birth control, tell their communities that condoms do not prevent the spread of HIV, some even going so far as to claim that they cause it. African governments actively censor any mention of the existence of the disease, hoping that turning a blind eye will make it go away. The American youth, driven by what seems to be an increasing degree of social irresponsibility, fail to respond to political campaigns promoting condom use. State institutions favor the socially unlikely abstinence program and refuse to teach the use of condoms in sex education classes under pressure from religious groups.

Original Sin

Many Christian denominations teach the doctrine of original sin, which states that we are all born as sinners even before our first action because we inherit the crimes of our fathers and of Adam and Eve. Nothing can ever remove this sin, and though it may be forgiven, nothing can make it go away.

Society has let HIV get out of hand, and studies and progress suggest that HIV just might be incurable altogether. The prevention fight goes on, but advances on a cure or vaccine are few and far between.

The great pandemic of the 21st century is growing rapidly, and for the first time that disease is one that is minimally infectious. It isn’t spread by mosquitoes, or rats, or sneezes. It can’t be spread through food, and it has minimal survivability outside the human body. It spreads through sex, and needles. HIV requires intentional acts on the part of its host to spread, and they are acts that are not made more likely by the presence of the virus. HIV is a social disease, and it spreads for social, not biological reasons.

HIV is successful because it allows us to destroy ourselves, and it demonstrates that we need little help.

Image by ajcann

Cooking is not reading directions on boxes and preparing the contents. Recipes are not cooking in the same sense that sheet music is not actually music. The art of cooking does not involve secret recipes or grandma’s wisdom (although grandma probably has a lot to teach you). The difference between food you enjoy and food you survive on is the difference between cooking and simple preparation.

By no means can the complicated art of cooking be explain in short terms, but there are a few basic principles that will help every one enjoy more fulfilling food, even the kind that comes out of a box.

Principle Number One: Fat Equals Flavor.

Nobody likes to hear it, but if you plan to lose some weight you’re going to have to work out. Draining the liquid fat out of your daily hamburger and French-fry diet, and switching to diet cola, isn’t going to trim off any pounds by itself. It will make you a lot more miserable at the dinner table by turning your already-grim food options into tasteless-and-grim options.

There is a good chance that, every Thanksgiving (for the Americans, that is) you put a turkey in the oven, set it on top of some sort of metal shelf, cook it for several hours until the little button thing pops up. After you pull it out it carries approximately the texture of chalk, and you vow to do better next year. The reason is that, no matter how slow or fast you cook a piece of meat, especially poultry, if you drain the fat you are draining the flavor and moisture. If you are having a problem with dry cooking, cook in a fluid. Be it water or the natural oils of your main dish, the flavor is in the fat and should not be wasted. This applies to vegetables too, but to a lesser extent.

Principle Number Two: Know About Seasoning

There is a reason that every restaurant table in every restaurant has salt and pepper on the table. Every recipe has a secret last step: Adjust Seasonings. Skilled eaters already know this, and they add salt or pepper in moderate amounts to everything they eat.

A seasoning is an herb or spice that accentuates the flavor of a food. Generally speaking, seasoning does not actually change the flavor, just enhances it. For example, adding salt to a baked potato does not make the potato taste salty, it makes it taste more buttery. If anyone has ever made the grim mistake of tasting soy sauce straight they will know that it does not lend its own flavor to food it is added to.

A secret for you: Cayenne Pepper, used in very small quantity, will enhance the flavor of almost any food without making it any spicier.

Principle Three: Stop Overcooking Things.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I declare to thee, pink chicken is not necessarily dangerous. You can eat red beef, and even (gasp) pink pork.

I know, it’s heresy, but hear me out. According to the USDA, pork should be cooked to 160 °F. Pork does not turn white at 160°. Safely cooked pork will have turned white on the outside, but may still be slightly pink in the middle. Chicken can be slightly less pink, and beef can be considerably red, so long is it reaches that same 160°.

Why the magic number? E. Coli is destroyed at 160°F. Be glad you know that, and stop being such a princess about the color of your meat. If you’re scared, get a meat thermometer and remember the magic number.

Oh, and I’ll not let you vegetarians off the hook here. Stop overcooking pasta too. You don’t have E. Coli to contend with here, and mushy pasta is ruined pasta. The Italian “Al Dente” means “To the Tooth” and implies a slightly chewy texture. Overcooked pasta falls apart, does not properly absorb sauce, and sucks overall.

