Sometimes I just want to make a quick lunch, so I heat up a can of chili. I do try to be conscientious about such things as GMOs and the big multinational monsters. For a long time I would buy Dennison. I since discovered that Dennisons is a ConAgra product so I had to switch. Lately I've been purchasing Staggs chili. I decided to look them up on Google and discovered they are a Hormel product, the same as Spam. That's not so bad but Hormel was one of the major contributors to the effort that defeated Proposition 37 on the recent California ballot.

Mark Twain visited the Versailles in 1867 and marveled at it's extent and craftsmanship in construction and maintenance. One point that struck me is the relationship between the workers and the high borne that had it built:

As American society creeps closer and closer to feudalism, we've just had a very narrow escape, I continue to retreat into the works of Mark Twain for solace. I'm currently converting my recordings from reading The Innocents Abroad into mp3s to be compiled into audiobooks. A recurrent theme throughout The Innocents Abroad is Twain's criticism of "The Old Masters". The works of these fellows are a significant part of what we today recognize from feudal societies. They portray the "1%ers" from those times. What we rarely see are the lives of the rest of the populations.