Our son is now a year old, and as he's developed and is just about at the point of walking on his own, some voluntary and some involuntary changes have occurred as he transitions into toddlerhood:

• He is no longer drinking formula - and since he doesn't like milk, he's getting his fat intake elsewhere
• He's now dropped a nap and is down to one nap per day, with surprisingly little in the way of an adjustment period
• We are more conscious than ever of keeping him occupied by finding new things for him to do - playgrounds, going outside more, etc.

Luckily, many of these signs of growth were fairly easy on us as parents. We're not the types to stress the small stuff, so when he showed us he rarely wants milk, rather than worry, we just make sure he gets enough meat and other fat in his diet.

One interesting development we're looking forward to is when he does start walking that's all he'll want to do, yet he'll take in less calories and slim out a bit. He'll still be hungry like a horse, but at around a year old kids start getting more picky about food and can show you when they are full. It's also a good time to start regimenting meals more as the one year mark, generally speaking, is past the point of not being able to overfeed children: now the parents need to start watching food intake a little more closely.

Something that's been on our minds since day one is the idea that we should all eat together as a family. With my wife working many nights, that's not going to be possible all the time, but whenever we're all here it's something we'll try. Our son eats at 5pm and goes to bed around 7pm, but it shouldn't be long before we can push his dinner time out a bit to be more in line with ours. Since he no longer has to eat baby food and can eat nearly everything we can eat, it's been a lot easier to cook his meals on the fly rather than worry about how many jars of baby food are left. That might be convenient, but I find it more rewarding to cook some chicken breasts in the oven one night for the week, and find new ways to prepare it - with rice, with zucchini or summer squash, or with some type of vegetable soup.

Living in New England, the autumn is a fun time of year with little kids. We will go apple picking and visit a pumpkin patch before Halloween; we've already been to a zoo; and of course as autumn starts turning toward winter there's the holidays. Being outside shoveling snow over the next few winters won't be nearly as harsh when I think of my son wanting to come outside and build a snowman with me after the heavy lifting is done.

Of course, with such rapid change comes plenty of stress. Work becomes almost mechanical - for better or worse - when dealing with changing nap schedules and less sleep (though our son is a good sleeper, it's still tougher to get up knowing that there's plenty to do before packing up and going to work each day). But the stress is manageable, and it's all about those rewarding smiles and milestones, as well as the small family barbecue we had to celebrate his first completed year.

Nowadays most economists agree that the crisis in the American economy, starting with the housing market and later spreading to Europe, was either caused or blown up in proportion by irresponsible banking institutions. Now it is time for us to agree on the following: that financial institutions taking big risks is normal in a functional market economy, but that big risk-takers also need to face the full consequences of those risks.

The subprime market scheme, that began during the late Clinton era and boomed dramatically during the Bush Administration, has received a lot of criticism. And rightly so. But few understand the intention behind it. There will always be people who, for various reasons, lower their credit value by making unsound financial decisions. Maybe they start up a company, go broke, and find no way of getting out. Maybe they bet on poker online and cash in all their possessions to pay back.

Whatever's the reason, responsible banks will have a hard time to lend these people money if they want house or car. Contrary to how liberals feel about it, I don't think this is "unfair." But I do think it's reasonable that we allow certain banks on the market to take greater risks and lend these people whatever money they need. Inevitably, the interest rate over time will be high, maybe sometimes too high for these people to pay up. If banks were doing this practice responsibly, e.g. in moderate volumes in relation to their overall lending business, it would not be a big problem--except for the people who do the borrowing and cannot pay back.

The banks who began offering these subprime loans made the unsound decision of offering too many of them, to make more profit. For every bad housing loan, banks took out interest and made more money. Then they repackaged those bad loans and sold them off as new loans. More money was made. At first only the low-credit people were suffering. They were the ones who couldn't pay. But when banks examined their business, they were also going dry. Their capital was useless, because it relied on people who couldn't pay back. A financial dead-end.

Any normal financial outcome of such malpractice would be to let the market do its social darwinistic job: die. Let them fall. But Bush and his financial administers decided to bail out the banks. The argument was, in the light of his political career, perfectly understandable: don't upset middle class voters who'll see their economy shaking, maintain an economic status quo. But from a larger point of view, this decision makes no sense. If you take big risks like these housing firms did, you also have to face the consequences of those risks threatening to take you down. What else would the incentive be to change from unsound to sound financial behavior? More regulation?

Just as low-credit people continue to borrow money to waste it on poker and sluts - and we don't hold this against them as long as they face the consequences - banks will lend out money and make huge profits as long as they know someone else will save them from falling. Their fall would shake the economy, probably very badly, but now we have a situation where old and new firms continue to speculate and hand out bonuses while taking big risks to trash other people's economy, and therefore, lives. It's irresponsible of a government to prevent finance to regulate itself, just like it's silly of parents to prevent children from learning by making mistakes. Sometime big risks pay big, but that's life.

Simple political question: Why do intelligent groups, who would seem to benefit the most from being left alone to practice their own values, vote liberal? It reminds of a time not so long ago when visiting a Jewish friend, and it became so apparent to me how younger generations now are scoffing and casting aside the values their parents expect them to sustain and uphold.

Mother to Jewish friend rambles on as usual about Polish ghettos and Jewish brilliance. I overlook the sentimentality of the situation and find it kind of amusing, but my friend suddenly grows tired of it all.

Son: Mum, stop talking like we're so special all the time, it makes me uncomfortable.

Mother: But you are special, you're Jewish.

Son: That's what I'm talking about. Give up that talk already, everyone's just as good and bad as the other, we don't need to feel superior all the time.

Mother: Jonathan, are you an anti-Semite!

At this point I have a hard time not laughing.

Son: No, I'm not, I'd just wish you'd stop talking about Jewishness all the time. Everyone is good.

His mother now looks at him with a stern and self-confident facial expression.

Mother: No, everyone is not good. We are good, but not the others!

It wasn't the first time Jonathan's mother had comically picked on him for being a bad Jew, but this is not a judgment on Jews. It illustrates a larger and more important point, hardly confined to Jews, or even European groups in general. Younger generations are growing increasingly liberalized. Social democracy, economic equality and cultural humility are no longer campaign phrases only among the liberal left; it's become the expected social norm. But why do the people who would benefit the most from being conservative, choose to go liberal?

