BOOK REPORT
As we’re trying to extricate ourselves from Iraq & Afqanistan, it’s a good time to review our debacle of Vietnam. WHY VIETNAM? By Archimedes Patti, our guy who headed up the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) there, is a good way to hear the Why.
It all began in 1858 when France invaded Vietnam, which was their colony until the end of World War II. Ho Ch Minh put together a kind of government called Viet Minh, based in the North of the country, while the South was kind of governed by Bao Dai , who was a Royal Puppet of the French.
Ho & Archimedes had a good relationship as WWII wound down, Ho even based his constitution on ours. He claimed to be a Socialist but we were convinced he was a war mongering Communist. In reality, Russia & China did not trust Ho’s politics and probably wouldn’t have supported him. They were granted complete independence in 1954, with the defeat of the French by Ho’s guys. The country was divided into North & South. We started supporting the South in their civil war against the North.
We kept escalating with the assurance of our military we could clean it all up shortly. Well,finally, about 1969, Nixon said the US would avoid situations like Vietnam by limiting economic & military aid. The American masses marched & complained and in 1970 our senate passed a law barring military operations in Cambodia & aid to South Vietnam without congressional approval.
In retrospect, it is sad to conclude that if we had let Vietnam become independant from France & us, they would have ended up with a government which they now have, and avoided the carnage of 50,000 of our young soldiers and uncounted Vietnamese casualties. One of our tenants from Atelier One moved to ‘Nam a few years ago and is very happy with his situation.
What were we thinking? Well, we better get busy & keep building more atomic super submarines & billion dollar supersonic fighter jets so we can ferret out the bad guys (Religious fanatics) from their caves.
But don’t get me started.
MY SUNBEAM UNIVERSE
Recently while sitting watching the sun rise with a steaming cup of espresso in our small cabin near the top of Donner Pass, a shaft of sunlight came near me and exposed thousands of micro things swirling & floating around me in the air. What I had perceived a few moments before as empty space in my living room was in reality a micro(or is it Macro?) universe of thousands of objects. Where there seemed to be no draft anywhere, eddies and streams of air swooshed around silently moving all these micro worlds in space, separated from each other by a million light years. When I moved, a swarm of intruders took flight and joined in the fracas. As soon as one would float off out of the light, it would become instantly invisible.
Don’t breath!, I shouldn’t have trimmed my nose hair the other day, as I needed a filter for all this matter.
PASSACAGLIA
I’ve been musically retarded in classical music most of this lifetime, except for a few areas like Dietrich Buxtehude, as I’ve had a vinyl of his organ music for decades. My daughter recently gave me a CD of his music which is becoming one of my favorites (Une alchimie musicale). He lived in the 1600's when real composers involved complex mathematics in their works. I had read from Gurdjieff that great artists always did something imperfect in a work as only God could create a perfect work of art (Except for humans, look at Gingrich). The following liner notes will clarify it for you:
“We may observe this by employing the numerlogical technique which consists in reducing a number superior to nine to another number between one and nine by adding the figure of the hundreds to that of the tens and that of the units (e.g. 121 reduced to 4 by the technique 1+2+1). Each of the four sections of the passacaglia is formed of thirty bars, always divided by a transitional bar (between the first and the second sections, then between the second and the third and finally between the third and the fourth), which gives us 120 bars + three transitional bars, making a grand total of 123 bars. If we reduce 123 (1+2+3) we obtain 6, and this is where our imperfection could reside. For if the composer had added a bar at the end (e.g. by means of a tonic pedal), we would have obtained a total of 124 bars, which reduces (1+2+4) to 7. And that total of 124 bars in triple time would have produced 372 beats, the reduction of which is 12 (3+7+2). Since 12 is the product of 3 and 4 and its reduction (1+2) equals 3, the result would have been too perfect!”
Well, of course. Anyone could see that. I wonder if Charlie Parker or Coltrane used that system?
Monday, December 26, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
BOOK REPORT
Demosclerosis by Jonathan Rauch
If you want to understand why our government seems to be ineffective, and not paying attention to us, you might want to read this book. I had a hard time finding it, as the library doesn’t carry it & it’s been out of print for a while. My only regret is I wish it had been updated since 1993 Clinton times, as there are some juicy charts and statistics in it. The big surprise here is that we have met the culprit, and he is us! The author describes how in the last 30 or 40 years we have gotten too much democracy, in the form of Special Interest Groups, or Lobbyists. Since about 1960, this has spawned a huge Parasite Economy, consisting of lawyers and others who represent all the thousands of special interests. Everyone (You & me. Aarp, AIA, etc) is a member of some group who spend millions wresting favors (Money) from our government. Our poor pols cannot make any decisions on their own, if they want to be re-elected (and they do). If a group wants them to pass a law, another group is there to thwart it. This became very evident recently when I heard Gov. Brown say he had to check with the legislators and the lobbyists regarding the possibility of a certain move. Check with the LOBBYISTS?
With such a system, old programs are almost impossible to eradicate after they are useful. As soon as a new president comes into office with the brilliant idea to eliminate obsolete programs, a hoard of lobbyists are activated to keep it. With so much money being tied up in these programs, there is no money to begin any new, useful programs.
Although Rauch, like any intelligent critic, suggests ways that we might be able to get out of this gridlock, it is a pretty weak argument. I, for one, believe it is an impossible dream (I have a Dream! An impossible Dream!).
Just this week, a prime example of the problem surfaced in an article about "An Expensive Lesson." Regarding student loans initiated by Pres. Johnson in 1965, who as part of his wonderful "Great Society" (During Vietnam?) Initiated a program to promote education. Johnson pledged an amount that seems trivial now, $1.9 million to states who could leverage it up ten times to back student loans up to $1,000 for 25,000 students. They even said something about Technical Schools, which no one takes seriously.
Today, this has all metastasized into a huge, federally guaranteed loan industry.
Some students owe $300,000, and they still can’t get a job that they studied for. My ex-wife owes about $60,000 , as she has been a professional student for decades and now is too old to work. More than 10 million students took out loans last year. They may owe about 757 Billion and yet there is no method we have to cut back such a program. We can only augment it and suffer the consequences, or our children can suffer it. The pols have fiddled around with this default problem and claim that it won’t cost a us anything.
Yeah. And I’m going to get a good deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.
GOOD NEWS!
We’ve all heard that newspapers sell because they print bad news so I decided to put my scientific brain to the test. This morning I went through the paper and categorized each news item into Positive, Negative, or Neutral. The results were not staggering. Good News occurred seven times, Negative News was reported 37 times while Neutral was only two times. I didn’t consider the Sports pages as I am too biased and consider all sports News a Negative item.
MEDDLING WITH MY FOOD
America! The Land of More Than Plenty!
I am getting really tired of the plethera of choices we are having to make regarding our 2nd basic need , food (Wine is 1st). The beer section in my local Safeway is getting out of hand. When I was a kid, we had only about four beers to choose from (Pabst, Ace & a couple others) Of course, we only bought quarts of the stuff, as we were major consumers. Now look, every week I go there, I find an another brewery added to the twenty existing. Now that I don’t mind too much. After all, when I started making beer in 1975 it was against the law to make your own beer. I had to travel about 100 miles to a store to buy equipment and used a Canadian pamphlet for the recipes. (India Pale Ale). What upsets me is the potato chip section, about thirty feet long with every conceivable type of chip you can imagine. I only want plain but sometimes they don’t have that. I can’t buy Mother Goose anymore as the last time I only got Original, or as it turned out, reconstituted chips! Just when I discovered Safeway had a 70% chocolate bar for $2,50 made in Switzerland, they only had four kinds, each with a different herb or some other idiotic flavor. What’s wrong with plain, good 72% chocolate? That’s like using the Holy Grail to slurp up Bud Light.
I’M SORRY, THE PRESIDENT’S TOO BUSY........
To run the country. The president of the US wastes an enormous amount of time meeting with various groups, conferring honors , and all kinds of ceremonial functions. Every time there is a minor disaster he has to drop what he’s doing, appear on the scene, and say,"why yes, this looks like a disaster". Why can’t he send out the head of The Department of Disaster to check it out? No wonder presidents can’t get anything done as they promised in their campaign speeches. They all say it. "If elected, I will cut back government, cut old, non-productive programs"etc. Then when election time comes around, all bets are off. The Prez just forgets about his desk, gets on his planes and barnstorms around for about a year or more, when he will usually get re-elected (Remember, he has more money than God to spend at this point).
Recently, I read that in Britain, you could not campaign before two months before the election.
Do you think we could convince our politicians to change to that?
Demosclerosis by Jonathan Rauch
If you want to understand why our government seems to be ineffective, and not paying attention to us, you might want to read this book. I had a hard time finding it, as the library doesn’t carry it & it’s been out of print for a while. My only regret is I wish it had been updated since 1993 Clinton times, as there are some juicy charts and statistics in it. The big surprise here is that we have met the culprit, and he is us! The author describes how in the last 30 or 40 years we have gotten too much democracy, in the form of Special Interest Groups, or Lobbyists. Since about 1960, this has spawned a huge Parasite Economy, consisting of lawyers and others who represent all the thousands of special interests. Everyone (You & me. Aarp, AIA, etc) is a member of some group who spend millions wresting favors (Money) from our government. Our poor pols cannot make any decisions on their own, if they want to be re-elected (and they do). If a group wants them to pass a law, another group is there to thwart it. This became very evident recently when I heard Gov. Brown say he had to check with the legislators and the lobbyists regarding the possibility of a certain move. Check with the LOBBYISTS?
With such a system, old programs are almost impossible to eradicate after they are useful. As soon as a new president comes into office with the brilliant idea to eliminate obsolete programs, a hoard of lobbyists are activated to keep it. With so much money being tied up in these programs, there is no money to begin any new, useful programs.
Although Rauch, like any intelligent critic, suggests ways that we might be able to get out of this gridlock, it is a pretty weak argument. I, for one, believe it is an impossible dream (I have a Dream! An impossible Dream!).
Just this week, a prime example of the problem surfaced in an article about "An Expensive Lesson." Regarding student loans initiated by Pres. Johnson in 1965, who as part of his wonderful "Great Society" (During Vietnam?) Initiated a program to promote education. Johnson pledged an amount that seems trivial now, $1.9 million to states who could leverage it up ten times to back student loans up to $1,000 for 25,000 students. They even said something about Technical Schools, which no one takes seriously.
Today, this has all metastasized into a huge, federally guaranteed loan industry.
Some students owe $300,000, and they still can’t get a job that they studied for. My ex-wife owes about $60,000 , as she has been a professional student for decades and now is too old to work. More than 10 million students took out loans last year. They may owe about 757 Billion and yet there is no method we have to cut back such a program. We can only augment it and suffer the consequences, or our children can suffer it. The pols have fiddled around with this default problem and claim that it won’t cost a us anything.
Yeah. And I’m going to get a good deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.
GOOD NEWS!
We’ve all heard that newspapers sell because they print bad news so I decided to put my scientific brain to the test. This morning I went through the paper and categorized each news item into Positive, Negative, or Neutral. The results were not staggering. Good News occurred seven times, Negative News was reported 37 times while Neutral was only two times. I didn’t consider the Sports pages as I am too biased and consider all sports News a Negative item.
MEDDLING WITH MY FOOD
America! The Land of More Than Plenty!
I am getting really tired of the plethera of choices we are having to make regarding our 2nd basic need , food (Wine is 1st). The beer section in my local Safeway is getting out of hand. When I was a kid, we had only about four beers to choose from (Pabst, Ace & a couple others) Of course, we only bought quarts of the stuff, as we were major consumers. Now look, every week I go there, I find an another brewery added to the twenty existing. Now that I don’t mind too much. After all, when I started making beer in 1975 it was against the law to make your own beer. I had to travel about 100 miles to a store to buy equipment and used a Canadian pamphlet for the recipes. (India Pale Ale). What upsets me is the potato chip section, about thirty feet long with every conceivable type of chip you can imagine. I only want plain but sometimes they don’t have that. I can’t buy Mother Goose anymore as the last time I only got Original, or as it turned out, reconstituted chips! Just when I discovered Safeway had a 70% chocolate bar for $2,50 made in Switzerland, they only had four kinds, each with a different herb or some other idiotic flavor. What’s wrong with plain, good 72% chocolate? That’s like using the Holy Grail to slurp up Bud Light.
I’M SORRY, THE PRESIDENT’S TOO BUSY........
To run the country. The president of the US wastes an enormous amount of time meeting with various groups, conferring honors , and all kinds of ceremonial functions. Every time there is a minor disaster he has to drop what he’s doing, appear on the scene, and say,"why yes, this looks like a disaster". Why can’t he send out the head of The Department of Disaster to check it out? No wonder presidents can’t get anything done as they promised in their campaign speeches. They all say it. "If elected, I will cut back government, cut old, non-productive programs"etc. Then when election time comes around, all bets are off. The Prez just forgets about his desk, gets on his planes and barnstorms around for about a year or more, when he will usually get re-elected (Remember, he has more money than God to spend at this point).
Recently, I read that in Britain, you could not campaign before two months before the election.
Do you think we could convince our politicians to change to that?
Thursday, October 20, 2011
ACOUSTIC BRIGANDS
How did we get to this place where we are held hostage by packs of morons who believe they are really cool because they can drive around on a two wheel bi-cycle with a 300 hp engine that has no, I mean zero, muffler suppression, so they can intimidate and encroach on peaceful citizens with their ear splitting, gut wrenching, pain threshold noises that can be heard hundreds of feet around their perimeter as they move thru space. These are sometimes normal appearing people when they are not riding around thwapping their engines in all ways to make sure they are extruding the maximum decibels for what purpose, I cannot comprehend.
There is probably no way for us to squelch this behavior as can you imagine the strong political lobby they all have in our capitals?
GLOBAL COOLING
We’ve all been so taken up with the burning question of the hour about global warming a few degrees we’ve forgotten that the real threat to us is the fact that the earth is moving towards another Ice Age. Which begs the next question of the hour, When will Earth become uninhabitable for the human species? First of all we must be able to survive the next Ice Age in about 10,000 years, which will last for several thousand years and will leave only a small band of non-glaciated area around the equator. Well, I always wanted to live in the Bahamas.
