Maggie's Farm

It's common for humans to personalize things that don't have anything to do with us in particular. For instance, many people looked at today's news and espied a massacre at the Radisson Hotel in Mali. It was perpetrated by Al Qaeda, or Alcoa, or Al Kaline, or Boko Loko, or Procul Harem, or whatever those pesky Mohammedans are printing on their bowling shirts these days. Some observers immediately wondered what it meant to them.

Be honest. It's possible your first reaction to seeing the mayhem in Mali was, "I've been in worse Radissons than that! That one in Naperville didn't even have USA Todays in the lobby, and I couldn't tell the difference between the continental breakfast and the wet nap." That's hardly commendable, but it's understandable. It's no less sensible than rending your garments over it before changing the channel to The True Game of Downton Boardwalk Thrones. Bad things happen all day, every day. You're not the king of the world, as far as I know.

Tragedy is when I stub my toe; comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die. It's not as heartless as it sounds. Our reactions to the things we encounter in the news must be tempered by proportionality. We are all charged to look after our selves, our family, our friends, our community, our country, and then mankind -- in that order. Making gigantic, pointless, histrionic demonstrations of how much you care about people so far away they might as well be an abstraction isn't of any use to anyone. I've also noticed that people that make a big deal out of loving humanity in general usually leave a 5 percent tip after a four-hour meal, then go home and beat their wives. Or start the Soviet Union. Talk is cheap.

The level of moral preening abroad in the land grows daily. College students are demanding that Woodrow Wilson get airbrushed out of their textbooks to signal they're ready for three minutes hate. That way they can accuse anyone who stops after two minutes of being a kulak reactionary Goldstein fan.

It puts me in mind of King Charles II. After he was restored to the British throne, he dug up the corpse of Oliver Cromwell, the man who had beheaded his father, and had Cromwell's festering corpse drawn, hung, and beheaded. His father must have looked down from heaven, or more likely up from the other place, and thought to himself, "That's swell and all, but it would have been handier nine years ago."

On to the news:

Pope Francis calls Christmas a ‘charade’ as the ‘world continues to wage war’

Pope Francis said Thursday in a sermon that Christmas this year will be a “charade” because the “world continues to wage war” and “we do not understand peace." “Today, Jesus weeps as well because we have chosen the way of war, the way of hatred, the way of enmities. We are close to Christmas. There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes — all decked out — while the world continues to wage war,” he said during Mass at the chapel of the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican.

Christ, bring back the Borgias. What an invertebrate sits on that chair now.

Baltic Dry Index Falls Below 500 for First Time Ever

Slower coal and iron ore demand from China – the world’s biggest industrial importer – have battered the dry bulk sector, already in the midst of its worst ever downturns that is expected to extend well into next year.This week the Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index , which tracks rates for ships carrying dry bulk commodities and seen by investors as a forward-looking indicator of global industrial activity, plunged to an all-time low.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. The Baltic is no big deal. Put all your hotels on Mediterranean.

The Original Container Ships

By the late 1500s, fleets of Manila galleons had helped Spain lock down lucrative trade routes between its Pacific colonies. Latin American silver mines—some of the richest and most productive in the world—provided Spain with wealth, and its Philippine colony of Manila gave ready access to valuable Asian markets. The fleet traded silver and gold for silk, spices, jewelry, and porcelain. By making just one or two trips a year, Spain tightly controlled supply, ensuring that the highly sought-after luxury goods turned a handy profit.

By ignoring everything but precious metals, Spain ended up with runaway inflation. Digging metal out of the ground to increase the money supply is no different than printing greenbacks.

In America's Little Syria, a divide on accepting refugees

A few days ago, a pastor asked Syrian-born restaurant owner Marie Jarrah to donate food to a welcoming event for recently arrived Syrian refugees. Jarrah, who said she regularly helps people in need, declined. Like many of Allentown's establishment Syrians, she doesn't think it's a good idea to bring refugees to the city. She clung to that view even before last week's terrorist attacks in Paris. "Problems are going to happen," said Jarrah, co-owner of Damascus Restaurant in a heavily Syrian enclave.