Because liberalism is in many regards a signal system. People who argue over bumper stickers on cars saying "No more war in Iraq" or get upset over uneducated teenagers wearing Che Guevara shirts are missing the point. The stereotypical campaign liberal is not merely, and increasingly often not at all proposing anything in principle. It's a way to fit into a social hierarchy; to prove in public that he or she understands the act of sending and receiving moral codes. Nobody, not even liberals, really believe war is going to end. They just want to say how sorry they am, and how good we should perceive them for saying so.

Intelligent people, especially socially trained people, seem to prefer to participate in this process, inevitably expressing more or less liberal ideas. At the same time, liberalism is now slowly hitting back on those groups. In a modern progressive society, fairly wealthy people (including much of the middle class), successful ethnic groups, religious groups, scientists and company owners are hurt the most. Their values of family care, self-preservation, independence, risk-taking and cultural self-confidence are going extinct, because an increasingly aggressive government is not going to tolerate deviations from the progressive denominator.

It means the people who are voting liberal to ensure they are tolerated, will increasingly find that there is not much tolerance left. Take for instance Jews in Swedish multicultural Malmö. Previously an historically integral and well-off part of the city culture, is now a fragmented and scared ethnic group, afraid to speak out in public or express Jewish values. Why? The tolerant leaders they once voted for are now also tolerating radical Muslims, who are slowly taking over the city and would rather wish that Jews moved to somewhere else. Liberalism may be the biggest deceiver in the means of communication between intelligent people yet. Without a conservative framework to keep it in check, it seems to damage the very people it was supposed to benefit.

The hysteric world view of climate change may be the best thing that has happened to us conservatives. Thanks to it and the social guilt liberals always project unto each other, they've become society's whiny, dogmatic doomsday prophets. People nowadays laugh at those who say we need to recycle everything in sight, that we can save the world if we donate billions to poor children, that a grey race culture can be achieved. Election results across Western and Eastern Europe speak for themselves: people don't buy the shit anymore.

This gives conservatives a great opportunity to express their forward-thinking philosophy. It's what Corrupt has been trying to do for years. I find increasingly that people are baffled when you think positive and do good things instead of pointing out what's negative. They understand there's a better way of living life, and they want to be on that train rather than becoming another fake-sympathizer with invincible causes. Check this out:

• Engagement: Because progressives have destroyed our morality on sex, it's nowadays almost thrilling to get engaged with someone you love before you turn 25. Most younger people, including girls, would have no idea what it's for. Now you can seek out a lover, love her/him more than ever, and prove it to the world with confidence.
• Home cooking: My message has always been clear on this subject, but let me rephrase that again for all of you. Cooking your own food today is revolutionary. I know people passing 24 who don't know how to cook pasta properly or make their own pasta sauce. When I discovered that it only takes me 30 minutes to make my own bread and much less to make really, really good ice cream, I almost completely abandoned the overpriced junk you find at supermarkets. Promise me, once you show your friends how to piece together a chicken stew, they'll at least want to try it at home, too.
• Church community: You may not be religious, but if you're looking for an intelligent, dutiful partner - or just something meaningful to do after work/studies, a not-so-dogmatic church community is not a bad place to start. If you're American this may sound strange to you, but most of Europe today is secular, especially Northern Europe. You can't imagine the looks on people's face when someone says they regularly attend or work in a church because it's more fun than to watch television. I've played some hilarious trolls on people by denouncing populist atheism as boring. In a society where no one believes in anything, religion suddenly becomes mystical and interesting again.
• Cut adolescence: The increasing reality for younger generations in the West is to remain a teenager until you're about 30. That's about the time people these days finish studies, get a job, and...well, wait five years and they may plan to have a baby. In most societies where modernity hasn't struck high yet, like Russia or Ukraine, people think you're a retard if you're a woman and not pregnant by the age of 25. All you Western youngsters who're in your 20s can really provoke people's lazy attitude to life by aiming early at nailing the following (not necessarily in this order): competitive education -> decent paying job, stable relationship (1+ year), safe home (living home at ma's and pa's doesn't count). I know women past their 30s who still believe that their life is over if they'd become pregnant by accident. In such an environment, a self-confident and soon-to-be father is danger alert for whiny liberals.
• Life is good-philosophy: Have you noticed how basically all politics today is about CHANGING everything. Why do we catch on to that? Are things really all so bad that we need other people to tell us what to do to be safe? I don't think so. But most people do, including many misguided conservatives, because they basically think life sucks. I don't, and if you learn to appreciate what you've got, you won't either. Believe it or not, but this may in our current time be the most radical political message out there: DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING. Society is good. I can fulfill my ideals, I can build a future for my family, I can shoot cans after work, I can make my own beer. Anything is possible, if I just have the will (and, occasionally, money) to do it. Don't become another believer in CHANGE. Most stuff in the West works. Don't mess with it, or us.
• Dare to be indifferent: I'm sure those who are reading this, like me, have got quite a few immigrant friends. I like my immigrant friends, but I've got my own culture, and am not overtly interested in what Iraqis have for dinner or why Iranian women sometimes are pushed out of balconies. I'm just fairly indifferent to diversity and only choose to participate in it when I feel like it. Liberals demand we all share a great interest in everything besides our own culture. If we don't, we're bad, backwards-thinking people. Have you tried sometime to join a multicultural discussion by saying that you just don't care about what goes on in segregated neighborhoods, and that you really just prefer your own lifestyle? Indifference to diversity usually upsets a lot of people. You should allow yourself to smile when saying this.

There's more, but I'm sure that if you ponder the idea, you will discover the rest. It always boils down to this: everyone else is busy trying to conform to a progressive lifestyle, so you have all the time and space in the world to take charge of your own future and shape it according to what you believe is important. It really is a great world, isn't it?

A wise Englishman once remarked that when politicians do as little as possible, they tend to do good. Martin Regnen always says that he fears intelligent leaders, because they tend to want to change everything, even if it only makes things worse. Maybe this explains why a lot of intelligent people are liberals, but would benefit the most from being conservative?