Speaking of which, I keep getting flyers on my FAX about Luxury Vacations to those places in the Carribean that are truly unbelievable deals. Look, at this one! 8 days, 7 nites in a San Juan , Puerto Rico condo vacation for only $149.98!!! Now that’s only $18.75 a day!! How can they do that? Who can not afford to do that in these trying times? But wait. There’s a small note in parenthesis that says (companion airfare). Does that mean anything? Anyway, Call now as offer expires in a day. But don’t worry, you’ll get another offer next week as my FAX paper is free to them.
I suppose those damn cockroaches will outlive humans by a couple of Ice Ages.
BOOK REPORT
Here’s another intelligent person I know nothing about. Jeeze, where have I been? I came across Noam Chomskys’ “The Prosperous Few & the Restless Many” and have noted down a few of his peregrinations.
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this & that - is astonishing. These numbers aren’t duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You’d have to go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.
But wait, there’s more! Just a few years ago there was a study about our thoughts on evolution. Only 9% believed in Darwinian evolution (not that much above a statistical error). About half the population believed in divinely-guided evolution, Catholic church doctrine. About 40% thought the world was created a few thousand years ago.
Again, you’d have to go back to pre-industrial peasant societies, before you get numbers like that.
I also got a few nuggets from reading Walter Cronkite’s bio, although I have never seen him on TV. These are pretty relevant during our current year long campaign trail.
Those who get their news from TV probably are not getting enough information to intelligently exercise their voting franchise in a democratic system. Can a potential voter take a campaign seriously after he has been escorted by television backstage to be shown how the managers transform their candidates into actors?
Sound- bite journalism simply isn’t good enough to serve the people in our national elections. Back in ‘92 the average bloc of uninterrupted speech by a presidential candidate was 8.2 seconds. No meaningful explanation of issues is possible in that short outburst. Since nothing of any significance is going to be said in seven seconds, this does work to the advantage of many politicians. They are not required to say anything of any significance, and issues can be avoided rather than confrontational.
Me? I get my news from The Daily Show & Colbert Report. Every once in a great while I pull up a news station to verify it’s stupidity before returning to Jon Stewart.
Don’t forget, I’m from the era where we got our news once a week in the movie theater where the Pathe News showed nothing but actual news footage (black & white) with a narrator telling us about it. “Here comes the Hindenberg.....”.
TALIBAN RULES
Rules of work for Hospitals & clinics that are based on Islamic Sharia principles. These are so ludicrous that it could make you laugh if you didn’t know that Taliban Fundamentalists believe it’s all very serious.
1. Female patients should go to female physicians. In case a male physician is needed, the female patient should be accompanied by her close relative.
2. During examination, the female patients and male physicians both should both should be dressed with Islamic hijab (veil).
3. Male physicians should not touch or see the other parts of female patients except for the affected part. (No hanky panky here!)
4. Waiting room for female patients should be safely covered. (Safely?)
5. During night duty, in rooms of female patients, the male doctor is not allowed to enter the room unless the patient calls him.
6. Sitting & speaking between male & female doctors are not allowed, if there is need for discussion, it should be done in hijab. (Quick, get me a hijab, this girl is dying!)
7. Female doctors should wear simple clothes, no use of cosmetics or make-up.
(Of course, the male doctor has to wear a black turban & full beard)
8. Female doctors & nurses are not allowed to enter rooms where male patients are.
9. Hospital staff should pray in mosques on time. (Five times a day? Here, hold this scalpel, I’ll be back in a few)
10. The Religious Police are allowed to go for control at any time and no one can prevent them.
11. Anyone who violates this order will be punished as per Islamic regulations.
(Like being stoned to death?)
There is probably no way for us to squelch this behavior as can you imagine the strong political lobby they all have in our capitals?
GLOBAL COOLING
We’ve all been so taken up with the burning question of the hour about global warming a few degrees we’ve forgotten that the real threat to us is the fact that the earth is moving towards another Ice Age. Which begs the next question of the hour, When will Earth become uninhabitable for the human species? First of all we must be able to survive the next Ice Age in about 10,000 years, which will last for several thousand years and will leave only a small band of non-glaciated area around the equator. Well, I always wanted to live in the Bahamas.
Speaking of which, I keep getting flyers on my FAX about Luxury Vacations to those places in the Carribean that are truly unbelievable deals. Look, at this one! 8 days, 7 nites in a San Juan , Puerto Rico condo vacation for only $149.98!!! Now that’s only $18.75 a day!! How can they do that? Who can not afford to do that in these trying times? But wait. There’s a small note in parenthesis that says (companion airfare). Does that mean anything? Anyway, Call now as offer expires in a day. But don’t worry, you’ll get another offer next week as my FAX paper is free to them.
I suppose those damn cockroaches will outlive humans by a couple of Ice Ages.
BOOK REPORT
Here’s another intelligent person I know nothing about. Jeeze, where have I been? I came across Noam Chomskys’ “The Prosperous Few & the Restless Many” and have noted down a few of his peregrinations.
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this & that - is astonishing. These numbers aren’t duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You’d have to go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.
But wait, there’s more! Just a few years ago there was a study about our thoughts on evolution. Only 9% believed in Darwinian evolution (not that much above a statistical error). About half the population believed in divinely-guided evolution, Catholic church doctrine. About 40% thought the world was created a few thousand years ago.
Again, you’d have to go back to pre-industrial peasant societies, before you get numbers like that.
I also got a few nuggets from reading Walter Cronkite’s bio, although I have never seen him on TV. These are pretty relevant during our current year long campaign trail.
Those who get their news from TV probably are not getting enough information to intelligently exercise their voting franchise in a democratic system. Can a potential voter take a campaign seriously after he has been escorted by television backstage to be shown how the managers transform their candidates into actors?
Sound- bite journalism simply isn’t good enough to serve the people in our national elections. Back in ‘92 the average bloc of uninterrupted speech by a presidential candidate was 8.2 seconds. No meaningful explanation of issues is possible in that short outburst. Since nothing of any significance is going to be said in seven seconds, this does work to the advantage of many politicians. They are not required to say anything of any significance, and issues can be avoided rather than confrontational.
Me? I get my news from The Daily Show & Colbert Report. Every once in a great while I pull up a news station to verify it’s stupidity before returning to Jon Stewart.
Don’t forget, I’m from the era where we got our news once a week in the movie theater where the Pathe News showed nothing but actual news footage (black & white) with a narrator telling us about it. “Here comes the Hindenberg.....”.
TALIBAN RULES
Rules of work for Hospitals & clinics that are based on Islamic Sharia principles. These are so ludicrous that it could make you laugh if you didn’t know that Taliban Fundamentalists believe it’s all very serious.
1. Female patients should go to female physicians. In case a male physician is needed, the female patient should be accompanied by her close relative.
2. During examination, the female patients and male physicians both should both should be dressed with Islamic hijab (veil).
3. Male physicians should not touch or see the other parts of female patients except for the affected part. (No hanky panky here!)
4. Waiting room for female patients should be safely covered. (Safely?)
5. During night duty, in rooms of female patients, the male doctor is not allowed to enter the room unless the patient calls him.
6. Sitting & speaking between male & female doctors are not allowed, if there is need for discussion, it should be done in hijab. (Quick, get me a hijab, this girl is dying!)
7. Female doctors should wear simple clothes, no use of cosmetics or make-up.
(Of course, the male doctor has to wear a black turban & full beard)
8. Female doctors & nurses are not allowed to enter rooms where male patients are.
9. Hospital staff should pray in mosques on time. (Five times a day? Here, hold this scalpel, I’ll be back in a few)
10. The Religious Police are allowed to go for control at any time and no one can prevent them.
11. Anyone who violates this order will be punished as per Islamic regulations.
(Like being stoned to death?)
Monday, September 12, 2011
DANCING WITH GHOSTS
9/11 DECADE OR “WE’LL SHOW ‘EM HOW TO BE IRRATIONAL!”
Freedom Tower! Ground Zero! Sacred ground. Hallowed ground. Patriot Act! Here we are on the tenth anniversary of the second attack on American soil in 50 years (Remember Pearl Harbor?). But it was a totally different kind of war, this time. A small group of religious fanatics (Muslim) were able to attack the biggest icon of America, incredibly only killing 3000 mem, women & children. Not only did they bring down the two tallest buildings in New York, a nearby 47 story building also totally collapsed, and maybe we don’t even know why. How did the other 40,000 workers escape the holocaust? The Masterminds, who sent these poor suicidal bastards to their deaths (and Paradise of unlimited sex for the rest of creation), could not have dreamed that their work would have such an impact on the American public.
Reacting without thinking, we immediately formed the third largest government agency (Patriot Act), went to war with a country that was not involved with the attack (Iraq) and involved our country in another civil war (Afganistan). Our military advisers, who were still ordering nuclear submarines & aircraft carriers, seemed to be unaware that we the cold war with communism was over 20 years ago, and it was no fun ordering very small groups of Seals around when they had some really big hardware that they kept ordering for their friends in the arms industry. But don’t get me started.
My rant here is about the attitude that the costs be damned, we must fight back by throwing our money around in a totally irresponsible and reckless manner that will be a heavy burden on the workers who will be commuting to the site for the next few decades (the increased fees on bridges & tunnels). Take the most important building, “Freedom Tower” or now called 1 WTC. This is supposed to be the tallest building in US, but only due to the 800 foot narwhale spear on top of it. High rise buildings are generally rated by the top occupied floor, not any spire. And they had to get it up to 1776', is that hokey or what? And why is this the most expensive building? First of all they placed it right next to a major highway, full of terrorists driving 737's around to crash into it with a bomb. So they made the first 65 feet a blast wall of steel & concrete, no rentable space here, with a glass skin of super super fragilistic tempered glass for what reason, to hold back a 737? One of the more important designers on the project was a security “expert” who decreed anti terrorist elements, no matter what the costs were. 3.3 billion dollars.
After wrangling for ten years, 19 public agencies, 2 developers, 33 architects, ended up with a melange of 5 skyscrapers, set in a crescent, which could give some protection to Freedom Tower from an aircraft attack, leaving the original site a memorial park, no matter what the cost. We’ll just buy up the surrounding properties to build the replacement buildings, for a total cost of 11 billion dollars. Of course, you must have a frivolous metro station by Calatrava, already over budget by $1 billion, his trademark, emulating a Brobdingnagian spiney mollusk.
I wasn’t ready for “Flag Day” on 9/11, why don’t we just make Labor Day (An obsolete Holiday) into “Ground Zero” Day? Worse than that, I saw our real heroes, professional footballers, all wearing little bumper sticker ribbons on their uniforms, after, of course, “Amazing Grace” was played for the thousandths tear jerking time. I can understand the terrible loss for the families of all the victims of this new type of warfare, but the rest of the country didn’t know these people, yet we act like “we are family”. Look at the idotic outpouring when the royal Diana got killed eluding papparotsi with a rich lover. I didn’t know her.
We might as well get used to these attacks by simple Muslim youths for the rest of our lives, as they are building new suicide bombers Dailey in their madrassa (schools) throughout the world.
Me? I don’t support the idea of any religion.
Freedom Tower! Ground Zero! Sacred ground. Hallowed ground. Patriot Act! Here we are on the tenth anniversary of the second attack on American soil in 50 years (Remember Pearl Harbor?). But it was a totally different kind of war, this time. A small group of religious fanatics (Muslim) were able to attack the biggest icon of America, incredibly only killing 3000 mem, women & children. Not only did they bring down the two tallest buildings in New York, a nearby 47 story building also totally collapsed, and maybe we don’t even know why. How did the other 40,000 workers escape the holocaust? The Masterminds, who sent these poor suicidal bastards to their deaths (and Paradise of unlimited sex for the rest of creation), could not have dreamed that their work would have such an impact on the American public.
Reacting without thinking, we immediately formed the third largest government agency (Patriot Act), went to war with a country that was not involved with the attack (Iraq) and involved our country in another civil war (Afganistan). Our military advisers, who were still ordering nuclear submarines & aircraft carriers, seemed to be unaware that we the cold war with communism was over 20 years ago, and it was no fun ordering very small groups of Seals around when they had some really big hardware that they kept ordering for their friends in the arms industry. But don’t get me started.
My rant here is about the attitude that the costs be damned, we must fight back by throwing our money around in a totally irresponsible and reckless manner that will be a heavy burden on the workers who will be commuting to the site for the next few decades (the increased fees on bridges & tunnels). Take the most important building, “Freedom Tower” or now called 1 WTC. This is supposed to be the tallest building in US, but only due to the 800 foot narwhale spear on top of it. High rise buildings are generally rated by the top occupied floor, not any spire. And they had to get it up to 1776', is that hokey or what? And why is this the most expensive building? First of all they placed it right next to a major highway, full of terrorists driving 737's around to crash into it with a bomb. So they made the first 65 feet a blast wall of steel & concrete, no rentable space here, with a glass skin of super super fragilistic tempered glass for what reason, to hold back a 737? One of the more important designers on the project was a security “expert” who decreed anti terrorist elements, no matter what the costs were. 3.3 billion dollars.
After wrangling for ten years, 19 public agencies, 2 developers, 33 architects, ended up with a melange of 5 skyscrapers, set in a crescent, which could give some protection to Freedom Tower from an aircraft attack, leaving the original site a memorial park, no matter what the cost. We’ll just buy up the surrounding properties to build the replacement buildings, for a total cost of 11 billion dollars. Of course, you must have a frivolous metro station by Calatrava, already over budget by $1 billion, his trademark, emulating a Brobdingnagian spiney mollusk.
I wasn’t ready for “Flag Day” on 9/11, why don’t we just make Labor Day (An obsolete Holiday) into “Ground Zero” Day? Worse than that, I saw our real heroes, professional footballers, all wearing little bumper sticker ribbons on their uniforms, after, of course, “Amazing Grace” was played for the thousandths tear jerking time. I can understand the terrible loss for the families of all the victims of this new type of warfare, but the rest of the country didn’t know these people, yet we act like “we are family”. Look at the idotic outpouring when the royal Diana got killed eluding papparotsi with a rich lover. I didn’t know her.
We might as well get used to these attacks by simple Muslim youths for the rest of our lives, as they are building new suicide bombers Dailey in their madrassa (schools) throughout the world.
Me? I don’t support the idea of any religion.
Friday, September 09, 2011
THIS IS GOVERNMENT?