Principle Number Four: Know Thy Sauce

When cooking meat, you only need to know one thing: Au Jus. Au Jus is a fancy French term meaning “With Juice.” Here is the procedure. Cook your meat, take it out of the pan and put in on the plate for serving. Take all that grease left in the pan, add a pinch or two of flour and stir it in. Then add just a little bit of water. Pour a little of this over the meat and serve. The flour thickens it, and the water activates the oils (like when you add water to absinthe to open up the wormwood oil). This is the perfect topping for any meat because it is actually made from that particular cut and will compliment it perfectly.

If you add significantly more flour to said sauce and let it cool slightly, you have gravy.

On another note, just add a pinch of parsley and black pepper to all your canned sauces to make them much less totally pathetic.

Principle Number Five: Presentation Matters

You may not be a restaurant chef, but color and presentation always matter. Add some bell peppers to rice dishes to vary the color, serve meat on top of rice or potatoes, instead of next to it. Add parsley to sauces just for the visual complexity. Add a little pepper or parsley to your macaroni and cheese both for flavor and to add a little variation in color. Pretty food magically tastes better, because it puts the eater in a good mood.

Photo by avlxyz

Karma is a very misunderstood concept in Buddhism. The common conception is that Karma represents some invisible law that punishes the wicked and rewards the good. The ultimate “what goes around comes around” is a pretty flawed way of looking at it. Since this is such a deeply held misconception, let’s have a few examples.

Wrong: Stanley walks into a bar, bumping into Xavier on his way out. He sneers and yells “Watch where you’re going” and slides up to the bar. Soon after his advances are rejected by an exceedingly beautiful woman, Maribel. Charles, who witnessed the whole scene, sneers back at him and says “that’s karma for you.”

This pretty much fits most people’s idea of karma, where one “bad” action is later punished by an unrelated “bad” event. This could not be farther from the truth. Another example.

Melisa strolls into a Saks Fifth Avenue, her heart racing nervously. She strolls past a counter, taking all her will to not look over at the saleswoman hocking jewelry. She takes a few minutes to look at clothing before closing on the perfume counter. She picks up a vial of expensive perfume, turns as though looking at something behind her, and slips it into her pocket. She shops around for a few more moment to make sure no one saw her, and then exits the store; her heart racing with exhilaration at her success.

Conventional wisdom would tell us that Melisa got away scot-free. Lots of karma believers would say that she will pay for it in the end, but the truth is that she has already paid for it. The “consequences” of karmic action are not real-world consequences, nor are they pie-in-the-sky consequences. The karmic consequence of theft is that you are now a thief. Having stolen something intentionally, a person’s concept of law is forever tainted, and theft becomes a viable option in future problem-solving processes.

Karma, which is always “bad,” is related to the attractiveness of the familiar. When theft is familiar, it becomes option number one. The same applies to gambling, lying, or religious justification. In a lot of situations where a conventional religion might simply claim that justice will come in the end, Buddhist karma strikes immediately, and is not by any means justice. Essentially, karma is the negative force that the world struggles against for enlightenment.

Even “good” karma is still ultimately bad. That’s not to say that you should avoid donating to charity, but the motivations need examining. Donating to charity can be an addictive behavior too, keyed to relieve your personal guilt for other actions in your life. Handing over money does not, under any circumstances, make you a better person. If you give for any other reason than the sheer kindness of your heart, you are accumulating bad karma just as much as any common thief. Even saving a life can be little more than an ego-stroking god-complex behavior. Nobody is saying that you shouldn’t save lives, only that you should get over yourself if you do.

A prime example of this is the sometimes neurotic tendencies of career doctors and scientists. No doubt they are doing their level best to help out humanity, but over time they can downright lose their direction. Some do, some don’t.

When someone criticizes someone’s beliefs, takes a pain pill that they don’t really, really need, or artfully dodges a speeding ticket, their problem is not the consequences it may have on them later. The issue is what it does to their character, and remember that karma is just an internal part of a human being, not something enforced by an exterior entity.

The consequence of being rude is simply that you become an asshole, and isn’t that punishment enough?

Photo by Daffydus

Kosovo is a small landlocked country in the Balkans. Yes, it’s a country. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17 2008, and was immediately recognized by a number of countries who had not had to deal with serious separatist movements in many years.

Kosovo was part of the Roman empire, later overtaken by the Byzantine empire, lost, and retaken again. It was then conquered by the Serbian Empire, and finally by the Ottoman Empire.

This is where our modern drama really begins, way back in the 15th century. We take an ethnic group that, after all that conquering, has developed a pretty cohesive racial identity, and proceed to force them to convert to a new religion through political sanctions against the Orthodox Christian faith. The stage is set for a long and troubling tragedy, and it will be played out.