Swedish election is coming up and every party is promising job opportunities, better schools and better health care. Eventually every social democratic state transforms into a version of Sweden: people want to be nannied into narcotic safety, and leaders love to hand out the drugs. Welfare becomes an addiction. If you're used to giving away 30 or so percent of your income and expect "free" hand outs in return, you'll want more of it, all the time. Despite what socialists say about capitalism, we know for sure that social democracy breeds generations of egoists: "We paid our taxes, now we demand you give us everything we want!"

Social democratic elections always push paternalism, regardless of who ends up winning. It's not that we don't need a more flexible labor market, that public schools don't need to raise the standard, that health care isn't running out of funding, or that we don't need to reduce organized crime. It's just that our leaders are incapable of doing it all that well. If they deregulated the labor market, lowered the taxes for employees, pushed more people into private schools and made it harder to pass public education tests, cut down on health care bureaucracy and strengthened laws and civic society, we would improve fast.

Instead we expect the election to be a time when leaders promise us to save us from ourselves. "I will be in charge of your safety," says a conservative party poster close to where I live. It is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the political culture of our society. You're not supposed to be in charge of my safety--that's my business. Your job is to make sure I can run my own life. To expect something else would be financially unwise and morally reprehensible. I don't like morons as leaders, but Martin and other democracy-critics may have a point: if you think you're so smart you can make all decisions for me, you need to be dethroned and put on a real job instead. Paternalism is slow death.

In a recent post, I mentioned that our home is considered a starter home by the HGTV crowd, but we'd rather grow the house as our family grows and stay long-term. The lot is private and the house has only ever been owned by one other family. The location is great too and it already feels like it's been our home for a long time.

But another factor is the work we've already put into it, including taking advantage of rebates and tax incentives. One of those programs is the Mass Save program, which gave us steep discounts and rebates on insulation work, an energy-efficient hot water tank, and replacing some windows. Not only does the program offer discounts, but if you have decent credit, you can finance the work over 7 years at 0% interest. Our government at work, indeed.

Since this type of work typically doesn't carry financing options if you were to just call up any old contractor, it's well worth it to look into the program or similar ones in your area. Sure, there's some bureaucratic nonsense involved, but it's well worth it considering the benefits. Your energy bills will go down significantly, and of course, the main sponsors of these programs are electric utilities. This is the mark of a well-intended program: don't hide the fact that the end result will be more money in my wallet each month, and I won't pretend to want my house to have a big sign over it that says, "GREEN PEOPLE LIVE HERE!"

With the up front cash you save by financing this work and taking advantage of rebates, you can focus on other things that are more pressing, whatever those happen to be. Or you can just bank the money and save more for a rainy day.

It's been an interesting first summer with a baby in constant development. Our son is fairly tall for his age and is almost walking now.

To be sure, stressful times abound when trying to balance a house, necessary work in the first year, and a baby who is always priority number one at this age. But to unwind, we've found time to do the little things this summer with our young child, such as:

• Heading to the beach a few times
• Taking at least a few weekly walks together, and making sure at least one of us walks with the baby outside each day
• Going to town events - our town has a rich history and has summer concerts and a town pride day during the summer

It might sound boring, particularly to the single crowd, but when you get to a point of wanting children and wanting a family, you also have to think of what that means for your lives as individuals. Family, singular, becomes more than just a word as it represents a living organism - all of you, together - and parents need to be willing to give all of their time to ensure the organism stays healthy.

That said, it's stressful, and as adults we all need to unwind a bit. We've found it convenient to take off and have someone babysit after the baby is already asleep - so really more "sitting" than anything else is involved - and get a drink or unwind somewhere outside the house for a while. That, or one of us has a night out with the friends.

The summer tends to cleanse the mind and spirit, and as such, it's nice to be outside in the summer heat and let the mind wander. It's easy to do that in our neighborhood as it's fairly peaceful and we see a lot of the same cars driving by; we already have good relations with a few of our neighbors. One of the nicer things about the house, of which there are constant reminders all over, is the fact that it was built in the 1950s yet only ever had one owner before us. Sometimes I'll be in the driveway or outside doing yard work and look around the neighborhood thinking to myself, "I wonder what this looked like to the original owner in...say, 1955? What's changed, what looks the same?"

In New England, you can usually tell the decade a house was built by style of home. Capes were common post-war, ranches around the same time or earlier, old-style Colonials well before either World War in some cases, and then split-levels came along in the 1970s and into the 1980s before everyone wanted a Colonial again. So it's easy to look out at the neighboring streets and imagine where newer houses stand, how there were just empty lots of land, 1950s cars, and roads probably made more of dirt than pavement.

Our hope for the future is that we are well into mid-century by the time the house is sold to its third owner. Some people would call what we have a 'starter home', but I like to think of it as a keeper. Pride of ownership in a home, regardless of size of lot or prestige of location, is important for any homeowner - otherwise, the trips to Home Depot and the weekends weeding and planting are hardly worth it.

Occasionally I decide to break a few laws. When doing so, it's mostly motivated by personal principles. For instance, I refuse to pay the common license fee for televisions, because I don't watch the public service channels. I sometimes drive against red light to follow traffic rhythm in inner cities. And I don't see a problem with letting friends smoke marijuana at my porch when it's hot outside. Here's why.

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.
- Henry David Thoreau

The rule of law is one of the key things that set the West (including its offspring like Australia and Japan) apart from most of its other neighboring powers. We follow the rule of law because we want each citizen to be treated equally under a common standard. But the laws themselves need to change over time in order to reflect the current culture they preside over. Sometimes politicians don't make that happen. Then people have to act.

Justice in Western societies is based upon Christian morality. According to Western tradition, people are sole responsible for their individual actions. This is why we have individual rights written down in our constitutions. But with these rights also come limitations. Following Christian tradition, we have a choice to either obey a law or break it. When we break it, there are ways of punishing our behavior. Punishment is a cost for behaving without limitations. This is what Plato described when he talked about the invincible ring of Gyges; if we act invincible, we will corrupt ourselves, because we escape consequences of our choices.

