Thoughts On A Sunday

Summer weather is still with us even if most of the summer folk are gone until next year and many of those that cater to their needs have closed and shuttered their businesses until next May.

A few are still open, mostly on weekends, having just enough customers to keep them going until foliage season ends, sometime around Columbus Day. Then the last of the summer businesses will also shut down until next year.

Today BeezleBub and headed out on to the lake rather late in the day, about 6PM. At the height of summer there'd be plenty of sunlight left, but this time in September the sun hangs just above the horizon. There were still a number of boaters out on the lake with us, but nothing like we'd usually see. Whether that's because summer is 'over' or because the NASCAR folks have gathered this weekend just south of us for the Nextel Cup Sylvania 300 won't be evident until next weekend. If the traffic level on the lake is the same as this weekend , we'll know it's because the summer folk have abandoned the Lakes Region until next summer.

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In case you haven't noticed, Jay and Deb of Accidental Verbosity have switched their blogging efforts over to their new blog, Dispatches from Blogblivion.

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For those of you out there that happen to be fans of ABC's Lost, here's a link to information about what the sequence of numbers means as well as what the Hanso Foundation's Dharma Initiative is all about.

Scary. And all too cool.

Other interesting links about Hanso and Lost can be found here.

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Individ has an interesting piece on uranium, the latest upsurge in demand, and how it might not be such a bad idea to buy uranium stocks.

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It turns out that George Will wasn't the first one to editorialize about why liberals – and academics – hate WalMart.

Thomas Sowell wrote back in May of 2005 in Capitalism Magazine about The Crusade Against WalMart, citing a long article in the New York Times that asked if the retailer could pay its employees more.

Sowell's response:

Of course they can pay more. The New York Times could pay its own employees more. We could all pay more for whatever we buy or rent. Don't tell me you couldn't have paid a dime more for this newspaper. But why should any of us pay more than we have to?

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Should people be paid according to what they "need" instead of according to what their work is worth? Should they decide how big a family they want and then put the cost of paying to support that family on somebody else?

If their work is not worth enough to pay for what they want, is it up to others to make up the difference, rather than up to them to upgrade their skills in order to earn what they want?

Are they supposed to be subsidized by Wal-Mart's customers through higher prices or subsidized by Wal-Mart's stockholders through lower earnings? After all, much of the stock in even a rich company is often owned by pension funds belonging to teachers, policemen and others who are far from rich.

This is something the anti-WalMart folks seem to forget.

(H/T Individ)

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Omar at Iraq The Model asks “[W]hat part of France's policy had lead to this, and what made al-Qaeda consider France an enemy that must be fought and brought into submission?”

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Have temporary restraining orders become too easy to obtain? While the original idea behind them is a reasonable one, now they have become ridiculous. Is it merely the extension of the ever expanding litigious nature of America, or is something else driving it?

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BeezleBub and I got some of our outside pre-Fall domestic chores taken care of today. All it required was a paint scraper, a gallon of Behr deck stain, and a few paint brushes.

Both sets of front steps on The Manse now look pretty spiffy.

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The New England Patriots won their second game of the season, beating the New York Jets 24-17.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer weather still lingers for yet another day, foliage reports have started appearing on local TV, and where there are still plenty of boaters out enjoying the lake.