BOOK REVIEW - A RATIONAL STUDY OF WHY OUR GOVERNMENT IS NON-FUNTIONAL
THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM By Fareed Zakaria
Why are US citizens disenchanted with our political system? Why has engagement in Public & Civic affairs declined 40% since the mid ‘60's? Attitudes toward our government shifted from positive to negative during the three decades of extraordinary growth & social stability. Something has gone wrong with American Democracy. Strangly, Zakaria believes there has been one big change - The Democritization of Politics. Sounds crazy, eh? We have opened ourselves up to greater public contact & influence in an effort to become more democratic. Organized groups - Special Interests - now run Washington. It’s not that politicos are unwilling to hear our pleas. It is that they do scarcely anything but listen to the American People. Public opinion is too important for them - lobbyists, activists, consultants, pols use this info for the basis of their actions. As the pandering has gone up, the public attitude toward pols has gone down.
Meanwhile, some of our major institutions are distinctly Undemocratic - For instance our Court Systems - power by unelected judges (for life!). Political parties - Candidates & platforms are chosen by party hierarchies. But his was done internally before going to the public. Representatives & senators met in committees to trade, barter & compromise. The legislature is the best indirect democracy. We choose who will legislate for us. They do not write or pass bills. James Madison didn’t regard America as a democracy. Democracies are governed directly, thru popular assemblies, (like ancient Greece). He said the better term is a republic, where citizens delegate the task of governing to it’s representatives.
Edmond Burke (English) said “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement : and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion”. And Sen. Bradley said “If a politician adopted a policy without regard for it’s popularity, he is considered not brave, but stupid”. Most politicians that have left said our political system is out of control. But most voted for the changes that turned American politics into the hyper-responsive, poll - driven system, it has become. Under the banner of Democracy, “Good intentions have gone haywire”.
About 1970, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Watergate, Urban Violence were the challenges of our government. We had to “fix it”. In America, that meant democritizating. It was too closed & heirarchigal, we had to move power out of the hands of the leadership into the entire body of the members. They had to be more accountable & with greater scrutiny. Thirty years later, almost all agree it made matters worse. “Campaign finance laws, Independent Council statutes, nothing turned out the way it was supposed to” (Biden).
The House of Representatives ,1972, democritized the method of choosing committee chairs by party elections instead of seniority. The number of subcommittees expanded 50%, allowing unlimited numbers of new bills & amendments, from any member of the house. To do this, staffs grew by individual members, not committee chairs. From an institution dominated by 20 + powerful leaders, congress evolved into a collection of 535 independent political entrepreneurs, their own interests uppermost , e.i., to get re-elected.
With our open committee meetings & recorded votes, now each member has to vote publicly on every amendment. The purpose of these changes was to make congress more open & responsive. And it has - to Money, Lobbyists & Special Interests.
These activists ensure that the groups they represent are well taken care of in the federal budget & legal code. Well organized interest groups, no matter how small, - can ensure that government bends to their will. Reforms designed to produce majority rule have produced minority rule. “It isn’t that these groups don’t have a legitimate interest but they distort the process by wrangling over the smallest issues, leaving congress paralyzed & the public disgusted” (Sen. Bumpers).
As our government has become larger & more open, lobbyists have become Washington’s largest growth industry. In the mid ‘50's, there were 5,000 registered lobbyists, 10,000 in the ‘70's, 20,000 in the ‘90's. In 1979 there were 117 health groups in D.C., by ‘93 the number was seven times that. The rise of interest groups has made our government totally dysfunctional. D.C. is unable to trim, let alone eliminate - nearly any government program, no matter how obviously obsolete. Spending real money on new problems or opportunities in the U.S. has become close to impossible.
The industries, problems & opportunities of the future do not have lobbies ; Those of the past do. When government seems unable to apply reason or logic to it’s priorities & spending, people lose faith in it’s ability to solve new problems. We have evolved into a self-organizing structure 20% under control of politicians & voters and 80% under control of countless thousands of client groups. Any serious attempt at change produces instant well-organized opposition from the small minority who are hurt by it & these are the minority who really run Washington.
James Madison in his famous Federalist Paper 51, placed his faith in the size & complexity of America. Small factions wouldn’t be able to have their way because other factions (outnumbering them) would thwart them (He was wrong).
Take Cuba for instance - Obvious to most Americans, 30 years after the cold war, they realize Cuban Communism no longer possess even the remotest geopolitical threat to us. However, Anti-Castro Cuban Americans have controlled the issue because they live in two electorally significant states, (Florida & New Jersey). Thus a handful of Americans have been able to dictate American Foreign policy for decades.
Here’s something surprising - political parties do not really exist in America anymore. They have become so open and decentralized that nobody controls them. The party is , at most, a fund-raising vehicle for a telegenic candidate (Looks good on TV). The bullet that killed the American political party was the primary election. Choosing a candidate was the most important decision a party organization made.
Campaign finance reform has suffered the same problems. Now a candidate must spend and entire year before the election wooing “Masters of the Rolex” to find enough galas & breakfasts to get enough cash for a campaign.
The growth of referendums is another aspect of the disease. In 1960, there were 88 issues, by 2000, it had risen to 204. As a result, 85% of our California state budget is outside of the legislature or governor’s control. I guess that could be called “Government by the people”. But then, if that’s the case, why do we need a legislature?
One of the biggest problems Zakaria sees, is there is probably no way to get out of this mess. I’m afraid I agree with him on that score.
THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM By Fareed Zakaria
Why are US citizens disenchanted with our political system? Why has engagement in Public & Civic affairs declined 40% since the mid ‘60's? Attitudes toward our government shifted from positive to negative during the three decades of extraordinary growth & social stability. Something has gone wrong with American Democracy. Strangly, Zakaria believes there has been one big change - The Democritization of Politics. Sounds crazy, eh? We have opened ourselves up to greater public contact & influence in an effort to become more democratic. Organized groups - Special Interests - now run Washington. It’s not that politicos are unwilling to hear our pleas. It is that they do scarcely anything but listen to the American People. Public opinion is too important for them - lobbyists, activists, consultants, pols use this info for the basis of their actions. As the pandering has gone up, the public attitude toward pols has gone down.
Meanwhile, some of our major institutions are distinctly Undemocratic - For instance our Court Systems - power by unelected judges (for life!). Political parties - Candidates & platforms are chosen by party hierarchies. But his was done internally before going to the public. Representatives & senators met in committees to trade, barter & compromise. The legislature is the best indirect democracy. We choose who will legislate for us. They do not write or pass bills. James Madison didn’t regard America as a democracy. Democracies are governed directly, thru popular assemblies, (like ancient Greece). He said the better term is a republic, where citizens delegate the task of governing to it’s representatives.
Edmond Burke (English) said “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement : and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion”. And Sen. Bradley said “If a politician adopted a policy without regard for it’s popularity, he is considered not brave, but stupid”. Most politicians that have left said our political system is out of control. But most voted for the changes that turned American politics into the hyper-responsive, poll - driven system, it has become. Under the banner of Democracy, “Good intentions have gone haywire”.
About 1970, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Watergate, Urban Violence were the challenges of our government. We had to “fix it”. In America, that meant democritizating. It was too closed & heirarchigal, we had to move power out of the hands of the leadership into the entire body of the members. They had to be more accountable & with greater scrutiny. Thirty years later, almost all agree it made matters worse. “Campaign finance laws, Independent Council statutes, nothing turned out the way it was supposed to” (Biden).
The House of Representatives ,1972, democritized the method of choosing committee chairs by party elections instead of seniority. The number of subcommittees expanded 50%, allowing unlimited numbers of new bills & amendments, from any member of the house. To do this, staffs grew by individual members, not committee chairs. From an institution dominated by 20 + powerful leaders, congress evolved into a collection of 535 independent political entrepreneurs, their own interests uppermost , e.i., to get re-elected.
With our open committee meetings & recorded votes, now each member has to vote publicly on every amendment. The purpose of these changes was to make congress more open & responsive. And it has - to Money, Lobbyists & Special Interests.
These activists ensure that the groups they represent are well taken care of in the federal budget & legal code. Well organized interest groups, no matter how small, - can ensure that government bends to their will. Reforms designed to produce majority rule have produced minority rule. “It isn’t that these groups don’t have a legitimate interest but they distort the process by wrangling over the smallest issues, leaving congress paralyzed & the public disgusted” (Sen. Bumpers).
As our government has become larger & more open, lobbyists have become Washington’s largest growth industry. In the mid ‘50's, there were 5,000 registered lobbyists, 10,000 in the ‘70's, 20,000 in the ‘90's. In 1979 there were 117 health groups in D.C., by ‘93 the number was seven times that. The rise of interest groups has made our government totally dysfunctional. D.C. is unable to trim, let alone eliminate - nearly any government program, no matter how obviously obsolete. Spending real money on new problems or opportunities in the U.S. has become close to impossible.
The industries, problems & opportunities of the future do not have lobbies ; Those of the past do. When government seems unable to apply reason or logic to it’s priorities & spending, people lose faith in it’s ability to solve new problems. We have evolved into a self-organizing structure 20% under control of politicians & voters and 80% under control of countless thousands of client groups. Any serious attempt at change produces instant well-organized opposition from the small minority who are hurt by it & these are the minority who really run Washington.
James Madison in his famous Federalist Paper 51, placed his faith in the size & complexity of America. Small factions wouldn’t be able to have their way because other factions (outnumbering them) would thwart them (He was wrong).
Take Cuba for instance - Obvious to most Americans, 30 years after the cold war, they realize Cuban Communism no longer possess even the remotest geopolitical threat to us. However, Anti-Castro Cuban Americans have controlled the issue because they live in two electorally significant states, (Florida & New Jersey). Thus a handful of Americans have been able to dictate American Foreign policy for decades.
Here’s something surprising - political parties do not really exist in America anymore. They have become so open and decentralized that nobody controls them. The party is , at most, a fund-raising vehicle for a telegenic candidate (Looks good on TV). The bullet that killed the American political party was the primary election. Choosing a candidate was the most important decision a party organization made.
Campaign finance reform has suffered the same problems. Now a candidate must spend and entire year before the election wooing “Masters of the Rolex” to find enough galas & breakfasts to get enough cash for a campaign.
The growth of referendums is another aspect of the disease. In 1960, there were 88 issues, by 2000, it had risen to 204. As a result, 85% of our California state budget is outside of the legislature or governor’s control. I guess that could be called “Government by the people”. But then, if that’s the case, why do we need a legislature?
One of the biggest problems Zakaria sees, is there is probably no way to get out of this mess. I’m afraid I agree with him on that score.
Monday, August 29, 2011
LOST MY MIND
I have never considered myself an intellectual (I can’t even spell it!) and never gave concepts much thought even when I was ripping out great designs for hillside homes in Laguna Beach, until my first house was being published, the editor wanted to know what my philosophy of architecture was. I was greatly surprised to recommence I didn’t have one, I just worked on a gut level, solving the current problems as they came up. Of course I had a modus operandi, collecting all the relevant data on a project, utilizing the cantilevers in order to gain area economically, exposing structure whenever I could, using materials in a natural state and to have a low maintenance finished job. So I did sit down and invented my philosophy of design which seemed to satisfy the guy.
Since I had already solved the philosophy problem then, I currently am reviewing the likes of Socrates, Plato, Epictitus (Where’d he come from?). I’m finding that those thinkers are easier to read than the ones from the Middle Ages. A good example is Thomas Hobbes (1651), who some writer recommended I read. So I picked up his “Leviathan” , (It even sounds like Heavy reading) and tried to get into a couple of chapters, but to no avail. It didn’t take long before I was wallowing on a shipwreck of literature and had to take to the lifeboats in a short time. I retreated back to a couple of murder mysteries to salve my overburdened brain.
I DIDN’T MEAN TO DO IT!
I was just wondering the other day how many of the major religions began because the leader wanted to start one, or was it merely accidental? So I began looking at some of them.
HINDUISM - I guess you have to start here as it began about 1700 BC.
Is it even a religion? Anybody know who started it? Bob Hindi?
JEWS - Moses is blamed for it , or was it really Aaron? About 1400 BC. Of course, all the myths, stories of the Old Testament have been proved to be written several hundred years after the purported incident by many different scribes, priests, etc.
In other words, we don’t know who started it or if he wanted to be the Culprit.
BUDDHISM - Prince Siddhartha Gautama could have been an actual person, but people who experience enlightenment while sitting under a tree tend to be kind of non-organizers. (I am speaking from my own experience, here).
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS (Excerpt from my “History of Inventions” by J. Lamont Langworthy)
- 5000? Jain Lord Rishabha India
- 5000? Brahmanism ? India
- 1750 Zorasterism Zoroaster (Ahura Mazda) Persia
- 1500 Hindu ? India
- 1200 Jews (Maybe one God) Moses (Yeah, right) Israel
- 900 Greeks Lots of Gods! Greece
- 500 Confucianism Kong Fuzi China
- 500 Buddhist Prince Siddhartha Gautama India
- 200? Mayan, Aztec, Inca ? Mexico & Chile
- 150 Taoism Lau-Tzu China
Now up to this point, there were lots of Gods to blame every thing on. From here on, there was only one God. But this one God was totally different from the one God you were worshiping.
+ 300 Roman Catholic Jesus blamed for it Israel
+ 600 Islam Mohammed Saudi Arabia
+ 1000 Orthodox Catholic Jesus Constantinople
+ 1517 Lutheran Martin Luther Germany
+ 1534 Church of England King Henry VIII England
+ 1560 Presbyterian John Calvin Scotland
+ 1500? Unitarian ? Europe
+ 1600 Congregationalist from Puritanism England
+ 1650 Quakers George Fox England
+ 1607 Baptist John Smyth Amsterdam
+ 1744 Methodist Charles Wesley England
+ 1789 Episcopalian Samuel Seabury American Colonies
+ 1780 Unitarian ? England
+ 1800 Bahai Faith Bahaullah ?
+ 1830 Mormon (Latter-Day Saints) Joe Smith Palmyra, US
+ 1865 Salvation Army William Booth London
+ 1879 Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy Los Angeles
+ 1870 Jehovah’s Witness Charles Taze Russell Pennsylvania
+ 1901 Pentecostal ? (United States) United States
+ 1930 Foursquare Gospel Aimee Simple McPherson Los Angeles
+ 1953 Scientology L. Ron Hubbard United States
You’‘ note that I left out all the current hucksters like Graham, Falwell, etc.,
And then there are the:
Agnostics Profess uncertainty or skepticism about existence of God or Higher Being.
(Fence sitters!)
Atheists Do not believe in the existence of God or any other higher power.
Wait a minute! Not even The Laws of the Universe?
Seems the Christian Crusaders are still fighting the Muslims (Iraq and Afganistan).