A law is a sort of contract. It's a promise that if you step beyond the bounds of society, society will punish you for it. This is why law breaking, in one sense, is unproblematic. You are free to kill your cheating wife or hunt down a rapist with torches, but if someone gets hurt, you'll have to pay for it. So when I decide to be civic obedient and not pay for a service I don't want, I'm rebelling against a law. But with that choice, I am also ready to face any consequences of my behavior. In this case, it'll just cost me a fine, and only in a rare case will I face a shorter prison sentence.

But the point stands: I, together with many other Swedes who feel the public service channels should either change the way they finance their service, or switch to a commercial model, are slowly changing an idiotic law by protesting against it. Civic disobedience is a common feature of Western societies all throughout history, and is actually actively supported by the Swedish parliament. It is believed to strengthen important rights and democracy.

Why is this important? Because most people today walk around in total fear of laws and are ready to commit to irrational behavior in order to obey the government. Sometimes laws, like in the traffic, can be more harmful than helpful. In those situations it's crucial to make an independent evaluation of what's going on. It's important to understand that a system of laws is just a contract, and you're free to pull off from any details, as long as you understand that it may cost you. In most cases, the cost is too high, which is what supposedly stops most of us from killing and stealing whenever we feel like it. The rest, of course, is up to communal and individual morality. That's why a strong civic community is important, both to protect, and occasionally, circumvent laws.

The World Cup final featured this distillation of anti-racism into its essence:

As you can see here, anti-racism has nothing to do with non-whites. It's a method of self-aggrandizement whose purpose is to demonstrate to other white people you're more important and better than them, and a convenient way to excuse your being useless and annoying because it's "for a good cause". This pitch invader is to anti-racism as the North Korean government is to open-minded progressive ideology - the purest example of it we have in the world today.

Not that I have anything against shameless self-aggrandizement, of course. I just prefer to do it the old-fashioned way.

"White people in America and abroad are being manipulated to feel guilty for simply wanting to preserve their own heritage, culture, traditions, and ethnic identity."

These two videos [1,2] on YouTube attempt to address an uncomfortable truth in our society: that there is plenty hidden under the shiny fantasy land of "let's all get along and forget our differences".

The problem with the videos is that most are conditioned to believe any mention of race - and certainly a critical look at racial tension - is a big no-no in our society. See Craig Bodeker's wonderfully executed "A Conversation About Race" for another example. We should let the intelligent men and women at the offices of MTV and Hollywood studios handle racial issues for us, since they usually tell us that believing in cultural diversity is a good thing, something we can all feel happy about. But as these videos ask, "if these ideas are so natural, why is it necessary to promote them via advertising and education?"

I'd further ask, "why is it necessary to hide certain facts from people, or to avoid mentioning them?"

The videos call to our attention an interesting dilemma. Media tends to influence the opinions of many. As a father, I can appreciate that I want to be one of very few influences on my son when it comes to matters of culture, upbringing, and morality. It's not always up to the parent, particularly during teenage years when kids are very easily influenced. But during the critical developmental years, do you want your child watching TV and getting ideas about culture, promiscuity, and values from there? I would argue that anyone approving of this approach likely lacks any sort of decent family background, since the idea of having kids is to pass on what you feel is good about your heritage and trying to exclude some of the things that maybe aren't so great. It takes a lot of effort and a good deal of ego deflation to try and see yourself and everything you are (your family & ancestral background) in an objective light, then try to figure out what's not so great and filter that out.

My mother in law retired recently and gave us a placard she had up on her wall, which read: "The two lasting things we give to our children are roots and wings". Roots is of utmost importance. If your children are not getting values at home, they are getting them from media - meaning any sort of communication to them from outside the home, be it politically correct propaganda at school from teachers or potentially broken or strange values from friends when they visit other people's houses. I can speak from experience when I say that I took that aforementioned objective look at my own background just in time to do some real soul-searching as a father and realize there are certain things I don't want to pass down to my children, as hard as it was to take that step.

It's going to be a tough balancing act, for sure, but we want our children to leave our house, when they are ready to make those first steps into their Kindergarten class, with the idea that our family is the strongest source of values and information they have, and education is there to ensure they are well-read and studious when it comes time to develop and blossom into intelligent, thinking adults. Unfortunately, education is seen these days as more a place to teach "tolerance" of everything except intolerance of anything, rather than attempt to take the brightest kids and mold them into fine examples of their community so they can move on and represent that family/community/region well by doing good in the world.

Circling back to race, diversity, and sexuality, essentially what we are told by media these days is that it's not up to parents to teach their kids about race - and especially not white parents who would probably tell their kids to avoid anyone brown or yellow. It's up to media outlets and the government to ensure that everyone is tolerated equally - by viewing some of the disturbing imagery you can see in the above videos. Be realistic for a moment and ask yourself: as a parent, who do I trust to instill values in my children? The list should be extremely short.

It's been a long spring and it has already segued into summer. Keeping up with a house during any spring seems like a challenge, but during the first spring of living in a new house, it can be exhausting learning all the new tricks in the yard, fixing neglected problems, and adding one's own touch to the outside.

One task that required attention this spring was cutting down some old pine trees that had too many dead branches. They were only about 25 feet tall and
were mostly dead, and it appeared the original owner planted them back in the 1950s. In any case, they never got enough sun, particularly on the lower branches, and it wasn't a big deal to fell and buck them, then toss the logs into the woods. The new view outside our rear windows is now of smaller but thriving pine trees.

More recently, indoors, we had a company that specializes in "green" home improvement come and do an audit of our house via a new Massachusetts energy-efficiency booster program called Mass Save. Really, all I was looking for was the gubmint rebate money that I feel, as a lifelong taxpayer and first-time moocher, I deserve. And to their credit, the gentlemen the company sent were not HGTV greenist types, looking to get a foot in the door under the guise of insulation work so they could upsell me on solar panels for my roof. They were honest that our house was fairly leaky but came up with some good, common sense solutions such as insulating the attic/roof rafters, air sealing the house, replacing two of the windows that haven't already been replaced, and at the expense of the Commonwealth they replaced our light bulbs and shower head for free. Well, someone paid for it - probably me on my last tax return.

People from New England will understand when I say that these programs do add some value in areas where many old homes are sold and not everyone has the money to start gutting and modernizing. For people like us who don't get sucked into the new craze of making sure every little detail of the home is just-so, a couple grand in rebate money can go a long way toward energy savings that pays for itself over time.