Pockets of Christianity survived throughout this time, mostly those willing to pay the extortionately high taxes on Christian organizations, and the restricted rights of Christians. When the Turkish Empire effectively fell, losing ground on all fronts, things in Balkans just got out of hand. Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria rushed in to fill the power vacuum, and Kosovo ultimately ended up under the control of Serbia once again

In the early 20th century hell broke loose. Bulgaria secured independence, Kosovar Albanians began their revolutionary trend, and Montenegro obtained its own independence. Serbia just happened to be the top dog in the region before this all went down, and so instead of being yet another revolutionary power, it was the standing government that was broken away from.

During and after World War I Kosovo was freed from Serbia and brought into the yoke of Bulgaria and Austria, only to be lost again with World War II. As a part of Yugoslavia Kosovo became a political province and gained some small degree of self-determination.

What seems like a happy ending was broken up by race and religion. Interference from Islamic religious interests and Armenian racial interests sparked the Kosovo war. Ceasefires didn’t hold, and the process continues today as a region of religious and cultural diversity splits itself apart at the seams, seeking some stable sate of cultural or racial hegemony.

UN intervention turned what might have been just one more episode in the sordid history of the Balkans into a full-blown political crisis, and demonstrates the Western world’s willingness to interfere in political conflicts not directly affecting them.

The world has to decide who does and does not deserve sovereignty before situations like this can be viewed in anything even remotely resembling perspective. The world is split between support for ethnic identity as a source of sovereignty (ironically backed primarily by countries not fighting their own separatist movements), and between the authority of existing governments to retain their territory (coincidentally supported by a number of nations with long histories of internal conflict).

Where are things going in Kosovo? Exactly where they have been going since the beginning.

Photo by ianturton

Feudalism is the system of social order that produced the knight. It is the subject of fantasy, but also a symbol of oppressive government and corruption. Also, it isn’t as much a thing of the past as you might think.

Feudalism is in many ways the most basic type of government conceivable. It is reflected in the classical organization of the Italian Mafia, and its vestiges remain in the majority of the world’s governments. The simple premise is that one person enters a binding contract with another. The first person offers land, money, or other goods or rights capable of supporting them permanently, and in return the second person is bound to come to the assistance of the first in times of trouble. Seems simple enough, but let’s not forget what we’re talking about. The first person is called a “lord” and the second is called a “vassal.”

How is this a system? You have to think it through. A king, of England, for example, may offer a territory, let’s call it “Wales,” to a vassal. That vassal may then subinfeudate said land to a series of other vassals. The water doesn’t have to run down stream, either. At one point the King of England owned a good part of his kingdom in fealty to the King of France, who in turn did not have the political power to undermine his vassal. There is nothing stopping a noble who is vassal to a second noble from being lord to a third who is in turn lord to the first (that’s right, your boss’s boss just might be your employee). There we have the complicated stuff, but don’t worry, there is still more.

Normally, feudalism was a top-down affair with Kings over nobles. The real point was to conscript a standing army to defend yourself against other nobles in the absence of any national or global law to ensure your safety. Security through society was the order of the day, and the size of your wealth was the size of your army. Such were the ways of war.

The everyday people, also know as peasants, or serfs, were bound laborers. Yes, the majority of the population was bound to the land they lived on, which was owned by a lord, and were to work said land for the profit of their lord. Crummy life, right? Their obligations were to pay taxes on their profits and be productive, and in return their towns would be protected from foreign invasion by their lord’s armies.

On second thought, this is starting to look pretty familiar. In modern America, landowners lose their land if they fail to pay land taxes to the government. Income is taxed and actions are legislated in exchange for the common defense. Despite ideals about government existing to provide common services and a common defense, in reality laws are passed to serve various interests, and a common justification for a law is that it helps the population that it affects. Perhaps pure government theorists would argue that no redistribution of wealth is justified, whether in the form of hospitals or tax breaks for businesses, but our tradition of law comes from the feudal system. The lord of a fiefdom creates laws to maximize the profit of his holdings, and that means supporting the wellbeing of his serfs, forcibly if necessary.

At the city level, though, peasants had something a little more akin to a modern democracy with elected officials and public services provided for by the public treasury. They were given a good deal of self-rule so long as it did not interfere with the needs of the gentry.

This is one difference: serfs do not elect their lords. This single detail sets up a whole series of problems and solutions. Absolute power is removed from the equation, making the lords accountable to their subjects. Instead of military might being the source of power, it is now popularity, and tyranny is no less present. What is more troubling is that, while Royalty claimed the divine right to rule and were regularly ousted from their thrones by rivals, modern lords claim popular mandate, and can be more difficult to remove so long as the masquerade holds up.