We’ll teach the bastards, not to believe in our God, Oil !
I have never considered myself an intellectual (I can’t even spell it!) and never gave concepts much thought even when I was ripping out great designs for hillside homes in Laguna Beach, until my first house was being published, the editor wanted to know what my philosophy of architecture was. I was greatly surprised to recommence I didn’t have one, I just worked on a gut level, solving the current problems as they came up. Of course I had a modus operandi, collecting all the relevant data on a project, utilizing the cantilevers in order to gain area economically, exposing structure whenever I could, using materials in a natural state and to have a low maintenance finished job. So I did sit down and invented my philosophy of design which seemed to satisfy the guy.
Since I had already solved the philosophy problem then, I currently am reviewing the likes of Socrates, Plato, Epictitus (Where’d he come from?). I’m finding that those thinkers are easier to read than the ones from the Middle Ages. A good example is Thomas Hobbes (1651), who some writer recommended I read. So I picked up his “Leviathan” , (It even sounds like Heavy reading) and tried to get into a couple of chapters, but to no avail. It didn’t take long before I was wallowing on a shipwreck of literature and had to take to the lifeboats in a short time. I retreated back to a couple of murder mysteries to salve my overburdened brain.
I DIDN’T MEAN TO DO IT!
I was just wondering the other day how many of the major religions began because the leader wanted to start one, or was it merely accidental? So I began looking at some of them.
HINDUISM - I guess you have to start here as it began about 1700 BC.
Is it even a religion? Anybody know who started it? Bob Hindi?
JEWS - Moses is blamed for it , or was it really Aaron? About 1400 BC. Of course, all the myths, stories of the Old Testament have been proved to be written several hundred years after the purported incident by many different scribes, priests, etc.
In other words, we don’t know who started it or if he wanted to be the Culprit.
BUDDHISM - Prince Siddhartha Gautama could have been an actual person, but people who experience enlightenment while sitting under a tree tend to be kind of non-organizers. (I am speaking from my own experience, here).
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS (Excerpt from my “History of Inventions” by J. Lamont Langworthy)
- 5000? Jain Lord Rishabha India
- 5000? Brahmanism ? India
- 1750 Zorasterism Zoroaster (Ahura Mazda) Persia
- 1500 Hindu ? India
- 1200 Jews (Maybe one God) Moses (Yeah, right) Israel
- 900 Greeks Lots of Gods! Greece
- 500 Confucianism Kong Fuzi China
- 500 Buddhist Prince Siddhartha Gautama India
- 200? Mayan, Aztec, Inca ? Mexico & Chile
- 150 Taoism Lau-Tzu China
Now up to this point, there were lots of Gods to blame every thing on. From here on, there was only one God. But this one God was totally different from the one God you were worshiping.
+ 300 Roman Catholic Jesus blamed for it Israel
+ 600 Islam Mohammed Saudi Arabia
+ 1000 Orthodox Catholic Jesus Constantinople
+ 1517 Lutheran Martin Luther Germany
+ 1534 Church of England King Henry VIII England
+ 1560 Presbyterian John Calvin Scotland
+ 1500? Unitarian ? Europe
+ 1600 Congregationalist from Puritanism England
+ 1650 Quakers George Fox England
+ 1607 Baptist John Smyth Amsterdam
+ 1744 Methodist Charles Wesley England
+ 1789 Episcopalian Samuel Seabury American Colonies
+ 1780 Unitarian ? England
+ 1800 Bahai Faith Bahaullah ?
+ 1830 Mormon (Latter-Day Saints) Joe Smith Palmyra, US
+ 1865 Salvation Army William Booth London
+ 1879 Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy Los Angeles
+ 1870 Jehovah’s Witness Charles Taze Russell Pennsylvania
+ 1901 Pentecostal ? (United States) United States
+ 1930 Foursquare Gospel Aimee Simple McPherson Los Angeles
+ 1953 Scientology L. Ron Hubbard United States
You’‘ note that I left out all the current hucksters like Graham, Falwell, etc.,
And then there are the:
Agnostics Profess uncertainty or skepticism about existence of God or Higher Being.
(Fence sitters!)
Atheists Do not believe in the existence of God or any other higher power.
Wait a minute! Not even The Laws of the Universe?
Seems the Christian Crusaders are still fighting the Muslims (Iraq and Afganistan).
We’ll teach the bastards, not to believe in our God, Oil !
Friday, May 13, 2011
IT'S THE 13TH!
MAYDAY
Let’s start with May 1, which in my very young days (I know we’re reaching way back for this) was an exciting time for us as we made up May baskets, small with flowers or treats that we left on a friends or neighbors doorstep. after ringing the bell, we ran away but if the ringee caught you, they would get a kiss. I don’t think little ones do that anymore, sounds too much like giving someone something when now we must just get stuff.
But somewhere along the way Unions decided it was a good time to make trouble. Of course, management didn’t exactly like the forming of unions in order to sort out their grieviances (The French word for strike is greve, if you travel a lot in in Europe, you’ll experience a lot of that). In Chicago, in 1886, the march resulted in a riot with bombs, anarchists and hangings. But the workers of the world didn’t let that stop them, with the result that in the worker’s paradise, Communist countries, make a really big showing of not just workers, but military arms parades to show they have more missiles than you.
We might as well get into the confusion of CINCO DE MAYO. This is not a holiday in Mexico, only with the 12 million illegal Mexicans in the US. This represents a victory over the French in a siege on Puebla in 1862. Somehow the Mexicans , with a force of 4,000 beat 8,000 French troops. The real Independence day was on Sep. 16, 1810, when they started the rebellion against Spain and didn’t get it until ten years later. Kind of like our hassle with Britain in 1776.
But the best battle of all was when the Mexicans caught a group of 62 French Foreign Legionaires at Cameron in a small inn with a fortified wall. The Mexicans had about 4,000 troop and they kept trying to get the Legionaires to surrender but they wouldn’t do it even though they had no water. Capitan D’anjou was in charge, (he had a wooden hand carved like a glove), but after he and most of the others had been killed, about five men led a bayonet charge after running out of ammunition. Two were finally overwhelmed and subdued. Fortu
nately, his hand is in the legion Museum in Aubane, France,. (Viva Le Legion Etranger Francaise!!)
POWER GENERATION
This is probably not a good time to comment on nuclear power but let’s not get all excited about a radiation spill. Up to this time, although 35,000 Japanese have been killed by the triple catastrophe, I believe only a few may have died due to the nuclear plant problems. Of course, by the time the whole thing is over, there will certainly be more deaths attributed to the plant. But let’s take a look at the big picture.
Questions:
1. How do France (80% of nation’s electricity) , Japan (30%) & Germany (20% of electricity, just like US) take care of their waste? Does anyone reprocess it yet? Yes, the French, Japanese, Russians & U.K. do it, everyone but the US. do reprocess the waste which reduces it by about 75%.
2. New designs are looking to use the nuclear waste for fuel in a design called A Fast Reactor. This is not being done in the US.
3. Maybe we should look at the dangers of electric generation in the light of deaths per watt produced. The World Health Organization has put together figures on the human costs of all different methods of electric generation and it has some surprising results. The following figures are world wide numbers in terawatts/hrs, One terawatt=one million watts). But coal kills more people than anyone as these figures include deaths from lung problems, mine disasters, etc..
COAL 454 deaths per terawatt/hrs
OIL/GAS/BIO 64 per TWh
SOLAR .44 per TWh
HYDRO 1.4 per TWh
NUCLEAR .04 per Twh What !? Not possible !
The above figures don’t include deaths from the wars we fight in middle East for oil, nor the 100,000 civilians that die from “collateral damage”. The US alone has about 1,000 deaths a year from installing Solar stuff.
Even Chernoble, 50 deaths were due directly while they figure about 4,000 may die earlier due to the explosion but cause & effect of the disaster are difficult to quantify.
Air pollution in the US may kill 30,000 per year while in China they figure about 500,000 may die early. Well, there are too many of them over there, anyway.
It’s time for us to look at EFW or Energy From Waste. In the US & UK about 80% of our waste still goes to landfills, while we generate electricity with only 7% of our waste. In contrast, Germany only puts 1% in landfills and generates 67% of waste into energy.
THE CELESTIAL DYNAMO
The sun does not stand still, it circles the galaxy in 250 million earth years, during which time our galaxy has moved thru space which gives our sun a spiral trail . Since earth and the rest of the solar system (It’s planets) circle the sun, this means the resulting trail thru space are coils resembling the windings of a generator. Where do you think all the energy comes from to run the suns?
A LOOK AT EBOLA, WHICH MAKES AIDS LOOK BENIGN
My understanding of the Ebola Virus is it originated around 1976 in a huge cave in Africa that was made by elephants tusking around the edges, maybe for salt or something, then the walls kept collapsing where they were undermined. This resulted is a huge vaulted cavern where monkeys somehow got infected with something from the caves. Since Africans and some Asians eat the brains of some monkeys (Better make mine well done, please) it was passed into the human strain. Easily transmitted thru blood, it will devastate the body in a matter of days, during which the body has a melt down with large quantities of infected blood gushing out all over the place. Anyway, the virus was transmitted throughout Africa along the Kinshasha highway, mostly be truckers who frequented the prostitutes along the way. This virus is nasty, killing the infected within 2 to 18 days, with a death of 50% to 90%. This stuff destroys the blood vessel lining resulting in hemorragic fever. Fortunately it acts so quickly that it kills it’s hosts before it can spread all over. There is no known vaccine for it.
URINE TESTS
Although this is a widespread practice in the US, I still believe it to be an invasion of privacy. For sports, you might as well make it legal as it seems athletes need steroids & blood cleaners to be in top shape. Bicyclists use a type of blood cleaner that Is not talked about much, but seems to be illegal. They take some of your blood, freeze it for several weeks, then put it back in you veins. Is that really doping? Just imagine what they’ll be doing in the future. (Hard to imagine). Or now, they inject a drug, EPO, to do the same but you can discover it by urine tests. They do this with soldiers before going on a mission if you want to have an edge.
Now testing for pot, cocaine, heroin & ecstacy is a little different. It seems to me that it is a result of religious persecution, in other words, why does someone care if I am having a couple of hours of hilarious time? I assume there must be some pretty big lobbyists to keep it illegal, like alcohol and law enforcement who get plenty of loot from the busts. Our drug habit has ruined Mexico, and eroded our freedoms even before the “Patriot Act”. There are always going to be people who will be prone to overuse of drugs, and it probably wouldn’t get much worse even if it was all legalized. If I have a bad cough in Europe, I only have to stop at a pharmcia to get a cough syrup that contains Codeine, no big deal. I don’t understand why we spend billions a year on this when it doesn’t change anything. REMEMBER! DRUG USE IS NOT DRUG ABUSE!
Random urine testing is not allowed in Canada due to their Human Rights Act. (Don’t we have one of those?). No pre-employment screening. Only alcohol testing where safety of employees is involved. Who cares what you do at home ?
To answer the question you’ve all been asking: Poppy seeds really do show positive if you have enough of them. Maybe a hundred or more?
THE TIDES QUESTION
I’ve always been confused by why certain places have huge tides and other nearly none. Ever since I’ve traveled in Brittany and Scotland to see all the boats in a harbor sitting on the ground at each low tide I finally looked it up on Wikipedia. I had assumed that the closer to the poles, the larger the tidal height was, but that is totally wrong. As there is basically no tidal flux at the North pole, yet the Bay of Fundy has a 53 foot tide. How do you tie a boat up on a dock? Yet Some islands in the middle of the pacific have none at all. There are high tides on the West coast of Panama but nearly none on the East coast. It seems to have to do more with the configuration of the land mass or something. And here I always thought the bloody moon was the culprit.
I’ve mentioned the Tidal Generation facility in Brittany before. Installed in 1966, it generates 96 megawatts a day on an average.
METRIC
One of my Quixotic quests in my life (Design of our money, our flag design) is what in hell happened to the metric system in the US. When in 1586 Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin published a pamphlet of measurement based on the circumference of the earth he declared it so important that universal use of weights, measures & coinage would only be a matter of time. Well, he didn’t know how backward & ignorant us folks in the US were going to be, did he? Just in the last couple of centuries most countries have adopted the metric system except three countries. The United Ignoramis’s of America, Liberia (Africa) and Burma (Myanmar). Why can’t we join the modern world? Are we too arrogant? How do we build automobiles, heavy machinery, aircraft if we are not using metric? Who is it that keeps us from joining the rest of the world except two other really backward countries? Can’t we take baby steps and adopt the 24 hour clock to avoid zillions of hours of confusion? To hell with all you Luddites. You can just keep your fucking inches, cubits, feet, fathoms, rods, cables miles and leagues. A metric pox on you!
Viva le metric !! On the right I have designed a schedule to get your attention.
FRIDAY THE 13TH
I thought I’d mention this today and find out where such an idiotic pastime came from. There are several theories. First, the two biblical ones are there were 13 guys at the last supper (So what?), and the crucifixion happened to be connected to 13. Not the last half of cruci-fiction is all fiction.
However, a more recent one happened in the middle ages when The Knights Templar organization became really rich & the French king and the pope got together, arrested all of them throughout Europe, tortured, killed them ,but mostly got all their money and properties.
Yet, there wasn’t much ado about before the 1900's until a novel, Friday the 13th came out, then everyone freaked out and still do. Can you believe that some high rise buildings don’t have a 13th floor, as no one will rent it? Most high rise make that the mechanical floor. This is just plain crazy!
Let’s start with May 1, which in my very young days (I know we’re reaching way back for this) was an exciting time for us as we made up May baskets, small with flowers or treats that we left on a friends or neighbors doorstep. after ringing the bell, we ran away but if the ringee caught you, they would get a kiss. I don’t think little ones do that anymore, sounds too much like giving someone something when now we must just get stuff.
But somewhere along the way Unions decided it was a good time to make trouble. Of course, management didn’t exactly like the forming of unions in order to sort out their grieviances (The French word for strike is greve, if you travel a lot in in Europe, you’ll experience a lot of that). In Chicago, in 1886, the march resulted in a riot with bombs, anarchists and hangings. But the workers of the world didn’t let that stop them, with the result that in the worker’s paradise, Communist countries, make a really big showing of not just workers, but military arms parades to show they have more missiles than you.