Unlike all the little SJW twerps going to Ivy League, I have known lots of real, live Syrians. They're Christian. They came here years ago to get away from the murderous psychos you're inviting over now. But keep on caring deeply about Syrians to earn a sanctimony merit badge on your diploma, kids.

Scientist claims to have detected a parallel universe

Dr. Ranga-Ram Chary believes he may have found evidence that parallel universes have been bumping up against ours, like bubbles floating in a foam, and that these bumps have caused "bruises" that can be observed, reports New Scientist. Chary looked for signs of these cosmic bumps in the Planck map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a map of the radiation leftover from the first few moments of our forming universe. It's a map that would look the same no matter where you're viewing it from in the universe; a blueprint, if you will, of the structure of the cosmos.

I used to live in a parallel universe where scientists could produce results twice in a row before they'd claim they'd outdone Newton.

Why young American women are joining ISIS

An estimated 4,500 Westerners have ditched home for the Islamic State or other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria or Iraq. Researchers at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., collected data on 474 of these cases. They found in news reports an unprecedented number of radicalized women sneaking across borders.“They often appear to be typical teenagers,” said Brigitte Lebans Nacos, a political science professor at Columbia University who studies terrorism. “They ask about hair dryers. They’re looking for romance. They’re fans of ISIS, like others are fans of pop stars.”

I'm often surprised by what surprises people. Chicks dug Rudolph Valentino, too -- until he opened his mouth.

LivingSocial Offers a Cautionary Tale to Today’s Unicorns

Today, LivingSocial is more unicorpse than unicorn. The company never filed for an initial public offering and consumer fervor for daily deals has cooled. T. Rowe Price has written down its stake in LivingSocial to nearly zero, data from Morningstar shows. The company’s work force has shrunk to around 800 employees from 4,500 at its peak in 2011. (Groupon, which did go public, is trading at more than 85 percent below its I.P.O. price.)

The iPhone economy is 99 percent Ponzi. A half dozen companies make money, everybody else borrows over and over again to cover their losses. LivingSocial lost $1.4 billion in 4 years. They simply convinced investors that the electronic equivalent of a flyer that falls out of the newspaper was General Motors.

The Man Who Went From Harvard to Goldman to Colombian Jail

Isaza Tuzman spent more than four years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., working in emerging markets arbitrage. In 1998, while still at the bank, he co-founded govWorks.com, a website that promised to link people to local municipalities. In the 2001 documentary “Startup.com,” he could be seen pitching venture capitalists and chatting with Bill Clinton at a summit about the Internet.

It's like the sun rising in the east, isn't it? If a Clinton offers to go halfsies on a gold mine, they'll get the gold, you'll get the shaft.

In a remote corner of Romania, neighbours kill each other over tiny strips of land.

When Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship was brought to a violent end in the revolution of 1989, demand surged for restitution of the lands that had been collectivised during the years of communism. More than 1.5m Romanian farmers started court cases against their neighbours for land claims in the 1990s. Those who had been using the land during communism thought they had as good a claim to it as the descendants of those who had owned it before. Many of the descendants had moved away and were now in the cities. How did they have more of a right to land than those who had been working it for decades? Corruption and complexity swamped the process. Village land commissions, run by the mayors and deputy mayors, became the means of rewarding friends and punishing rivals.

Would you like to find out more? Vote Sanders!

Man called Phuc Dat Bich posts passport to Facebook after being repeatedly banned from site

Phuc Dat Bich, 23, told Facebook followers he finds it “highly irritating” that “nobody seems to believe me when I say that my full legal name is how you see it”.
The photo of his old passport clearly displays the name – whose correct pronunciation is approximately “Phoo Da Bic” – and has been shared tens of thousands of times. “I’ve been accused of using a false and misleading name, which I find very offensive,” wrote the Bank of Australia worker.

My aunt, Carlotta Tendant, feels your pain, dude.

Maggie's Farm readers are our friends. We care about our friends. Stay out of the Radisson!