Another recent development is on the family end: our son can pull himself up to a standing position, he crawls now, and more teeth are coming in - seemingly by the day. More and more we're seeing a big toddler when we look at him rather than a baby, which is rewarding. It can also be a bit emotional for some, but if too emotional to watch your children growing and developing well before you, you're not keeping your eye on the big picture. It's an ego boost to have a being that you love and cherish - and shares your DNA - need you for everything, and that ego boost deflates a bit when your baby is suddenly trying to break free from your embrace so s/he can explore the huge world that is the living room.

First summer in a new house and first summer with a baby means that we expected this season to be busy and hectic. It's been a rewarding journey thus far.

The G20 summit to discuss the world economic crisis is currently taking place in Toronto. Pseudo-socialists and wannabe-anarchists -- mostly under the age of 30 -- are itching to dress up to play revolutionary against naturally intrinsically fascist governments, and continuing to wreak confused havoc in the urban center. It would be laughable if I wasn't at the risk of having an intellectual aneurysm, and if the state of the downtown core didn't so ostentatiously affirm the stupidity and herd-following instincts of most people.

Masses took to the streets yesterday damaging property, including managing to target three large Canadian banking centers, numerous ABMs, storefronts along major Toronto streets (including buildings I used to live beside), some of which belonged to American corporations, some of which were harmless enough independent shops. Hospitals entered lockdown mode, and the Toronto Transit Commission halted service in core areas. It was essentially a roaming, violent, mindless mob that overtook Toronto streets, with such a confusing and hazy aim that leads me to only believe that their real perogative was venting adolescent, male, anarchist fantasies.

Asked why a Canadian bank was firebombed a week preceding the summit, the group taking responsibility made loose connections between the fact that they sponsored the Vancouver Olympics and it was rightfully "Aboriginal land." Making vaguely political, or really, ANY politicizeable statements seems so sadly self-parodical.

Watching YouTube coverage last night (I didn't want to put myself at risk of arrest or injury for gawking), there were Canadian flags with marijuana leaves substituted for maple leaves. What is it supposed to signify? What does marijuana legalization (for the record, it's already de-criminalized here), have anything to do with the meeting of global financial powers?

The G20 protests seem like the poorly thought out mind-experiment by a group of 15 year old boys who want to revel in the thrill of destructing public property. The justification for it is tenuous at best, and naturally is structured around portraying the protestors as victims of some hazily labelled "New World Order." Jerk-offs.

Yesterday, the mob chanted, "This is what a police state looks like!" as officers idly stood by and supervised the demonstrations. If this were a legitimate police state, they would not be gathered en masse and bullets would be firing at the crowd. Bourgeois teenagers with hypocritical political views are the larger crime anyway.

War always has its costs. Europe has been waging expensive wars against itself and the world for centuries. Many say we lost countless lives of brave, important men. We did, but we lost more. Instead of expanding land and teaching natives about Shakespeare, we became a morally introvert civilization. Here is how we and our children of Europe pay this cost, every day.

Pointing at the British, French or German empires on the world map used to instill honor in Europeans. We were pretty merciless at times, but with the knowledge that we took wastelands and turned them into full-blown civilizations. Would the world championship in football be held in South Africa this summer if we hadn't been down there and developed agriculture and economy? Where would India be? America as we know it wouldn't even exist without the British.

Today we blame ourselves for our imperialist past. While it's important to recognize where we killed for killing alone and where we erased culture by projecting our own as superior, it's equally important to note the good things that came out of our imperialism. If we'd been morally confident about our contributions to the world in terms of governance, law and morality, we wouldn't be threatening our children today in schools with post-colonial theory and Marxist analyses of apartheid history.

Every following crisis in Europe ever since has received a response of moral guilty. When America's economic melt down began and later spread to Europe, leading political leaders suddenly began blaming capitalism itself instead of the fiscal irresponsibility enacted by banks and economic advisors. This led to a deacreasing belief in the economic system as a whole, slowing down consumption and killing off vital industry. Banks freaked out and then did the only thing they know how to do well: lowering interests rates. Consumption picked up, but inflation rose, which led to a slow devaluation of the currency. This is still going on and the economy's hurting. Self-destructive moral guilt plays a big role in this downward spiral.

Europe has also become a center for environmentalist religion, placing irrational faith in climate models put forward by researchers with doubtful scientific methods. Since the West leads all industrial nations in the world, it is also causing most harm to the environment. But thanks to effective markets and impressive engineering, we are also leading the innovation fields where technology is becoming more effective and less damaging to the environment. This, coupled with global efforts to protect wild land and species, which quite frankly is totally off the agenda in most other parts of the world, means nothing to the moral elite who say we better worry like crazy over carbon emissions instead of developing better and slimmer industry.

Even more deadly is our cultural guilt that followed WWII. Europe could not find sufficient leadership for its turn to radical conservative ideologies and as a result collapsed inward into another world war. It cost us our cultural platform. With liberal Marxist culture infiltrating universities and government theorists at the time when the Cold War had just ended, Europe decided to use negative instead of positive logic: "Hitler/Mussolini/Franco was bad, but instead of building positive culture, we avoid all that may potentially become negative culture." That was the beginning of multiculturalism and cultural relativism, or as Mark Steyn so truthfully put it, "our core values is that we have no core values."

Moral guilt has taken ethnic culture hostage in its own natural habitat. Because Europe wanted to expel foreign cultures before WWII, it now pretends it is forced to "compensate" for this with mass immigration. No one really believes such a thing is possible or a rational thing to do, including most immigrants, who are often just looking for a better place to live in (who doesn't?). Most people will also acknowledge that denying your own cultural heritage isn't really a good way to meet and understand other cultural communities.

What these cultural memes in Europe do is that they force people to feel guilty over who they are, what they belong to culturally and how they wish to live their lives. That is a process that threatens to completely erode a civilization from within. Turning moral guilt into a national culture produces weaklings as citizens, robs people of their hope, and inflates cultural values. If you wonder why Europe seems to be hiding behind welfare, Islam and progressive morality, you now know the answer. We are paying a moral price for what people before us did in the past. But we don't subscribe to the past any longer. We are increasingly, like American Tea Partiers, turning more and more conservative on the basis that any other system of politics erodes what we've accumulated over time. Time has tested us before and it will continue to do so. And we will still stand.