We might as well get into the confusion of CINCO DE MAYO. This is not a holiday in Mexico, only with the 12 million illegal Mexicans in the US. This represents a victory over the French in a siege on Puebla in 1862. Somehow the Mexicans , with a force of 4,000 beat 8,000 French troops. The real Independence day was on Sep. 16, 1810, when they started the rebellion against Spain and didn’t get it until ten years later. Kind of like our hassle with Britain in 1776.
But the best battle of all was when the Mexicans caught a group of 62 French Foreign Legionaires at Cameron in a small inn with a fortified wall. The Mexicans had about 4,000 troop and they kept trying to get the Legionaires to surrender but they wouldn’t do it even though they had no water. Capitan D’anjou was in charge, (he had a wooden hand carved like a glove), but after he and most of the others had been killed, about five men led a bayonet charge after running out of ammunition. Two were finally overwhelmed and subdued. Fortu
nately, his hand is in the legion Museum in Aubane, France,. (Viva Le Legion Etranger Francaise!!)POWER GENERATION
This is probably not a good time to comment on nuclear power but let’s not get all excited about a radiation spill. Up to this time, although 35,000 Japanese have been killed by the triple catastrophe, I believe only a few may have died due to the nuclear plant problems. Of course, by the time the whole thing is over, there will certainly be more deaths attributed to the plant. But let’s take a look at the big picture.
Questions:
1. How do France (80% of nation’s electricity) , Japan (30%) & Germany (20% of electricity, just like US) take care of their waste? Does anyone reprocess it yet? Yes, the French, Japanese, Russians & U.K. do it, everyone but the US. do reprocess the waste which reduces it by about 75%.
2. New designs are looking to use the nuclear waste for fuel in a design called A Fast Reactor. This is not being done in the US.
3. Maybe we should look at the dangers of electric generation in the light of deaths per watt produced. The World Health Organization has put together figures on the human costs of all different methods of electric generation and it has some surprising results. The following figures are world wide numbers in terawatts/hrs, One terawatt=one million watts). But coal kills more people than anyone as these figures include deaths from lung problems, mine disasters, etc..
COAL 454 deaths per terawatt/hrs
OIL/GAS/BIO 64 per TWh
SOLAR .44 per TWh
HYDRO 1.4 per TWh
NUCLEAR .04 per Twh What !? Not possible !
The above figures don’t include deaths from the wars we fight in middle East for oil, nor the 100,000 civilians that die from “collateral damage”. The US alone has about 1,000 deaths a year from installing Solar stuff.
Even Chernoble, 50 deaths were due directly while they figure about 4,000 may die earlier due to the explosion but cause & effect of the disaster are difficult to quantify.
Air pollution in the US may kill 30,000 per year while in China they figure about 500,000 may die early. Well, there are too many of them over there, anyway.
It’s time for us to look at EFW or Energy From Waste. In the US & UK about 80% of our waste still goes to landfills, while we generate electricity with only 7% of our waste. In contrast, Germany only puts 1% in landfills and generates 67% of waste into energy.
THE CELESTIAL DYNAMO
The sun does not stand still, it circles the galaxy in 250 million earth years, during which time our galaxy has moved thru space which gives our sun a spiral trail . Since earth and the rest of the solar system (It’s planets) circle the sun, this means the resulting trail thru space are coils resembling the windings of a generator. Where do you think all the energy comes from to run the suns?
A LOOK AT EBOLA, WHICH MAKES AIDS LOOK BENIGN
My understanding of the Ebola Virus is it originated around 1976 in a huge cave in Africa that was made by elephants tusking around the edges, maybe for salt or something, then the walls kept collapsing where they were undermined. This resulted is a huge vaulted cavern where monkeys somehow got infected with something from the caves. Since Africans and some Asians eat the brains of some monkeys (Better make mine well done, please) it was passed into the human strain. Easily transmitted thru blood, it will devastate the body in a matter of days, during which the body has a melt down with large quantities of infected blood gushing out all over the place. Anyway, the virus was transmitted throughout Africa along the Kinshasha highway, mostly be truckers who frequented the prostitutes along the way. This virus is nasty, killing the infected within 2 to 18 days, with a death of 50% to 90%. This stuff destroys the blood vessel lining resulting in hemorragic fever. Fortunately it acts so quickly that it kills it’s hosts before it can spread all over. There is no known vaccine for it.
URINE TESTS
Although this is a widespread practice in the US, I still believe it to be an invasion of privacy. For sports, you might as well make it legal as it seems athletes need steroids & blood cleaners to be in top shape. Bicyclists use a type of blood cleaner that Is not talked about much, but seems to be illegal. They take some of your blood, freeze it for several weeks, then put it back in you veins. Is that really doping? Just imagine what they’ll be doing in the future. (Hard to imagine). Or now, they inject a drug, EPO, to do the same but you can discover it by urine tests. They do this with soldiers before going on a mission if you want to have an edge.
Now testing for pot, cocaine, heroin & ecstacy is a little different. It seems to me that it is a result of religious persecution, in other words, why does someone care if I am having a couple of hours of hilarious time? I assume there must be some pretty big lobbyists to keep it illegal, like alcohol and law enforcement who get plenty of loot from the busts. Our drug habit has ruined Mexico, and eroded our freedoms even before the “Patriot Act”. There are always going to be people who will be prone to overuse of drugs, and it probably wouldn’t get much worse even if it was all legalized. If I have a bad cough in Europe, I only have to stop at a pharmcia to get a cough syrup that contains Codeine, no big deal. I don’t understand why we spend billions a year on this when it doesn’t change anything. REMEMBER! DRUG USE IS NOT DRUG ABUSE!
Random urine testing is not allowed in Canada due to their Human Rights Act. (Don’t we have one of those?). No pre-employment screening. Only alcohol testing where safety of employees is involved. Who cares what you do at home ?
To answer the question you’ve all been asking: Poppy seeds really do show positive if you have enough of them. Maybe a hundred or more?
THE TIDES QUESTION
I’ve always been confused by why certain places have huge tides and other nearly none. Ever since I’ve traveled in Brittany and Scotland to see all the boats in a harbor sitting on the ground at each low tide I finally looked it up on Wikipedia. I had assumed that the closer to the poles, the larger the tidal height was, but that is totally wrong. As there is basically no tidal flux at the North pole, yet the Bay of Fundy has a 53 foot tide. How do you tie a boat up on a dock? Yet Some islands in the middle of the pacific have none at all. There are high tides on the West coast of Panama but nearly none on the East coast. It seems to have to do more with the configuration of the land mass or something. And here I always thought the bloody moon was the culprit.
I’ve mentioned the Tidal Generation facility in Brittany before. Installed in 1966, it generates 96 megawatts a day on an average.
METRIC
One of my Quixotic quests in my life (Design of our money, our flag design) is what in hell happened to the metric system in the US. When in 1586 Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin published a pamphlet of measurement based on the circumference of the earth he declared it so important that universal use of weights, measures & coinage would only be a matter of time. Well, he didn’t know how backward & ignorant us folks in the US were going to be, did he? Just in the last couple of centuries most countries have adopted the metric system except three countries. The United Ignoramis’s of America, Liberia (Africa) and Burma (Myanmar). Why can’t we join the modern world? Are we too arrogant? How do we build automobiles, heavy machinery, aircraft if we are not using metric? Who is it that keeps us from joining the rest of the world except two other really backward countries? Can’t we take baby steps and adopt the 24 hour clock to avoid zillions of hours of confusion? To hell with all you Luddites. You can just keep your fucking inches, cubits, feet, fathoms, rods, cables miles and leagues. A metric pox on you!
Viva le metric !! On the right I have designed a schedule to get your attention.
FRIDAY THE 13TH
I thought I’d mention this today and find out where such an idiotic pastime came from. There are several theories. First, the two biblical ones are there were 13 guys at the last supper (So what?), and the crucifixion happened to be connected to 13. Not the last half of cruci-fiction is all fiction.
However, a more recent one happened in the middle ages when The Knights Templar organization became really rich & the French king and the pope got together, arrested all of them throughout Europe, tortured, killed them ,but mostly got all their money and properties.
Yet, there wasn’t much ado about before the 1900's until a novel, Friday the 13th came out, then everyone freaked out and still do. Can you believe that some high rise buildings don’t have a 13th floor, as no one will rent it? Most high rise make that the mechanical floor. This is just plain crazy!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
ROGUE WARRIOR
Reading about those stalwart boys of the Seal Team that inserted into Pakistan in a kind of Black Ops to kill the bad guy reminded how much we owe to Dick Marcinko, who formed Seal Team 6 back in 1980. This guy (Read some of his “Rogue Warrior” books) was an incredible fearless & motivated sailor who spent his early days in Cambodia as a Navy Seal, wearing black pajamas & barefoot to run around behind enemy lines to kill the bad guys. He latter realized we needed a Counter Terrorism group who would be ready in a few hours to go from Langley, Virginia to any spot on earth to clean up shit without a lot of bureaucratic bullshit in the way (A good example: our foiled rescue of our people in the Iranian Embassy fiasco). He led his hardened men for several years, not from a desk, but from the front. Unfortunately, he had stepped on too many toes to get things done and was blacklisted and accused of conspiracy and you name. Bottom line, he was thrown in a Federal slammer for 22 months & charged $10,000. It cost the Feds (You & me) $60 million to investigate and sue him, They just wanted to ruin his reputation.. After that, the Navy tried to eradicate much of what Marcinko had done. Obviously, enough was left to get Osama. Thank you, Marcinko!
THE ROYAL FIASCO
I see one of the princes of England (Is it still called the United Kingdom? If so why? Seems Canada & Australia are not really part of it?) Got himself a juicy morsel. This led me to ask how much all this folderal costs the poor Brits, but it was not so easy as I thought. I found that there is a L40 million per year budget for some of the things but don’t know what it covers.
It was easier to see what a comparable Royal House costs in Holland. The queen, Beatrix, gets an allowance of e813,000, The Prince another e241,000 plus e241,000 for his wife. They pay no taxes on this and do have use of several Mercedes and airplanes, if needed.
Back th England, the property of the Royal Household is worth about 6.6 Billion pounds. Seems like kind of a long term lease sort of thing, eh, what? However, they did sell Britannia, the huge Royal Yacht. I don’t know how much they got for it (It’s a museum now in Scotland) but the crew of 200+ doesn’t suck on the Royal Tit anymore. We toured the ship a couple of years ago and I was struck how small the office for The Duke of Wales was, even though his job description is probably pretty esoteric, while the Queen had a large office to carry the flag around the world to all the remaining dominions. Long Live the Queen!
ASTROLOGY
Why is it that identical twins, born under the same star do not have the same future? Pythagoras
ETHICAL DILEMMA
My first book, “Hillside Homes” I self published in 1980 and took about 10 years to sell my thousand copies at $10 each. By the time it got to Amazon I got $6 per book from them, even though I paid $8 per book to print.(That’s called “Langworthy Economics”). During the 90's, they started appearing on ebay for $240 per copy, which I thought was crazy, as I have a rare book of Louis Sullivan’s drawings that is worth just a little less. Anyway my book was out of print and is currently worth about $150. However, I do have a few books left, and once in a while someone asks to buy it but I can’t sell it for $200 to a friend, can I?
FILM FLAM
Instead of going around grousing about how much you lost on the current economic meltdown, why not view the Video “Inside Job”? This Oscar nominated documentary presents a detailed scenario of the Global economic meltdown. Featuring politicos, Journalists and academics. It paints a galling portrait of an unfettered financial system run amok, without accountability. Narrated by Matt Damon, 2010.
NO END IN SIGHT
This is a video you should buy as it’s worth viewing more than once. “No End in Sight” by the same folks who did “Inside Job”, Charles Ferguson (A former Brookings Institute Fellow) is another Oscar nominated film that examines the decisions that led to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the handling of the occupation by King Bush and his administration. Detailed analysis and interviews with central players, the film chronicles the twists & turns America took on the path to war. Didn’t we really know that the Shiites, Sunnis & Kurds all hate each other? We had no real plans for how to occupy Iraq, see our major faux-pais, like firing all the Republican Guard, who became the armed insurgents (Out of a job, they had the weapons), letting the Museums & Libraries to be looted (But not the Ministry of Oil), leaving most weapon stockpiles unguarded. I can’t go on.
BOOK REVIEWS
While I’m ranting about the economy, try reading “Hoodwinked” by John Perkins, a former economic Hit Man. About high finances & law ethics, someone who was deeply entrenched in our government/corporate imperialistic (Militaristic) structure has come forward to reveal our involvement with third world countries. This involves the World Bank, CIA, NAFTA, WTO and how they do business. What appears that we are helping these countries, it ends up devastating them with large corporations rake in any profits, & these poor countries owing huge sums they will never be able to repay. The results are not exactly near what the wonderful concept was.
WASHINGTON RULES
This book by Andrew Bacevich, “Washington Rules“ is about America’s path to permanent war and our so called Foreign Policy. Our politicians insist that we must invest blood and treasure in mud brick Afgan villages, while China invests in advanced technologies. We seem to be locked in a global military presence sustained by power interventionism by military Force. The Washington Rules are basically these three: 1. Global Military Presence
2. Global Power Production
3. Global Interventionalism
This is all getting pretty depressing.
THIS MIGHT HELP
“Make me one with everything” said the buddhist to the hot-dog vender. But when the Buddhist hands over a twenty dollar bill in return for the slathered bun, he waits a long time for his change. Finally asking for it, he is informed that “change comes only from within”.
Reading about those stalwart boys of the Seal Team that inserted into Pakistan in a kind of Black Ops to kill the bad guy reminded how much we owe to Dick Marcinko, who formed Seal Team 6 back in 1980. This guy (Read some of his “Rogue Warrior” books) was an incredible fearless & motivated sailor who spent his early days in Cambodia as a Navy Seal, wearing black pajamas & barefoot to run around behind enemy lines to kill the bad guys. He latter realized we needed a Counter Terrorism group who would be ready in a few hours to go from Langley, Virginia to any spot on earth to clean up shit without a lot of bureaucratic bullshit in the way (A good example: our foiled rescue of our people in the Iranian Embassy fiasco). He led his hardened men for several years, not from a desk, but from the front. Unfortunately, he had stepped on too many toes to get things done and was blacklisted and accused of conspiracy and you name. Bottom line, he was thrown in a Federal slammer for 22 months & charged $10,000. It cost the Feds (You & me) $60 million to investigate and sue him, They just wanted to ruin his reputation.. After that, the Navy tried to eradicate much of what Marcinko had done. Obviously, enough was left to get Osama. Thank you, Marcinko!