Perhaps modern government would be best described as neo-feudalism. The new feudalism cares about what the subjects think, although not necessarily about their wellbeing. Furthermore, modern governments often live in a bit more fear of their subjects, and will often take counterproductive actions in seeking popular support.

Ultimately, the idea that the people are in direct control of their government is at best half-true, and perhaps there is some wisdom in a system that places its rulers in debt to the wellbeing of the subjects rather than to those subject’s whims.

It’s a difficult position to maintain, I’ll admit, but next time you’re paying your land taxes on pain of foreclosure, and derived from an artificially inflated property value, you might want to ask yourself who really owns the land.

Photo by: yashima

Wine is not elitist, no matter what anyone tells you. If you have trouble believing that, go to Spain. Spaniards sometimes refer to their country as “la tierra de vino,” or, “the land of wine.” In a Spanish restaurant, a glass of wine costs the same as a glass of water. If anyone knows wine, it’s the Spanish.

For those of you who don’t know, Spain is a country in Western Europe. It’s the country where Spanish people are from. It happens to be next to Portugal and France. All those Spanish people in your country that your government is trying to kick out? They’re actually not Spanish at all, unless your country happens to be England.

The trouble with most wine connoisseurs is that they are the sorts of people who use words like “connoisseur” without cracking a smile. Wine is not, and was not, about the social elite. If you wear a monocle and carry a pocket watch, you are not grounded enough to properly enjoy wine.

In Spain, wine is served in the morning (that’s right, in Spain they drink before noon and they are not alcoholics, because they don’t go to meetings), with lunch, and late at night. Wine is served at bars, and at night clubs, and at cafés, and sometimes at McDonald’s.

So what’s the big deal with wine anyway? Wine has a long history, but nobody really cares about that other than those sommeliers I was making fun of earlier. What really matters is that wine is the oldest, cheapest, and most accessible form of culture there is. Wine is to be enjoyed, and if you can enjoy a beer, then you can enjoy a wine. If you are self-conscious about drinking wine, then it’s time to get over it. Just to help you get over your irrational urge to put wine on a pedestal as something snooty and elite, here are a couple common drinks made in Spain from wine.

Sangria
First you take some wine, and then you add juice to the wine. Add fruit to the wine. Shake up the wine. Put the wine in a goofy-looking ceramic pitcher. Guzzle the wine.

Yep, that’s it, and when I say “Guzzle” I mean it. In most bars, restaurants, and cafes, you can’t order just a glass of sangria. It only comes in pitchers. Eat, drink, and toss your inhibitions out the window. With Sangria, public intoxication is king.

Calimocho
First you take some wine, and then you add Coca-Cola to the wine. Presto, you have the ultimate party drink. The wine inebriates you, the Coke caffeinates you, and the huge plastic cup makes your dancing look better by making your idle weight-shifting look like an attempt to keep from spilling. Besides being a salvaging mechanism for exceptionally bad wine, it’s also pretty tasty, and not at all snooty.

So, what do you need to know to find a good wine? Two important things come to mind. “How much do you want to spend?” and “how good do you want it to be?” The answers to these questions are “Not much” and “Very” and that means one thing first and foremost: Do not buy wine based on price.

My general advice is to never, under any circumstances, pay more than $20 for a bottle of wine. If you happen to live in a country that uses those silly “€” or “£” symbols, then you shouldn’t be paying near that much even, both because your money is worth a lot more than mine, and because your wine market is a lot more reasonable.

Another important thing to know about wine is that it is chemically active. The most important consequence of this is that, if you pour a glass of wine and take a sip, you may find it too bitter or sour just plain bad for your tastes. If you take said glass, put it on the counter, and go make a sandwich, it will almost certainly taste different when you come back. One of my personal wine choices, Yellow Tail Shiraz, tastes certifiably horrible out of the bottle. Let it breathe for five minutes and it’s completely tolerable, and after fifteen it is downright enjoyable.

If you do live in the US, then you probably have this absurd idea that wine comes in “Merlot” and “Cabernet” and “Pinot Noir” varieties, sometimes called “varietals” by people who try too hard to sound important. Put the idea out of your mind immediately. The differences between vintages, wineries, and processing methods far outweigh the differences between grapes. If you live in the old world, you’re probably still wondering what this whole “Merlot” thing is all about anyway. Don’t worry, you’re not missing much.

Try different wines, don’t listen to the wine guy at the your local restaurant, bar, or liquor store. You will find wines you like, and over time your tastes will change. I swear by Rioja or Riviera de Duero, two Spanish wine regions, but I’ve had my share of enjoyment from Australian and California wines too. Next time you cook pasta or a nice steak, break out a glass of wine and give it a chance. You might find out that you like it quite a lot.

Photo by: katiew