I was talking to a chef from a fancy French restaurant at this weekend's video shoot, and he mentioned that certain expensive cheeses only actually taste good when paired with the right wine. As someone who sometimes enjoys cheese that most people can't stand (nothing terribly fancy, I'm talking stuff like 5-year cheddar or fleur de maquis), I started to wonder whether the cheese actually tastes good, or if we convince ourselves that it tastes good because we enjoy it for other reasons.

Enjoying a foul-smelling cheese, after all, gives you the wonderful feeling that you are far more refined than the average person, yet at the same time far more barbaric. There aren't many other things you can consume to get that wonderfully pretentious feeling - mostly certain kinds of hard liquor. But would the cheese be actually enjoyable without that feeling?

Hardly one of life's most pressing mysteries, but I believe I have the answer. Whenever I pull an especially smelly cheese from the fridge, my dogs go crazy. Even while it's still wrapped in foil, they are far more interested in it than they would be in any other food - even meat. If the dogs think it's the greatest food in the world, I'll trust their opinion to be objective and accurate. Dogs aren't capable of being pretentious.

A lot of ink has been spilled about gender gaps in achievement. Differences in averages, standard deviations will keep getting analyzed, but I think even if women had the exact same aptitude for math, engineering etc. that men do they would still be less likely to be found at the top levels of any field. This is something I realized while watching a video for a pop song from Mongolia. There are four vocalists on this track, and one of them basically kicks everybody's ass in terms of not only vocals but also body language and clothing.

That was something of a surprise to me, because Agiimaa is normally a lot more tame in all aspects. She's gone out of her way here to prove she is the best singer on this track. No surprise that the video ends with a shot of her. The funny thing is that if a guy did that, he'd benefit a lot more from his victory than she did.

As Ricky Raw wrote a few weeks ago, "most women don’t like to look like they’re trying to consistently and conspicuously outshine their friends and enjoying it to boot". That's very true. Women pay a much higher social cost for outshining their friends. But in addition to the jealously from other women, there's another cost. Men perceive women who outshine others as high-maintenance. Just look at Agiimaa in that video. She sure does make herself look like a high-maintenance attention whore - not an impression I get from any of her other videos.

So, if you're a woman who does a really great job at something, your girlfriends will be jealous and guys will suspect you'd be demanding and annoying. That's just the way we're wired. Of course it's way better to be a woman who's really great at something than a woman who isn't especially good at anything, but being a guy who's really great at something will always be even better. Life's not fair, and I'm glad I'm among those benefitting from the unfairness.

You might look at the top of this page, where our tagline says "Conservation and Conservatism," and wonder where the conservation went. After all, the entire media has been having a field day with this BP oil spill in the gulf, and you are literally as saturated with pictures of oil-soaked creatures as the creatures are saturated in oil.

In fact, every Tom, Dick and Harriet is trying to show you how Environmentally Conscious(tm) he or she is. There are innumerable stories covering this spill: how BP screwed it up, how they have a record of screwups, how the boycott is affecting BP, how the animals are dying, how one in ten can be saved, how volunteers are misplaced, how there's a coverup, how Louisiana shrimping is dead, and how the oil spill affects New Orleans nightlife. Every angle is cover, and dramatically enough to make a movie out of it, too!

And that there is the problem. The problem with the rest of you is that you're acting like this is news. The problem is that you need it made into a movie, and you need some pivotal event, in order to take note.

For me, this spill happened long ago. In fact, I assume one is going on at roughly the pace that they happen, one every couple of years. Not all are this big, but then again, ten little spills are as destructive as a big one in that they afflict more terrain. For me, this spill is to be expected, because it's the cost of being oil-dependent in a time when we, as a species are barely competent, and our method of governing ourselves is so juvenile that not only is corruption and corner-cutting rife, but our only solution to it is regulation by bureaucrats of below average intelligence.

Have you ever seen regulation in action? Probably not: if you're reading this, your job is located far from such rough 'n' tumble blue collar places. Regulators are people who couldn't make it through regular college. They're usually community college graduates, and lifers with government, who've "risen" to the position of being head paper-checker. They don't get paid all that much, although they are very handsomely paid for what they do. Their personal lives are usually disasters. Sometimes, their best chance for socialization comes through the people they are supposed to be regulating.

Are you getting the picture yet? Regulation isn't a solution. It may be part of a solution, but it isn't The solution. Yet we as a nation have handed off our future to bureaucrats time and again, preferring to believe that regulation is yet another magic modern bullet. Put penicillin on it! Get democracy in there and everything will turn out OK! The free market will solve it! Any time there is a tragedy, we demand more laws, which basically hire more regulators who are even less efficient than the previous regulators.

This oil spill was inevitable from day one. You set up a market that rewards the cheapest and fastest, then you conveniently sell all of these idiots on an unsustainable lifestyle, and you have the perfect setting for corruption and corner-cutting. Then you appoint people too incompetent to get hired outside of government to oversee this -- these are the same low self-esteem, high anger, high failure cases who make the most abusive cops -- and you are surprised when they fail it?

In fact, the big story about the BP spill is the story that will not get told: our entire approach to how we harvest and use oil is broken, and because it is broken, it's amazing spills like this don't happen more often. In fact, my feeling is that the only reason they don't is the high number of people who work in the oil fields who like nature. They probably at some personal risk intervene and try to avoid the worst potential accidents.

Look at your news media. For them, this is a giant holiday. What sells newspapers? Uplifting stories, tragedies, fears, or collective hate/cry-ins like this spill. No one except a sociopath doesn't feel upset for the oil-covered birds. So it sells newspapers. We all get sad together, then get outraged and demand things from our legislators, then talk about how oil spills make us "feel."

And then what?

And then back to business as usual. It ws a holiday for us. We got to feel bad about something, and then we let it drop out of our collective nitwit mind. Somewhere, there are well-meaning and celibate college students and volunteers trying to fix this for us. Onward to the next thing. Anything to distract ourselves from the big story, which is that we can't govern ourselves, and the biggest human failings aren't government or corporations, but the masses of asses who complacently live unsustainable lives, breed like crazy, and then demand more, more, more and if we have to overlook some incompetence that will inevitably lead to oil spills, so be it!