THE ROYAL FIASCO
I see one of the princes of England (Is it still called the United Kingdom? If so why? Seems Canada & Australia are not really part of it?) Got himself a juicy morsel. This led me to ask how much all this folderal costs the poor Brits, but it was not so easy as I thought. I found that there is a L40 million per year budget for some of the things but don’t know what it covers.
It was easier to see what a comparable Royal House costs in Holland. The queen, Beatrix, gets an allowance of e813,000, The Prince another e241,000 plus e241,000 for his wife. They pay no taxes on this and do have use of several Mercedes and airplanes, if needed.
Back th England, the property of the Royal Household is worth about 6.6 Billion pounds. Seems like kind of a long term lease sort of thing, eh, what? However, they did sell Britannia, the huge Royal Yacht. I don’t know how much they got for it (It’s a museum now in Scotland) but the crew of 200+ doesn’t suck on the Royal Tit anymore. We toured the ship a couple of years ago and I was struck how small the office for The Duke of Wales was, even though his job description is probably pretty esoteric, while the Queen had a large office to carry the flag around the world to all the remaining dominions. Long Live the Queen!
ASTROLOGY
Why is it that identical twins, born under the same star do not have the same future? Pythagoras
ETHICAL DILEMMA
My first book, “Hillside Homes” I self published in 1980 and took about 10 years to sell my thousand copies at $10 each. By the time it got to Amazon I got $6 per book from them, even though I paid $8 per book to print.(That’s called “Langworthy Economics”). During the 90's, they started appearing on ebay for $240 per copy, which I thought was crazy, as I have a rare book of Louis Sullivan’s drawings that is worth just a little less. Anyway my book was out of print and is currently worth about $150. However, I do have a few books left, and once in a while someone asks to buy it but I can’t sell it for $200 to a friend, can I?
FILM FLAM
Instead of going around grousing about how much you lost on the current economic meltdown, why not view the Video “Inside Job”? This Oscar nominated documentary presents a detailed scenario of the Global economic meltdown. Featuring politicos, Journalists and academics. It paints a galling portrait of an unfettered financial system run amok, without accountability. Narrated by Matt Damon, 2010.
NO END IN SIGHT
This is a video you should buy as it’s worth viewing more than once. “No End in Sight” by the same folks who did “Inside Job”, Charles Ferguson (A former Brookings Institute Fellow) is another Oscar nominated film that examines the decisions that led to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the handling of the occupation by King Bush and his administration. Detailed analysis and interviews with central players, the film chronicles the twists & turns America took on the path to war. Didn’t we really know that the Shiites, Sunnis & Kurds all hate each other? We had no real plans for how to occupy Iraq, see our major faux-pais, like firing all the Republican Guard, who became the armed insurgents (Out of a job, they had the weapons), letting the Museums & Libraries to be looted (But not the Ministry of Oil), leaving most weapon stockpiles unguarded. I can’t go on.
BOOK REVIEWS
While I’m ranting about the economy, try reading “Hoodwinked” by John Perkins, a former economic Hit Man. About high finances & law ethics, someone who was deeply entrenched in our government/corporate imperialistic (Militaristic) structure has come forward to reveal our involvement with third world countries. This involves the World Bank, CIA, NAFTA, WTO and how they do business. What appears that we are helping these countries, it ends up devastating them with large corporations rake in any profits, & these poor countries owing huge sums they will never be able to repay. The results are not exactly near what the wonderful concept was.
WASHINGTON RULES
This book by Andrew Bacevich, “Washington Rules“ is about America’s path to permanent war and our so called Foreign Policy. Our politicians insist that we must invest blood and treasure in mud brick Afgan villages, while China invests in advanced technologies. We seem to be locked in a global military presence sustained by power interventionism by military Force. The Washington Rules are basically these three: 1. Global Military Presence
2. Global Power Production
3. Global Interventionalism
This is all getting pretty depressing.
THIS MIGHT HELP
“Make me one with everything” said the buddhist to the hot-dog vender. But when the Buddhist hands over a twenty dollar bill in return for the slathered bun, he waits a long time for his change. Finally asking for it, he is informed that “change comes only from within”.
Monday, April 25, 2011
ARE YOU CRAZY? A DOLLAR COIN??
There are rumors that the Feds are making noises about making a one dollar coin. I was surprised to hear the Feds are looking at the status of our miserable one dollar bill. I didn’t think anyone in Washington was able to come up with a creative thought about our monetary system, anymore. Everyone understands (except of course, the paper lobbyists) that it’s time to change since the dollar has not much value left. It used to be worth quite a bit, but you can’t even buy a lolly-pop with one these days. We already have an ill conceived dollar coin which weighs a ton and is the size of our original dollar coin, which can only be used in a slot machine, if you can even find one. How
about this? Design a small coin, like the Euro, that is the size of a nickel. Is it hard to imagine using one at the laundromat, in your parking meters, in vending machines, instead of a pile of quarters? And while you’re at it, how about getting rid of the penney and the mill?While I’m rantin
g on my favorite subject (The terrible design of the American Flag is another, but that’s another story) Let’s take a quick look at the undesign of our money. A list of all our currencies looks like a review of some 18th century graphics. (Which it is!). Notice the $2 bill (When’s the last time you saw one?) And it appears the $100 bill is the largest we make, due to out War On Drugs. Also, remember we do have a very large & heavy $1 coin, which is non-existent except for slots in Vegas. What were the minters thinking? Have you ever carried ten of those coins around in your pocket?The mil, which you engage every time you purchase gas, is also non-existent. It’s called a ”coin of account” on account there isn’t any. Although some states did mint some, of which I have one somewhere. It is a tiny copper penny like object.
In beautiful contrast, look at the Euro in Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with it. There is total rationale in the sizes, colors, designs, etc. They even print a e500 bill, with all kinds of infra red anti-counterfeiting stuff. Their e1 is a coin, made of two metals and very small. Howev
er, I am flabbergasted why they mint a penny and even a 2 cent piece. The greater the value, the larger & heavier the coin is. Each one has a different edge so the blind can easily know each one. I assume that’s why the paper money is in different sizes, however subtle.Before the Euro was introduced, the French, Dutch & Belgiums had clever, beautful money. French currency featured people like Saint-Exupery (Author), The Curies (Scientists) & Victor Horta (Architect). The Belgiums did similar with the likes of Adolph Sax (Inventor of the saxaphone).
THE OIL WARS Ethnic & territorial identity
In devising means to fight terrorists, it would surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them.
Christians have nations (Like the US & Britain, France) while Islam has no borders, just as Jews had none until the Brits gave them part of the Arab lands recently (1947?). And how’s that working out for everyone?
In 1998 Bin Laden published his grieviances in London, which we should review about every ten years of each war..
1. Christians for seven years occupied the lands of Islam (Arabia) with bases to fight Islamic peoples.
2. New Crusaders (Jewish Alliance ) humiliate Muslims.
3. U.S. is serving Jews, Continuation of the Crusades to occupy the lands of Arabia.
This constitutes a declaration of war by the U.S. against God, the prophet & Muslims. Mecca & Medina were in Saudi Arabia, then moved to Iraq & Bagdad.
Well, shit, he missed the whole thing, didn’t he? We had to make sure we had access to the oil there as we can’t drill much in the US as it is too messy. Too bad there were some Muslim hordes spread all over the area.
Oil was discovered by US in 1930 by the US. The Wahhabi’s (House of Saud) appeared about 1700's, but have become the primary “Spokesmen” (Bombers) recently.
DESIGN OVERLOAD
With all the time I have to spend on keeping up with the handicap laws, energy codes, fire codes, and all, it does leave much time for an architect to consider such unimportant things like water intrusion, structural failure, site planning and so on. Then, on top of all that , I am informed that with the appearance of “Foodies” in the kitchen, there is a whole new level of knowledge I must research and understand. With Sub-Zero’s dual refrigeration with NASA designed air infiltration or Viking’s Plasma-cluster Ion air purifier filtration system or Liebherr’s bio-fresh technology, I’m falling behind pretty fast. Let’s not forget the the steam oven, the speed oven and the electric Mandolin, indoor grills (George Forman, you should have stayed in the ring!). the $4,000 espresso machine, blenders and juicers, the electric sub-panel for the kitchen alone will be bigger than the meter for an entire house of 1980. And where do we put all these where they will be instantly available to assuage your every whim? The cost? Why maybe you can finance your kitchen appliances separately, just as you would your new car.
Friday, March 18, 2011
FALL OUT OF LOVE
THE FALL OUT OF LOVE
I didn’t think I would use this sketch again but it once again seems pertinent to current events. This is a cartoon one of our previous tenants left & I don’t remember who it was. Have also some wonderful stuff like a Prince Phillip cut out dolls with a full line of absurd clothes. (Naturally Diana is also cleverly lampooned).
I didn’t think I would use this sketch again but it once again seems pertinent to current events. This is a cartoon one of our previous tenants left & I don’t remember who it was. Have also some wonderful stuff like a Prince Phillip cut out dolls with a full line of absurd clothes. (Naturally Diana is also cleverly lampooned).
ON THE MARKET 
In accordance with my long standing concept of Real Estate: “Buy High, Sell Low”, we have put our cabin on Donner Summit for sale for the absurd low price of $282,500.
Right now you can’t see the exterior as it is covered in snow about 15' deep. However, I can show you a shot of it during the warm, balmy summers, where we have been paddling around in our peddle boat to get to the bar at the lodge. It’s a small ‘A’ frame structure of 2.5 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. Nice big, partially covered deck to Tai Chi on or BBQ. Metal roof and all wood inside. We bought it ten years ago about this time of year and didn’t see the exterior until about June. Who cared? We only live on the inside.
In accordance with my long standing concept of Real Estate: “Buy High, Sell Low”, we have put our cabin on Donner Summit for sale for the absurd low price of $282,500.
Right now you can’t see the exterior as it is covered in snow about 15' deep. However, I can show you a shot of it during the warm, balmy summers, where we have been paddling around in our peddle boat to get to the bar at the lodge. It’s a small ‘A’ frame structure of 2.5 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. Nice big, partially covered deck to Tai Chi on or BBQ. Metal roof and all wood inside. We bought it ten years ago about this time of year and didn’t see the exterior until about June. Who cared? We only live on the inside.
Friday, March 04, 2011
DEMOCRASCLEROSIS
THE WORKINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT
John Stewart’s book on American politics points out how we are actually governed by lobbyists, who manipulate our representatives. Well, I always thought this was a more or less covert deal until I heard our new governor, Mr Brown, say publicly that he would have to check with our politicians as well as our lobbyist regarding his tax cuts and restructuring. So, in actuality, Brown has to influence the lobbyists who in turn will influence the politician on what their vote will be on issues. It is so blatant that Brown is pictured with a lobbyist that he is lobbying! This system is basically a version of the old method of bribery used for so long in so many other countries that we purport to abhor.
SPONSORSHIP
A few short years ago, the USA had a bicycle team that was sponsored by The US Postal Service. It took me a while to wonder how they were able to sponsor a team that must cost millions of dollars each year, and more so, why did they feel they had to advertise like that? Were they trying to get Europeans to defect from France’s Le Post?
I believe it cost more that one million dollars to sponsor a team for a season, and I wonder why US Postal seems to be having money problems & raise rates about every six months 2 cents at a time. So basically, to sponsor a team is to advertise. Do you ever wonder why a business has to advertise when it is a monopoly? However, I do take offense at our armed forces sponsoring NASCAR race teams to the tune of $20 million (National Guard for Dale Earnhardt, Jr.) & US Army paying Newman $7.4 Million. I do realize that NASCAR fans is where their cannon fodder comes from, but is it the best use of my hard earned taxes?
ARCHITECTURAL CRITIQUE
Each time I see the iconic Sydney Opera House in a photo I see the roots of our current maxi-buildings that have totally deviated from the simple concept that Form follows Function. Or better yet, Form & Function are one. If you see a human body with a couple of extra arms or legs, we perceive it as a freak. Jorn Utzen, a Swedish architect who had no buildings constructed, but had won several competitions, was the winner of this competition. The budget was $7 million. This is still touted as ”one of the great buildings of the World”. However, how would you feel if you thought your building would cost 7 M when after 16 years & 10 years late the final cost would be 14 times the budget at $103 Million. Since this fledgling architect didn’t have a clue of how to build his ‘Iconic Sails’, Ove Arup , fortunately was hired to cobble it all together. Even so, Arup took nearly six years to find a structural solution that would be economical to build (Economical?). They would all be segments of the shells, which seems kind of obvious to a lay person like me. Aside from costing zillions and decades over construction time, Utzon wasn’t able to incorporate a 3,000 seat Concert Hall into his design. They ended up with a smaller one of 2600 seats. In addition, the Opera Hall is inadequate to stage large scale Opera and Ballet.
Well, Sydney, I hope you’re happy with the competition & got your money’s worth, if you have any left. Any lessons learned?
1. Competitions are very sketchy method of design. There is not enough research, information to do in depth studies.
2. An architect should have experience & background for such a large & complex project.
3. What client is naive enough to begin construction before knowing how much it would cost? 14 times a budget should have defrocked the architect.
John Stewart’s book on American politics points out how we are actually governed by lobbyists, who manipulate our representatives. Well, I always thought this was a more or less covert deal until I heard our new governor, Mr Brown, say publicly that he would have to check with our politicians as well as our lobbyist regarding his tax cuts and restructuring. So, in actuality, Brown has to influence the lobbyists who in turn will influence the politician on what their vote will be on issues. It is so blatant that Brown is pictured with a lobbyist that he is lobbying! This system is basically a version of the old method of bribery used for so long in so many other countries that we purport to abhor.
SPONSORSHIP
A few short years ago, the USA had a bicycle team that was sponsored by The US Postal Service. It took me a while to wonder how they were able to sponsor a team that must cost millions of dollars each year, and more so, why did they feel they had to advertise like that? Were they trying to get Europeans to defect from France’s Le Post?
I believe it cost more that one million dollars to sponsor a team for a season, and I wonder why US Postal seems to be having money problems & raise rates about every six months 2 cents at a time. So basically, to sponsor a team is to advertise. Do you ever wonder why a business has to advertise when it is a monopoly? However, I do take offense at our armed forces sponsoring NASCAR race teams to the tune of $20 million (National Guard for Dale Earnhardt, Jr.) & US Army paying Newman $7.4 Million. I do realize that NASCAR fans is where their cannon fodder comes from, but is it the best use of my hard earned taxes?