We're all beholden to them. They're the ones buying the newspapers. They're the ones casting the votes. They're the ones who will get outraged and revolt if they can't fill up the $50,000 full-size pickup trucks they bought on a $30,000/year salary. They might go on the television, express outrage, and cause a wave out of outrage to rise up among the other proles, which could cause lost elections. Possibly worse, it could inconvenience us all.

The real demon of the BP spill is not BP, this spill, or oil. It's that we've structured a society based on the wants of the individual, and what the individual wants to do is (a) ignore problems (b) cry/rage over distant problems and (c) buy things to make themselves comfortable and ignore the consequences. This applies to rich as well as poor nations, but not equally to all people. Some come pre-configured to make sense of this all, and the rest of the masses really hate them. In fact, our entire political system is designed so that what is in unpopular can be denied, voted out of existence, ignored and considered taboo or illegal.

As with all things human, we like to pretend that a single external actor did this. BP rose from hell, and with a Hitlerian will of pure evil, smote the gulf into ruin. The fact is that it's the incompetence of individuals and their desire for oblivion that creates "evil" not through action, but inaction. Sins of omission. And on some level we know this, and that's why we're ignoring the big story in order to make a holiday over weeping for the ten thousand non-stories that sell newspapers.

When buying a home, the first thing one should ask oneself is, can I/we afford it? That's an involved question, and one that deserves some thought. Most mortgage bankers, at least in the United States, will give you the "total monthly cost", meaning property taxes, mortgage and interest, and any additional insurance needed depending on your finance package.

While banks should be a trusted source of any additional questions or concerns you have about home ownership and in particular, the associated monthly expenses, recent events have shown they may not be the final word as they have an interest in making a loan happen. Rather than advocating for the government to force them to be trustworthy, which would hinder intelligent people who know their limitations in a house purchase from borrowing in some instances, a more sustainable solution is for the individual or family to take an honest look at their own finances.

It can be difficult to do this when browsing house listings or going house-hunting, so be aware of the following:

• Add a few things to projected monthly expenses. These would be water bills, your current bills of course, and build in a buffer for groceries, plus oil or gas (depending on how your home will be heated). Slice your income by 10% on the top line just in case tax brackets change. You won't have a real picture of what your bottom line will be each month until you get realistic about the actual house expenses.
• Beyond house expenses, build in a nice night out for you and your spouse and/or family each month, plus other discretionary spending. You shouldn't be buying a house if you need to sacrifice 100% of your discretionary spending, for a couple of reasons: you'll be miserable if you can succeed in doing so, living only for your house, and most people are simply unable to eliminate all discretionary spending.



• Build in landscaping expenses and one-time expenses such as a lawn mower, tools, barrels, anything else you know you'll need shortly after the purchase. It can get overwhelming if you have to suddenly spend hundreds of dollars maintaining a home you just bought. The inside is usually okay to leave as is for a while and projects can be tackled inside with little expense, but outside is where equipment and other expensive purchases may need to occur.
• Make sure you have plenty in savings before buying. The bank might want you to have two or three month's worth of mortgage payment in the bank, but be conservative and have at least six or seven. A year's worth would be even better.

Lastly, of course, there are things you can't expect. That's what homeowner's insurance is for. Spend the extra money putting in a sump pump even if you feel you may not need it - your own little insurance policy against basement flooding, which can lead to mold, mildew, and plenty of other damage you'd rather avoid. That's just one of many additional items to consider.

In my case, our family bought a smaller house in a better town, and ensured our budget was such that we still had money left over every month - taking our past spending habits as a history, even though we knew in the backs of our minds we could curb some of the discretionary spending. Seeing the bottom line in black rather than red every month even in "worst case" estimates will increase your confidence during the home buying process, but will also properly direct you toward wiser decision making.

"I want anarchy!" "Save the white race!" "Money is our enemy!" When you've lived long enough you begin to understand why most people, especially those who are sensible in most areas of life, surprisingly are moderate when it comes to politics. They've seen extremists and revolutionaries destroy whole societies like Russia and Cuba. But more cautiously, they've observed how the best of soft intentions often spawn tyranny, as in the case of Holland and Sweden. This is the story of why conservatism really is about conserving moderation.

Revolution attracts young people, because of its inherent idealism. Powerful people are fascinated by it, because it gives them an opportunity to continue to rule under a new fashion system of government. When the lower classes in France demanded a revolution, the nobility recognized the problems their privileges posed to the public, but chose to resist opposition. After the Second World War, in many parts of Europe, they slowly passed votes saying yes to public democracy. Conservatism was therefore born to stabilize society by slowing down revolutions through the implementation of slow changes to society as a whole.

The conservative principle is belief in slow change guided by tradition. This means it's both futuristic and traditionalistic. Radical ideologies like socialism, feminism and anarchism fall outside of this scheme of thought, because they demand a radical transformation of society at fast speed, often with little or no consideration to historical reality. Put simply, radicalism takes no regard to human nature or history, but sees only ideas on paper. When they become reality, they often create dysfunctional cultures like Russia and North Korea.

Radical conservatism is therefore sort of an oxymoron. You're not really conservative if you believe we should immediately overthrow our democratic leaders, replace the entire class system with birth-given meritocracy and send home millions of immigrants from wherever they came from. It would completely disrupt the entire society, even if its goals are based on historic conditions. If we look realistically at the world, we recognize we need a moderate change over a longer period of time to which people can adapt to. Think about some of these issues:

• Feminism: Has caused us a lot of harm, but as it stands today, many women are capable in the work force and some of them are completely unsuitable as mothers. Forcing them all to revert back to pre-2000 gender roles would not work out, and would dig a hole in an already infected economy.

  Democracy: Moderates some problems with direct tyranny, but historically seems to transform into some form of fascism over time, clouded with bureaucracy. What would we do if we killed it next year? We'd have to rewrite our entire constitutions, many of them spanning centuries of political wisdom. And after anarchy? Well...