ARCHITECTURAL CRITIQUE
Each time I see the iconic Sydney Opera House in a photo I see the roots of our current maxi-buildings that have totally deviated from the simple concept that Form follows Function. Or better yet, Form & Function are one. If you see a human body with a couple of extra arms or legs, we perceive it as a freak. Jorn Utzen, a Swedish architect who had no buildings constructed, but had won several competitions, was the winner of this competition. The budget was $7 million. This is still touted as ”one of the great buildings of the World”. However, how would you feel if you thought your building would cost 7 M when after 16 years & 10 years late the final cost would be 14 times the budget at $103 Million. Since this fledgling architect didn’t have a clue of how to build his ‘Iconic Sails’, Ove Arup , fortunately was hired to cobble it all together. Even so, Arup took nearly six years to find a structural solution that would be economical to build (Economical?). They would all be segments of the shells, which seems kind of obvious to a lay person like me. Aside from costing zillions and decades over construction time, Utzon wasn’t able to incorporate a 3,000 seat Concert Hall into his design. They ended up with a smaller one of 2600 seats. In addition, the Opera Hall is inadequate to stage large scale Opera and Ballet.
Well, Sydney, I hope you’re happy with the competition & got your money’s worth, if you have any left. Any lessons learned?
1. Competitions are very sketchy method of design. There is not enough research, information to do in depth studies.
2. An architect should have experience & background for such a large & complex project.
3. What client is naive enough to begin construction before knowing how much it would cost? 14 times a budget should have defrocked the architect.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
THE BURNING QUESTION OF THE HOUR
DANGER! THE FOLLOWING IS A PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION AND IF YOU’RE A DEVOUT ANYTHING, DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY. (This is Orange Threat warning from the Unpatriot Act)
IN LU WE TRUST
As I don’t have much architecture to do currently my thoughts have turned to the infinite. Ever since I opted out of the Catholic religion when I was 18, I have been searching for a substitute for Michelangelo’s God, like the one on the Sistine Chapel in Roma. I really never believed that the old man was able to cobble tegether the Universe, even in 7 days (or was it 6?). Christians have finally figured this out to be 4435 BC on a Sunday around 10.34 in the morning. The only other viable option I have come across is the concept that if there is not an uncaused cause,(or possible a caused uncause), then the entire Universe does really function quite well on certain laws of physics. In other words, the laws that govern the movements of atoms are the same ones that govern the creation of galaxies. (Here it gets a little fuzzy). Anyway, that seems a lot more plausible than that God, Jehova or Allah or even Zeus is conducting this symphony, down to listening to everyone’s prayers, brewing up devastating hurricanes, tsunamis & earthquakes, convincing everyone to get into his church or mosque, then destroy the entire building with all his faithful cowering in it. (Maybe by this time they may be his/her unfaithful). But I digress. I feel very comfortable considering an entity called Laws of the Universe as the creator and maintainer of the entire universe. To simplify this, I have tended to call this force (Remember the Force, Luke?) LU. I considered Universal Laws, but who wants to call the ultimate creator, maintainer & force UL?
Now aside from all this bullshit of creators & such, this has no relationship to whether we have a soul or no, since it’s mostly about religions. That’s really the burning question of the hour, (once we’ve solved the first burning question, see above). Even as far back as Socrates (see below), folks were beginning to suspect the existence of a soul, or some kind of essence or spirit that accompanied the body and left it at death as well as entering it at birth, of course. If we accept that proposition, we have to ask when a baby is born, when and where does this spirit of soul come from? The Christians have been fighting that one for years in order to ban any form of abortion. In other words, when is a human a human? They’ve probably got it back to about the fertilization of the egg, by the male sperm. Now we’re getting into sex! It won’t be long before they assume the sperm has the soul rider and to jerk off will be a federal offense.
So you can see there is a lot of murky thought to get into that end of the soul train so I am just sticking with the end of life part, as that is a lot closer for me than my origins. Now the problem here is that no one I know has come back from the dead to inform me what happened, if anything. I have a couple of books that describe many ‘Near death’ experiences collected by doctors. (Kubler-Ross, etc.) Most of these people have been in situations where they have been clinically dead for a few minutes (I’m not talking about just brain dead, like so many of our politicians and ministers of religions). There are peculiar similarities in their descriptions to each other and strangely, to descriptions of a few Masters from India . You know, a light at the end of the tunnel, friendly beings (No one saw the Devil so far). Now, the great masters don’t say they have died and come back. They attain inner states (You’ve got to meditate to do this) on several levels that culminate in the non-life area. In other words, they claim we need to ‘die’ while living and experience where it is we’re going when we die. This is not a new concept as it has been around for thousands of years but it certainly is new to us, within the last couple of centuries here in the Americas.
TRIAL OF SOCRATES
Published by I.F. Stone in the 1980's. He was the publisher of IF Stones Weekly, a muckraking independent journal. After a heart attack, he quit the journal, and decided to study freedom of thought in human history. He began by studying the English revolutions in the 1600's, which led him to the Protestant Reformation which in turn led to the Middle Ages when they had rediscovered Aristotle through the Arabic & Hebrew translations in the 12th century. That got him to study ancient Athens but he was disappointed in all the standard sources. Therefore, he had to learn Greek so he could go directly to the source and not rely on other’s commentaries. Now he was concerned about how could the trial of Socrates have happened in so free a society? His book,’The Trial of Socrates’ is about that.
In pursuing all the reports & writings in the original Greek related to Socrates and his concepts, he came to a startling conclusion. Socrates wanted to be convicted & possibly die. After all, he was seventy years old and that’s pretty old, even in our time. But more important, it becomes apparent that Socrates was a critic of democracy. Two of his students even became tyrants of Athens during a couple of rebellions that displaced democracy with Oligarchies. He was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, not in a moral way, as the world of antiquity was pretty bi-sexual (chasing young boys around. This was the beginning of the priestly class)l, but convincing them that all should be ruled by one man, a philosopher, the ‘One Who Knows”. Of all the rulers in history, maybe Marcus Aurelius was such a one. But Socrates was an enemy of democracy, as is apparent from Plato’s Republic, a description of Socrates Utopia (or maybe distopia).
There were untold arguments that S. Could have used but didn’t. He was convicted by a very small margin of the 400 voters. He was then subjected to a sentencing trial, which due to his absurd defense, he was convicted to drink a draughft of Hemlock, not exactly a Cabernet Sauvignon. He could probably have gotten them to at least exile him, but to S., that would be worse than death. Remember, there was only one great Agora for him to strut around in and extol the intricacies of the universe to his adoring public, and that was in Athens.
IN LU WE TRUST
As I don’t have much architecture to do currently my thoughts have turned to the infinite. Ever since I opted out of the Catholic religion when I was 18, I have been searching for a substitute for Michelangelo’s God, like the one on the Sistine Chapel in Roma. I really never believed that the old man was able to cobble tegether the Universe, even in 7 days (or was it 6?). Christians have finally figured this out to be 4435 BC on a Sunday around 10.34 in the morning. The only other viable option I have come across is the concept that if there is not an uncaused cause,(or possible a caused uncause), then the entire Universe does really function quite well on certain laws of physics. In other words, the laws that govern the movements of atoms are the same ones that govern the creation of galaxies. (Here it gets a little fuzzy). Anyway, that seems a lot more plausible than that God, Jehova or Allah or even Zeus is conducting this symphony, down to listening to everyone’s prayers, brewing up devastating hurricanes, tsunamis & earthquakes, convincing everyone to get into his church or mosque, then destroy the entire building with all his faithful cowering in it. (Maybe by this time they may be his/her unfaithful). But I digress. I feel very comfortable considering an entity called Laws of the Universe as the creator and maintainer of the entire universe. To simplify this, I have tended to call this force (Remember the Force, Luke?) LU. I considered Universal Laws, but who wants to call the ultimate creator, maintainer & force UL?
Now aside from all this bullshit of creators & such, this has no relationship to whether we have a soul or no, since it’s mostly about religions. That’s really the burning question of the hour, (once we’ve solved the first burning question, see above). Even as far back as Socrates (see below), folks were beginning to suspect the existence of a soul, or some kind of essence or spirit that accompanied the body and left it at death as well as entering it at birth, of course. If we accept that proposition, we have to ask when a baby is born, when and where does this spirit of soul come from? The Christians have been fighting that one for years in order to ban any form of abortion. In other words, when is a human a human? They’ve probably got it back to about the fertilization of the egg, by the male sperm. Now we’re getting into sex! It won’t be long before they assume the sperm has the soul rider and to jerk off will be a federal offense.
So you can see there is a lot of murky thought to get into that end of the soul train so I am just sticking with the end of life part, as that is a lot closer for me than my origins. Now the problem here is that no one I know has come back from the dead to inform me what happened, if anything. I have a couple of books that describe many ‘Near death’ experiences collected by doctors. (Kubler-Ross, etc.) Most of these people have been in situations where they have been clinically dead for a few minutes (I’m not talking about just brain dead, like so many of our politicians and ministers of religions). There are peculiar similarities in their descriptions to each other and strangely, to descriptions of a few Masters from India . You know, a light at the end of the tunnel, friendly beings (No one saw the Devil so far). Now, the great masters don’t say they have died and come back. They attain inner states (You’ve got to meditate to do this) on several levels that culminate in the non-life area. In other words, they claim we need to ‘die’ while living and experience where it is we’re going when we die. This is not a new concept as it has been around for thousands of years but it certainly is new to us, within the last couple of centuries here in the Americas.
TRIAL OF SOCRATES
Published by I.F. Stone in the 1980's. He was the publisher of IF Stones Weekly, a muckraking independent journal. After a heart attack, he quit the journal, and decided to study freedom of thought in human history. He began by studying the English revolutions in the 1600's, which led him to the Protestant Reformation which in turn led to the Middle Ages when they had rediscovered Aristotle through the Arabic & Hebrew translations in the 12th century. That got him to study ancient Athens but he was disappointed in all the standard sources. Therefore, he had to learn Greek so he could go directly to the source and not rely on other’s commentaries. Now he was concerned about how could the trial of Socrates have happened in so free a society? His book,’The Trial of Socrates’ is about that.
In pursuing all the reports & writings in the original Greek related to Socrates and his concepts, he came to a startling conclusion. Socrates wanted to be convicted & possibly die. After all, he was seventy years old and that’s pretty old, even in our time. But more important, it becomes apparent that Socrates was a critic of democracy. Two of his students even became tyrants of Athens during a couple of rebellions that displaced democracy with Oligarchies. He was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, not in a moral way, as the world of antiquity was pretty bi-sexual (chasing young boys around. This was the beginning of the priestly class)l, but convincing them that all should be ruled by one man, a philosopher, the ‘One Who Knows”. Of all the rulers in history, maybe Marcus Aurelius was such a one. But Socrates was an enemy of democracy, as is apparent from Plato’s Republic, a description of Socrates Utopia (or maybe distopia).
There were untold arguments that S. Could have used but didn’t. He was convicted by a very small margin of the 400 voters. He was then subjected to a sentencing trial, which due to his absurd defense, he was convicted to drink a draughft of Hemlock, not exactly a Cabernet Sauvignon. He could probably have gotten them to at least exile him, but to S., that would be worse than death. Remember, there was only one great Agora for him to strut around in and extol the intricacies of the universe to his adoring public, and that was in Athens.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
UTOPIA
UTOPIAS
I’ve just finished The Faber Book of Utopias, edited by John Carey. It consists of descriptions of Utopias from ancient Egyptian to present day.
Beginning with an Egyptian Tale from about 1700 BC, when fictional narrative emerged after 1938 BC. In “A Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor” a retainer tries to comfort his master who is sailing home from a failed mission of some kind. On a paradise island, a devine snake can suffer misfortune and overcome it. E.i., stoic endurance and self control will win the day. It was only translated in 1820!
The Greek Poet Hesiod wrote “Works & Days” about 700 BC. He describes the Four Golden Ages, where life was perfect, food falling off trees, etc. Probably from an earlier Zorostrian myth.
Plato’s “Republic” is more renowned. About 360 BC, he described Socrates’ version of a perfect world. However, it comes out as a totalitarian world of compulsion & authority, with three classes - Rulers, Auxillories (Police, etc.) and workers (us!). The masses needed to believe “A convenient Fiction” or “ Noble Lie” (Brainwashing?) Favored censorship as well as controlled breeding. (I’m outa here!).
Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ 1667, shows what a great life Adam & Eve had in the Garden. Not exactly like the bible, these two had lots of sex and fun!
Louis Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, 1771 described Tahiti, a real Utopia we all still want to go to. However, the are always mosquitos in paradise as his crew ended up with venereal disease from screwing all the beautiful young girls there. (Life’s not fair!).
Oscar Wilde’s ‘ The Soul of Man under Socialism’ of 1891, really advocated Anarchy more than Socialism. His aim was to shock people into thinking, an exercise, he believed, they seldom undertook.
Karl Marx wrote ‘Critique’ in 1875.
Samuel Butler’s ‘Erewhon’ most people will remember.
Hilton’s ‘Lost Horizon’, at least we saw the movie.
Hitler’s ‘Mien Kampf’ of 1924 was always a best seller.
Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, 1949, has come and gone, except some of it came true.
The last one of the book is Lee Silver’s ‘Rembering Eden’, written in 1998
Utopia means nowhere or no-place. Distopia a not so nice place. But all try punishing criminals, not punishing criminals, and exterminating them are all methods of turning people into Utopians. We all have our own personal Utopias. What’s yours?
FUNNIES
When I was a kid (1935), almost all the funnies were written for young people like me. There were a few exceptions, even in those days, like ‘Krazy Cat,Pogo, etc. I just realized the other day that almost all our funny papers are made for adults. What do the kids, see? Just cartoons on TV? Maybe Peanuts is still for kids, although Shultz’s humor has been that little tykes think like adults. Do little folks understand that?
THE NOOZ
It’s a funny world, though. Look at how I get my news of world events. Jon Stewart’s The Dailey Show. The Colbert Report and now the Onion News ( “News Before it’s Made”). I tried to watch the supposedly real news shows the other evening to justify my curiosity that it was absurd and could only spend about half an hour of my getting more precious hourly time before I had to abort. Let me tell you young wippersnappers (Whatever that means) how we used to get our news other than from the radio. Everyone would usually get to the movies at least once a week. The main feature (Casablanca) would be preceded by a cartoon (Mr Magoo, Roadrunner) as well as a short ‘Pathe News ‘ reel of about five minutes. It would strickly show actual events that happened the previous week usually, but only accompanied by a narrator describing the scenes. Talking heads were unknown. Of course, it was all in Black & White color.