  Multiculturalism: Has not brought us much diversity, despite high promises. Yet most people today know that some immigrants have managed to integrate nicely and contribute to the host culture and society. It's not been a picnic, but slowly we've found out that culture is much more dynamic than what we think and if it wants to survive, it cannot be isolated, it needs to adapt to worldly conditions in a global civilization.

  Capitalism: Everyone's favorite target these days, and indeed, the West's hyper-effective economies have drained natural resources and made life boring and miserable for a lot of workers. The alternative though, as we can still see in socialist countries around the world, is not that appealing. Great minds have found that it's possible to limit environmental and social problems by better understanding how a free market really works, given the input of sane values guiding it instead of raw money craze.

  Americanism: When a dominant culture rules, all other cultures adapt to certain key conditions of that host culture. We saw it in central Europe during the rule of Rome and we see traces of it in Caucasus today. But what it means is not just that cultural diversity is relative to any master culture sustaining it, but most importantly that maybe, sometimes, we should be thankful there is a backing hand in a world increasingly left in the hands of unpredictable and dangerous dictatorships.

This realization may upset some people, especially young idealists. It means we may be thinking right when we orient ourselves around radical philosophy, but fail miserably when we try to apply these philosophies short-term. Therefore we choose not to directly advocate an uprise against democracy, death of feminism or destruction of globalism on this site. Radical conservatism, understood as a belief that life would be better if we returned to a pre-modern world, is appealing in theory, but is lethal in practice.

Instead we believe in a moderate conservatism where these over-arching goals influence the way we bring about slow change today. In terms of lifestyle, this means we may choose to lift weights instead of training with swords, letting our women repair the car one day instead of locking them up inside the kitchen, joining a local church community instead of declaring pagan gods our masters, or attending local Arab parties when we feel like having fun, instead of deciding that all immigrants are unwelcome guests. Some say this is pragmatism, but what it really is, is a recognition of the depth and value of history, and a willingness to let that history guide us safely but bravely into the future. Think wisely, think conservative--think Right.

We recently had our first true holiday weekend with the new house, welcoming late spring/summer with open arms during Memorial Day weekend.

Looking back at the past five months of home ownership, we were happy to buy in winter as we were able to tackle small projects inside for a few months before moving outdoors. During our first holiday weekend I noticed many neighbors were taking the opportunity to have barbeques on either Saturday or Sunday, then using Monday as a day to tie up loose ends around the house. So I followed suit: we attended a barbeque at my sister's house Sunday, and Monday I was up early and working outside.

While it didn't take long, I learned a lot about my first project outdoors that didn't involve yardwork. I dug a hole, picked up my father, went to a hardware store to buy a mailbox post, mailbox, and cement mix, and planted it in the ground. Simple enough, but the feeling of accomplishment having finished by 11 A.M. was nice. It left enough time for some smaller projects like replacing light fixtures and enough time still to take my son for a pretty long walk before ending the day tired and sore, but in the best way.

This is part of the reason I enjoy the four seasons offered by New England: the wait through a rainy and sometimes cool spring is well worth it for days like that, and in looking forward to the days ahead of late June and all of July, where it seems people feel younger and are breathing much fresher air. Even heading into the winter, at least for me, the fall can be a time of rejuvenation as people go back to their busy schedules, but there's still time for that one last cookout and maybe a day or two to wear shorts until Columbus Day weekend hits and you notice the school buses in the morning more and more.

Beyond the enjoyment of our first holiday, it also reminded me that buying a home involves a lot more responsibility than just paying the mortgage, and you can always tell the folks who forget just by driving past houses. Maintaining a yard, making the house look like a true home inside and out, getting settled, and becoming more organized are all traits that are fairly easy to spot at first glance. I used to think people who spent a ton of time on their yard and flower gardens should just mulch their entire lawn or keep things as streamlined and simple as possible, but now I understand why people are careful about the way their home looks on the outside just as much as the inside, and feel fortunate to live among neighbors who care about appearance.

Our son is now nine months old and, thankfully, healthy. My wife remarked yesterday that our son has been in existence "nine months in, nine months out" [of the womb]. When we think about the journey of the past eighteen months, it's been quite the ride for us, too. So what has happened and what has changed?

• In December 2008, we were in a car accident in a very bad, icy Nor'Easter. This was very early on in the pregnancy and even though it was a low speed accident, we made sure an ambulance was called. The hospital did an ultrasound as a precaution and it was our first look at the baby's heartbeat. Given the circumstances, and not figuring we'd see a heartbeat in a doctor's office for a good two or three months, this was particularly emotional.
• Birth as induced in August 2009. This was mostly a precautionary measure, and we did it on the last day we were advised by doctor's to wait before my wife got too far past her due date for (modern levels of) comfort. We joked that he just didn't want to come out and was comfy in there, and his personality has held up to that assertion.
• Looking back, we said we'd use cloth diapers, but that hasn't panned out. It was more a matter of habit than an issue of convenience as our relatives would shower us with diapers not knowing our plans. We are hoping to have a second child at some point and plan to be more vigilant about it.
• Speaking of a second child, we had said early on after our son's birth that we wanted a second child right away, as we were swept up in the emotion of our first child. We have been extremely fortunate with his sleeping habits, and even so, we feel worn down at times by raising a child and all it involves. Still, we know that we want a second child, and hope to have two and only two (unless we have twins the second time around).

While there's been a lot of good, there's also been plenty of emotionally trying times. People tell you when expecting a first child that "it changes your life" and other assorted cliches. This is true, and most of these people are only trying to help.

But it also highlights that parenthood is not for everyone. We like to think in our modern society that anyone can do anything, and since you don't get tested or licensed to be a parent, it's easy to feel this way about having children too: when this one or that one has a kid, they'll grow up and mature. It happens for some people, but typically, people who are ill-equipped to have children to begin with slip into old ways once that emotional rush of parenthood in the hospital is over.

On the other hand, I don't think parents who are organized enough to give children a healthy and loving environment deserve an award. That's part of the territory and it should be understood. We are happy that our child is developing well and has a home where he gets what he needs, but we don't need a pat on the back for that.

Seeing our son develop from an infant into near toddler age over nine months has been a treat. Some aspects of parenting will get tougher in the months ahead, others will get easier. But being able to look back and say, at the very least, we've been good parents and can continue to be good parents, is rewarding in and of itself.