WORD FOR THE DAY (Just in from the Gulf)
Petrochemigull
SHOPPING HINTS
Toilet paper - You can tell a lot about a country by their toilet paper. When I first got to England, I was appalled by their TP. It was kind of like thinner wax paper! What the hell! Didn’t they know it was supposed to be kind of absorbing the stuff you were trying to wipe off? The French, they use a pink paper in a pile of small individual sheets that disintegrate when you try to use it. The Italians? They don’t give you any. I always carry a roll of TP whenever I travel to Europe, as God knows, you’re going to need it. Don’t forget to take a small flashlight into the loo with you as the light switch will invariably turn
off before you are finished and leave you floundering around in a unfamiliar toilet trying to finish up in pitch dark.
Back home here, your choices are unlimited. In my search for the true grail of TP, I have tried them all. The long & short of it is...The more they advertise, the crystal worthless the product. I finally settled on the cheapest one, Ultra-somthing from Safeway. It has all the right stuff. Easy to start unrolling without ripping half the roll apart trying to get thru the glue part, sheets tear easily and where you want them to, double sheets, strong enough not to fall apart easily, etc..
While we’re on paper products, why did it take a hundred years for Paper
Towel people to come up with “Select-a-size’ rolls? I suppose the executive who thought that up is now basking in Bermuda in his condo, enjoying the rest of his rich life on the beach. Even now, it seems there is only one company making it. And just try to find rolls that are not printed with some inane bullshit pattern that I wouldn’t have in the house in the first place. Life is soo hard!
DEATH & TAXES
Since I’m getting too close to the first part, we’ll skip that & talk about income tax for the Feds. I am beginning to think that exempting religions from paying taxes is not a rational decision. I know, we have determined that they are supposedly a ‘Non profit’ entity, but can you imagine how much money that must cost the US? If they’re so non-profit, how can they build Crystal Cathedrals costing millions in Anaheim? Fortunately, Billy Graham is just about dead so he won’t be giving all our presidents advice on how to run our country. Maybe Obama will be able to turn a deaf ear to the Christians anyway, as long as he doesn’t give to much to the Muslims. Most good Xians , Jews & Muslims give 10% of income to their churches, allowing all the priests, rabbis & mullas to lay around all day in luxury. Just imagine if all those zillions went to the Feds we could have continuing wars all over the Middle East. (As if we don’t already). Do you think we could look at our Health Care and maybe get it as good as Holland or France?
FOR THE FOODIES
Being a history buff and having lived in the Islands for a year as a kiamana beach boy I recently got curious about where pineapple came from. Well, here’s the skinny - The Pineapple originated in Paraguay (That’s in South America) and somehow got to the Carribes at the time of Columbus (This area is kind of sketchy). By the 1600's the plant had gotten to the Phillipines and not until 1813 did it finally arrive in Hawaii. The rest is the history of Dole.
Now sugar cane originated in India before 600 AD. By 770 it had gotten to Bagdad and Egypt. The Sabres of Paradise brought it over to Spain thru North Africa around 1400. It wasn’t long before it got to the West Indies and on to Phillipines and later to Hawaii. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that sugar beets in Europe were cheaper and the market went to hell.
I’ve just finished The Faber Book of Utopias, edited by John Carey. It consists of descriptions of Utopias from ancient Egyptian to present day.
Beginning with an Egyptian Tale from about 1700 BC, when fictional narrative emerged after 1938 BC. In “A Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor” a retainer tries to comfort his master who is sailing home from a failed mission of some kind. On a paradise island, a devine snake can suffer misfortune and overcome it. E.i., stoic endurance and self control will win the day. It was only translated in 1820!
The Greek Poet Hesiod wrote “Works & Days” about 700 BC. He describes the Four Golden Ages, where life was perfect, food falling off trees, etc. Probably from an earlier Zorostrian myth.
Plato’s “Republic” is more renowned. About 360 BC, he described Socrates’ version of a perfect world. However, it comes out as a totalitarian world of compulsion & authority, with three classes - Rulers, Auxillories (Police, etc.) and workers (us!). The masses needed to believe “A convenient Fiction” or “ Noble Lie” (Brainwashing?) Favored censorship as well as controlled breeding. (I’m outa here!).
Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ 1667, shows what a great life Adam & Eve had in the Garden. Not exactly like the bible, these two had lots of sex and fun!
Louis Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, 1771 described Tahiti, a real Utopia we all still want to go to. However, the are always mosquitos in paradise as his crew ended up with venereal disease from screwing all the beautiful young girls there. (Life’s not fair!).
Oscar Wilde’s ‘ The Soul of Man under Socialism’ of 1891, really advocated Anarchy more than Socialism. His aim was to shock people into thinking, an exercise, he believed, they seldom undertook.
Karl Marx wrote ‘Critique’ in 1875.
Samuel Butler’s ‘Erewhon’ most people will remember.
Hilton’s ‘Lost Horizon’, at least we saw the movie.
Hitler’s ‘Mien Kampf’ of 1924 was always a best seller.
Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, 1949, has come and gone, except some of it came true.
The last one of the book is Lee Silver’s ‘Rembering Eden’, written in 1998
Utopia means nowhere or no-place. Distopia a not so nice place. But all try punishing criminals, not punishing criminals, and exterminating them are all methods of turning people into Utopians. We all have our own personal Utopias. What’s yours?
FUNNIES
When I was a kid (1935), almost all the funnies were written for young people like me. There were a few exceptions, even in those days, like ‘Krazy Cat,Pogo, etc. I just realized the other day that almost all our funny papers are made for adults. What do the kids, see? Just cartoons on TV? Maybe Peanuts is still for kids, although Shultz’s humor has been that little tykes think like adults. Do little folks understand that?
THE NOOZ
It’s a funny world, though. Look at how I get my news of world events. Jon Stewart’s The Dailey Show. The Colbert Report and now the Onion News ( “News Before it’s Made”). I tried to watch the supposedly real news shows the other evening to justify my curiosity that it was absurd and could only spend about half an hour of my getting more precious hourly time before I had to abort. Let me tell you young wippersnappers (Whatever that means) how we used to get our news other than from the radio. Everyone would usually get to the movies at least once a week. The main feature (Casablanca) would be preceded by a cartoon (Mr Magoo, Roadrunner) as well as a short ‘Pathe News ‘ reel of about five minutes. It would strickly show actual events that happened the previous week usually, but only accompanied by a narrator describing the scenes. Talking heads were unknown. Of course, it was all in Black & White color.
WORD FOR THE DAY (Just in from the Gulf)
Petrochemigull
SHOPPING HINTS
Toilet paper - You can tell a lot about a country by their toilet paper. When I first got to England, I was appalled by their TP. It was kind of like thinner wax paper! What the hell! Didn’t they know it was supposed to be kind of absorbing the stuff you were trying to wipe off? The French, they use a pink paper in a pile of small individual sheets that disintegrate when you try to use it. The Italians? They don’t give you any. I always carry a roll of TP whenever I travel to Europe, as God knows, you’re going to need it. Don’t forget to take a small flashlight into the loo with you as the light switch will invariably turn
off before you are finished and leave you floundering around in a unfamiliar toilet trying to finish up in pitch dark.
Back home here, your choices are unlimited. In my search for the true grail of TP, I have tried them all. The long & short of it is...The more they advertise, the crystal worthless the product. I finally settled on the cheapest one, Ultra-somthing from Safeway. It has all the right stuff. Easy to start unrolling without ripping half the roll apart trying to get thru the glue part, sheets tear easily and where you want them to, double sheets, strong enough not to fall apart easily, etc..
While we’re on paper products, why did it take a hundred years for Paper
Towel people to come up with “Select-a-size’ rolls? I suppose the executive who thought that up is now basking in Bermuda in his condo, enjoying the rest of his rich life on the beach. Even now, it seems there is only one company making it. And just try to find rolls that are not printed with some inane bullshit pattern that I wouldn’t have in the house in the first place. Life is soo hard!
DEATH & TAXES
Since I’m getting too close to the first part, we’ll skip that & talk about income tax for the Feds. I am beginning to think that exempting religions from paying taxes is not a rational decision. I know, we have determined that they are supposedly a ‘Non profit’ entity, but can you imagine how much money that must cost the US? If they’re so non-profit, how can they build Crystal Cathedrals costing millions in Anaheim? Fortunately, Billy Graham is just about dead so he won’t be giving all our presidents advice on how to run our country. Maybe Obama will be able to turn a deaf ear to the Christians anyway, as long as he doesn’t give to much to the Muslims. Most good Xians , Jews & Muslims give 10% of income to their churches, allowing all the priests, rabbis & mullas to lay around all day in luxury. Just imagine if all those zillions went to the Feds we could have continuing wars all over the Middle East. (As if we don’t already). Do you think we could look at our Health Care and maybe get it as good as Holland or France?
FOR THE FOODIES
Being a history buff and having lived in the Islands for a year as a kiamana beach boy I recently got curious about where pineapple came from. Well, here’s the skinny - The Pineapple originated in Paraguay (That’s in South America) and somehow got to the Carribes at the time of Columbus (This area is kind of sketchy). By the 1600's the plant had gotten to the Phillipines and not until 1813 did it finally arrive in Hawaii. The rest is the history of Dole.
Now sugar cane originated in India before 600 AD. By 770 it had gotten to Bagdad and Egypt. The Sabres of Paradise brought it over to Spain thru North Africa around 1400. It wasn’t long before it got to the West Indies and on to Phillipines and later to Hawaii. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that sugar beets in Europe were cheaper and the market went to hell.
Friday, January 14, 2011
WINTER SALE!
BOOK REPORT
The Gate, the true Story by John Van der Zee is one of the best book about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. You have to overlook the poor quality of inaugurated reproductions of drawings & photos but you really get the incredible problems that Joseph Strauss had to overcome. Aside from about ten years of political bull shit he waded thru, and the surprising innovations of the bridge, and given that all this happened in the middle of the Depression, we are fortunate it all turned out so well. Other than the fact the bridge was paid off a long time ago and the district subsidized the ferries and the bus system in order to burden us with ever increasing fares.
Strauss, the purported engineer of the bridge, was actually the promoter of the whole thing, he fortunately hired the best engineers in the US (Ahman, Moiser, etc.) but especially Charles Ellis, a brilliant man in the wings who really made it feasible. Fortunately, Strauss’s first design, a combination cantilever/suspension structure (Ugly!) was replaced by the all suspension type, which was a thousand feet longer than any built to that date. A span of 4,200 feet was really stretching the envelope at the time. It was only recently spans were built longer. Roebling Company, (Brooklyn Bridge) spun the cables and inaugerated safety measures on the bridge, even using hard hats made of leather.
In those days, you figured on one death for every million dollars of construction cost.
As the bridge cost 33 million, that no one was killed during the initial stages was a miracle. However, when the deck was nearly completed, a large platform used for stripping forms of the concrete roadway collapsed, sending twelve souls to the water. Two survived the fall, broken up a bit.
The color? Originally to be silver, like the Bay bridge, the architect (Riding in on his white horse!) Convinced all that International Orange would be perfect. Praise the Lord!
COFFEE SHOP BLUES
For the past few years, after I have my morning porridge & coffee & read the newspaper, I escape to one of several coffee emporiums to read a book. I could do this at home but my wife chatters all the time, even though I have my nose in a book. I have about four places I can go to have a second cup and read in peace for about an hour. As the old saying goes: ‘There are mosquitos in Paradise’. A couple of problems have emerged to squelch my early morning tranquility. One is music over the loud speaker system. The Village Bakery, was run for years by an attractive Scandinavian lady who had wonderful classical music softly on the background. Recently, she retired and sold to a young jitterbug who took over, although he didn’t change the food (Fortunately!) He blasts your auditory system with the usual banl pop music that really is disconcerting. The same thing happened to my Forestville shop, except it was louder there. Asking the teen-bopper working there to tone it down only gets reprisals with worse music louder.
But wait, there’s more! Inevitibally, after I’ve become a regular, people begin to act friendly, interrupting my concentration on “The trial of Socrates” or my current tome. My only hope is the Union Hotel Bakery in Occidental, where They still make a fabulous Italian turnover. However, I do bitch about that as years ago, some younger member of the clan decided to change from white flower to whole wheat which made the turnover tend to fall apart more easily. Oh, the horror of it all!
SELLING OUT
Joy and I have a small, older (1975) cabin on Donner Summit that we have owned for ten rears, but with the economy in the toilet, and real estate selling at it’s lowest in years, we are putting it up for sale. We would like to keep it for another couple of years, but look, I’m not getting any younger and we’ve got to get to Europe soon before the dollar gets better over there. Anyway, if you’re interested, we are expecting about $380,000 for it. It’s really great if you like shoveling out of ten foot snowdrifts every time you go up to do a little skiing. But mostly, I’m telling you this to pitch all the furniture, and accouterments that we will have to get rid of. What to do with our 6 Breuer dining chairs, the oak dining table that easily breaks down for moving (My famous Nomad Furniture), a Breuer lounge chair, plus a couple of original Eames ply chairs.
CIAO GRAPEMAN
Recently, my favorite grape grower, Dominic Canale, died. When my friend, Dodson and I were making wine, we loved the experience of buying our grapes from Dominic. He had 75 acres of zinfandel and Cabernet that bill and I mined. Dominic was one of those characters one is fortunate to run into, He came to the US when he was five to escape Mussolini’s influence. While fighting in Italy in WW2 he was a valuable asset to the Allies as he could speak Italian and French. His father sang opera, which Dominic did also, and when Dominic got to Monte Cassino , the monks taught him the Stradella, based on the life of a 17th century Italian composer. After the war, who else would use the GI Bill to study at La Scala in Milan for six years?
It was always a memorable experience buying our grapes from Dominic. We would arrainge to meet at his farm in Dry Creek Valley and he would have all the grapes picked, usually about one half ton. He would dump them in his crusher and then fill our 33 gal containers with the must. Of course, during this whole process, we would be drinking his wine , as well as his port, eating a selection of cheeses and bread until everyone was pretty loopy and really shouldn’t be operating any machinery at all. But that’s one of the hazards of making wine and one just has to live with it. Anyway, we all had just a terrific time and managed to get over to my place in Graton to innoculate the grapes with the proper yeast in order to begin fermentation.
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